Stuart Nash

MP for Napier
Police Spokesperson

MEDIA STATEMENT

9 August 2016

PM’s police numbers wrong

The Prime Minister has said that police numbers will increase in-line with population growth, however, the Police’s own four year strategy clearly states there are no plans to increase police numbers for the next four years, Labour’s Police spokesperson Stuart Nash says.

“The Police four year plan was signed off by the Minister in May and shows “Police’s strategic direction will require Police to continue looking for opportunities to re-balance the workforce” and then goes on to show the forecast number of officers for each year until 2019/2020.

“There are no plans to increase staff numbers or to put more police on the ground until 2020 so this totally contradicts what the Prime Minister told the House today.

“The Prime Minister also told the House that there are 600 more police than when he took office in 2008. This is simply incorrect. There is an increase of only 223 FTE constabulary employees.

“Questions need to be asked if Police Minister Judith Collins misled the Prime Minister as to the true nature of the state of the police force in 2016.

“Police would need a total of 9,370 constabulary employees to achieve a 1:500 police-to-population ratio that the Prime Minister promised when he took office!

“Judith Collins needs to approach the Minister of Finance for more money to fund police at the same ratio as there was under Labour,” Stuart Nash says.

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