What did we learn from Yvette Cooper's first major speech on policing reform this week? The Home Secretary attended the annual conference of the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in London on Tuesday. Here are five key 'takeaways' from the speech and the event itself:
1. The Home Office is going to ‘lean in’ to policing.
I worked with Yvette Cooper in the months leading up to the General Election so this was no big surprise. She signalled in her speech that she will be a more interventionist Home Secretary - not interfering in operational police decisions, but scrutinising performance on the Government’s ‘safer streets’ priorities and taking action where improvements are needed.
The instruments by which she will do this are still in development, but it represents a clear break from the approach taken in 2010 - the last time there was a complete change of government. Back then, in her first major speech on policing as Home Secretary, Theresa May told the Police Federation conference she would scrap centrally-imposed performance indicators, end “bureaucratic meddling” and "transfer...power over policing from Whitehall to communities”. The first elections for police and crime commissioners (PCCs) took place two years later.
Cooper, by contrast, pledged to set out a "clear strategic direction” and hold policing "more robustly" to account. PCCs were mentioned only twice.
2. Performance, performance, performance
Key to Cooper's new approach is a return to a centrally-imposed performance framework, led by a Home Office team which, according to the Home Secretary, will use "high-quality police data to spot trends, and drive up standards, performance and consistency”. It’s to be modelled on the Police Standards Unit (PSU) introduced by David Blunkett when he was appointed Home Secretary in 2001.
The PSU was run by a man named Bond (Kevin Bond) before Paul Evans, a former US Army marine and Commissioner of Police in Boston, took over. Although there was huge interest when Evans was appointed, he kept a low profile in the role and the work of the unit went under the radar. Its objectives included decreasing the gap between the best performing local areas and the worst; cutting car crime, burglary and robbery; and reducing the harm caused by illegal drugs. If police forces failed to improve the Home Secretary had powers to intervene. It’s difficult to assess the true impact of the PSU. It didn’t survive the decade and the police performance regime which it was there to enforce
has since been widely criticised for leading to perverse incentives, such as arresting offenders for minor crimes to meet targets, and forces gaming the system by re-categorising or not logging certain offences.
Exactly how the new Home Office team will be managed and whether it will involve the return of police performance tables and targets is unclear, but the lessons of the old PSU and its performance framework must be learned. I do find it surprising, to say the least, that with the deluge of inspections, oversight and reviews that police forces are subjected to that a new unit is really needed. Isn't judging performance the role of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services? Give the policing watchdog more teeth if it needs them rather than establishing another body with different priorities.
3. A hard centre
The Home Secretary said there will be a new National Centre for Policing - but what it will contain, how it'll work, who will oversee it and where it will be located are very much up for grabs.
A report from independent policing consultants Rick Muir and Tom Gash, published on the day of Cooper’s speech, sets out four options. The most radical idea would involve transferring responsibility for counter-terrorism policing from the Metropolitan Police to the new central body, which would also swallow up the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the College of Policing (CoP). Muir and Gash describe it as the “maximalist” option, a “big bang” approach which would risk “operational disruption” and could result in a "loss of focus" on police technology and training.
It’s highly unlikely that the Home Office would go for Option 4 initially but officials and Ministers have discussed the Muir/Gash paper, it was referenced in the department’s own press release and Cooper said opportunities to “expand” the remit of such a national body will be explored. A merger of the NCA and counter-terrorism policing is not off the table then, a point which appears to have been lost amid the overblown and tedious furore about non crime hate incidents.
At first, however, I expect the Home Secretary will opt for a less ambitious re-structure with the new agency in charge of national policing services, including mutual aid, IT systems, forensics and helicopters. The agency would take charge of workforce planning and key procurement decisions, as well as building on the work of the CoP. The NCA and the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command would stay as they are. We’ll know more when the Home Office publishes a White Paper in the Spring, but if its proposals lead to the creation of an additional organisation, with more layers of management, that will be a disaster. This must be about simplifying structures, improving delivery of services and reducing costs and bureaucracy.
4. Bobbies not on the beat
Nearly five months since the General Election, we’re still waiting for the first of the promised 13,000 extra neighbourhood police to arrive and we still don’t know how Labour’s ten-year targets to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls (VAWG) will be measured. During the election campaign there was barely any scrutiny of these three key ‘retail’ pledges, but that is beginning to change.
Chief constables want to know how much flexibility they’ll have regarding new deployments to neighbourhood teams, specifically whether they’ll retain discretion over the mix of extra police officers, police community support officers and special constables they’ll be given funding for. The Home Secretary was asked when boots will be on the ground but said only that details will be set out “in due course”.
The target for knife crime is likely to be measured through the use of police figures, which can be broken down by force area, but the benchmark figure has yet to be agreed. Should the target include knife-enabled robberies, where a knife may be threatened but not brandished? Or would a better indicator be stabbings? In that case, it might be preferable to use hospital accident and emergency data. Three police forces - the Met, West Midlands and Greater Manchester (notwithstanding its crime recording difficulties) - account for the bulk of knife crime, so a huge effort to bear down on the problem in those cities might yield some positive results. The target itself, though, appears a long, long way off.
Among the chiefs, PCCs and others at the conference there was confusion about how the VAWG target could be measured, let alone achieved. Police figures depend largely on reporting so are unreliable as a true measure of VAWG trends, unless only the most serious offences, such as murder and manslaughter are counted. Estimates from the Crime Survey of England and Wales have limitations too, in particular the ability to accurately gauge VAWG in each police force area.
It’s also clear that the Home Office will have to work closely with other government departments, local councils, charities and criminal justice agencies if it’s to make any progress towards this most stretching of targets. To say it has raised a few eyebrows would be an under-statement.
5. It's all about the money
Police funding will remain extremely tight - in spite of Cooper’s announcement of an extra £500 million from April next year. The details of exactly how much is to be allocated to the 43 constabularies, the NCA and counter-terrorism will be set out next month. But Chief Constable Paul Sanford, the NPCC’s finance lead, said the service would remain in “financial distress” because of years of under-investment, increases in costs that are running at more than double the rate of inflation, above-inflation pay awards and officer workforce targets.
Under the target regime, every force has an optimum number of police officers they must reach otherwise they face financial penalties. Some chiefs would like the twice-yearly targets to be relaxed so they can hire civilian staff instead of officers to fill support roles police officers are having to perform. For example, Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, says he has 2,500 officers doing civilian support functions. Other chiefs say they simply can’t afford to keep recruiting police officers. The sensible course of action, therefore, would be to amend or scrap the officer workforce targets and allow forces greater flexibility. There’s a strong case to be made for that but it would lead to a reduction in officer numbers - and that may be a political hurdle too far for the Home Secretary.
Another perennial bugbear is the police ‘funding formula’, the outdated and complex way money from central government and the council tax is allocated to each constabulary. A new method has been devised by the Home Office and some forces which feel they’re unfairly treated would benefit from it. Others, however, would lose out, which is why it probably won’t be implemented at least until there’s enough money in the system to lessen the initial impact of any changes.
In the meantime, the anomalous old system, which hits constabularies such as Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire and the West Midlands, continues - and its impact could be felt keenly in the way the Treasury provides funding for the rise in employer national insurance (NI) contributions, announced in the Budget by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Police forces will not be exempt from the rise, which takes effect from next April, but, according to the Home Secretary, the Treasury will “compensate” them.
That news was welcomed by PCCs and chiefs - but there are two major wrinkles. If the compensation is awarded on the basis of funding formula calculations, rather than the number of officers and staff, Sanford says some forces will face a financial “gap” which could be “critical”. He also pointed out that private companies which supply police forces with IT, forensics and other services will pass on some of their extra NI costs to policing.
There was a buzz of excitement at the conference and a new Home Secretary offering a change in direction and fresh commitments. But the same problems remain. Policing won't get any easier next year.
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