Tag: Nick Herbert

Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Herbert, the Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs, in the House of Commons on 5 November 2019.

Thank you for calling me to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker, and commiserations on yesterday—I congratulate the new Speaker. I apologise for being unable to be here at the start of the debate. I had not intended to speak, but I decided only last night to stand down as the Member of Parliament for Arundel and South Downs, the constituency that I have been honoured to represent for nearly 15 years.

It was a pleasure to listen to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin). Some 33 years ago, while working as a ​young researcher, I helped a young candidate who was standing in a by-election in West Derbyshire. I claim that the 100 votes that my right hon. Friend secured to win the seat were won by me, and he claims that he would have won handsomely had it not been for my disastrous research.

I went on to stand for Berwick-upon-Tweed in north Northumberland. Unfortunately, that was in 1997, the year of Armageddon. My efforts in that beautiful rural constituency were not helped early on when I opened a coffee morning with a speech urging everyone to vote Conservative, only to be told that I was in fact at a meeting of the Methodists. I could not have been expected to know that that particular village had two village halls, but I learnt an important lesson about knowing your constituency.

I was immensely privileged to be chosen at the very last moment to stand for Arundel and South Downs for the Conservatives, and I believe that someone else will be very lucky indeed to be chosen at the very last minute to stand for what I believe is the best constituency in the country, full of the most wonderful people and strong communities. I will miss it a very great deal. I fought four general elections and my majority has gone up every time to a record level, and I know that it is smart to quit while ahead.

I made my maiden speech in a debate on rural issues. I spoke last in that debate, too, and nobody told me that I was permitted to go to what the Americans call the restroom while waiting to make my speech. I waited for what seemed to be hours, absolutely desperate for it, and then made the shortest maiden speech in history as a consequence.

I then went to see the Whips to explain that it was very important for the new Member of Parliament for Arundel and South Downs to watch Australia play the Duke of Norfolk’s XI at the Arundel castle cricket ground. The Whips told me that not only was that entirely possible, but I should submit any request, at any time, for any sporting event that I felt I needed to attend. I had no idea that they were being sarcastic and so proceeded to give them a long list of all the sporting events I wished to attend that year. I have never lived it down.

I soon found myself on the Front Bench and, for a very brief time—this is a salutary lesson for all the young people who will enter the House after the election—was billed as a rising star. I then plummeted into the depths of the Home Office, a fall from which I never entirely recovered.

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Sir David Lidington) that attending this debate, in which we have heard some marvellous speeches, is rather like attending the reading of one’s own obituary. I am not entirely certain that everyone would be effusive enough, so I intend to list some of the things that I have been involved in—my serious point is that I intend to continue working in a number of important areas that I have worked on in this place. They include LGBT rights, which my friend the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) mentioned, the campaign for equal marriage, setting up the all-party parliamentary group on global lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights, and setting up the Global Equality Caucus, run so ably by Alan Wardle and supported by Andrew Slinn.​

I also set up the all-party parliamentary group on global tuberculosis, to help fight the world’s deadliest disease. The Global TB Caucus has succeeded in driving TB up the agenda, with a high-level meeting at the United Nations. It is ably led by Sarah Kirk, with support on the APPG from Janika Hauser, and it was set up with brilliant initial work by my friend Matt Oliver.

I have recently assumed the chairmanship of the Countryside Alliance, which I intend to devote a lot of time to, returning to my roots, because I believe passionately in supporting rural communities, in the freedom to choose and in ensuring that we protect the rural way of life. I will be running the think-tank that I have set up, the Project for Modern Democracy, just as I previously set up the think-tank Reform, because I believe we need new thinking on Whitehall reform, planning and how we ensure markets operate fairly in the modern world.

I just want to say something briefly about Brexit. I set up the national no campaign against joining the euro. For a long time I was thought of as a Eurosceptic, but I led the Conservatives In campaign to remain in the European Union. Nevertheless, I accepted the result of the referendum immediately. I want to dispute the idea that the only principled position for remainers to take is somehow to gainsay the referendum result. I do not believe that that is true. Actually, I think it is a principled and honourable position to accept the result of the referendum, because in the end it is about democracy. I have done that, which is why I support the Prime Minister in successfully seeking a deal. I do not think that we should demonise the millions of people who voted for remain, but have accepted the result and think a deal is possible. Rather, we should investigate more closely why people voted for leave and what exactly they wanted, and have a more mature, sober and sensible debate on those issues.

Finally, I would like to thank my brilliant staff: Michelle Taylor, my wonderful constituency assistant; Alex Black, who runs my office; Lynsey White, my wonderful secretary; and Chris Cook, my researcher. I would like to thank members of my Conservative association and my chairmen, Angela Litchfield, Sue Holland, Malcolm Gill and Peter Griffiths. I thank my constituents for doing me the great honour of returning me to Arundel and South Downs. Above all, I thank my partner, my closest and best friend, Jason Eades, without whose tireless and unquestioning support I would never have been able to do this job in the first place. Thank you all for doing me this great honour. I am very sad to be going, but I know it is the right time to do so.

Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Herbert, the then Minister for Policing, Fire and Criminal Justice and Victims, on 26 January 2012.

Thank you for inviting me to speak once again at a CityForum event.

A year ago at CityForum, I set out why the challenge of maintaining and improving policing as budgets fall was manageable – provided that we did not treat this as ‘business as usual’. I argued that with transformational change in the way police forces work, savings of over £2 billion a year were possible – exceeding the reductions in police funding. I said that we could make the police service stronger even at it becomes leaner.

The strategy I set out was threefold: to improve frontline services, spend the minimum on other functions, and from the start think about re-shaping service through long-term change rather than tactical salami-slicing.

Today I want to to set out the ways in which the service is responding to that challenge: how we, at a national level, are working hard to support the service in delivering that transformation, through an ambitious and long overdue package of reforms that we need a continued and concerted drive to deliver further transformation in policing, focusing not simply on doing the same for less, but working towards improved outcomes, reducing crime and keeping the public safe

Dealing with the deficit

The context remains the same. We need to deal with the deficit and that means reducing public spending. I am not going to rehearse the arguments why. But I will observe that there is a cross-party consensus that police spending must be reduced. The only argument is by how much – but even the official opposition accepts that there need to be savings of over £1 billion a year. In any case, police forces will be smaller, with fewer officers and staff.

In asking police forces to accept their share of the burden, we are driven by a determination to deal with the deficit and maintain market confidence in our economy. We are not taking tough decisions because we want to cut police budgets, but because we believe we have to.

Pay reform and restraint

Our aim has been to do everything that we can to support forces to drive out cost. Since pay accounts for the large majority of police spending, the pay bill is a key issue.

We have always said that pay reform and restraint must form part of the package. We are not, as some have suggested, singling the police out – we are having to make difficult decisions about pay right across the public sector.

We recognise that police officers carry out difficult and sometimes dangerous work, and that they should be rewarded fairly for what they do. We also believe it is necessary to ensure modern pay and conditions that reflect the demands of policing today.

Police officers and staff are, understandably, concerned about the proposed changes, but let me say here that we absolutely want to ensure that any changes are fair. That is why we are giving very careful consideration to the recommendations made by the police arbitration tribunal earlier this month.

Non-pay savings

Government also has a role in helping forces to reduce their non-pay bill, which still amounts to some £3.5 billion, or around one quarter of total revenue and capital spend. So we have also been focusing on how the police can secure better IT and procurement. I will outline significant changes in these areas later in my speech.

But the bulk of the work is for forces themselves to do – changing how they operate to become as efficient and effective across the board as the best of their peers, in frontline services, and in the back and middle office services that support them.

HMIC’s adapting to austerity report last summer showed that forces had begun work on seriously and carefully making or exceeding the required savings. But the report also showed that there was more to do. The budget gap of unidentified savings in each force is closing, but as it does so and changes are implemented, the focus must be on ensuring that levels of public services are maintained.

The role of government

So if forces themselves are in the lead in driving the necessary savings, what is the role of government?

Well, first of all, we need to get the structures right to ensure that policing is organised to meet the challenges. Our agenda across government is to return power to people and communities, driving up standards in the public sector through greater accountability and a focus on outcomes rather than central direction and bureaucratic micromanagement.

So in November, we will see the election of the first police and crime commissioners. A strong link from the police organisation as a whole to the public is essential if transformational change in policing is to be seen through. And I believe that, far from being parochial or opposed to radical change in how services are delivered, police and crime commissioners will be strongly motivated to drive better value for money because they will want to protect frontline services.

We also want to see greater focus and accountability in the national bodies that support policing, where possible with ownership being taken by the profession. So this year the National Policing Improvement Agency will give way to a new IT company and a new police professional body. These will each play key, though very different, roles in supporting forces to improve value for money.

HMIC is becoming more independent, with a sharp focus on value for money as it shines a light on performance, acting in the public interest and telling the truth about what forces are doing – as it did in its crime report yesterday.

What of the Home Office?

The days of performance management and Whitehall intervention are gone. But that doesn’t mean that we are standing idly by.

Last year we had a healthy discussion with service leaders about the role of the centre – by which I mean the Home Office, government more widely, and the national policing bodies – in supporting forces to meet this challenge.

As a result we put in place a policing value for money unit in the Home Office to work with the service in taking forward a national strategy.

We agreed that the priorities should be: * First, to help enable forces to put in place better, more cost effective, IT arrangements * Second, on procurement, to use the national buying power of the police service – indeed the whole public sector – to do things cheaper and better * Third, to explore with the service – and enable – changes to how support services are delivered * Fourth, to support forces develop and implement transformational change in their businesses

Fundamentally, this is about defining a relationship between the national and local levels where the right balance is struck between convergence, interoperability and maximising economies of scale – on the one hand – and enabling local innovation, local decision-making and local flexibility, on the other.

The paradox of policing policy under the last government was that it interfered far too much in how local policing should be conducted, but didn’t focus on the national issues where a stronger grip or collaboration was required. To use the business expression, we need ‘tight-loose’ leadership – allowing new discretion and freedom for professional and local decision-making, and focusing the role of the centre on the proper issues.

So, while we are sweeping away central targets, returning discretion to police professionals, and giving newly elected police and crime commissioners the power to set local strategic priorities, we have also introduced new powers under the police reform & social responsibility act to ensure that forces work effectively together.

Next year the new national crime agency will strengthen the fight against serious and organised crime, and we have introduced, initially in shadow form, a new strategic policing requirement to ensure that forces work together to meet national threats.

We are working with suppliers and across the police service to ensure that policing is treated as a single client – with the clear benefits of better service at reduced cost.

And we have put new duties on forces to collaborate – duties which we will back up with mandatory arrangements if we have to.

National Police Air Service

Last year at CityForum I pointed out that the proposed national police air service was a good example of collaboration, saving £15 million a year and resulting in a better co-ordinated and more consistently available service.

Led by chief constable Alex Marshall, the plan has the full support of ACPO and will give all forces access to helicopter support 24 hours a day, 365 days year – in contrast to the current system which sees some force helicopters grounded for days a time while they are being repaired.

I said that if the police service’s operational leaders had concluded that this was the way forward, I hoped and expected that police authorities would rapidly endorse the proposals.

Chief officers of all forces in England and Wales have given their support to the proposal, as have the overwhelming majority of police authorities in principle.

But to get the full benefits, the commitment of the whole of the police service in England and Wales is needed.

As I said to the CityForum, the time for talking about collaboration, and the era of police fiefdoms, is over.

I am, in exceptional cases of last resort, prepared to mandate where a small minority of authorities or forces create a barrier to significant savings.

I am therefore announcing today that I intend to make an order requiring the police service to collaborate in the provision of air support. This order will be made using the new powers brought in by the police reform & social responsibility act. It will require all authorities and forces to collaborate in the provision of air support through a single collaboration agreement for England and Wales.

Improving police IT

The national police air service hasn’t been a top-down, directed government project. It’s been led by chief constables with support from the centre. We are helping to secure the end, but we aren’t directing the means.

The same should apply to police IT.

It is critical to the success of the service in meeting the spending challenge that we take the right approach.

Forces need to get better and more seamless services for their officers and staff, for example avoiding time-wasting re-keying of the same data into different systems.

And police IT should also enable closer and more effective working with other criminal justice agencies. At present, the progression of cases relies too heavily on paper and physical media being passed between agencies, building unnecessary cost, duplication and delay into the system.

Progress has been made

Criminal justice agencies have been working in close partnership at a national level to deliver digital working across the CJS by April 2012, and real change is being delivered at pace, but there is more to do.

Forces have already made substantial savings in IT. We’ve seen police spend fall by some £73 million last year compared with 2009/10, but there are opportunities for further savings to be made.

We are seeing a deepening of voluntary collaboration on IT – through wide partnerships of forces as exemplified by the athena project, and through bilateral collaboration, for example in South Yorkshire and Humberside.

But we have to ask ourselves why, despite the grand plans and record levels of spending, police IT has, in the main, remained so stubbornly disjointed, with 2,000 systems across the 43 forces.

We need a new approach, driven by forces themselves, with greater accountability. The best and quickest approach to improving police IT does not involve us specifying exactly the IT systems all forces should buy. We can take that approach successfully for some IT commodities, but not for complex systems and services, where dealing with the spider web of legacy systems in one fell swoop simply is not feasible.

This is why the government last year announced the intention to help the police create a new company which would provide forces with support relating to procurement, implementation and contract management for ICT, related business change and outsourcing services.

While it is not envisaged that the company should direct force IT spend, it would have the capability to assist forces by negotiating better prices for IT services, providing technical knowledge and insight and, over time, reducing the number of procurement specialists and IT professionals employed by forces.

The objective of the new company would be to enable a more commercial and efficient approach to police IT provision, using economies of scale and market forces to ensure more efficient management of IT expenditure and to save the public money.

This will be mirrored by a re-calibration of the police service’s information systems improvement strategy, which will remain as an enabler of voluntary collaboration between forces, and which will be owned directly by the service rather than by the IT company.

Procurement

By contrast, when it comes to non-IT procurement and the procurement of IT commodities, the service needs to use its buying power together – and government leadership can assist in this.

The work started by the NPIA in creating national purchasing frameworks has been of vital importance in leveraging better purchasing power by the police service acting collectively.

Last year, we put in place the first mandatory frameworks, covering some key services – police cars, body armour and a wider range of commodity IT hardware and software. This will ensure that all forces use the specified frameworks and so the full potential for savings in these categories – £27m – can be achieved by 2014/15.

We will now consult on further regulations to specify frameworks to be used by the service when buying further equipment – vehicle light bars and digital interviewing equipment. The consultation will also cover regulations on frameworks for some services, particularly translation and interpretation – where there is the opportunity to join up with the procurement of these services for the courts – mobile telephony, some consultancy, e-learning and a police procurement hub to support more effective procurement.

We are already seeing tangible success, with savings of £34m so far, reported through the Collaborative Police Procurement Programme – a total projected to rise to £70m by the end of this financial year. These savings include spending volume reductions as well as price savings and we are on track to see this figure rise to savings of at least £200m per year by 2014/15.

I also said that we would encourage the service to behave as a single client, and we’ve brought together industry and the service in March last year to reinforce this message and to understand what the service needs in order to be a more intelligent customer. Since then, there has been work with a range of suppliers, gathering management information about activity across the service.

This has been useful work and as one example, helped us to identify a supplier who holds over 1,500 individual contracts with the 43 forces, and where prices charged are significantly higher than those received in other areas of the public sector. We’ve since worked with this supplier to rationalise the service and pricing across the police service and where possible, give money back to forces.

Support services

The fourth area we identified for savings was in support services.

Forces shouldn’t be constrained by the way things have been done in the past. In seeking better service at reduced cost, they should look across the range of possibilities, including collaboration with other forces or public services, partnering with private sector providers and establishing mutuals, and work out what best fits their local circumstances.

I made clear last year that, from the government’s point of view, there is no ideological barrier to the engagement of the private sector in delivering improved policing services.

New thinking and design should not be limited to the back and middle office functions. It should also focus on how frontline services could be reconfigured.

Greater Manchester police, for example, have carried out a thorough review of their support functions and been able to deliver £62m in year-on-year savings, and importantly, release 348 police officer posts from these roles.

This review has additionally seen the introduction of significant innovations that have led to improvements in service delivery in areas such as the investigation of fraud and the policing of major events.

In many areas public services are jointly looking at the public asset base as a way of making significant savings. Savings of around a fifth are possible by public sector partners working across an area and treating all the buildings as if they have a single owner.

In Worcestershire, for example, the blue light services are coming together in a single centre. Sussex police are leading the partnership approach in East Sussex, chairing the joint management board of partners and identifying significant savings for the whole public sector in the County.

Business partnering

The government has been supporting Surrey and West Midlands forces and authorities in a joint programme to explore the value of business partnering. The procurement notice was published on the official journal of the European Union on Tuesday this week which should lead to a contract in Spring next year.

The areas of service which could be included is wide, including a range of activities in or supporting frontline policing, including dealing with incidents, supporting victims, protecting individuals at risk and providing specialist services.

This is not about traditional outsourcing, but about building a new strategic relationship between forces and the private sector. By harnessing private sector innovation, specialist skills and economies of scale, forces can transform the way they deliver services and improve outcomes for the public. Every police authority in England and Wales bar one is named on the procurement notice, allowing other forces to join in should they choose to do so.

And, under their own steam, Lincolnshire are about to sign a £200m contract over ten years with G4S. This contract for support services is available to those other forces named on the procurement notice.

These are highly significant developments, opening up the possibility of new savings across policing. The published potential value of the Surrey/West Midlands contract is between £300m and £3.5bn. Other forces need not be unnecessary pioneers of support service delivery models. Creating scale and volume within arrangements with the private sector will mean better prices. And that means better value for the taxpayer.

Protecting the frontline

Collaboration, shared services, improved IT, collective procurement and business partnering are not ends in themselves. They are the means by which police forces can reconfigure their organisations to drive savings, improve service delivery and protect the frontline.

The forces making these transformational changes are showing that budget reductions, while challenging, are also a spur to new thinking and innovation.

And they are disproving the weary claim that reductions in spending will inevitably harm public services.

The latest official statistics on police numbers are published today. We already know that the police workforce has been reducing from its peak.

But as HMIC revealed, a third of the police workforce – including some 25,000 police officers, or just under a fifth of the total – were employed in back or middle offices. There is plenty of scope to make savings while protecting the frontline.

And this is what is happening. HMIC’s most recent data is showing that the proportion of the policing workforce in the frontline is expected to rise significantly over the spending review period.

But, as I constantly repeat, the strength and quality of frontline policing cannot, and should not, be measured simply in terms of officer numbers.

What matters is not the total number of officers employed, but how officers are deployed.

HMIC found that, on average, police forces had more officers visible and available on a Monday morning than on a Friday night.

The best forces had twice the visibility and availability of those at the bottom of the table.

So spending isn’t the sole issue. By changing shift patterns, targeting resources better, reducing time-wasting bureaucracy, and using initiatives such as hotspots or problem-oriented policing, forces can not only continue to deliver within reduced budgets – they can continue to cut crime.

And this isn’t conjecture.

The latest official crime figures showed no statistical correlation between force strengths and local crime rates. Some forces had larger than average falls in officer numbers and larger than average falls in crime.

Claims that crime is bound to rise because overall police numbers are falling are simplistic and unfounded.

The home affairs select committee said last February: ‘We accept that there is no simple relationship between numbers of police officers and levels of crime.’

The idea that only higher spending and more inputs will deliver better policing is discredited.

Examples of transformation

Hampshire, for example, has delivered significant reductions in crime in recent years, whilst also achieving considerable savings – reaching £20m in 2011 alone, while having a public commitment to retain May 2010 levels of local visible policing. Their work in rooting out unnecessary bureaucracy has made much use of mobile data terminals, liberating officers from their desks.

In Thames Valley, the force’s productivity strategy has reduced business support costs such as HR by amalgamating all the small units into one shared service and encouraging self-service. They have removed a layer of management and worked hard at collaboration with other forces. Together this has meant that in the current financial year, not only have they made over £15m of savings, they have also been able to redeploy 35 officers to frontline roles in neighbourhoods or patrol. And I know they have ambitions to redeploy a further 100 officers to the frontline over the next two years.

The force and authority work closely together and have applied a considered, thoughtful and evidence-based approach to the development of a new operational policing model, which is designed to prioritise neighbourhood policing.

The Metropolitan Police’s commitment to single patrolling where possible has meant that, in the past year, they have carried out, on average, more than 350 extra patrols every day across the Capital.

Kent police have led a comprehensive review of the public’s demand for policing services, with a view to matching staffing levels with that demand and increasing police officer availability at key times.

They have re-structured the way in which they provide policing services and, together with savings from collaboration with Essex Police, streamlining and rationalising support services and re-aligning some of their specialist policing functions, they have been able to deploy more officers onto uniformed street patrols.

This has increased police visibility with the public, the headcount of neighbourhood officers and staff has increased by 50 per cent since last November, and public satisfaction levels have increased.

Leadership and culture in a time of transformation

The same story is being repeated across the country. Police leaders at all ranks are displaying the ‘can-do’ attitude which marks the service, and is such a credit to it.

No-one is saying that the challenge is straightforward, or that change is easy.

We must remember that police staff have been losing their jobs and some officers with more than 30 years’ service have been retired.

When budgets are tight, hard working officers and staff are being asked to make big changes and sometimes to do more. But whenever I visit a force or talk to officers, I am constantly impressed by their determination to deliver.

For all the focus on structures and processes, people are at the heart of our public services, and people will effect the successful transformation of policing. And how the service leads its people to work in new ways will be critical to success in the years ahead.

That is why I believe the new professional body for policing will be so important. It will help to identify and equip the police leaders of the future. But it will also foster the professionalism which will underpin an important cultural change, enabling time-wasting bureaucracy to be replaced by the exercise of discretion and judgment by officers.

Conclusion

A year ago, I concluded my speech by saying that I didn’t underestimate the challenge facing forces to deliver savings and a better service through transformational change, but I was absolutely confident that forces could rise to it.

I believe they can, and they have. The service is well on its way to delivering the savings of over £2 billion which are required. But, equally importantly, it has also begun the process of transformation that will ensure that forces can improve services while lowering cost.

The government is playing its part with support through pay reform, collective procurement, collaboration and business partnering. We are backing the drive against bureaucracy and leading a new approach to delivering better IT.

But, in the end, the necessary change will come from forces.

I commend the chief constables and teams who are showing leadership and rising to this challenge.

There is more to do and further to go.

But I am confident that with transformational change, we are beginning to build a modern, flexible and responsive police service, delivering value for money for the taxpayer, and fighting crime.

Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Herbert, the then Policing and Criminal Justice Minister, on 28th September 2011.

Introduction

My thanks to the Police Foundation for inviting me to speak today at the close of your annual conference. Currently there could not be a more apposite subject for discussion than police effectiveness in a changing world. I would like to contribute to this debate by setting out the challenges I believe an effective police service should meet, and how the Government’s reforms support that endeavour. But my focus today will be on the aspects of reform that affect the people who work in policing and, in particular, what this means for police leadership.

The challenges

Despite significant reductions, crime is too still far too high. We know there are particular challenges at either end of the scale. Anti-social behaviour has sometimes seemed too small a matter to tackle head on, but affects the public deeply, whilst organised crime has been too big and complex to take on fully.

At the same time, the deficit which this Government inherited has left us with no choice but to reduce funding to police forces. The daily financial news makes the risks of failing to tackle the deficit ever more clear.

I’m not going to enter here into a discussion about whether police budgets should be cut by £1 billion or £2 billion a year. Nor am I going to humour the sophists who dispute what should be a non-contentious proposition that the core mission of the police is to cut crime.

There are many challenges for the police service, but they are obviously framed by the necessity to reduce crime while budgets fall: cutting crime while cutting costs.

The Government’s reforms

The Government’s reforms help police forces fight crime by changing the terms of trade externally and internally. Externally, bureaucratic accountability is giving way to democratic accountability, bolstered by a new commitment to transparency.  Internally, the bureaucratic approach to police work must yield to a culture which emphasises professional discretion and common sense.

Let me start by highlighting two key structural reforms we have put in place already – crime mapping and Police and Crime Commissioners.

Our crime mapping website, www.police.uk, has been a phenomenal success, attracting over 430 million hits since its launch at the beginning of this year.  From next May, justice outcomes will be added so that people can see not just the crimes, but how they are dealt with.

The recent passage of the Act to elect Police and Crime Commissioners next year represents another key reform.  PCCs will make policing more accountable and I believe more responsive.

These reforms mark a major change in the way that the public and the police will connect with each other.  They will strengthen the essential bridge between the police and the people, and give the public a stronger voice while protecting the operational independence of the police.  They represent a major shift of power from Whitehall to local communities.

There has been full debate about Police & Crime Commissioners, and Parliament has spoken.  Now is the time to focus on transition to the new system and, in the interests of policing, to make the reform a success.  In particular, we should see the PCC’s wider responsibilities for community safety as an opportunity to ensure effective local partnerships to prevent crime.

Meanwhile, we are bringing together for the first time the work of all those tackling organised crime in a new strategy which we set out this summer.  Going further, we are creating a powerful new body of operational crime fighters – the National Crime Agency – to make the UK a hostile environment for serious and organised criminality.

Just as forces will be accountable to their Police and Crime Commissioner, the NCA will be accountable to the Home Secretary.  The NCA will have a culture which is open, collaborative and non-bureaucratic. From the outset, a key NCA objective will be to demonstrate its impact publicly, including to local communities.

So this is a strong and coherent agenda, creating appropriate structures at both force and national levels to address the challenge of reducing crime while cutting costs.  These are powerful elements of the first phase of police reform.  They reflect our determination to empower the public, boost transparency, create strong accountability and remove bureaucracy.

None of this would have happened if, instead of driving reform, we had set up a Royal Commission or a committee of inquiry.  As the independent Inspectorate of Constabulary has made clear, the fiscal challenge is urgent: there is no time for delay. It’s right to seek professional guidance and independent views in specific areas – and we have.  But we cannot contract out political leadership or funk the big challenges which must be grasped.  And it is little use setting up committees of wise men if you don’t even acknowledge that there’s a problem to be solved.

And let me be clear about how we should approach the changes that are needed.  Public service reform must be driven first of all by the interests of the public.  The changes we are making to reduce bureaucracy and enhance professional discretion will help the police.  This is a positive agenda for them, and I am committed to it.  We will consult the professionals and we will listen.  But we cannot rely on committees of experts consulting other experts.  Our reforms will give the people a voice.  And where tough decisons are needed, including changes to ensure a fair deal to the taxpayer and a voice for the consumer, we will take them. The public interest will come first.

Reform and the people in policing

If the important structural changes we are making are the first phase of police reform, we now enter the second phase, focusing on the most valuable asset in policing: its people.

Let’s be clear about our starting position.  This country has the most diverse, most academically qualified, and best trained police service we have ever had.  The British way is that the police are part of the public and derive their legitimacy from the public – a huge strength.  The can do approach of police officers is a strength, too.  So is the British model of impartial policing, admired around the world – and with good reason.

These are strong foundations to build on.  But they can’t be a reason to conclude that there’s no need for change.  Let me identifty four key areas in particular which I believe point to the need for changing the way in which police forces work.

Challenges and opportunities for police leadership

First, recent events have raised questions which must be answered.  Phone-hacking led to resignations at the top of the Met, and has raised serious questions about the relationship between the police and the press.  There are troubling issues relating to police conduct in other parts of the country as well.  HMIC is doing work on police integrity.  But it’s important that we can have a frank debate about the lessons to be learnt, particularly around how openness reinforces integrity and is the ultimate guarantor of the values we need at the top of policing.

In response to rioting, police officers put themselves in harm’s way for the public, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.  Again, it’s sensible and right to have a debate about tactics in the wake of such events, and HMIC will advise us.  This need not mean criticism.  Some lessons will be positive, such as the response of the public and of the criminal justice system.

Other police forces around the world are experiencing the new phenomenon of flash mobs using social media to commit crime.  The world, as the title of this conference acknowledges, is changing.  It simply makes sense to consider how to adapt.

This debate should be conducted without rancour or defensiveness.  To recognise the problems, and to consider the changes needed in response, is not destructive criticism of the service.  Any healthy organisation and its leaders need challenge and support.

It is the responsibility of politicians to hold public services to account, to ensure proper arrangements for governance, and to ensure that operational leaders are equipped to meet contemporary challenges.

The second driver for change relates to the need to deal with bureaucracy.  Bureaucratic control led to front line officers and police leaders responding to Whitehall rather than the public.  It defined an era when officer numbers and police spending rose dramatically – but when crime reduction actually slowed compared with preceding years.

I am glad to say that the bureaucratic approach is changing.  Just as accountability to the public needs to shift from being bureaucratic to being democratic, we need to see through a corresponding shift in how police officers and staff are allowed to work.  This agenda is one which can be immensely empowering to officers and staff, where innovation is encouraged, discretion is allowed and professionals are trusted.  But in an era where we take a new view of the assessment and management of risk, new leadership is needed.

The third reason for change relates, again, to resources.  Falling budgets mean that there is a requirement for transformation in policing.  Police forces need to re-think how they provide their service, protecting but re-shaping frontline service delivery and bearing down ruthlessly on cost in non-essential functions.  They need to question the unnecessary deployment of sworn officers, the most expensive police resource, in back and middle office functions rather than in frontline roles.  They need to move away from deploying their people in ways which have grown up over time but bear little relation to what the public needs.

Police leaders need to drive the organisational changes and the changes in culture that will enable these better approaches.  They need to inspire their officers and staff with relentless focus on crime-fighting.  That should not be a difficult or unwelcome message to deliver.  Officers and staff joined policing, in the main, inspired to serve the public and fight crime.  The problem is that the day-to-day bureaucracy and over emphasis on procedure for its own sake has obscured that aim.  We need police leaders who will return to the focus on crime-fighting which the public and Police and Crime Commissioners will certainly demand.

I often hear that, when budgets are falling, government must tell the police what they should stop doing.  Let me answer.  We don’t run the police or tell officers how to do their job.  But I do want forces to stop doing things – stop their officers filling in unnecessary forms, stop inefficient processes, and stop the bureaucracy that wastes police time.  And I will do everything I can to support those changes.  I don’t want the police to stop providing key services, salami slice provision rather than re-think it, or believe that the answer is to ration demand.  And they don’t need to.

We remain in the midst of a poor political debate about policing, where too many politicians and commentators still measure success by the size of inputs and assume that less spending inevitably means poorer service.  But it is outcomes that count, and the effective deployment of officers matters at least as much, if not more, than overall numbers.  This generation of police leaders must deliver a service that becomes stronger even as it becomes leaner.

The Winsor Review

The fourth requirement for change is that we need a workforce which is structured, rewarded and motivated to respond to modern demands.

The Home Secretary has of course commissioned Tom Winsor to provide two reports which will be central to the people side of police reform.  His first report is currently in the Police Negotiating Board process.  So it would not be appropriate for me to comment in detail.

But I do want to draw attention to Tom Winsor’s principles, which he set out in his first report and which the Home Secretary has already accepted.  Amongst these, he set out that fairness is an essential part of any new system of pay and conditions – fairness to the public and fairness to police officers and staff.

Winsor said people should be paid for what they do, the skills they have and according to how much they contribute.  His principles noted that while rewarding officers for the onerous demands of front line policing, the police service also needs to recognise the contribution made by police staff.

The Winsor principles send a clear message in support of fostering professionalism and discretion in policing.  I would urge all bodies with an interest in policing to contribute fully and in detail to Tom Winsor’s work on his second report. This work will map the way forwards for policing over the medium and long term.  It represents an opportunity for change which comes only once every 25-30 years.  That opportunity must not be missed.

Criteria for police leadership reform

So the police need to cut crime and cut costs, and they need to tackle big agendas relating to governance, reducing bureaucracy, transforming their organisations and managing their workforces through a major programme of change.

This is a significant challenge, and it will require real leadership.  My job is to provide the clear framework and support which the service needs to help them through.  But in the end the public, through their elected Police and Crime Commissioners, will rely on police leaders to deliver.  So I think it’s right to ask what we want from the next generation of leaders – and I don’t just mean senior leaders – in policing.

– First of all, I believe we need to maintain the positive characteristics of current police leadership – such as the ‘can do’ spirit found in the police service as a whole.

– We must maintain the British model of operationally independent, impartial policing.

– The public will want to see inspirational leaders who drive a relentless focus on crime-fighting.

– They will want a police leadership which they can trust.

– We need a police service and leaders, as Chief Constable Steve Otter and I argued two weeks ago, who are properly representative of the public they serve …

– … and a service that is open to all and attractive to the best.

– We need to ensure that police forces have the management capacity and skills to control costs.

– Related to this, we need leaders who can drive transformational change, in particular to the way their officers and staff work, moving to a culture of professional discretion.

– And we need to underpin all this with values of integrity of conduct combined with openness to challenge and to new ideas.

I don’t believe that these set of requirements should be controversial.   Indeed, it strikes me that forward thinking police leaders are already espousing them.  Bernard Hogan Howe has done so in his first week as Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

Talking points

So then we come to the steps needed to promote these criteria.  We need a good debate about these.  But let me offer a few talking points.

– Policing should not deny itself access to talent from whatever suitable source.  That’s why we’ve asked Tom Winsor to look at direct entry to policing at ranks above constable, and accelerated promotion within policing.  I know that direct entry in particular is controversial in the service, and operational issues must be addressed.  But outward-looking and self-confident organisations should welcome the ability to attract good people, from all backgrounds and at various points in their careers.

– Similarly, openness must underpin the approach to the selection, training and development of leadership from within the service.  We need to expose police leaders to learning from other sectors, making training more flexible and more open.  We need to broaden skills through more secondments out of the service, and indeed more varied careers which see rising stars moving in and out of the service.

– We need to foster a more open appointments system.  Too often we are seeing competitions for chief officer posts which are scarcely competitions at all.  An outward-looking and self-confident service should welcome more open approaches.  Direct entry is one solution, but there are broader cultural issues around selection and promotion to address.

– We need to consider how police forces should meet – and show they meet – high standards of corporate governance as they are held to account by Police and Crime Commissioners.  That can sound a dry area – but what it means is that the way a force top team works must provide good management and leadership, and follow the key values of policing.

A professional body for policing

We now need the right vehicles for delivering these changes in the future.  We have consulted on Peter Neyroud’s Review of Police Leadership and Training which sets out a vision of a professional body for policing.  We are considering the response, and we will set out our proposals shortly.

But the NPIA will be phased out next year.   So I do want to be clear that the destination should be a new professional body for policing which has responsibility for training, standards and leadership.  We will, of course, talk about the detail.  We must get the governance right: there must be accountability to the local, in the form of elected Police & Crime Commissioners, as well as to the national.  It must be a body that speaks for the whole of policing, staff and officers.  But it is time that we collectively lifted our sights and saw the huge and positive opportunity which creating an inclusive, professional policing body would bring to the whole service, including rank and file officers and staff.

Conclusion

I want to take this work forward collaboratively, in dialogue with the service.  But let me conclude by repeating the challenges which I set out:

– The continuing need to cut crime;

– The need to cut costs;

– The need to learn positively from recent events, and

– The need to equip leaders to meet these contemporary challenges.

These are indisputably challenging times.  I appreciate that forces, officers and staff are being confronted with difficult decisions.  But I remain optimistic about the future of policing, not least because of its huge institutional strengths:

– The British model of impartial policing, where the police are part of the public not separate from it, a model which is rightly envied around the world, and

– The values of the people who work in our police service – who, overwhelmingly, joined policing inspired to serve the public and fight crime.

The benefits of change, to the public and police professionals alike, are too important to lose, and a failure to act would be damaging.  So we will continue to drive reform.  There is room for debate, but no time for denial.  The world is changing.  Successful organisations will change with it.

Below is the text of the speech made by Nick Herbert to the IPPR on 28th March 2011.

I’d like to begin by thanking the IPPR for giving me this opportunity to speak today.  The IPPR has made a strong case for redressing what it calls the ‘accountability deficit’ in policing.  Rick Muir and Guy Lodge’s pamphlet in 2008, ‘A New Beat,’ cogently set out the case for local democratic accountability, describing police authorities as ‘weak, unaccountable and remote.’  I am glad that I am not alone in using blunt language.

It’s significant, though too often overlooked, that the case for reform of police governance is made across the political spectrum.  There is a party consensus in favour of the democratic reform of police authorities, albeit differences of view about the best model.

Nevertheless, I intend today both to re-state the case for reform and explain how we as a Government, implementing the Coalition Agreement, are going to swap the bureaucratic control of the police for democratic accountability, and how this will benefit police and public alike.

Who runs the police?

In Shanghai a few years ago, a Chinese businessman who was perplexed by the notion of parliamentary democracy asked me who, as an MP, I worked for – the government or the people?

I once put the same challenge to Sir Ian (now Lord) Blair, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner. He declined to reply. His answer should have been unequivocal: the people.  After all, aren’t the police a public service?

Who runs the police? We probably wouldn’t ask the same question about other public services.  Head teachers and governors run schools.  Chief executives of NHS trusts run hospitals, with medical directors at their side.  We know that politicians have a role in overseeing schools and health policy, but we rightly balk at the idea that they should try and manage the services.

And yet, when the Home Secretary told the Police Federation conference last year that she didn’t want to run the police – policing was their job – some raised their eyebrows.  She was surely right to say that “professional policing means policing run by you, the professionals, not us, the politicians.”  But this was clearly a significant break from the past.

Today, some of those who rightly ask questions about the policing of demonstrations forget that politicians should not direct the police – we hold the police to account.  But that is the way that policy was going. Police forces sprang out of the municipalities, yet in recent years they have increasingly looked to the Home Office rather than their local communities.  Instead of trusting the skills, decision-making and professionalism of those that actually do the work, politicians and policy makers became focused on raising standards from Whitehall with a plethora of targets. There were even detailed instructions on how to answer telephone calls.

This government is determined to end the decade of centralisation, by axeing policing targets, scrapping unnecessary forms and ditching the so-called Policing Pledge.  We have removed ring-fences on funding and we are restoring professional discretion, allowing police officers to be crime fighters, not form writers.

The need for stronger local accountability

But the police are a monopoly service – the public can’t choose their force.  Officers must be accountable for their actions and performance.  We cannot simply release the grip of Whitehall without putting in place some other means to ensure that forces deliver.  Most crime is local.  It is far better that forces should answer to local communities than to box ticking officials in Whitehall.  But if local accountability is to substitute for the centralised performance regime of the past, it needs to be strong.

And the problem is that police authorities are not strong enough to exercise this alternative governance, and they are not sufficiently connected to the public.  Only four out of 22 inspected police authorities have been assessed by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Audit Commission as performing well in their most critical functions.

There is also a gap between the authorities and the public they are meant to serve.  Only 8 per cent of wards in England and Wales are represented on a police authority.  Only 7 per cent of the public understand they can approach their police authority if dissatisfied with policing.  Almost no-one knows who their authority chairman is.  A recent survey found that a typical authority receives barely two letters a week from the public.  They may be doing a worthy job, and I thank authority members for their commitment, but this democratic deficit cannot continue.

The absence of a direct line of public influence is problematic for forces, too.  The founder of modern policing, Sir Robert Peel, said back in the 19th Century that “the ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions”.  After about a decade over which public approval of the police fell, it has now started to rise again – a welcome trend – but still only 56 per cent of the public say that the police do a good or excellent job.

A survey by Consumer Research last year found that nearly a third of those who come into contact with the police – and I don’t mean criminals – were dissatisfied.  Of the minority who complained, nearly two thirds were unhappy with the way the police dealt with their complaint.  The police were amongst the poorest performers of public services.

We should recognise and pay tribute to police success in tackling crime.  Every time I visit a force and see policing at its best I am reminded of the commitment of officers, PCSOs and staff.  And at a time when many rush to judgement on the police, as we have seen in relation to recent operations, we should remember the challenges they face.

Today I have publicly rejected criticism of the police over their handling of the riots in London, which I believe is unfair.  Of course lessons must always be learnt from such incidents.  But the readiness of officers to place themselves in harm’s way, and their can do attitude, is something for which the whole country should be grateful.  Over 50 officers were injured on Saturday; some had to be taken to hospital.  It is the violent thugs who attacked property and the police who should be condemned.

But we would be doing a disservice to officers, staff and the public if we failed to identify the areas where policing needs to improve.  Successful policing in future will rely on the bridge between the people and the police being strengthened.  Police forces will need to raise their game in relation to antisocial behaviour at one end of the spectrum, where public concern remains high, and the threat of serious organised crime at the other.  And this is at a time when budgets are necessarily being reduced, requiring chief constables to show real leadership and drive a fundamental redesign of policing to protect frontline services.

I believe that forces have the people and the will to meet these challenges, but that we now need radical change in the way we organise policing.

A Royal Commission?

To those who call for a Royal Commission to ponder these issues, I say – in common with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary – that there is no time for one.  Reform cannot wait; we do not have the luxury of delay while a committee of wise men ponder and eventually agree to differ.

We live in the age of accountability and transparency: as MPs discovered, institutions which are too late to see this will be damaged as a result.  From the beginning of the next financial year – starting in just a few days – forces will need to make the significant budget reductions that the economic recovery of our country requires.  In Harold Wilson’s words, ‘I see no need for a Royal Commission … which will take minutes and waste years.’

The police reform agenda

Direct local accountability and decentralisation are part of a coherent reform agenda to cut crime.  We are also creating a powerful new National Crime Agency, to improve the fight against serious and organised crime and help protect our borders.  We are dealing with an over cluttered national policing landscape, phasing out the National Policing Improvement Agency.  We have proposed new powers to tackle antisocial behaviour and we are toughening the licensing laws.  We are reviewing police leadership, training and skills, examining pay and conditions and moving towards a reformed, more accountable ACPO. We will publish Peter Neyroud’s report on police leadership very shortly.

Central to this reform agenda is the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners. They are a key element of the government’s programme of decentralisation, where power is returned to people and communities.

We will swap bureaucratic control for democratic accountability, replacing police authorities with directly elected commissioners in all forces in England and Wales save for the City of London, which is an exception. London already has its Mayor. He will be London’s Police and Crime Commissioner and will take over functions from the Metropolitan Police Authority, which will be abolished.  From the first elections in May next year, the public will have a real say over how their area is policed.

These new commissioners will be big local figures with a powerful local mandate to drive the fight against crime and antisocial behaviour.  They will decide policing strategy and the force budget, set the local council tax precept, and appoint – and if necessary dismiss – the chief constable.  They will do all these things on behalf of the public which elected them.

The role of commissioners will be greater than that of the police authorities they replace.  That is the significance of the words ‘and crime’ in their title.  They will have a broad remit to ensure community safety, with their own budgets to prevent crime and tackle drugs.  They will work with local authorities, community safety partnerships and local criminal justice boards, helping to bring a strategic coherence to the actions of these organisations at force level.  And in future their role could be extended to other elements of the local criminal justice system, ensuring that the police and those who manage offenders operate together, working to break the cycle of crime.

Strict checks and balances

Our aim is not to abandon the ‘tripartite’ arrangement of police governance, between the Home Office, local representatives and forces, but to rebalance it.  We are recognising, in the words of the Local Government Association, that the tripartite has “become unbalanced, with the Home Secretary acquiring more and more powers at the expense of chief constables and police authorities.”

To prevent too much power from being invested in a single individual, we are putting in place strict checks and balances.  These will include local Police and Crime Panels, with representatives from each local authority and independent members, with the power to scrutinise the commissioner’s actions.  District councils will have a stake in police governance for the first time.

We need to strike the right balance here, ensuring that the panels will be effective, but guarding against appointees inappropriately cutting across the mandate of the elected commissioner.  Panels will not, and should not, have direct control over a commissioner’s decisions, and they will not be police authorities – it is commissioners who will hold forces to account, not the panels.

But the panels will have teeth.  They will have the power of veto over excessive precepts and the appointment of chief constables.  And they will have the weapon of transparency.  They will have the power to compel commissioners to release documents, summon them for questioning, and compel them to respond to any suggestions or advice.  All of this will be in public.  The thinking and decisions of commissioners will be laid bare for the people to see.

A single accountable individual

The strength of this model is that local councillors will still be involved in the governance of policing while an elected individual takes executive decisions, supported by a highly qualified team.  The principle of one accountable individual, directly responsible for the totality of force activity, is crucial to our vision.

Policing governance by committee has meant that an unelected body has power over the level of precept.  It has meant that no-one is properly held to account for decisions or poor performance.  No-one is truly in charge.  Even police authority chairs are first among equals – they are not decision-making leaders.  Under our new system, commissioners will be able to appoint their own executive teams to support them.  But the buck will stop with commissioners, and the public will cast judgement at the ballot box.

Direct elections of police authority members would not produce this single focus.  Directly elected chairs of authorities – the previous government’s latest proposal – would be the worst of all worlds, a really bad idea, where an individual would have a mandate but be unable to deliver it, routinely outvoted by a committee of appointees.  What’s more, this model would cost more.

Direct accountability at Basic Command Unit or some equivalent level is an interesting idea, and superficially attractive, but it would result in lots of politicians with a mandate, none of them actually having strategic responsibility at force level.  Someone has to set the force budget, strategic direction and appoint the chief constable.  Without a single, clear mandate, the waters remain muddied, committees still take decisions and the public loses out.

Operational independence

It’s fundamental to the British system that the police remain operationally independent.  No politician can tell a constable – a sworn officer of the crown – who to arrest.  Forces will continue to be under the legal ‘direction and control’ of their chief constable.

I welcome Sir Hugh Orde’s comments in this week’s Police Review that ‘the government has listened to our concerns’ on this issue.

There is general agreement that we should not try and define operational independence by statute.  But as Rick Muir has argued, “we need to clarify who decides what, when and how – and where politics ends and policing begins.”  A Memorandum of Understanding was recommended by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee in a report last December.

The government has therefore committed to developing a new protocol –  which has also been described as a Memorandum of Understanding – to delineate the key responsibilities of Chief Constables, Police and Crime Commissioners, the new local Police and Crime Panels which will scrutinise commissioners, and the Home Secretary.  The Home Office is working with ACPO and others to ensure these principles are reflected in this document, and I hope that it will be ready to be considered alongside the Bill in the House of Lords.

Ensuring strategic policing

It has been suggested that Police and Crime Commissioners will be focused on local issues to the exclusion of those which require a strategic response – that they will be too parochial.  I doubt that they would behave in this way, but in any event they will have a clear responsibility for tackling all crime in their area and for holding the whole of their force’s activities to account.  That is the principle which underlies the vertical integration of forces.

As I have argued before, there’s a paradox of policing over the last few years.  While central government has interfered too much in matters that should be determined locally, it has been weak in areas where a stronger grip was required.  The imperative of dealing with the threat of terrorism, backed by a huge investment, saw a strong national counter terrorist network developed.

But the fight against serious and organised crime, as Sir Paul Stephenson reminded us last year, remains patchy.  There has been too little focus on ensuring value for money.  And following the failure of compulsory force amalgamations, the centre was weak in setting a new vision or driving collaboration.

The time has come to reverse this situation – giving more space for local determination with stronger local accountability, while ensuring real leadership where national organisation and cross-boundary policing is needed.

So the new National Crime Agency will transform the fight against organised crime, working with police forces.  The Home Secretary will issue a Strategic Policing Requirement, which will guide forces on their responsibilities for serious and cross-boundary policing challenges – such as terrorism, organised crime, public order and responding to major incidents and emergencies.  Police and Crime Commissioners and Chief Constables will be under strong duties to have regard to this Requirement.

Collaboration between forces

It makes operational sense for forces to work together. But it also saves money. The Home Office is providing stronger co-ordination and support for collective procurement of goods and services by forces, including IT, where we estimate potential savings of some £380 million a year.  Around a third of spending by police forces is not on the frontline – it is on back and middle office functions.  Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary will be reporting in detail on this breakdown later this week.  But it is clear that the opportunities for savings while protecting the frontline are immense.

I flatly disagree with those who expect Police and Crime Commissioners to be obstacles to collaboration.  In fact, I expect them to be strongly motivated to drive out costs as they seek to free officers to fight crime.  They will have a public mandate to do so that is stronger than any pressure brought about by Whitehall bureaucracy.

That means that PCCs will be powerfully incentivised to look hard at what their forces do and what opportunities there are for working with other forces and other partners to do things more efficiently and effectively.

But to allay any fears, the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, currently before Parliament, also places commissioners and chief constables under a strong legal duty to collaborate.

The need to tackle serious and cross-boundary criminality more effectively, and deliver support functions more efficiently, are not new problems.  They have not been brought about by the introduction of PCCs.  They are the same challenges that we have been facing for some time.  But because we are strengthening the accountability of forces to their communities, we are also able to address weaknesses in our national response to serious crime without undermining the space, freedom and discretion for local decision-making which is so important.  Put simply, the Home Office is now focusing on the right things.

Driving value for money

I expect Police and Crime Commissioners to reap a return for taxpayers by driving value for money more strongly.  Their running costs will be no more than police authorities, because we will no longer be paying allowances to councillors.  The only additional costs will be those of holding elections once every four years.  Because these will be combined with local elections, this will be £50 million.  (The Association of Police Authorities’ estimate, at double this, is wrong.)  This sum has been provided additionally by the Chancellor for 2012; it will not come out of force budgets.  To put it in context, the equivalent annual cost is less than 0.1 per cent of total police spend.

Policing in the United States

And while I am dealing with one poor argument against reform, let me address another.  Police and Crime Commissioners are not a crude import from the United States.  As Bill Bratton reminded us when he came over here last year, with some 17,000 police departments, there is no single model of policing in the US in any case.  At least that’s a number that should give the proponents of force amalgamations here some cheer.

Of course there have been things to admire and learn from the United States – Bratton’s own remarkable policing reforms in New York; the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, similar to our own rediscovery of neighbourhood policing; the strong connection between public services and the people which direct elections create.  It was seeing Los Angeles’ street level crime mapping that persuaded me to promote that idea here – resulting in a new website, www.police.uk, which received over 400 million hits in the first two months, an example of the power of transparency but also the public appetite for information about crime and antisocial behaviour in their neighbourhood.

But there are other aspects of the US system which we emphatically would not wish to replicate, and many areas where our own model is superior.  In particular, we have an independent Inspectorate of Constabulary – which we are strengthening – a robust Independent Police Complaints Commission, and we have national measures to ensure the integrity of crime data collected by local forces.  Those who suggest that Police and Crime Commissioners would open the door to widespread police corruption simply do not understand our system.

The Mayor of London

And we don’t need to look across the Atlantic to see that an elected individual holding the police to account is popular.  In London, Mayor Boris Johnson has delivered on his pledges to tackle knife crime and put uniformed officers on public transport.   He has committed to keep cops on the streets – strikingly, at a time when most forces have frozen recruitment, the Met is about to begin hiring officers again. How many Londoners would prefer their police force to answer to an invisible committee?

The office of the Mayor of London has proved to be popular amongst Londoners, precisely because the Mayor is sensitive to his electorate.  Since Boris took greater charge of policing in the capital, the Metropolitan Police Authority has received four and a half time as much correspondence.  The people know who to go to and who to hold to account – and they like it.

The politicisation of policing

Nor can it be said that the Mayor’s greater involvement has politicised the Met.  In any case I find the criticism of politicisation a peculiar argument when the Home Secretary is always an elected politician and a leading member of their party.  As the IPPR’s Director, Nick Pearce, has said, “one person’s politicisation is another person’s accountability.”  If the police aren’t to answer to an elected representative of the people, who exactly will they answer to?

We judged that it would be both wrong in principle and unworkable in practice to ban political parties from fielding candidates as Police and Crime Commissioners.  But that does not mean that party politics will be introduced into police forces themselves.  Commissioners will not be permitted to appoint political advisers.  And, once again, the operational independence of officers will be crucial.

Police and Crime Commissioners will not be picking up the phone to individual officers, telling them how to do their job, who to arrest, and where to be.  They will not be permitted to sack or appoint officers, other than the chief constable – indeed under these arrangements Chief Constables will receive greater power over who they hire for their top management team than they have at the moment.

And the candidates for office need not come from the political parties.  There is a real opportunity for highly qualified independent candidates to come forward, and I hope they will.

It’s claimed that extremists will be elected, even BNP candidates.  This is nonsense: they polled just 2 per cent of the national vote in the general election.  The electoral system and size of constituencies means that their candidates will not succeed.  The same disreputable arguments – that you can’t rely on people to make the right decisions – were advanced against votes for women.

Dig deeper, and you find an elitist fear that elected Commissioners might be so brash as to reflect public concern and pledge to get tough on crime.  It’s strange that so many democrats are so wary of democracy, but I believe that we can and should trust the people.

The benefits of reform

This reform is essential to address the democratic deficit in policing, to end the era of Whitehall’s bureucratic control, to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour and to drive value for money.  I accept that police authorities will be losers, since they will be abolished.  But I believe that everyone else will gain.

Chief constables will be liberated to be crime fighters rather than government managers, free to run their workforces, and relieved of the burden of politics which they can safely leave to Police and Crime Commissioners.

Police officers will benefit from a less bureaucratic system where discretion is restored and where someone close to their force has a strong interest in driving out waste and prioritising the frontline.

Local authorities will benefit from a continuing say in the governance of policing, and district councils will have a role for the first time.

The taxpayer will see better value for value money as commissioners, who will have responsibility for the precept, focus relentlessly on efficiency in their forces.

Local policing will benefit from a strong democratic input, focusing attention on issues of public concern.  The streets will be safer.

The Home Office will be refocused on its proper role, especially to address national threats and to co-ordinate strategic action and collaboration between forces.

Above all, the public will have a voice in how they are policed.  Police and Crime Commissioners will have the mandate and the moral authority to reflect public concern on crime.

Finest service in the world

The Prime Minister said recently that we have the finest police service in the world.  Like the NHS, we should be proud of this British institution and protect what is best in it.  But we also need to ensure that the police are able to meet today’s challenges and command broad public support.

Sir Robert Peel, famously said that ‘the police are the public and the public are the police’.  Forces will continue to be run by chief constables, but their legitimacy depends on the principle that the police answer to the people they serve.