Hull MP tackles Home Office on local police funding

Diana Johnson MP today questioned ministers on funding for Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) in Home Office questions at the House of Commons.

This follows the Home Secretary's announcement on 27 November 2006 that the Home Office, in response to requests from policing organisations, would allow funding for 16,000 PCSOs to be recruited nationally, instead of the 24,000 that had been a national target earlier. This allowed for around 300 PCSOs to be recruited in Humberside, instead of the 210 that the recent Home Office announcement would provide funding for.

After asking for a statement on neighbourhood policing, the Hull North MP followed this by asking: "Allowing local flexibilty in the allocation of neighbourhood policing resources is right. But does my Right Honourable Friend agree that this should allow forces such as Humberside to recruit the higher number of PCSOs that they want with the level of funding that they were expecting will be given."

Diana Johnson has also written to the Home Secretary John Reid pressing the case for the Home Office to stand by the original funding commitment for those forces that want a higher number of PCSOs.

Diana Johnson MP said: "There is now a broad consensus that PCSOs have helped to increase the visibility of local policing, even from Conservatives and Lib Dems who consistently voted against the resources needed to establish PCSOs in the first place. Indeed, the Lib Dems voted against having PCSOs at all when Parliament debated the law introducing PCSOs in 2002!

"Of course, it is easy to forget that ten years ago, before Labour was in power and increasing investment in policing, we had fewer police, and PCSOs and Hull's Community Wardens were non-existent. I want to maintain the momentum of investment and reform that is needed to improve neighbourhood policing in Hull.

"This is why I believe that the flexible approach to allocating neighbourhood policing resources that the Home Secretary announced last November, and which was requested by the police themselves, needs to be flexible enough to allow Home Office funding for Humberside Police to recruit the higher number of PCSOs that they want without facing difficulties elsewhere in their budget.

"The 90 or so extra PCSOs that this would mean in Humberside would be an important extra weapon in fighting crime and anti-social behaviour. I do not see why areas like Humberside should be held back in recruiting the numbers of PCSOs that they want just because police forces elsewhere in the country say they could manage with fewer."