It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) on securing the debate. If I was still a Back Bencher—we all start in that position—I would probably have put my name down for a debate here today on this subject as well. As colleagues who are here from both sides of the House know, that is what this place is for, and I have never hidden any of my views on this subject. I stand up again today, as I do every time I stand up as the Police Minister, which it is an honour and a privilege to do, to pay tribute to the police officers not only in the west midlands, but across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland—this great kingdom of ours. They do a simply fantastic job.
The forces around the country have adapted brilliantly to changes in the crime that they deal with daily and to austerity. Opposition Members will not like this point, but we inherited a really difficult financial position, and we went into an austerity process. The country made a decision at the general election. Many of the things that I heard in the speech by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), were also put out by him across the country during the general election campaign, but the public believe in what we are trying to do, which is to run a stable ship with the money available and not continue to get ourselves in a difficult financial situation.
I have met representatives of many forces, from chiefs right down to junior constables who have just joined the force. The other day I was at Hendon, where training of new recruits was going on. The one thing that has always been clear to me is that 99.9% of police officers are in the job for the right reason. That is true whether they are at the bottom or the top. I do not think that the press pay enough of a tribute to them; too often, they focus on the bad apples who spoil it for everyone else. It is right that they should be rooted out, and they are.
I pay tribute to the comments made on both sides of the Chamber. In the time allowed, I probably will not be able to answer all the points that were raised, but, as always, I will write to colleagues—and I did write to the
shadow Police Minister in response to his letter to me. If he has not got that response, I do not know where it has gone, but I have responded.
Let us begin right at the start. Every time I went to see different forces, the one thing that the chief and the PCC either said in unison or quietly said individually to me was that the existing formula was fundamentally flawed. We were basically saying to forces, “This is how much money you should have, based on what you’re delivering, and this is what we’re going to take away from you through damping, top-slicing, etc.” All of them said that it was fundamentally flawed, so the principle of what we were looking at was how we could find a fairer system for all 43 forces that I represent.
I fully understand that there have been real, substantial and difficult financial decisions to be made by PCCs and chief constables about where and how they deliver their policing. I pay tribute to the work that has been done. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) said that I might not know what she has done. Trust me: the civil service is quite good and did tell me exactly what she has done in the past. I thank her for the work that she has done for the Department and in her community. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
It is important that we ensure that the people on the front line and not the people—without being rude—in this room decide how policing is delivered in their communities. With that in mind, I have, interestingly enough, a new member of staff joining my private office from the Metropolitan police. They will be seconded from the Metropolitan police for one year, so that I can hear about what is happening on the front line, rather than perhaps just going by other experiences in the room. Actually, that person has volunteered to do it; they have not been seconded.
It is crucial that we ensure that a modern police force can deal with modern, difficult crimes. Some of those crimes are not new to us. FGM has been around since we became—this interesting word—a multicultural society. A lot of people have brought here traditions that we find completely abhorrent. Fortunately, we now have the legislation on the statute book to try to do something about that and people are coming forward.
When I was a young man on the council estate where I was brought up in north London, domestic violence was, I am ashamed to say, almost accepted. Thank God it is not today. People do have the confidence to go to the police and report it—sometimes through a third agency—and those prosecutions are going up.
Some of the figures for crime were alluded to by the shadow Minister. Has it gone up in the west midlands by 1% this year? Yes, it has. People should have a quick look, though, at what the figures tell us about where the reporting of offences is—I am referring to rape, sexual violence, male rape and domestic violence. Those are the areas where we should all be proud that people now have the confidence to come forward. Because of some of the historical sexual abuse cases, there are, rightly, more and more people coming forward. They are telling us things that we perhaps would never have dreamt had taken place in this country.
Crime as a whole is falling. I accept that it has also been falling in other parts of the world, but the police have done a simply fantastic job, with more limited resources, of ensuring that crime is coming down.