Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Northern Ireland’s police chief has urged Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to help plug a £35mn funding gap that is threatening the service’s ability to cope with future threats, such as a repeat of this month’s rioting.
Starmer told reporters in Belfast on Monday that he had discussed immediate and medium-term “support” for the Police Service of Northern Ireland in a meeting with chief constable Jon Boutcher.
But the prime minister stopped short of offering funding, which Boutcher said was essential, as the service grapples with a shortfall of around 1,200 officers that recently required it to draft in reinforcements from Scotland.
“We can’t just be allowed to wither on the vine and disappear because if we do . . . if we see disorder, if we see some of the recent spikes in national security threats that we’ve seen here in the past, we simply will not be able to deal with it,” Boutcher said after the meeting.
The prime minister “humbly” thanked the police for their response to the rioting, which spread to the region after breaking out in Northern England in early August.
The violence was originally sparked by a mass stabbing in Southport, in which three girls were killed and eight other children and two adults were injured.
“We’ve had that discussion about what further support can go in — whether that’s financial or whether it’s in other ways in terms of making sure the system works better,” he said.
Starmer, a former human rights adviser to the region’s policing board, stressed that policing is a devolved matter, meaning it must be funded locally.
Boutcher noted, however, that national security is not devolved and receives funding from Westminster. “I don’t have an answer . . . I’m afraid today, and I don’t think the politicians have an answer,” he said.
The PSNI was set up in 2001 after the region’s three decades-long conflict fought by republican paramilitaries seeking to end British rule, loyalists battling to remain in the UK and British security forces. It currently has 6,340 officers.
Boutcher said it needed to return to “at least about 7,000 officers . . . to give us an ability to operate as an independent police organisation”.
“What I’m trying to do with every bone in my body is to explain the seriousness of the situation . . . to those that can make the difficult decisions around making sure that we are funded appropriately to get the officers that we need,” Boutcher added.
Failure to arrest the service’s declining numbers would lead to “dire” consequences. “We’re dangerously beyond the point of where we should be,” he said.
Northern Ireland, which is funded via a £15bn annual grant from the UK government, is facing long-standing financial pressures.
The region’s executive has pushed for a new funding formula, saying Northern Ireland has for years been underfunded, leading to what Boutcher called “wickedly difficult challenges”.
Liam Kelly, chair of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, which represents rank and file officers, also met Starmer. “We used the opportunity to tell it as it is. We are starved of resources and officer numbers are depleting at an unsustainable rate,” he said in a statement. “We are on a slippery slope.”
