London's policing supremo is demanding an extra £20 million of police counter-terror funding to keep the public safe after a rift with the Government over “penny-pinching” in the wake of the Paris attacks.
Deputy Mayor Stephen Greenhalgh said that the money currently earmarked for counter-terrorism policing was “not enough” to cope with the increasing threat posed by returnees from the Syria conflict and other extremists.
He said that at least £20 million more was needed instead and that it was a “scandal” that the Home Office was planning to retain a large chunk of the £130 million of additional terror funding promised by David Cameron.
He warned that the police’s ability to protect the public would be weakened without the extra cash.
Mr Greenhalgh’s criticism follows a warning by the Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer, Met Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, that police and Jewish residents could be at increased risk of attack by Islamist extremists. The police presence in Jewish areas of London has been stepped up as a result. Officers will also patrol in pairs, rather than alone, in some parts of the city.
Mr Greenhalgh said that the Home Office was gaining £35 million agencies of the money promised by Mr Cameron, but that only £5 million of that had initially been earmarked for police.
That sum had now been raised to around £9.4 million after protests from him and Boris Johnson. But the rest of the money was being retained in Whitehall to fund the Home Office’s “Prevent” counter-radicalisation programme and other Government work.
The Deputy Mayor said that meant the money going to the Met was inadequate and added: “I think that’s a scandal. We are having an arrest nearly every day, 50 per cent of the undercover counter-terrorism work is here in London and half of the people returning from Syria are in London so there is a huge volume of activity that needs to be carried out. The police’s ability to keep us safe will be harmed if they are not getting the money to do the job. The pie doesn’t seem to have been split fairly and the cops are unhappy about it.”
Mr Greenhalgh also expressed concern that an attack would have a devastating effect on tourism. He said that was the capital’s third largest source of revenue. “We make more than £11 billion a year from our tourist industry. That is massive. I went to New York two months after 9/11 and the plane was empty. We can’t afford to be penny wise and pound foolish about this when billions would be lost if we had a terrorist outrage.”
The Home Office said that it did not discuss precise funding levels and that a final decision on the allocation of the £130 million had not yet been taken. A spokesman said: “While all public services must constrain their spending, we have protected funding for counter-terrorism policing.”
The total budget for counter-terrorism policing for the financial years 2014/15 and 2015/16 is £564.3 million.
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