Policing Minister tells Labour PCCs to accept responsibility for rising crime
The Policing Minister has slapped down Labour politicians in the West Midlands for blaming soaring crime levels on budget cuts.
Kit Malthouse MP said successive Labour police commissioners (PCCs) in the region needed to accept responsibility for reduced officer numbers over the past decade.
He said London, where he served as deputy mayor for policing under Boris Johnson, had also faced budget cuts but was in a "better position" than West Midlands Police.
In the latest official figures the West Midlands Police area saw crime soar by more than 20 per cent while in almost every other force area it decreased.
The region's Labour PCC Simon Foster has followed the lead of his predecessor David Jamieson in blaming the desperate situation on budget cuts, which he says have resulted in the force losing 2,200 officers since 2010.
Speaking in a Westminster Hall debate on the use of stop and search, Mr Malthouse said: "Police and Crime commissioners do make a difference.
"You can't walk away from the decisions that were made over the last 10 years and say 'nothing to do with us guv'.
"And it is the case that decisions made in this decade by police and crime commissioners means that as we get into a time of investment in policing, and I'm happy that we're now over halfway through our growth in the number of officers, where you start from is a product of those decisions that were made.
"And there are some forces in the country who fought hard to preserve police officer numbers, not least in London.
"We had to face the same cuts during our time because of the [financial] crash, and as a result we are in a better position now to advance on police officer recruitment.
"West Midlands, I'm afraid, made a different set of decisions during those 10 years, driven by the thinking of the police and crime commissioners there."
Mr Foster has called on Conservative MPs in the region to back his calls for more than £50 million to pay for 1,000 extra officers, on top of extra funding to address a budget black hole.
The force is getting 1,200 new officers by 2023 as part of the Government's uplift programme.
