WAITING FOR REAL POLICE REFORM? - DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH

It is over a year now since the Coalition came to power. Police Reform was high on the Conservative Party pre election agenda. On these pages and others that write frequently about policing and criminal justice matters, we frequently look at the initial stated aims of politicians, measuring them against what they actually achieve.

With thanks to the "All Copped Out" blog which served as inspiration, in this article we look at the often negative effect of Whitehall and the Civil Servants on achieving much needed reforms.

Home Secretaries of all political colours through the years have battled with the bureaucracy and hidden agendas of the Whitehall brigade. It will be interesting to see if Theresa May proves any more effective than her predecessors in driving reforms through. 

 SOMETIMES, fiction is the best guide to reality. Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister accurately depicts the real life warped relationship between a politicians and servants, who spend much of their time thwarting well intended plans and turning reforming politicos into pathetic creatures of the establishment.

Yet what is astonishing is that whilst the series’ ran between 1980 and 1988, the themes and issues remain incredibly contemporary. History is repeating itself; the coalition has learnt nothing from the failures of previous governments. But it is not all as it was in the 1980s. The series’ fictional permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, was a brilliant man. The fact that Appleby spent all of his time sabotaging reform, openness and his minister Jim Hacker’s political goals – Appleby is the real boss, with Hacker tolerated as a passing nuisance – didn’t detract from his competence. The problem was one of incentives – bureaucratic empire building was the primary objective, not improving the country – not ability.

While the incentive mismatch remains a lethal issue today, an added tragedy is that the quality of the civil service has also deteriorated, as testified by the fact that so much government legislation is riddled with errors, internal inconsistencies and other problems. The bureaucracy has lost much of its competence. The “Rolls-Royce” (yet deeply flawed) civil service of yore no longer exists. The situation is even worse in quangos; the biggest problem is a lack of managerial ability among senior people. Few of those in positions of power have real, private sector operational knowledge.

Many intelligent, altruistic and principled people work for the state. But the average competence of civil servants is in decline. Our antiquated and over-centralised system now resembles a cross between Yes, Minister and the Thick of It, a modern-day, coarser and horribly plausible satire developed by Armando Iannucci, where the political-spin-doctor-civil service establishment is depicted as idiotic, gutless, incompetent and power-hungry.

One problem is that so much power has been transferred to the European Union. The last thing clever graduates want to spend their time doing is to become implementers of somebody else’s legislation. Another force halting reform is that government decisions are now all constantly subject to litigation and judicial review. Civil servants routinely take lawyers into meetings with ministers; their first reaction to any proposed change is that it is illegal. Often, this has to do with European legislation or human rights. There is also a fresh dimension: the Labour-imposed requirement to perform Equality Impact Assessments on all policies, with any deemed to discriminate against a “disadvantaged” group automatically open to legal action. These EIAs are a complete disaster and have given officials as well as pressure groups carte blanche to kill off all change – including the entirety of the austerity programme. Unless the coalition acts fast, it will be soon be overwhelmed.

Some of the best bits from YM and YPM say it all really . . . .

Jim Hacker takes office - In the first ever episode, Jim Hacker is made Minister for Administrative Affairs and meets his Principal Private Secretary, Bernard Woolley, and Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby.

Bernard shows the Minister round his office: “It used to be said there were two kinds of chairs to go with two kinds of ministers: one sort that folds up instantly and the other sort that goes round and round in circles.”

Political animals - Hacker meets animal rights protesters. Activist: “There is nothing special about man, Mr Hacker. We’re not above nature. We’re all part of it. Men are animals too, you know.” Hacker: “I know that, I’ve just come from the House of Commons.”

Negative discrimination - Inspired by his wife, the Minister decides to do something about the number of women in the Civil Service.

Sir Humphrey: “Surely there aren’t all that many?”
Bernard: “The Minister thinks we need more.”
Sir Humphrey: “But we’re up to quota on typists, cleaners and tea ladies.”
Hacker: “I’m talking about senior civil servants. We need female mandarins.”
Bernard: “Sort of satsumas?”

Drinks Cabinet - The Home Secretary is arrested for drink-driving after causing a lorry loaded with nuclear waste to crash.
Hacker: “He’ll have to resign.”
Sir Humphrey: “Alas, yes.”
Hacker: “What on earth will happen to him?”
Sir Humphrey: “Well, I gather he was as drunk as a lord, so after a discreet interval, they’ll probably make him one.”

A matter of honours - Bernard explains the abbreviations for various Foreign Office honours.
Bernard: “Of course, in the service, CMG stands for Call Me God. And KCMG for Kindly Call Me God.”
Hacker: “What about GCMG?”
Bernard: “God Calls Me God.”

Lies, damned lies…
The Minister is interviewed by the BBC.
Hacker: “This government believes in reducing bureaucracy.”
Ludovic Kennedy: “Well, figures that I have here say that your department’s staff has risen by 10 per cent.”
Hacker: “Certainly not. I believe the figure is much more like 9.97.”
Kennedy: “How are you going to meet the challenge of reform?”
Hacker: “It’s far too early to give detailed proposals. After all, I have just come here direct from Number 10.”
Kennedy: “From Number 9.97, perhaps?”

Briefs encounter - Hacker is about to face a Select Committee hearing. Sir Humphrey has prepared copious briefing notes for him.
Hacker: “Why can’t ministers go anywhere without briefs?”
Bernard: “It’s in case they get caught with their trousers down.”

Industrial language - Sir Humphrey secretly encourages health workers to go on strike.
Union official: “But what about the Minister?”
Sir Humphrey: “The Minister doesn’t know his ACAS from his NALGO.”

Better out-tray than in-tray - When the Minister is inundated with correspondence, Bernard offers to take it off his hands by sending “official replies”.
Bernard: “I’ll just say, ‘The Minister has asked me to thank you for your letter’ and something like ‘The matter is under consideration’, or even ‘under active consideration’.”
Hacker: “What’s the difference?”
Bernard: “Well, ‘under consideration’ means we’ve lost the file, ‘under active consideration’ means we’re trying to find it.”

The Euro-sausage - The Minister has been in talks with the European Commissioner about standardising the names of foodstuffs.
Bernard: “They can’t stop us eating the British sausage, can they?”
Hacker: “No, but they can stop us calling it a sausage. Apparently it’s got to be called the Emulsified High-Fat Offal Tube.”
Bernard: “And you swallowed it?”

OPEN GOVERNMENT - "If people don't know what you're doing, they don't know what you're doing wrong."
"It is sometimes difficult to explain to Ministers that open government can sometimes mean informing their Cabinet colleagues as well as their friends in Fleet Street."
"Minister's language: 'We have decided to be more flexible in our application of this principle' means 'We are dropping this policy but we don't want to admit it publicly'. "

OFFICIAL VISIT - "A career in politics is no preparation for government."

ECONOMY DRIVE - "Asking a town hall to slim down its staff is like asking an alcoholic to blow up a distillery."
"Politicians must be allowed to panic. They need activity. It is their substitute for achievement."
"The argument that we must do everything a Minister demands because he has been 'democratically chosen' does not stand up to close inspection. MPs are not chosen by 'the people' - they are chosen by their local constituency parties: thirty-five men in grubby raincoats or thirty-five women in silly hats. The further 'selection' process is equally a nonsense: there are only 630 MPs and a party with just over 300 MPs forms a government and of these 300, 100 are too old and too silly to be ministers and 100 too young and too callow. Therefore there are about 100 MPs to fill 100 government posts. Effectively no choice at all."


"Seven ways of explaining away the fact that North-West region has saved £32 million while your department overspent:


1. They have changed their accounting system in the North-West.
2. Redrawn the boundaries, so that this year's figures are not comparable.
3. The money was compensation for special extra expenditure of £16 million a year over the last two years, which has now stopped.
4. It is only a paper bag saving, so it will have to be spent next year.
5. A major expenditure is late in completion and therefore the region will be correspondingly over budget next year. (Known technically as phasing - Ed)
6. There has been an unforeseen but important shift in personnel and industries to other regions whose expenditure rose accordingly.
7. Some large projects were cancelled for reasons of economy early in the accounting period with the result that the expenditure was not incurred but the budget had already been allocated."


"There has to be a nuclear bunker in Whitehall. Government doesn't stop merely because the country has been destroyed. Annihilation is bad enough. Without anarchy to make it even worse."

"The press described the Prime Minster as 'overwrought' today. In fact he was overwrought as a newt."

BIG BROTHER - "Stalling Cabinet Ministers: the 5-stage formula

1. The administration is in its early months and there's an awful lot to do at once.
2. Something ought to be done but is this the right way to achieve it?
3. The idea is good but the time is not ripe.
4. The proposal has run into technical, logistic and legal difficulties which are being sorted out.
5. Never refer to the matter or reply to the Minister's notes. By the time he taxes you with it face to face you should be able to say it looks unlikely if anything can be done until after the election."

"The Opposition aren't really the opposition. They are only the Government in exile. The Civil Service are the opposition in residence. "

WRITING ON THE WALL - "Civil Service language: 'Sometimes one is forced to consider the possibility that affairs are being conducted in a manner which, all things being considered and making all possible allowances is, not to put too fine a point on it, perhaps not entirely straightforward.

Translation: 'You are lying'."

"The Prime Minister doesn't want the truth, he wants something he can tell Parliament."

THE RIGHT TO KNOW - "Almost anything can be attacked as a failure, but almost anything can be defended as not a significant failure. Politicians do not appreciate the significance of 'significant'. "

"The emotions of the environmentalist lobby are rooted more in Thoreau than in anger."

"If Civil Servants did not fight for the budgets of their departments they could end up with departments so small that even the Ministers could run them."

"Private Secretaries have divided loyalties - to their Minister and to the Civil Service. Whose side are they on when the chips are down? It is their job to see the chips stay up."

JOBS FOR THE BOYS - "The Official Secrets Act is not to protect secrets, it is to protect officials."

The perfect representative on a government committee is a disabled black Welsh woman trades unionist."

"Conjurors offer the audience any card in the pack and always get them to take the one they want. This is the way we in the Civil Service get Ministers to take decisions."

"It is my job to protect the Prime Minister from the great tide of irrelevant information that beats against the walls of 10 Downing Street every day."

THE COMPASSIONATE SOCIETY - "People do not want to know how welfare money has actually been spent. Nobody asks the priest what happen to the ritual offering after the ceremony."

"Why should we close a hospital because it has no patients? We don't disband the Army just because there isn't a war."

DOING THE HONOURS - "'This would create a dangerous precedent'. Translation: 'If we do the right thing now, we might have to do the right thing again next time'."

"Avoiding precedents does not mean nothing should ever be done. It only means that nothing should ever be done for the first time."

"The Letters JB in capitals are one of the highest Commonwealth honours. They stand for Jailed by the British. The order includes Gandhi, Nkrumah, Makarios, Ben Gurion, Kenyatta, Nheru, Mugabe and many other world leaders."

"No one really understands the true nature of fawning servility until he sees an academic who has glimpsed the prospect of money or personal publicity."

"The surprising things about academics is not that they have their price, but how low that price is."

THE DEATH LIST - "Ministers have an enviable intellectual suppleness and moral manoeuvrability. Translation: You can't trust them further than you can throw them."


THE GREASY POLE - "It is only totalitarian governments that suppress facts. In this country we simply take a democratic decision not to publish them."
 "How to discredit an unwelcome report:

Stage One: Refuse to publish in the public interest saying
1. There are security considerations.
2. The findings could be misinterpreted.
3. You are waiting for the results of a wider and more detailed report which is still in preparation. (If there isn't one, commission it; this gives you even more time).

Stage Two: Discredit the evidence you are not publishing, saying
1. It leaves important questions unanswered.
2. Much of the evidence is inconclusive.
3. The figures are open to other interpretations.
4. Certain findings are contradictory.
5. Some of the main conclusions have been questioned. (If they haven't, question them yourself; then they have).

Stage Three: Undermine the recommendations. Suggested phrases:
1. 'Not really a basis for long term decisions'.
2. 'Not sufficient information on which to base a valid assessment'.
3. 'No reason for any fundamental rethink of existing policy'.
4. 'Broadly speaking, it endorses current practice'.

Stage Four: Discredit the person who produced the report. Explain (off the record) that
1. He is harbouring a grudge against the Department.
2. He is a publicity seeker.
3. He is trying to get a Knighthood/Chair/Vice Chancellorship.
4. He used to be a consultant to a multinational.
5. He wants to be a consultant to a multinational."

"To suppress an internal government report, rewrite it as official advice to the Minister. Then it is against the rules to publish it, so you can leak the bits you want to friendly journalists."

"Going from Commons to the Lords is like being moved the animals to the vegetables."

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW - "The Common Market: We went into it to screw the French by splitting them off from the Germans. The French went in to protect their inefficient farmers from commercial competition. The Germans went in to purge themselves of genocide and apply for readmission to the human race."

THE QUALITY OF LIFE - "If you are not happy with Minister's decision there is no need to argue him out of it. Accept it warmly, and then suggested he leaves it to you to work out the details."

A QUESTION OF LOYALTY - "A good political speech is not one in which you can prove that the man is telling the truth; it is one where no one else can prove he is lying."

"Politicians speeches are not written for the audience to which they are delivered. Delivering the speech is merely the formality that has to be gone through in order to get the press release into the newspapers."

"Ministers do not believe they exist unless they are reading about themselves in the newspapers."

"It is our job to tell Select Committees the truth and nothing but the truth. But it would be profoundly inappropriate and grossly irresponsible to tell them the whole truth."

"Ministers must never go anywhere without their briefs, in case they get caught with their trousers down."

PREFACE - "Any statement in a politician's memoirs can represent one of six different levels of reality:

a. What happened.
b. What he believed happened.
c. What he would have liked to have happened.
d. What he wants to believe happened.
e. What he wants other people to believe happened.
f. What he wants other people to believe he believed happened."

"Civil Servants need great flexibility. They have to be constantly prepared to change horses in mid stream, as politicians change what they are pleased to call their minds."

"The Civil Service must always have the right to appoint the best man for the job, regardless of sex."

"Too much Civil Service work consists of circulating information that isn't relevant about subjects that don't matter to people who aren't interested."

THE MORAL DIMENSION - "Terms for describing bribes when drawing up contracts:

1. Below £100,000
- Retainers
- Personal donations
- Special discounts
- Miscellaneous outgoings
2. £100,000 to £500,000
- Managerial surcharge
- Operating costs
- Ex-gratia payments
- Agents' fees
- Political contributions
- Extra-contractual payments
3. £500,000 +
- Introduction fees
- Commission fees
- Managements' expenses
- Administrative overheads
- Advance against profit sharing"

"Politicians' language:
- Special development areas = marginal constituencies.
- Assistance to areas of economic hardship = pouring money into marginal constituencies.
- Descentralisation of government = moving government offices into marginal constituencies."

BED OF NAILS - "All governments departments are lobbies for the pressure groups they deal with. The Department of Education lobbies the government on behalf of teachers, the Department of Health lobbies for the doctors and hospital unions, the Department of Energy lobbies for oil companies and so on. Each department of State is actually controlled by the people it is supposed to be controlling."

"The Civil Service is neither right wing nor left wing. Political bias varies from department to department. Defence, whose clients are military, is right wing, where as Health, dealing with health unions and social workers, is left wing. Industry, dealing with employers, is right wing; Employment, dealing with unions, is left wing. The Home Office - police, prison warders, immigration officers - is right wing. Education - teachers and lecturers - is left wing. The result is a perfectly balanced and neutral Civil Service."

"Leak enquiries are for setting up, not for conducting."

THE WHISKEY PRIEST - "Reorganizing the Civil Service is like drawing a knife through a bowl of marbles."

"Government is not about morality, it is about stability; keeping things going, preventing anarchy, stopping society falling to bits. Still being here tomorrow."

"It is axiomatic in government that hornets' nests should be left unstirred, cans of worms should remain unopened, and cats should be left firmly in bags and not set among the pigeons. Ministers should also leave boats unrocked, nettles ungrasped, refrain from taking bulls by the horns, and resolutely turn their backs to the music."

"A minister who finds out that the government is doing something illegal does not have to tell the Prime Minister. Just because he's caught something nasty, he doesn't have to go round breathing over everyone."

"Government is about principles. And the principle is, never act on principle."

"A Politician's dilemma. He must obviously follow his conscience, but he must also know where he's going. So he can't follow his conscience, because it may not be going the same way that he is."

MIDDLE CLASS RIP OFF - "Politics, as defined by Roget's Thesaurus: Manipulation, Intrigue, Wire-pulling, Evasion, Rabble-rousing, Graft."

SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD - "Administration is about means, not ends. The only ends in administration are loose ends."

"The three most unreliable things in public life: Political Memoirs, Official Denials and Manifesto Promises."
"It is possible to remove everything of significance from a file released under the 30-year rule by saying that it is complete except for:
a. A small number of secret documents.
b. A few documents which are part of still active files.
c. Some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967.
d. Some records which went astray in the move to London.
e. Other records which went astray when the Department was reorganized.
f. The normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel of breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments."

PARTY GAMES - "To watch a Cabinet Minister in action is to watch the endless subordination of important long-term issues to the demands of urgent trivia."

"As long as there is anything to be gained by saying nothing, it is always better to say nothing than anything."

"The first rule of politics: never believe anything until it's been officially denied."

"'The Government's position' means 'the best explanation of past events that cannot be disproved by available facts'."

"If asked if he wants to be Prime Minister, the generally acceptable answer for a politician is that while he does not seek the office, he has pledged himself to the service of his country, and that should his colleagues persuade him that that is the best way he can serve, he might reluctantly have to accept the responsibility, whatever his personal wishes might be."

"Solved problems aren't news. Tell the press a story in two halves - the problem first and the solution later. Then they get a disaster story one day and triumph story the next."

"If any sentence in a television broadcast has more than twenty words, when it gets to the end most people have forgotten how it began. Including the person speaking it."

"Things don't happen just because Prime Ministers are keen on them. Neville Chamberlain was keen on peace."

"If a job's worth doing, it's worth delegating."

"Politician's logic:
We must do something.
This is something.
Therefore we must do it."

"The problem of the Ministry of Defence is that in peace time the three armed forces have no one on whom to vent their warlike instincts except the cabinet or each other."

"If we cannot refute the arguments in a paper, we simply discredit the person who wrote it. This is called playing the man and not the ball."

THE KEY - "It is important to put political advisors in rooms as far away as possible from the Prime Minister. Influence diminishes with distance."

"Our job is to see that the PM is not confused. Politicians are simple people; they like simple people; they like simple choices and clear guidance."

"We do not have to accept a political advisor just because the PM likes her. Samson liked Delilah."

A REAL PARTNERSHIP - "In government, many people have the power to stop things happening but almost nobody has the power to make things happen. The system has the engine of a lawn mower and the brakes of a Rolls Royce."

"When anybody says 'It's not the money, it's the principle' they mean it's the money."

"Being an MP is a vast subsidized ego-trip. It's a job that needs no qualifications, it has no compulsory hours of work, no performance standards, and provides a warm room, a telephone and subsidized meals to a bunch of self-important windbags and busybodies who suddenly find people taking them seriously because they've go the letters 'MP' after the their name."

"The Prime Minister is much more worried by discontent among back-benchers than among nurses and teachers. Nurses and teachers can't vote against him until the next election. Back-benchers can vote against him at 10 o'clock tonight."

"The Prime Minister wants Cabinet papers circulated earlier. But there are grave problems about circulating papers before they are written."

"Wearing two hats is not difficult for those who are in two minds. Or have two faces."

"A Civil Service computer strike would bring government to a standstill if it were not for the fact that it is already."

"Since Cabinet Ministers are incapable of understanding a paper more than three pages long, we put a one-page summary on the front. The Janet and John bit."

"If you do not want Cabinet to spend too long discussing something, make it last on the agenda before lunch."

"It is unthinkable that politicians should be allowed to remove civil servants on grounds of incompetence. Of course some civil servants are incompetent but not incompetent enough for a politician to notice. And if civil servants could remove politicians on grounds of incompetence it would empty the House of Commons, remove the Cabinet, and be the end of democracy and the beginning of responsible government."

"Foreign policy is made in the Foreign Office. Therefore the Cabinet cannot pursue it's own foreign policy unilaterally. The country cannot have two foreign policies."

"There was nothing wrong with appeasement. All that World War Two achieved after six years was to leave Eastern Europe under a Communist dictatorship instead of a Fascist dictatorship. That's what comes of not listening to the Foreign Office."

"Britain should always be on the side of law and justice, so long as we don't allow it to affect our foreign policy."

"It was a good idea to partition countries like India and Cyprus and Palestine and Ireland as a part of their independence. It keeps them busy fighting each other so we don't' have to have a policy about them."

"Diplomacy is about surviving to the next century. Politics is about surviving until Friday afternoon."

"The public aren't interested in foreign affairs. All they want to know is who are the goodies and who are the baddies."

"Foreign policy must be made in the Foreign office. It cannot be left to fools like Fleet Street editors, back-bench MPs and Cabinet Ministers."

"Ministers are ignorant not because we do not give them the right answers but because they do not ask us the right questions."

"It is well known that in the Foreign Office an order from the Prime Minister becomes a request from the Foreign Secretary, then a recommendation from the Minister of State, finally just a suggestion from the Ambassador. If it ever gets that far."

"Press statements are not delivered under oath."

"The Foreign Office is a hotbed of cold feet."

"A somewhat unorthox procedure means The act of a gibbering idiot."

THE SMOKE SCREEN - "Politicians are like children; you can't just give them what they want - it only encourages them."

"Any unwelcome initiative from a minister can be delayed until after the next election by the Civil Service 12-stage delaying process:
1. Informal discussions
2. Draft proposal
3. Preliminary study
4. Discussion document
5. In-depth study
6. Revised proposal
7. Policy statement
8. Strategy proposal
9. Discussion of strategy
10. Implementation plan circulated
11. Revised implementation plans
12. Cabinet agreement"

"The Treasury does not work out what it needs and then think how to raise the money. It pitches for as much as it can get away with and then thinks how to spend it."

"Government is not a team. It is a loose confederation of warring tribes."

"There is a moral principle involved in the government's attitude to smoking. But when four billion pounds of tax revenue is at stake, we have to consider very seriously how far we are entitled to indulge ourselves in the rather selfish luxury of pursuing moral principles."

"The history of the world is the history of the triumph of the heartless over the mindless."

"Pontius Pilate would have made very good Civil Servant."

"You can't put the nation's interest at risk just because of some silly sentimentality about justice."

"The Foreign Office never expect the Cabinet to agree with any of their policies. That is why they never explain them. All they require is that the Cabinet acquiesce in their decisions after they have been taken."

"The Foreign Office are not spineless. It takes a great deal of strength to do nothing all the time."

THE BISHOP'S GAMBIT - "Getting the PM to choose the right bishop is like a conjuror getting a member of the audience to choose a card. With the Church of England the choice is usually between a knave and a queen."

"The bench of bishops should have a proper balance between those who believe in God and those who don't."

"Bishops tend to live a long time, perhaps because the Almighty is not all that keen for them to join him."

"In Arab countries women get stoned when they commit adultery. In Britain, they commit adultery when they get stoned."

"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."

"An atheist clergyman could not continue to draw his stipend, so when they stop believing in God they call themselves 'modernists'."

"The Church of England is primarily a social organization not a religious one."

"Nowadays bishops only wear gaiters at significant religious events like the royal garden party."

"The plans for a new church in South London had places for dispensing orange juice, family planning, and organizing demos, but nowhere to celebrate Holy Communion."

"Theology is a device for helping agnostics to stay within the Church of England."

"The Queen is inseparable from the Church of England. God is an optional extra."

"The Foreign Office aren't there to do things. They're there to explain why things can't be done."

"People have said a lot of unpleasant things about the Foreign Office, but no one has ever accused them of patriotism."

ONE OF US - "Irregular verbs:

I have an independent mind
You are an eccentric
He is round the twist"

"If you believe the security of the realm is at risk you don't hold a security enquiry, you call in the Special Branch. Government security enquiries are only used for killing press stories."

"Giving information to Moscow is serious. Giving information to anyone is serious. Some information would do Britain less harm if given to the Kremlin than if given to the Cabinet."

"We dare not allow politicians to establish the principle that senior civil servants can be removed for incompetence. We could loose dozens of our chaps. Hundreds maybe. Even thousands."

The last one just about sums it up!

Asking Whitehall to abandon Bureaucracy and obfuscation will be like asking a mother to abandon its child.

Best of luck Theresa. If you can cut through the crap of Whitehall, ignore the self serving proposals of ACPO, believe more of what you hear from the rank and file and show REAL support and concern for those that matter most and side step the deflections from outside agencies, perhaps, just perhaps, the service may see some improvements during your term in office. As the title suggests, we won't be holding our breath.  

WHERE ARE ALL THE POLICE OFFICERS?

Inspector Gadget

Following the recent publication of the HMIC report 'Valuing the Police', Policing in an Age of Austerity, revealing that at best, only 11% of the police are visibly available to the public, we have today launched an in depth analysis that delves deeper into the visibility numbers. To see the report now click here.

HMIC warns that with looming budget cuts, the availability of the police to the public will be even further reduced, unless there is a total redesign of the police.

If only 11% (at best) of warranted officers are engaged in visible policing, the question that screams out to be answered is "WHAT ARE THE OTHER 127,000 OFFICERS DOING?"

We went in search of the answers and can reveal them in our report today "Where are all the Police Officers?"

The findings found us asking more questions:
• “Where are our police officers?”
• “What are they doing?”
• “Why are they NOT on our streets?”

The answers cast doubt over the abilities of Senior Officers to effectively manage resources through times of austerity, ensuring that the safety of the public and officers remain a priority.

This report looks at the recent findings of HMIC, Audit Commission and Home Office, delving deeper into the numbers, revealing by force area, the numbers of officers assigned to each of the function categories.

For each of the 43 police forces of England & Wales, the HMIC produce a 90 page “Value For Money” profile. Here, for the first time, in our new report, we have extracted the totals by category from each of the profiles.

The report goes into great detail, listing all 43 forces and revealing the numbers of officers assigned to each of the 62 Home Office defined police functions. The results will be no big shock to front line officers and police bloggers, who have been telling us for many months now, that there are enough police officers to do the job, there are just too many of them tied up in 9-5 office roles.

What may suprise you, are the actual numbers within the forces assigned to the various job functions. To give some indication of the functions contained within each category, we have reproduced a table to help. Within the report, there is a full 62 function definition list.

We were staggered to discover just how many officers are engaged in non operational roles. From their first hand knowledge of their force resources, front line officers could undoubtedly identify areas within each function where departments are significantly overstaffed. Without such intimate knowledge of each force and its use of resources, we will stick to the glaringly obvious areas where staffing appears to have been misallocated.

It would be the responsibility of the respective management teams within each force to justify the number or resources allocated to each function. Undoubtedly among the diligent, industrious and committed officers, there will be a number who are what used to be called “Uniform Carriers”. The drive for value for money from forces, alongside the cuts being imposed on the public sector by the Government may force the management teams to look more critically at the way they use their resources.

We refer to the HMIC and Audit Commission findings in some detail in the report, where similar observations are made. The shift in 1429 officer numbers away from front line duties, and the surge in “specialist” numbers by 1526 is one example illustrated.

Police Officers reading the report will have an inside practical knowledge of the departments, but may not have been aware of the extent to which these empires have grown.

IMPORTANT NOTE

What must also be born in mind, is that within the 63,845 officers assigned to “Community” reflected in the national numbers in the table above, there will be a number whose role is classed as Operational Support. So, although they will appear under the “Community” heading, many of these officers provide operational support from an office base and are not therefore visible to the public. This lends greater weight to the argument that 63,845 is an overstated number for potential visible officers and that the reduced number of 56,542 (explained in the report) across all reliefs is more likely to be closer to the truth.

NATIONAL SUPPORT

This global category contains 6,075 officers. Among these numbers are ACPO ranks, Crime and Incident Management, Operational Planning, Staff Officers & Departmental Heads. We have argued vociferously in previous reports that forces appear massively top heavy with senior management, with too many rank levels and a poor manager to officer ratio. There are massive savings in the many millions that could be achieved by rationalizing the rank structure, with much of that saving contributing to the Government cuts and preserving the frontline visible numbers. The Metropolitan Force is an excellent case in point.

Examination of their staffing levels begs the question “Why do they need a managerial structure that in addition to Senior Police Chiefs – A Commissioner, 4 Assistant Commissioners, 7 Deputy Assistant Commissioners and 26 Commanders, they also engage 49 DIRECTOR level managers, each of them being regarded as equivalent to Assistant Commissioner, Deputy Assistant Commissioner or Commander rank?"

The list of personnel and their roles is staggering. What is even more concerning, is the value they bring and the cost associated with their employment. Here is the list:

These personnel substantially outnumber the senior Met police officers - 4 ACs, 7 DACs and 26 Commanders. Source : http://www.mpa.gov.uk/about/

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

This function is heavily populated with some 2,382 officers and 9,262 police staff. Both from an Officer re-allocation and police staff requirement viewpoint, the growth of this department within the service has rocketed through the last ten years. 20 years ago, more officers were visible for longer hours, were man for man more effective and still managed to prepare their own court files and fulfill all of the other obligations listed. This suggests that a bureaucratic empire within an empire has arisen. Senior officers should be questioning whether more uniform officers could be redeployed and recruited and trained to complete their own prosecution files in their entirety freeing up much of the human and financial resource currently tied up in this area.

BUSINESS SUPPORT

2,490 officers and almost 20,000 police staff are engaged in this area. The functions include complaints and discipline, corporate development, finance, IT, other admin, Personnel/HR, press and public relations, staff associations, operational planning and welfare. As the largest non operational group, it represents the largest drain on overall human and financial resources. Centralisation of many of the functions is being considered by HMIC and forces, and success in this area would release millions of financial resource back to frontline duties and contribute toward the required Government cuts.

We would be interested to hear observations on the numbers, particularly from serving, retired and former officers.

Visibility Numbers

When we heard the overall figure quoted that as little as 11% of warranted officer numbers are engaged in visible policing, we applied the percentages for smaller and larger forces to arrive at the average numbers of officers visibly policing for each force over three example shifts. Again, from within the forces, officers may be surprised to learn how precariously low these numbers are in their areas.

Taking the numbers from these reports. we identified that the workload of visible officers is 10 TIMES greater than previously published in crime statistics and population figures, with each frontline officer responsible for an average of 303 crimes (30 suggested in Home Office figures) and for 3,431 members of the public versus 300 or so previously reported. The table below illustrates the workload in terms of crime incidents and population per visible officer ratios. (Home Office statistics have previously chosen to display such ratios compared to the total warranted officer numbers. This was never a true reflection of workload, when such a large percentage of the policing community are not public facing).

The report contains many more revelations, observations and recommendations for reform and we would be pleased to hear any comments readers might have.

The report also refers to a number of other useful and related publications on police strength, efficiency and visbilty. Click the links below to view any or all of them.

Related reports & articles from Thin Blue Line UK and related documents referred to in this report.

Police Response Numbers In England & Wales 2010”
It’s Official – The Dangerously Thin Blue Line Is Now A Dot . . . .

Police Visible Strength Analysis – July 2010
HMIC 43 Police Force Value for Money profiles

HMIC Valuing The Police – Policing In Times Of Austerity
HMIC 43 Police Force Value for Money profiles
HMIC, Audit Commission & Wales Audit Office “Sustaining Value For Money In The Police Service”
Home Office Police Strength as at 31st March 2009

House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee Report on Police Strength (March 2010)
House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee Report on Police Strength (January 2010)
Home Office “Policing in the 21st Century” July 2010
Home Office British Crime Survey Crime in England and Wales 2009/10
Policing for the People - Interim report of the Police Reform Taskforce
Home Office Diary of a police officer

Police Federation Views from the front line

Policing and the problems associated with it, is one of the most reported subjects at the moment. There are a plethora of official reports now in the public domain. We have taken extracts and contributions from the major reports and added our own thoughts, findings from our analysis and observations.

Within the many advisory and commissioned reports on policing, there are plenty of sensible, workable suggestions for reform. We believe that any change MUST start at the top and INCLUDE those at the top, namely thse who carry the responsibility of Governing the police. Of all the suggested requirements for reforms we have examined, these are what we believe should be given top priority.

GOVERNANCE. Sort out the Governance model of policing once and for all. The tripartite model of Home Office, Police Authority & Chief Constable is at best opaque with a mass confusion over roles and responsibilities.

Sort out the professional governance of the police service (the whole HMIC / ACPO / APA / HO / NPIA / HMIC / SOCA / 43CC / IPCC etc is a confused mess and needs a shake up). Elected Commissioners, phasing out of the NPIA and the changes to the SOCA model are an indication that the Coalition are treating the challenges seriously. There are far too many quangos and bureaucratic empires and fiefdoms. The expertise and skills contained within the various departments need identifying and consolidating, applying the value for money formulas for individuals and areas.

The status of ACPO, together with its 349 members needs to be remodeled and repositioned so that its accountability is increased and transparent. For confidence to return, it must start from the top, with a governance structure that makes it accountable to those who fund it, rather than the self perpetuating oligarchy that pervades at present.

Is there a need for 43 different separately governed forces within England and Wales? Make collaboration and mergers really work this time. Beyond a few notable projects - many of which were bank rolled by the Home Office - most of the rest are stuck in quagmire of details.  

The structure of the police must enable them to fight serious crime while enhancing and sustaining community policing. This means either the existing 43 forces co-operating much more effectively, or a new national force taking responsibility for serious crime while much more localised forces focus on volume crime in their areas.

COSTS AND CUTS. After years of growth the service is under increasing pressure to demonstrate they are more financially efficient. Shared service and shared procurement are becoming more essential.

Many of the proposed cuts and savings could be effectively delivered by smarter volume central purchasing arrangements and sharing of resources. HR is an example. Why do 43 forces have 43 HR departments when massive savings could be achieved with one central HR function?

The same principle should be applied for all areas of procurement. Equipment and services sourced centrally would deliver millions in savings. HMIC predict that £5billion could be saved by better procurement over a ten year period. The challenge is demonstrating that as a public service the police are strong on value and low on waste. Inspection bodies such as the HMIC and Audit Commission are creating more scrutiny on Forces and the Authorities that govern them.

STOP paying interim ICT consultants vast sums of money for doing maintenance work or else assembling cases for next piece of spend.

RESOURCES. The most effective application of human resources.

From the top down, forces must look at the roles occupied by senior officers right down to the management of the front line. Of 143,000 warranted officers, only 11% are at any one time visibly policing the streets.

How can ACPO justify 349 ACC ranks and above, when only 220 are engaged directly in force duties? A critical analysis of the rank structure is well overdue.

It has been suggested that the Chief Superintendent and Chief Inspector ranks are superfluous to operational needs. Why are there so many supervisory, rather than 'doing' ranks within the service? How many ACPO officers are really needed?

The police’s hands must be untied to give them the discretion they need and to release officers for front-line duties. Forms and processes which do not help the police to deliver a better service to the public MUST be eliminated. Any remaining Centrally imposed short term fixes, direction and targets should be replaced by locally accountable leadership and priority setting. Civilian staff or the private sector should be employed to do jobs which sworn officers do not need to do, and the police ‘family’ should be extended.

Civilianisation running at 82,000, costing £2.7billion (£62 million in non forecast overtime) people has clearly escalated out of kilter. Box ticking, flow chart creating departments and individuals, many of whom impede the delivery of common sense policing rather than support it, must be justified as truly necessary or not.

Assuming that 40'ish% of warranted officers (allowing for shift patterns and rest days) are assigned to front line roles, this raises the question, "What are the other 85,000 officers doing?" Accepted that some back office functions require a warranted officer, surely there are many thousands that should be redeployed back to directly policing and serving the community. This measure alone would increase visibility and start the process of restoring public confidence and cutting crime.

The PCSO V's Coppers debate. There are those that say this represents everything that is wrong with the system, soft, ill conceived politics playing numbers and lying to the public.

Get more coppers out on the street, get rid of 50% of the IT systems within police stations where they are not required and when that is done 50% less time will be spent on emails. Audit just one Force and see how many emails travel through their system each day and how many are work related and could have been performed by supervisors.

Inspectors and Sergeants must be freed up to go for a walk, in uniform, and meet with their Constables and do another thing that is lacking in the job today, talking and listening. Introduce far more job flexibility, trust and discretion - How much talent is lost to the service because of out dated and rigid working arrangements that pay little heed to a) public demand and b) preferences of frontline staff.

The complexity and demands of modern policing mean that the workforce must be reformed to ensure that it is flexible, well trained and highly motivated, with a diverse range of skills and expertise.

A key goal MUST be to enhance and monitor the ability of police chiefs to manage their workforces more effectively than they have to date.

The police must be made properly accountable for their performance as well as their conduct, and their performance management framework must only reward activity that delivers a better service, not activity which keeps officers busy ticking boxes or senior officers manipulating figures for self serving reasons.

The quid pro quo for reducing central intervention is strongly enhanced local accountability, with a new emphasis on more effective partnerships and the empowerment of communities to ensure their own safety.

CRIME AND DETECTIONS. Reducing crime and increasing detections.

The problem here has been the historic one. Set Senior Police Officers a target and hook or by crook they will show that they have achieved it.

Connecting performance to senior officer bonuses has whittled away any confidence the public and frontline officers may have had in the crime figures. This mistake MUST NOT be repeated by the new Government if public and front line confidence is to have any hope of being restored. The Coalition must beware of the accusation that the new broom is failing to sweep clean.

The practice of "Gaming" exposed by Dr Rodger Patrick, a former DCI with the West Midlands force revealed that Senior Officers either encourage or condone the practices associated with "Cooking the Books" and have done so for many years. Statistics may not be critical, but the deceitful manipulative practices are self serving and destructive.

The techniques of "Cuffing", "Stitching", "Skewing", and "Nodding" are known as gaming but police officers would call it fiddling the figures, massaging the books or, the current favourite term, 'good housekeeping'. Serving police officers confirm that the practice is rife across England and Wales and has badly eroded confidence. (The importance of eradicating this practice cannot be overstated - without doing so, any future success in the achievement of the Governments primary objective to "Cut Crime" will be treated with the same doubt, derision and suspicion as their predecessors.

Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation, which represents front line officers, said: "This practice demonstrates that senior officers are directing and controlling widespread manipulation of crime figures. The public are misled, politicians can claim crime is falling and chief officers are rewarded with performance-related bonuses."

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and the Police Standards Unit have shown "general tendency to underplay the scale and nature" of gaming. They have failed to tackle the problem. Tere are no examples of chief police officers being publicly criticised by inspectors for this type of crime figure manipulation. Instead, HMIC tended privately to refer examples of widespread gaming to the Home Secretary or the police authority rather than "hold the chief constable to account" because of the risk of political embarrassment.

HMIC inspectors should be made accountable to Parliament rather than the Home Office, and should be drawn from other professions rather than solely from senior police ranks.

OPERATIONAL PRIORITIES. Refocus the priorities of policing back to the Peelian principles, the main emphasis should always be the protection of life and property, the prevention and detection of crime. Anything else is a distraction.

The founder of modern policing, Sir Robert Peel, famously said: “The police are the public and the public are the police”. Police forces grew out of the localities. Restoring the accountability of the police to local communities will not only improve the fight against volume crime; it will be an important counterbalance to the areas where more effective national co-ordination of policing will be required, notably in relation to the development of technology and the fight against serious crime.

Many of the proposals are challenging. But we are convinced that they offer a better future for both police officers and the public.

The police will be released to do the job they want to do, consistent with the key theme of trusting officers for the professionals they are. Central interference must be minimised, professional discretion must be restored, and committed officers rewarded transparently and legitimately for their success.

The empowerment of local communities in the fight against crime will be a substantial element of the renewal of civic life and the democratic process. Above all, it will be an essential step towards rebuilding the bridge between the police and the public – and delivering lasting and genuine, NOT MANIPULATED reductions in crime and increases in detections.

The public will benefit from localised policing which is more responsive to their concerns, giving them a real voice and control to ensure the safety of their communities. Police officers will be returned to the streets where the public want to see them and the question that forms the title of this article will no longer seem as relevant as it is today.

POSTSCRIPT BY CRIME ANALYST

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr G from http://bankbabble.wordpress.com/ for his invaluable contributions to this article. His site is well written with informed content and I would recommend visitors to pop over to his site and enjoy his musings opn police, justice and life in general.