By Philip Johnston
1 February 2011
The coalition’s axe extends even to sacred cows such as the police, causing howls of protest and fears of fewer bobbies on the beat. But frontline officers have been noticeable by their absence for decades. So where is all the money going?
In marked contrast, today Prime Minister David Cameron is presiding over a cut in police budgets and numbers just as political tensions once again spill over into street protest and as Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke’s plans to reduce the prison population risk pushing up the crime rate for the first time in 20 years. Furthermore, the terrorist threat level is the highest it has been for some years amid concern that some sort of Mumbai-style attack is being plotted.
John Yates, head of Scotland Yard’s specialist operations command and the country’s most senior counter-terrorist officer, has gone so far as to question what he called ‘eye-watering’ cuts and their impact on the task of keeping the country safe. He warned that anti-terror policing both in London and elsewhere faced cuts at a time when the Met’s principal focus is now turning to the 2012 Olympics in London, which is considered a major terrorist target. As if this were not enough, the police are about to undergo the most profound structural reforms since the 1960s with the introduction of elected commissioners. This is potentially a toxic combination: is it one that might come to poison Cameron and the coalition?
A consistent theme of the government is that it is possible to cut deep into planned budgets without harming frontline services. Shortly before the election, Cameron appeared on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 and was asked what would happen if his ministers came to him proposing cuts that harmed the front line. ‘They would be sent back to their departments to think again,’ he said. The clear impression given – a pledge, Labour calls it – was that in the necessary retrenchment of public spending in order to reduce the deficit, the front line would not suffer. But was it ever going to be possible to cut 20% or more off most department budgets in four years without some impact on the front line?
There were always two obvious difficulties with Cameron’s statement. In the first place, the definition of the front line is by no means clear. And secondly, it is not departmental ministers who make the decisions on what happens to it: they can cut the overall budget – but how that then affects services is a matter for local managers and finance officers.
As Cameron and his coalition partners are about to discover to their political cost in 2011, it was an easier pledge to make than to deliver. Part of their problem stems from the different understandings of what comprises frontline services. Where policing is concerned, most people consider the front line to mean the beat officer and the neighbourhood police station, neither of which are especially prominent any more. Senior officers, however, regard the non-uniformed CID and some back-office employees, such as IT staff, as equally important to tackling crime – and so they are. The dilemma, though, is that the public is clamouring for more visible policing – beyond the community support officers in big town centres – just as overall numbers are starting to fall for the first time in 12 years.
The police themselves have undergone something of a Damascene conversion in recent years to appreciate the importance of a routine uniformed presence on the streets without which people fear – indeed, have witnessed – an increase in antisocial behaviour. This was conceded in a recent report by inspector of constabulary Sir Denis O’Connor, Stop the rot. He acknowledged that the absence of law and order from the streets had encouraged yobbish behaviour.
According to O’Connor, this trend began in the 1980s. Actually, it started far earlier than that – around the time the police began to believe that street patrols involved sitting in their Panda cars. The inspector argued that spending cuts would make matters worse. Yet during the period when, as he concedes, the police retreated from the streets, record amounts of money were pumped into policing. Targets were set, performance standards determined, key commitments entered into and none of this worked, though some forces did better than others.
For years the police suffered a cultural block to the whole idea of regaining control of the streets, even though their first duty is to prevent crime. A police officer on the beat is not only reassuring; he or she is a deterrent to bad behaviour and a collector of intelligence to be used in thwarting serious crimes such as terrorism. And yet, as an earlier inspectorate report showed, the police are hardly ever on the streets. On average just 11% are visible and able to respond or intervene when order breaks down. At weekends, the proportion is even lower.
If antisocial behaviour gets worse because there are too few police around, then spending cuts will doubtless be used as an excuse when, in reality, it has nothing to do with money at all. The Association of Police Authorities has predicted ‘damage’ to the front line unless the cuts are phased in more gradually. In a letter to policing minister Nick Herbert, the APA said that while its members were committed to protecting the public and the front line, ‘the ability of authorities and forces to achieve this outcome is seriously impacted by the phasing of the proposed cuts’.
But why should this be the case? The fact is that even after £125m is taken out of this year’s funding, the police budget is still going up to around £9.6bn. Almost 90% of this is taken up with costs of employees. However, most of the new recruits have been non-officer staff, such as police community support officers and IT experts, who are most vulnerable to the cuts.
The way police are deployed has also changed radically. Forty years ago there were far fewer warranted officers than there are today – under 100,000 in England and Wales compared with around 140,000 now. Yet far more were seen on the streets then – and the public consistently says it wants more bobbies on the beat. So why is it so difficult to achieve this; and if it did not happen when budgets were buoyant, what are the prospects when the cash is being cut?
One of the big changes over the past ten years has been the increasing proportion of non-officer staff. In 1998, they comprised around 30% of the total but now make up 40%. This was supposed to relieve warranted officers of back-office duties and get them back onto the operational front line. But this has simply not happened: one reason is that the explosion of specialist police units has taken officers off the streets and they are additionally burdened with red tape. One remedy, then, is for the Home Office to slash the bureaucracy that police officers have to deal with.
Police chiefs also need to find imaginative ways to live within their reduced budgets. And to be fair, many intend to do just that. Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, which is cutting 2,950 jobs over four years, said the axe would fall mainly in middle and back offices – and while some frontline posts would go it would not mean a decline in the service.
In London, where the Metropolitan Police expect to lose about 1,000 posts this year, Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin is also adamant that frontline services will be maintained. He said the Met was focusing on cutting costs through support functions, IT, buildings and vehicles. It is also developing plans to sell off police stations to save money and replace them with small ‘front counter’ services in high streets. Arguably, this could improve local services by making the police more accessible – especially since many smaller stations have already shut over the years and services centralised.
Many forces are also unhappy with the way the police national grant is distributed, with just under half of the constabularies in England and Wales receiving less than they are allocated under the funding formula. The Commons home affairs select committee has proposed that police authorities should have the discretion to raise funds through council tax according to their needs, as long as stakeholders, such as local residents and local authorities, are consulted.
Force mergers, an idea put forward by Charles Clarke when he was home secretary under Labour, are also back on the agenda though on a voluntary basis only. Greater sharing of back-office facilities and IT is also being encouraged, as is the use of private companies to provide frontline services such as forensics.
Coping with less money will be daunting for police chiefs and financial managers across the public sector but it represents a challenge: even if cuts fall on frontline services why does it automatically follow that they become worse? Many police officers hold the view that poor management is at the root of inadequate policing. The influential rank-and-file police blog The Thin Blue Line has set out options for achieving the £125m cuts needed this year without affecting the front line, including reducing non-police staff, cutting PCSO functions, merging forces, consolidating some of the higher policing ranks and rationalising procurement strategy.
The Commons home affairs select committee inquiry into what happened to the extra money pumped into policing under Labour concluded: ‘On the basis of the data currently available, it is difficult to assess how effectively the increased spending on the police in recent years has been deployed [or] the case made by the service and police authorities for more funding when there is no comprehensive measure of how well they have spent the money they have already received.’
Here, then, is an opportunity to consider whether the front line itself has become overmanned, inefficient and increasingly remote from the people it is supposed to serve. Reorganisation, rationalisation and the eradication of waste could both save money and lead to a leaner service that more reflects the public’s priorities.
Philip Johnston is the assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph
1 February 2011
The coalition’s axe extends even to sacred cows such as the police, causing howls of protest and fears of fewer bobbies on the beat. But frontline officers have been noticeable by their absence for decades. So where is all the money going?
The last time the Conservatives returned to office after a long period in opposition, there was one group of public sector workers above all that they were determined to keep on their side: the police. Almost the first decision the incoming Thatcher government took in 1979 was to implement in full the recommendations of the Edmund-Davies inquiry into levels of police pay, which had fallen markedly compared with those of other state employees.
In some cases, the increases amounted to nearly 40% and thousands of new officers were recruited, many of whom are now retiring exactly 30 years later. The goodwill the Tories bought paid dividends when the police were on the front line of dealing with some of the consequences of their policies, notably the inner-city riots of 1981 and the miners’ strike a few years later.In marked contrast, today Prime Minister David Cameron is presiding over a cut in police budgets and numbers just as political tensions once again spill over into street protest and as Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke’s plans to reduce the prison population risk pushing up the crime rate for the first time in 20 years. Furthermore, the terrorist threat level is the highest it has been for some years amid concern that some sort of Mumbai-style attack is being plotted.
John Yates, head of Scotland Yard’s specialist operations command and the country’s most senior counter-terrorist officer, has gone so far as to question what he called ‘eye-watering’ cuts and their impact on the task of keeping the country safe. He warned that anti-terror policing both in London and elsewhere faced cuts at a time when the Met’s principal focus is now turning to the 2012 Olympics in London, which is considered a major terrorist target. As if this were not enough, the police are about to undergo the most profound structural reforms since the 1960s with the introduction of elected commissioners. This is potentially a toxic combination: is it one that might come to poison Cameron and the coalition?
A consistent theme of the government is that it is possible to cut deep into planned budgets without harming frontline services. Shortly before the election, Cameron appeared on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 and was asked what would happen if his ministers came to him proposing cuts that harmed the front line. ‘They would be sent back to their departments to think again,’ he said. The clear impression given – a pledge, Labour calls it – was that in the necessary retrenchment of public spending in order to reduce the deficit, the front line would not suffer. But was it ever going to be possible to cut 20% or more off most department budgets in four years without some impact on the front line?
There were always two obvious difficulties with Cameron’s statement. In the first place, the definition of the front line is by no means clear. And secondly, it is not departmental ministers who make the decisions on what happens to it: they can cut the overall budget – but how that then affects services is a matter for local managers and finance officers.
As Cameron and his coalition partners are about to discover to their political cost in 2011, it was an easier pledge to make than to deliver. Part of their problem stems from the different understandings of what comprises frontline services. Where policing is concerned, most people consider the front line to mean the beat officer and the neighbourhood police station, neither of which are especially prominent any more. Senior officers, however, regard the non-uniformed CID and some back-office employees, such as IT staff, as equally important to tackling crime – and so they are. The dilemma, though, is that the public is clamouring for more visible policing – beyond the community support officers in big town centres – just as overall numbers are starting to fall for the first time in 12 years.
The police themselves have undergone something of a Damascene conversion in recent years to appreciate the importance of a routine uniformed presence on the streets without which people fear – indeed, have witnessed – an increase in antisocial behaviour. This was conceded in a recent report by inspector of constabulary Sir Denis O’Connor, Stop the rot. He acknowledged that the absence of law and order from the streets had encouraged yobbish behaviour.
According to O’Connor, this trend began in the 1980s. Actually, it started far earlier than that – around the time the police began to believe that street patrols involved sitting in their Panda cars. The inspector argued that spending cuts would make matters worse. Yet during the period when, as he concedes, the police retreated from the streets, record amounts of money were pumped into policing. Targets were set, performance standards determined, key commitments entered into and none of this worked, though some forces did better than others.
For years the police suffered a cultural block to the whole idea of regaining control of the streets, even though their first duty is to prevent crime. A police officer on the beat is not only reassuring; he or she is a deterrent to bad behaviour and a collector of intelligence to be used in thwarting serious crimes such as terrorism. And yet, as an earlier inspectorate report showed, the police are hardly ever on the streets. On average just 11% are visible and able to respond or intervene when order breaks down. At weekends, the proportion is even lower.
If antisocial behaviour gets worse because there are too few police around, then spending cuts will doubtless be used as an excuse when, in reality, it has nothing to do with money at all. The Association of Police Authorities has predicted ‘damage’ to the front line unless the cuts are phased in more gradually. In a letter to policing minister Nick Herbert, the APA said that while its members were committed to protecting the public and the front line, ‘the ability of authorities and forces to achieve this outcome is seriously impacted by the phasing of the proposed cuts’.
But why should this be the case? The fact is that even after £125m is taken out of this year’s funding, the police budget is still going up to around £9.6bn. Almost 90% of this is taken up with costs of employees. However, most of the new recruits have been non-officer staff, such as police community support officers and IT experts, who are most vulnerable to the cuts.
The way police are deployed has also changed radically. Forty years ago there were far fewer warranted officers than there are today – under 100,000 in England and Wales compared with around 140,000 now. Yet far more were seen on the streets then – and the public consistently says it wants more bobbies on the beat. So why is it so difficult to achieve this; and if it did not happen when budgets were buoyant, what are the prospects when the cash is being cut?
One of the big changes over the past ten years has been the increasing proportion of non-officer staff. In 1998, they comprised around 30% of the total but now make up 40%. This was supposed to relieve warranted officers of back-office duties and get them back onto the operational front line. But this has simply not happened: one reason is that the explosion of specialist police units has taken officers off the streets and they are additionally burdened with red tape. One remedy, then, is for the Home Office to slash the bureaucracy that police officers have to deal with.
Police chiefs also need to find imaginative ways to live within their reduced budgets. And to be fair, many intend to do just that. Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, which is cutting 2,950 jobs over four years, said the axe would fall mainly in middle and back offices – and while some frontline posts would go it would not mean a decline in the service.
In London, where the Metropolitan Police expect to lose about 1,000 posts this year, Acting Commissioner Tim Godwin is also adamant that frontline services will be maintained. He said the Met was focusing on cutting costs through support functions, IT, buildings and vehicles. It is also developing plans to sell off police stations to save money and replace them with small ‘front counter’ services in high streets. Arguably, this could improve local services by making the police more accessible – especially since many smaller stations have already shut over the years and services centralised.
Many forces are also unhappy with the way the police national grant is distributed, with just under half of the constabularies in England and Wales receiving less than they are allocated under the funding formula. The Commons home affairs select committee has proposed that police authorities should have the discretion to raise funds through council tax according to their needs, as long as stakeholders, such as local residents and local authorities, are consulted.
Force mergers, an idea put forward by Charles Clarke when he was home secretary under Labour, are also back on the agenda though on a voluntary basis only. Greater sharing of back-office facilities and IT is also being encouraged, as is the use of private companies to provide frontline services such as forensics.
Coping with less money will be daunting for police chiefs and financial managers across the public sector but it represents a challenge: even if cuts fall on frontline services why does it automatically follow that they become worse? Many police officers hold the view that poor management is at the root of inadequate policing. The influential rank-and-file police blog The Thin Blue Line has set out options for achieving the £125m cuts needed this year without affecting the front line, including reducing non-police staff, cutting PCSO functions, merging forces, consolidating some of the higher policing ranks and rationalising procurement strategy.
The Commons home affairs select committee inquiry into what happened to the extra money pumped into policing under Labour concluded: ‘On the basis of the data currently available, it is difficult to assess how effectively the increased spending on the police in recent years has been deployed [or] the case made by the service and police authorities for more funding when there is no comprehensive measure of how well they have spent the money they have already received.’
Here, then, is an opportunity to consider whether the front line itself has become overmanned, inefficient and increasingly remote from the people it is supposed to serve. Reorganisation, rationalisation and the eradication of waste could both save money and lead to a leaner service that more reflects the public’s priorities.
Philip Johnston is the assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph
