Funding The Police or Foreign Aid?

Last updated on August 22nd, 2023 at 08:54 pm

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Part One

It is no secret that Central Government funding of the Police is steadily reducing and has been since 2010 when that Camoron person just about scraped home in a General Election.

The other thing about Police Budgeting that pisses me off is the way the government fudges the figures to make themselves look better.

I have heard it mentioned several times that the Police Budget is in the order of £12 Billion and the government frequently state that they have increased funding to the Police for this reason or that.

Really?

Funding The Police or Foreign Aid?

Oh look, Police Funding has gone up. Except for two things. The graphic above includes both the Council Tax precept funding (that has increased over the years) and a Counter Terrorism Grant (yes, that has gone up too).

The Proof

Funding The Police or Foreign Aid?

Since 2015/16 our generous government has increased central government core funding to the Police from £7.101 Billion to £6.962 Billion. Except for the fact that’s a decrease obviously.

Since 2015/16 total Police Funding, including Counter Terrorism) has increased from £11.94 Billion to £12.997 Billion. This represents a true increase but not much more than half of it comes from Central Government in traditional funding. The balance is made up of an increasing Council Tax precept (and some will say that means they’re paying for the Police twice) and various assorted grants or IT funds etc. A big chunk of it is also the rising CT funding. The only figure that seems to be going down is the government’s Core Funding.

For the current financial year the figures look like this

Funding The Police or Foreign Aid?

Core funding has actually risen slightly to £7.108 Billion but the Council Tax Precept has also risen to £4.147 Billion. Total Police funding (excluding CT payments) has reduced from £12.269 Billion to £12.136 Billion.

But hey, a reduction of £0.13 Billion isn’t very much surely? Just £133 Million that’s all. Sounds a lot more like that.

The long and the short of it is that for the last 5 years the government’s Core Funding for Policing has been of the order of £7 Billion and total funding in the order of £12 Billion.

Happy with that? End of Part One.

Part Two

Overseas Aid. What is it?

Funding The Police or Foreign Aid?

How much do we pay in Overseas Aid?

Funding The Police or Foreign Aid?

In the 2018/19 financial year the Overseas Aid Budget was in the order of £14.5 Billion.

How much do we contribute compared to other countries?

Funding The Police or Foreign Aid?

So there you have it. Our government spends approx £2.5 Billion MORE on Overseas Aid than the total funding, from all sources, on our beleaguered Police Service.

How do they get away with it?

Brexit is the answer. It’s been in the papers but everyone is so fixated by the cock-up affectionately known as Brexit that this sort of news is simply hidden.

Britain is spending more money on foreign aid than it does on the police

We need to scrap the foreign aid target – and spend the money on policing instead

Everybody will have their own view as to which is more deserving, but it is true that in this country we have a Knife Crime crisis at the moment that, in part, seems to have been caused or worsened by Tory cuts to resources and various Youth Services. Overseas Aid is very noble, but personally I would prefer to see some kind of meaningful impact on the Knife Crime statistics by using some of that money to properly fund a multi-agency effort to stop the killing and maiming. Once that has been achieved we can consider the size of the Overseas Aid Budget again.  Quite simply “The killing has to stop”.

Reasonable?

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