Matt Vickers

As the hon. Member will have seen, in previous years, we were increasing the funding by more. In fact, last year we increased by £300 million more than what Labour is doing this year. We were not raiding our police forces with national insurance tax raids; we were putting the pay award into the baseline. I would be wasting less money on GB Energy. I would not be looking to give train drivers on £55,000 a year a bumper pay rise of almost £10,000, with no efforts to increase productivity. It is about priorities. Policing was a priority for the Conservative Government. That is why 20,000 more police officers were put on the streets, reaching record numbers. The Government have pointed to their promise to recruit 13,000 new neighbourhood police officers, but we all know that a relatively small number—just 3,000—are new officers. Most of the claimed 13,000 are either reassigned or redeployed, are part-time volunteers or are police community support officers with no powers of arrest. That redeployment is concerning for many. Will the Minister assure MPs that when their constituents ring 999, they will not have to wait longer for an emergency response because response officers have been redeployed to neighbourhoods? Will she guarantee that police numbers will not fall any lower than the current level as a result of her funding settlement? Given the nature of modern policing and overtime, to what extent did the Government consider the impact of overtime on the increased national insurance cost, and could there be a further shortfall as a result? We owe a huge debt of gratitude to our brave, hard-working police officers, PCSOs and police staff. They deserve resources and support, not tax raids and funding shortfalls.