Britain’s Hammond Rejects Call for Emergency Knife-Crime Fund
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Philip Hammond has publicly rejected calls by British police and home secretary, Sajid Javid, for an emergency fund to tackle the surge in knife crime.
Police chiefs have been seeking an extra £15m at least after Javid said the government should listen to their demands.
Hammond, the chancellor, already rebuffed Javid’s call for extra funds at a cabinet meeting on Monday and has now done so in broadcast interviews. Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said the government had already agreed to almost £1bn in extra policing resources in the next financial year, and he urged forces to use existing money more efficiently.
Hammond said: “If all police forces operated at the level of the most efficient in terms of eliminating paperwork and (using) the most modern ways of mobile working, we’d save enough police time to be the equivalent of about 11,000 additional officers a year.”
He also urged police forces to prioritize knife crime by redeploying officers from other areas, the Guardian reported.
The chancellor said: “Today we are focused on knife crime, and rightly so, but there are many other demands on available public spending. My job is to make sure that in dealing with an issue like this we use public resources in the most effective way.”
He added: “We know from polling, that people consider tackling knife crime should be the number one priority. So I want to see police forces, surging officers from other duties, into dealing with knife crime. Nipping this problem in the bud early and making sure we turn this spike around.”
Senior police officer have insisted there is a link between rising violent crime and the 21,000 reduction of police officers since 2010. But Hammond rejected this, saying “it isn’t just about money”.
He added: “It is about a joined-up approach across the whole of government, dealing with the young people who are caught up in this knife crime surge, dealing with the drugs issue that underlies it. It is about a whole of government approach to deal with these challenges to make sure we have an effective response that avoids young people going off the rails and taking to violent crime in the first place.”
Hammond said many forces were already using extra officers with the additional £1bn earmarked for next year.
The chancellor, on his talks with Javid, said: “We had a discussion about police funding for 2019-2020 and we reached a settlement which involved additional government funding, plus additional capacity for police and crime commissioners to raise local precept. That means that the police will have nearly £1bn of additional funding in the financial year 2019-20.”
Hammond insisted that calls for more money would have to wait until the next spending review. “We will be having a spending review starting in a few months' time, which will look at the additional spending capacity we have over the coming three years. But there are many demands on the available public funding and we have to look at how to prioritize that,” he said.
