Smith pledges migration support for police

The home secretary has promised extra cash for the police to cope with immigration, chief constables have said.

Jacqui Smith was on Thursday meeting with the Association of Chief Police Officers to discuss a report from the group on the impact of immigration on policing.

It showed that the surge of immigrants from Eastern Europe to the UK had created "new demands" on forces, but had not led to a "large scale crime wave".

Co-author and Cheshire chief constable Peter Fahy said: "Migration has had a significant impact on UK communities in past years but while this has led to new demands made on the police service, the evidence does not support theories of a large scale crime wave generated through migration.

"In fact, crime has been falling across the country over the past year.

"Cultural differences, such as attitudes to offences like drink driving may exist, but can be exaggerated.

"The influx of eastern Europeans has created pressures on forces in some areas, including local rumour and misunderstandings fuelling tensions which police have had to be proactive in resolving, and leading to significant increases in spending on interpreters, which can also make investigations more complex."

The report also showed police were being denied access to intelligence data about suspected eastern European criminals in Britain, because countries such as Poland refused to pass on information on criminal databases.

And following the meeting, Cambridgeshire chief constable Julie Spence said that Smith had unveiled plans for a new fund from which forces could apply for emergency cash from 2009.

"The home secretary is looking to set up a migration transition fund to look at how we deal with a sudden surge of immigration in an area," the senior police officer said.

"We do not yet know what that fund is going to look like.

"But the Home Office wants to consult us on how they distribute money to mitigate the impacts."