Today I have welcomed news that Leicestershire & Rutland Police will receive an extra £14.1 million to tackle crime and keep our streets safe – an increase of 7% from last year.
The Conservatives have announced an increase of up to £1.1 billion for police forces throughout England and Wales, to ensure our police can focus on keeping communities safe.
It comes on top of the Conservatives’ plan to recruit an extra 20,000 police officers, along with ensuring they have more powers and better kit. Leicestershire & Rutland Police is already set to receive an additional 89 officers this year, with more to come in the future.
As a result, overall police funding is set to increase by the biggest amount in a decade. This will see more money available to recruit, train and equip police officers, as well as investment in national priorities like tackling serious and organised crime, and our counter-terrorism capabilities.
I am therefore urging Labour MPs to vote in favour of this much-needed funding settlement when it comes before Parliament. The Labour Party voted against a similar settlement for the police last year, which would have denied forces an additional £970 million.
I am delighted that police funding in Leicestershire & Rutland could increase by up to £14.1 million next year.
We made a commitment to people at the election that we would crack down on crime and back our brave police to get on with the job, and we are wasting no time in delivering on that promise now.
The Conservative Party will always ensure that the police have the powers and resources needed to keep our citizens and communities safe.”
Home Secretary Priti Patel has told me : “This Government is delivering on the people’s priorities by giving policing the biggest funding increase in a decade. It will mean more officers tackling the crime blighting our streets, so people can feel safe in their communities. The police must now make full use of this significant investment to deliver for the public.”
Additional Information
- Giving the police the biggest increase in funding for a decade, so that they have the resources and officers they need to keep us safe. The amount of funding available to the policing system for 2020 to 2021 will increase by more than £1.1 billion, totalling £15.2 billion, if Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) take full advantage of flexibility to set the police precept. This represents an almost 10 per cent increase on the core (resource) grant provided to forces last year, enabling the police to cut crime and deliver on the people’s priorities (Home Office, News Story, 22 January 2020).
- Police and Crime Commissioners will receive £8.7 billion in grants - £667 million more than last year. This will ensure they can deliver the first wave of 6,000 new police officers by the end of the year.
- Providing £750 million to policing to enable police forces to recruit the first 6,000 of the 20,000 additional police officers by the end of March 2021. The bulk will be paid to Police and Crime Commissioners (£700 million). The remainder will be spent nationally on capabilities and infrastructure to support the recruitment drive. This includes investments to improve the recruitment process including training and specialist schemes to ensure the right officers end up in the right roles.
- Increasing funding to tackle organised crime, including county-lines drug dealing and increasing counter-terrorism funding by £90 million. Funding for counter-terrorism policing will rise by £90 million to £906 million and the latest funding settlement provides £150 million to tackle serious and organised crime, plus £20 million for fighting county lines, to stop drug traffickers exploiting young people and damaging the fabric of our communities with drugs.
- Introducing a new Serious Violence Reduction Order to help our hardworking police get more weapons off our streets. These new powers will give the police the power to stop and search habitual knife carriers without suspicion. We have already empowered more than 8,000 police officers to authorise enhanced stop and search powers (Home Office, News Story, 11 August 2019; Home Office, News Story, 27 September 2019; Home Office, News Story, 11 August 2019).
- Working to end serious violence and knife crime. We will provide a further £35 million for Violence Reduction Units, task the criminal justice system with developing a swifter response to knife carriers so that anyone caught with a knife following stop and search will be arrested on the spot, cautioned or charged within 24 hours, and have their first court appearance in less than a week (Home Office, News Story, 29 December 2019).
