Mr. David Ruffley (Bury St. Edmunds) (Con): I and my colleagues congratulate the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) on securing this timely debate. Let me make it clear that Her Majesty's Opposition support the six broad goals set out in the Government's 2005 document on neighbourhood policing. We believe in the principle that local people should have more influence over setting local safety priorities. We believe in stronger partnership working not just between local authorities, neighbourhood watches and local citizens' groups, but also between primary care trusts and the whole family of partnership workers in crime and disorder reduction partnerships and other groupings.

We also believe that having a more visible presence on the streets is vital to neighbourhood policing. We need to cut the paperwork and get more officers and police community support officers back on the beat. My concerns do not relate to the principle of neighbourhood policing, which we support, but its implementation. The Conservative-controlled borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which I visited earlier this week, provides an excellent example of delivering 24/7 policing. Two wards are enjoying this piloted experiment, which involves working across 24-hour periods. They have, on average, 30 officers, rather than the London average of six. It is worth while focusing on the results, and I would like the Minister's views on them. In Shepherd's Bush, for example, robberies are down by 48 per cent. In Fulham Broadway, overall crime is down 10 per cent., with burglary down 27 per cent. and theft down 22 per cent. Those are real examples of a very aggressive 24/7 neighbourhood policing policy.

What is the evidence for crime reductions in non-24/7 areas—our average neighbourhood policing areas? The Home Office's report this February, 'Neighbourhood policing: the impact of piloting and early national implementation', which I know the Minster will have studied with care, did not provide any numerical evidence for significant reductions in crime in the 16 wards that it studied. I wonder what the Minister's view is of the empirical evidence for crime reduction in neighbourhood policing areas.PCSOs are important in the delivery of neighbourhood policing, which was sagely observed by my hon. Friends the Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) and for Banbury (Tony Baldry). I do not need to go into the argument about the Government's promise at the time of the last election to recruit 24,000 PCSOs by 2008. That target has been reduced to 16,000. Will the Minister give us an indication of his estimates for the number of PCSOs who will be available in England and Wales to support sworn officers in neighbourhood teams for next year and the year after?

I have an even more important question about sworn officer numbers, police strength and absent PCSOs. We all believe in neighbourhood policing, but one does not have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the number of sworn officers needs to be kept up. I have one simple question, to which the House deserves an answer, and I am not making a party political point, because every hon. Member who cares about the problem will want the answer. On page 45 of Sir Ronnie Flanagan's final report on the independent review of policing, published in February, he said that

'maintaining police numbers at their current level'—

which was about 141,000 in January—

'is not sustainable over the course of the next three years...we would not be making the most effective use of the resources dedicated to the police if police officer numbers were sustained at their current level.'

I would dearly like to hear whether the Minister and the Government support Sir Ronnie Flanagan's proposition. Until we know what their intentions are over the next three years and whether 141,000 officers is a sustainable number, we cannot have an intelligent debate about the effectiveness of neighbourhood policing.

Mr. Mark Field: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Ruffley: I will not, because we are very short of time and I want the Minister to have a proper crack at answering these questions. I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House spoke about reducing red tape. One proposal has been de-emphasised by Sir Ronnie. In his interim report on 11 September, he strongly recommended that the Association of Chief Police Officers and the National Policing Improvement Agency draft a national suite of streamlined forms containing minimum reporting requirements by summer 2008. Conservatives support that, but we do not seem to be having much success. If anyone speaks to ACPO and the NPIA, as I did yesterday, there is not much evidence of a national suite of forms with minimum reporting requirements being produced by the summer of this year, as Sir Ronnie originally wished to see. Perhaps the Minister can comment on that. We are not going to have better and more effective neighbourhood policing unless the Government get serious at a national level on cutting red tape and reducing bureaucracy.

I want to give the Minister enough time to answer those questions, so I shall just make the following points. He will agree that it is not acceptable that the proportion of time spent by patrol officers on patrol fell from 18 to 17.1 per cent between 2003-04 and 2006-07, based on the Government's own figures up to 2007. Unless those figures are reversed, they cast doubt on the effectiveness of the neighbourhood policing programme in the next year and beyond. There are also some rather depressing figures about police station closures in the past 10 years. Freedom of information requests reveal that, to date, 550 have shut their doors.

We also need clarity on the single non-emergency number. In his final review in February, Sir Ronnie Flanagan highlighted the importance of the 101 non-emergency number in acting as a catalyst for improved partnership working between the police and other agencies. Will the Minister tell us about funding for the 101 number, because there are question marks over that?

Finally, proper implementation of the neighbourhood policing programme requires proper and stable funding. That is the view of all who have looked at the matter. Will the Minister accept recommendation No. 30 of Sir Ronnie Flanagan's report, which states:

'The NPIA should, by April 2008 have agreed a funded programme for the next three years to continue to support forces to embed Neighbourhood Policing'?

Is that something that we will see in April 2008? If not, why not?