Police funding continued - helping the police to protect our communities

As I posted this morning,  the Home Secretary announced today more than £15 billion to help the police build back safer and cut crime next year.

• We have asked more of the police than ever before during the pandemic, and this Conservative Government is determined to ensure they have the funding, equipment and support they need.

• That’s why we will increase police funding to £15.8 billion in 2021-22, an increase of £636 million on last year. This includes up to £914 million for counter-terrorism policing and over £400 million to continue recruiting 20,000 extra officers by 2023, of whom almost 6,000 additional officers are already in post..

• Conservatives are delivering on our promise to the British people to put more police on the streets and reduce crime as we build back safer from the pandemic.

We are doing this by:

• Increasing police funding to more than £15 billion on 2021-22
• delivering more officers and keeping our communities safe.

Policing will receive up to £15.8 billion in 2021-22, an increase of up to £636 million on last year. Alongside getting more officers out on the streets, the funding will help to tackle serious violence and increase the number of specialist officers tackling terrorism and serious organised crime such as child abuse and drug trafficking.

• Providing £400 million to continue delivering on our promise to recruit 20,000 extra police officers by 2023. As part of the £15 billion for policing in 2021 we will provide more than £400 million to continue recruiting more officers. We have already delivered almost 6,000 additional police officers.
• Ensuring the police have the resources they need to keep our country safe from terrorism. Funding for counter-terrorism policing will total up to £914 million next year, including money for armed policing and more officers. In addition, counter-terrorism policing will receive £32 million to establish a new Counter-Terrorism Operations Centre to keep the country safe from a range of threats.
• Ensuring the police have the funding and support they need through the coronavirus pandemic, as they work to keep our communities safe.

We have provided an additional £30 million to help forces step up coronavirus enforcement activities in 2020-21, and have reimbursed the cost of all additional PPE purchased between March and July.

This builds on the support we are already providing to the police:

• Putting a record number of officers onto our streets, to help cut crime and keep us safe. In total since November 2019, 12,675 new officers have joined forces across England and Wales. 5,824 of these were specifically recruited as part of the uplift programme, with the rest recruited to backfill leavers or through locally funded recruitment There is now a total headcount of 134,885 officers across forces in England and Wales.
• Enshrining a new police covenant into law, enhancing support and protection for our frontline police officers. The initial focus of the covenant will be on physical protection, health and wellbeing, as well as support for families. It will also create a statutory duty for the Government to do more to support the police, both those currently serving and those who have retired.
• Toughening up sentences for assaulting emergency workers, recognising the debt of gratitude the public feels towards them.
• In line with our manifesto commitment, we are bringing forward legislation to double the maximum sentence for those convicted of assaults on frontline staff including police officers, firefighters and paramedics
• Equipping over 8,000 more officers with Taser devices, ensuring they have the resources they need to keep themselves safe. We have delivered £6.7 million for 41 forces to purchase 8,155 Taser devices, and allocated £150,000 to train up Taser instructors. We have also approved a new Taser 7 model for use, which is more accurate, faster and compact.

We are keeping our communities safe:

• Cracking down on county lines drugs gangs, protecting towns and children from being exploited.
• We are delivering £25 million to help police forces dismantle county lines drugs gangs, with the first £5 million wave already leading to hundreds of arrests, drug deal lines closures and weapons seized.
• Delivering a £25 million Safer Streets Fund to tackle theft, robberies and burglaries in our towns. The money will go towards measures proven to cut crime including locked gates around alleyways, increased street-lighting and the installation of CCTV. This will stop offences that blight communities and cause misery to victims from happening in the first place.
• Empowering police officers to use enhanced stop and search powers, helping to take knives off our streets. We have heard the British people’s concerns about knife crime. That is why the government has lifted emergency stop and search restrictions so that more than 8,000 police officers can now stop and search anyone in a designated area without needing reasonable grounds for suspicion if serious violence is anticipated.

This restriction on our individual freedom is not imposed lightly. It is necessary because too many irreplaceable young lives are being lost to knife crime. 

Violence Reduction Units

• The government is Investing £70 million in Violence Reduction Units, helping the areas most affected by violent crime.

More than 100,000 young people have received support from VRUs, which bring together different organisations including the police, local government and community leaders, to tackle violent crime by understanding its causes and responding collectively.

We are overhauling Britain's sentencing system:

• Ending the early release of sex offenders and others convicted of serious crimes, ensuring they get the punishment they deserve.
• We are ending the halfway release of offenders sentenced to between four and seven years in prison for serious crimes such as rape, manslaughter and GBH with intent. Instead they will have to spend two-thirds of their time behind bars
• Overhauling terrorist sentencing and monitoring laws, so we can keep the most serious offenders in prison for longer and off our streets. 
• Our Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill ends early release for convicted terrorists who receive Extended Determinate Sentences, where the maximum penalty was life, and forces them to serve their whole term in jail
• Imposing Whole Life Orders on child killers, ensuring the worst criminals stay behind bars for longer.
• Child killers will have to serve their whole sentence without any possibility of parole or conditional release, with judges also allowed to impose this punishment on 18-20 year olds in exceptional cases to reflect the gravity of the crime.
• Reforming community sentences, making them stricter, better monitored and more targeted at cutting reoffending.
• Community sentences will be made tougher by doubling the amount of time offenders can be subject to curfew restrictions for up to two years. More vulnerable offenders who do not pose a risk to public safety will be diverted into treatment programmes.
• Passing ‘Helen’s Law’, meaning killers and paedophiles who withhold information on their victims could spend longer behind bars.

‘Helen’s Law’ places a legal duty on the Parole Board to consider the anguish caused by murderers who refuse to disclose the location of a victim’s body when considering them for release or paedophiles who make indecent images of children but do not identify their victims.