Labour today announces a plan to make Britain’s
communities safer, by putting thousands more frontline staff into critical
public services, including police, fire, prison, intelligence and border
agencies.
In the wake of large-scale Tory cuts to police and
security resulting in 37,000 fewer staff, Labour will recruit:
· 10,000 more police officers
· 3,000 more firefighters
· 3,000 more prison officers
· 1,000 more security and intelligence agency staff
· 500 more border guards
Labour’s plans to reverse staff cuts in these agencies
will return staffing levels closer to those when Labour left office.
Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party, said:
“Ensuring the safety of our communities demands
properly resourced action across many fronts. It means upholding and enforcing
our individual rights, promoting community relations, supporting our emergency
services, tackling and preventing crime and protecting us from danger,
including threats of terror and violence.
“Only a Labour government will meet these challenges.
As we set out in our manifesto earlier this month, Labour will recruit
additional police officers, additional firefighters, additional prison officers
and additional border guards.
“We will also legislate to ensure safe staffing levels
in the NHS, including for our ambulance services. Today, I am announcing that Labobur
will also increase staffing levels at the security and intelligence agencies –
GCHQ, SIS and MI5 – in order to better ensure our collective safety.
“As well as full funding for our frontline and first
response services, Labour will properly resource the partner agencies in other
frontline public services, including schools and colleges, and local
authorities. These agencies are charged with a duty to identify those
individuals vulnerable to violent extremism but under the current government
they have been held back and barely been able to provide their own core
services. Only Labour is serious about properly resourcing our security and
frontline services.”
Labour’s pledge to increase the resources of state
security and emergency services is matched by a renewed commitment to uphold
the individual rights and civil liberties of the people in communities served.
Diane Abbott, Shadow Home Secretary said:
“One of the great myths of British politics is that
the Tories are the party of law and order. The reality is very different.
Serious crime is up since the Tories came to office in 2010, and they have cut
police numbers by over 20,000 in that time. Theresa May broke her pledge to
protect the police budgets.
“Labour will protect our communities. We will focus on
rebuilding community policing, and the ties between communities and the forces
that serve them for good reason. It works. Unlike many other countries where
the police have long been a quasi-military force standing outside the
community, we have a history of policing by consent. We need to rebuild the
trust between communities and the police which has been eroded by a combination
of police cuts and rising crime.
”Part of rebuilding trust will a review of the Prevent
strategy and the Channel programme. Nobody disputes the need to engage
communities in the fight against violent extremism but we must be mindful of
the warning issued by David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism
legislation, who said: “There is a strong feeling in Muslim communities that I
visit that Prevent is, if not a spying programme, then is at least a programme
that is targeted on them.”
Richard Burgon, Shadow Justice Secretary, said
“Labour will uphold the rights which make our
communities safer, including a pledge to maintain the Human Rights Act and to
strengthen judicial oversight over the powers of intelligence services. We will
back up our legal protections with adequate resourcing across our security and
justice systems.
“In stark contrast, the Tories have cut the staffing
levels at the security and intelligence services, they have cut fire and rescue
budgets by more than 30%, they have taken 20,000 police officers and 6,000 Police
and Community Supports Officers out of service, they have dangerously reduced
the number of staff in our increasingly overcrowded prisons and they have
weakened our Border Force.”
Editor’s Notes:
SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES
1. Staffing levels at GCHQ, SIS and MI5 were cut by 5% in 2010 and despite
planned increases have not yet returned to the levels inherited from the last
Labour government.
2. The Conservatives have cut more than 37,000 roles to public service
agencies since 2010:
· 20,000 fewer police officers
· 10,000 fewer firefighters
· 6,000 fewer prison officers
· 31 fewer staff in the security and intelligence agencies
· 1,000 fewer border guards
POLICE AND CRIME
3. Since 2010, police officer numbers have been reduced by 20,000 and
police community support officer numbers have been reduced by 6,000.
4. Police budgets have been cut by £2.3bn and the government has already
broken its promise to protect police funding over this last Parliament. cutting
budgets by £330 million in real terms in the last two years alone.
5. Latest figures show rises in some of the most serious criminal offences,
including homicide, gun and knife crime.
FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICES
6. Since 2010, firefighter numbers have been reduced by 10,000.
7. Since 2010, more than 40 fire stations have been closed and more than
130 fire engines lost, including 10 stations and 13 engines in London alone.
8. Fire and rescue service budgets were cut by 30% from 2010-2015, with a
further 20% cut planned from 2015-2020.
9. The average response time to the most critical incidents has increased
by more than 30 seconds since 2010.
AMBULANCE SERVICES
10. The 8 minute
target for Red Call 1 ambulance response times have not been since May 2015:
Red Call 1 is the category of calls representing the most critical
life-threatening emergencies.
BORDER FORCE
11. Since 2010 more
than 1,000 border guard jobs were lost
12. Since 2011 Border
Force budgets were cut by 12%
13. Since 2011 there
has been an 11% increase in the people entering the UK
14. Since 2011 there
has been a cut of more than 25% to the amount on money spent for every person
who crosses passport control into Britain, from £5.80 spent in 2011 to £4.43
spent in 2015
15. The cuts to
Border Force have contributed to low staff morale at UK Border Force, with one
in three staff planning to leave within 12 months
PRISONS
16. Prison officer
numbers have reduced by more than 6,000 since 2010
17. There were 5,423
assaults on prison staff in the year to March 2017 – a rise of 40% on the previous
year
18. 68 per cent of
all prisons are overcrowded, holding more inmates than their usable ‘certified
normal accommodation’ (CNA), with some holding more than 50 per cent over the
recommended levels
19. Self-inflicted
prisoner deaths rose by 28% in the year to June 2016.
20. 65 prisoners were
released in error in 2015-16 – the highest total for six years.
DEVOLVED ADMINISTRATIONS
21.
Devolved administrations would receive consequential financial settlements for
those services which are devolved.
22.
The Welsh Government would determine policies and priorities for devolved
services as well as those services to be devolved following the election of a
UK Labour Government.
23.
This is as outlined in Welsh Labour’s 2017 manifesto, “Standing Up For Wales”
and the UK Labour manifesto.
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