Nick Speaks Out as Northumbria Police Face Cash Cuts
Nick with members of Newcastle's emergency services
The Evening Chronicle has today published details of a report which shows that Northumbria police force is the second worst hit nationally by spending cuts as a percentage of total funding.
Newcastle East MP Nick Brown said: “What the report shows is that the big Labour urban areas are taking a much bigger hit than the ones that are broadly speaking Conservative supporting. Northumbria has always suffered from being a mixed urban and rural force. It affects their grant formula. They will not find it easy to absorb this real-terms cut.
“Policing is a very labour intensive activity. It seems to me inevitable that this will have an impact on jobs. It makes the job of the chief constable a lot harder at a time when we ought to be helping them.”
And Nick denied claims by the Liberal Democrat and Tory coalition that the country was in it together in terms of painful spending cuts to deal with the national debt.
Nick said: “We are clearly not in this together. These cuts are falling disproportionately on urban police authorities in Labour voting areas. On the face of it, it doesn’t seem fair. Northumbria has always been disadvantaged by being treated as a part rural party urban area when in fact the overwhelming bulk of work is in urban areas.”
