The Pre-Budget Report last week promised ring-fenced budgets for policing so that frontline policing services can be protected.  This came with the caveat that £5 billion worth of efficiency savings need to be driven out of the public sector overall.  

 It seems the perfect time to think about how staff (and costly police officers) can be freed up from back and middle office functions, whilst at the same time strengthening the service to local communities.  At present, each of the 43 police forces of England and Wales have their own Human Resources, Finance, Public Relations, Procurement, Fixed Penalty Notice processing teams and so on.  In addition, each force needs to maintain specialist units many of which, according to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary reports, are too small to function effectively against crime that crosses police force borders – including serious and organised crime.
 
It was also announced this week that the Chief Constable of Kent, Mike Fuller, has been appointed as Chief Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, leaving a vacancy at the top of the Kent force.  Kent Police have been working very closely with Essex Police since July 2007 in an attempt to join up some of these critical services and deliver some savings.  Now is surely the time to facilitate a merger of the two forces to build on the efficiencies and more joined-up policing already delivered.  There are other good candidates too.  Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Police forces have wanted to merge for years, but the political will has simply not been there to facilitate this.  Likewise Cumbria and Lancashire proposed to the Home Office back in 2006 that they be allowed to merge to save money and provide a better service.  The then Home Secretary Charles Clarke strongly supported the move, his successor John Reid scrapped all mergers under pressure from the vested interests in Police Authorities.
 
In the pre-recession wastefulness in public sector spending, where more and more funding was poured in with no clear expectation of improvements in performance or efficiency, this seemed to be acceptable.  It cannot be now, and every support should be given to allowing police force mergers to happen.  The Government would be pushing on an open door – even ACPO recognises the sense in merging police forces.   Mergers are not the solution to all the problems of policing, but the hundreds of millions of pounds that could be saved at a stroke through their facilitation should be grabbed now in advance of the more radical police reforms that are needed.
 
In the first of a series of posts by award winning think tank, Policy Exchange, Gavin McKinnon sets out the impact of the deficit crisis on the Police. Gavin is Head of Policy Exchange’s Crime and Justice Unit

Alan Johnson’s announcement that he is not going to make ID cards compulsory could be any number of things.

It is, first of all, yet another reannouncement – the cards have never actually been compulsory (except for airside workers in Manchester and London, and for foreigners).

Secondly it’s an acknowledgement that the funds just aren’t there.

Thirdly it’s an acknowledgement that the government doesn’t really know what their purpose is – it used to be combating terrorism; then benefit fraud; then underage drinking then probably something else.

And fourthly, it’s a flexing of the power Alan Johnson currently holds.

What it’s not, however, is the abolition of ID cards and/or the National Database. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy loon, it’s not the card itself that is the big worry; it’s the database.

When I lived in France, I had to have a residency card, which had my photo, name, address, date of birth and nationality on it. I don’t really have any great objection to that; it served as a secondary piece of photographic ID, and I only ever had to produce it when I would have had to do so here (for example, as official proof of address at the Post Office or at France Telecom). I imagine that, had I ever been stopped by the police, I would have been asked to show it but again, I don’t think that providing evidence of who you are in the event of being arrested is really a problem.

My big problem with ID cards and their database is two-fold. Firstly, (unlike France) the UK is not a country where things have to be authorised – the assumption is that you’re allowed to do something unless you are expressly prohibited. Our tradition is much more liberal and free than countries where you’re not allowed to do something unless the law specifically permits it.

But my most major objection is this. Look what the state does when it’s given too much power. Look what Poole Council did using anti-terror laws – they went after people trying to make sure their child got a good education. Look what Labour does with its massive majorities – makes bad laws, wrong decisions and nearly bankrupts us. As I have often argued, the relationship between us as citizens and the state has shifted and is now the wrong way round.

Concrete proposals to restore power to people are a good start. But I suspect an even better one might be to go through and simply repeal law after law after law.

Strangely, I don’t often read the Mirror. But this article is absolutely right. Hunting with dogs was banned – democratically, by a decision of the House of Commons, and in accordance with a Labour manifesto pledge – and agitating now to repeal the ban smacks of throwing a sop to what are perceived to be ‘core supporters’ in a mirror image of the way that the hunting ban itself was seen to have done.

I personally don’t much care one way or another about hunting. I think there are more pressing animal welfare issues (battery chickens, for example). I can’t see why, if we need to control foxes, we shouldn’t extract a sport and livelihoods from that need.

I fundamentally disagree with Edward Garnier’s assertion that just because the law is not liked, it is not legitimate. He should really know better. I don’t like the fact that I can’t judge for myself a safe speed to drive at but I still obey speed limits.

The fact is – the hunting ban IS law. Foxes ARE still controlled. Hunting itself is NOT banned. Breaking the law – any law – should mean that you submit to the appropriate punishment when caught. And making a repeal of the ban your top priority for 2009 (even though I suspect that isn’t strictly true) is a complete nonsense. There are far more important things to worry about.

Max Mosley’s trial has the media agog. The Times was not alone, yesterday, in printing those  quotes from the ongoing case which it found most, umm, in the public interest (what Mosley said “on the pain of being spanked until he bleeds“, for example). I saw a disinterested media lawyer giving an interview on the TV news. His eyes were bulging with the horror of the consequences of the jury finding in Mosley’s favour: “It would limit newspaper revelations to cases of actual criminality”.

Archer-Pannell Towers emitted a guffaw at that. What strange world does that man inhabit, we wondered, that he couldn’t see the fundamental obscenity of what he was saying, that newspapers should have the right to expose private behaviour, if they decide it’s in the public interest. We get so worked up about the state’s intrusion into our privacy that we tend to forget that private corporations, like the evil Murdoch empire, have an anti-privacy agenda all of their own.

Reflecting further on the lawyer’s fear, I allowed myself a delicious day-dream of a post-Mosley future, where newspapers are forbidden from spewing filth about ‘celebrities’ onto their pages. No more Z-listers telling of their coke-and-shag shame.

But then the dream ended. Of course such filth will continue to pollute the public space, because the sad fact is that there’s an endless stream of wannabe Z-listers who are unable to resist offering up all the sordid details of their lives for some fleeting recognition and a contribution to their bank account.

So isn’t it time to have a test case, a sort of reverse-libel case? I should have the right to take the tube to work without being confronted with images of, for example, the joyless mound that is Kerry Katona. I shouldn’t have to see headlines on adverts inviting me to learn even more about the breasts of – her name escapes me, thank God. I should be able to switch on the television without worrying that the hideous image of Max Clifford will swim into view.
 
Ms Katona, the Breast Woman and Max Clifford should be summoned to a courtroom and forced to pay millions and millions of pounds in damages to the blameless citizens of the UK, and forbidden from sharing details of their sex lives with the newspapers ever again. The public has a right not to know!
 
 
 

Announcements made during the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool