Late last year, Freedom of Information requests that I submitted to all UK police constabularies revealed just how damaging the Chancellor’s budget will be for our policing – and the significant number of officers it could cost us.
The responses I received on the impact of the increases to employers’ National Insurance contributions were shocking. For example, Cheshire, my local constabulary, will face an additional £3.7 million bill for employers’ National Insurance costs annually, Devon and Cornwall a £6.3 million bill, and Greater Manchester a staggering £11.9 million. These increases will run into the millions of pounds for police forces up and down the country.
There is a very real risk that police services will have to be cut back, vital training curtailed, police numbers reduced and operational spending cut in order to foot this tax bill.
Labour’s budget has been a disaster on all fronts. And it was not lost on me that while the announced changes in employers’ National Insurance contributions would be a disaster for private businesses, as my parliamentary inbox can testify, it would also prove disastrous for our public services too.
For example, in West Yorkshire alone, where the force faces a £11.2 million tax bill annually, the rise would cost the equivalent of more than 220 police. (Average wage £35k plus employment costs). This is potentially 220 fewer police officers on the streets, keeping our communities safe, all as a direct result of this Government’s budget.
Merseyside will face £7 million, roughly 130 officers, and Kent will pay over £6 million, the equivalent of 100 officers. Every officer that we lose or fail to recruit means less protection for communities and our streets less safe.
To me, it is incomprehensible that the repercussions of this policy had not been fully considered before they were announced. It certainly appears Rachel Reeves had not foreseen the totally predictable impact that increasing employers’ National Insurance contributions would have on policing costs.
Rachel Reeves seems to have believed she could put the squeeze on business for ever more taxes in order to pay for Labour’s ideological choices of Net Zero, GB Energy, increasing foreign aid and public sector pay increases, but forgot that pushing up such taxes would end up crushing the public sector too.
It seems too, that the Treasury did not do an impact assessment on this tax rise, or a consultation with the police forces, as is so typical of this Government’s approach, but instead have tried to cobble together some hasty compensatory payments as an afterthought.
Last week I held a Westminster Hall debate on this very topic, so I could ask the Minister directly for her response. It comes as no surprise that the Government’s response was fiscally incoherent. And whilst the Government has belatedly announced it will pick up the £230 million National Insurance tab for this year, this is still money that will be going on tax rather than on frontline policing.
However it is framed, and no matter how many cop-out excuses this Government may give, there is only one way around the problem this Government has created: scrap this tax on our police forces.
This Government is banged to rights over their £26 billion tax grab that will hit the UK’s police forces hard
