Labour will seek to cut the number of police forces in England and Wales if it wins the next general election to free up cash to bolster neighbourhood policing.
Addressing the ACPO conference in Harrogate, Shadow Policing Minister Jack Dromey told delegates that there would be less than 43 forces by the end of the party’s five-year term.
He also hinted Labour could abolish police and crime commissioners and introduce a new form of governance – although he stopped short of committing to the proposal.
Mr Dromey said: “It is a nonsense to continue with 43 separate forces in England and Wales – it has been said to me time and time again that it is the enemy of operational effectiveness. It is certainly the enemy of efficiency.
“At the end of the first term of a Labour government there would not be 43 forces.”
Mr Dromey said that Labour’s plans to raise funds to bolster neighbourhood policing are currently being put together. He added that the neighbourhood policing policy – introduced by a previous Labour administration – had been successful but had been placed under threat by the cuts of the Coalition Government.
During his speech to the conference, Mr Dromey said there were a number of convincing proposals put forward in the Lord Stevens independent commission into the future of policing.
The party commissioned the former Met commissioner to carry out a comprehensive investigation in 2012, which had involved the consultation of several international law enforcement professionals.
In outlining the party's policy ahead of the general election in 2015, he said there were compelling arguments in Lord Stevens' recommendations to reduce the numbers of forces as well as abolishing the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and creating a new body.
He suggested that the IPCC did not have the confidence of either the police or the public – adding that the government was wrong to enhance funding of the body.
Mr Dromey believed that more could be achieved by bringing together the IPCC and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary – as suggested by Lord Stevens.
During his speech he emphasised that Police Service leaders would not always like what any future Labour government would have to say. But he stressed that the party would “stand up for the best of British policing”.
The senior MP also asserted that there needed to be sound and thorough investigations into past incidences, such as the Hillsborough and the Stephen Lawrence murder probe.
Article courtesy of Cliff Caswell. www.policeoracle.com
4 comments:
I am a local Labour Politician and ex GMP officer. If this comes to fruition I for one will be very happy.
1. We do not need Police Commissioners, they are a waste of money
2. We do not need 43 Police Forces they too are a waste of money.
We do need effective governance,and we need to at least regionalise our forces. This is the sting, the money saved needs to be put back into front line warranted officers!
I will NEVER be voting Labour. As the damage they did to the country is immense. The LibCon's are just finishing it off.
Labours PCSO's have just undermined the Constable.
A regional Policing model does make sense to most in terms of operational and economic efficiency. It has been talked about for years but now we are really skint can we afford the costs to set it up ? As politically and economically the benefits will not be seen in the life of any single Government. So no party has the political balls to commit to it.
Scotlands one force is the test bed for the rest of the UK ( whilst we still have a United Kingdom!)
Scrap the PCC's as nobody really wanted or voted for them. An expensive political exercise.
Regional Police Forces rather than a national force seems the most likely option a Labour government would pursue. I agree there would be economies of scale with the integration of many services, particularly technology and training. However, there would need to be the same safeguards to protect officers in the constituent forces from being forced to transfer to an area outside of the force they originally joined, as was just the case upon the amalgamations that took place in the 1960's. Some officers, of course, would voluntarily opt to move on promotion or in order to further their promotion prospects, or indeed for personal reasons, but it would be totally unacceptable to arbitrarily move an officer from one end of the region to the other perhaps for cynical or reasons of possible personality clashes, etc. Time for the Police Federation to get tough. www.david-farley.com
Over on our site at the thin blue line uk, we have commented in detail in previous reports that the time has come to seriously consider merging police forces.
We have suggested that there could be as few as 10 to correspond with the regional areas.
Millions can be saved on centralised procurement of equipment, uniform, cars, IT etc. Fewer forces means fewer buildings.
As the CEO of a 43 branch business, would you employ 43 MD's on £150k plus each, together with their typically 4-5 strong entourage of DCC & ACC's all on £100k plus? You wouldn't be solvent for long if you did.
The historic problem is that mergers were politically unacceptable to government, allegedly hard to sell to communities and don't sit easily with the plan for locally-elected commissioners.
When a member of the public calls for a police officer, does he/she look at the officers cap badge or insignia and say "Sorry you can't deal with my problem, you're not from my force area" Of course not, all they care about is that a police officer has turned up to help them. It is no more complicated than that, and any other objection to force mergers is pure obfuscation.
Until now, we would hardly expect Chief Officers to support a strategy that might reduce their number by 75% - after all, "Turkeys don't vote for Christmas".
* 130,000 police officers
* 60,000 staff - cost £2.7 billion
* 17,000 PCSO's - 484 million
* 17% Increase in ACPO ranks 1997 to 2010***
* 16% Increase in SMT ranks 1997 to 2010***
* 11% Increase in PC rank 1997 to 2010***
* Only 11% of warranted officers available for "Visible Policing"
* ACPO and SMT ranks basic salary £230million+
*** These figures prompt the question: "In view of there being a 17% increase in ACPO and 16% increase in SMT ranks and only an 11% increase in PC ranks, is there not an argument that there are in fact TOO MANY CHIEFS and an ineffective use of the resources of indians?"
Force by force, there is a top heavy ACPO/SMT and Police Staffing level.
The policing cuts debate fundamentally comes down to a balancing act between visible and invisible work. Half a century ago, more than a third of a constabulary's manpower was spent on those foot patrols - nabbing burglars with their swag bags.
Given the political and community pressure to protect the "front line", most chief constables are planning to cut specialist units, even though they argue they prove their worth. And many chiefs think the pressure to focus on local "visible" crime will grow if the government's commitment to elected Police and Crime Commissioners is maintained.
But surely that's the point of policing? Dealing with what matters to local people?
The time has come to strip away those roles whose value is doubtful, and there are plenty of them.
The time has come for the rainy day reserves to be used to protect the front line. It's not just raining chaps, it's chucking it down.
The time has come for some tough decisions, the right decisions about how the tax payers money is spent. Locally elected police commissioners are unpopular among ACPO ranks and perhaps we should ask ourselves why.
Could it be that a fiscally wise commissioner might actually apply some common sense to the way our money is spent? Whilst this may expose the weaknesses and activities of our Senior Police Officers and their advisors, perhaps the public would welcome the return of the common sense, back to basics, no frills coppering. Perhaps then, we might actually see the good guys start winning and more of the bad guys being caught and dealt with.
There's little new about mergers and regionalising. We've advocated it on politically for about 10 years. Pity it's taking the Labour party to decide to finally commit. Having seen the destruction they wreaked introducing performance targets for Chiefs resulting in a totally bent recorded crime, I am not confident they will play with a straight bat.
We can but live in hope.
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