With a ‘blackhole’ in the Met Police budget, money isn't the only challenge to effective Met Policing

10 December 2024, 18:53

£450 million is the latest ‘blackhole’ figure in the Met Police’s budget, as announced today by Mark Rowley at the London Policing Board.

Funding to the Metropolitan Police is complex. Three-quarters of their budget is funded by the Home Office, with the rest coming from City Hall. This leaves the Met police in an often tricky position, having to answer to and liaise with both national and city governments.

As such, the Metropolitan Police, like other public services, has been used as a political football – with financial ramifications. We’ve seen an enormous £1 billion of real-term cuts to the Met police budget since 2010/2011. To keep the Met Police on its feet, City Hall has continually increased their contribution – from 18% to 25% since Sadiq Khan’s election.

Despite this, the Met Police continually highlight gaps in their budget. Today, Mark Rowley stated these cuts force the Met to, “scale back [their] ability to tackle serious violence and organised crime”. Earlier this year, we heard similar warnings of an inadequate budget, which Rowley stated would slow down the Met’s progress in tackling internal racism, sexism and homophobia.

So – what do cuts mean for Londoners?

There’s a common misconception that London’s crime rates are sky-high. In actuality, ONS data shows the violent crime rate in London is lower than the average across England and Wales. This is not to say we should reduce the Met police budget, particularly with certain crimes such as knife crime on the rise once again. But it does dispel what is often assumed.

The greatest issue facing the Metropolitan police is their reputation. In our polling with Savanta, we asked Londoners what they believe is the biggest issue facing the capital. Crime is always in the top five. 42% of Londoners state they don’t feel safe walking in their local area – rising to 50% among women.

This may be due in part to mistrust of the police. More than 2 in 5 Londoners (44%) believe the Metropolitan police has done a bad job in ‘treating everyone fairly regardless of who they are’. This is sadly unsurprising, given the consistent police scandals in the capital, from the mishandling of the Stephen Lawrence case to the murder of Sarah Everard. The Met police have since been found institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic by the 2023 Casey Report – which called for radical and immediate reform.

The Casey Report was clear – there needs to be a rigorous recruitment process, specialist training and increased focus on community policing to strengthen connections between officers and residents. But reform isn’t free. Cuts to the Metropolitan police will be met with difficult internal decisions. A deeper look into our police service in the capital is needed – to work out where money is best spent while also rectifying long-standing institutional issues.

Furthermore, crime levels do not exist in isolation – they are impacted by a range of factors including poverty, education standards and healthcare provision. We cannot continue exponentially increasing the budget, without real evidence of change made within the Metropolitan police, and the root causes of crime being addressed in tandem.

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