Examination of witnesses (Questions 160
- 179)
WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 1998
MR FRANK
MARTIN, Second Treasury Officer
of Accounts, HM Treasury, further examined. SIR
PAUL CONDON,
QPM, and MR
DAVID OMAND
160. In fact it is unfair to ask you and
I should really have asked Mr Omand.
(Mr Omand) These are regulations and terms which
apply to the police force generally in the Police Pension Regulations
1987.
161. Yes, but why?
(Mr Omand) At the time, that is how these regulations
emerged from the discussions with the police authorities and with
the Home Office.
162. Why?
(Mr Omand) We are publishing next month a consultative
document on those regulations. We have picked up the point which
has been made by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary. He has some
specific recommendations to improve the definitions of injuries
on duty and we will carry that forward.
(Sir Paul Condon) Part of the historical rationale
was that as well as routine journeys to work, many police officers
on many occasions are called to work in an emergency. Last night
we ran our mobilisation and, without notice, we mobilised the
force to see our preparedness to deal with a major emergency,
so you had people called perhaps to a place of work in circumstances
where they did not expect to be, so I think the historical argument
was that if a police officer, having made plans about a rest period
or whatever, is suddenly and dramatically called back to work,
through no choice of his own, then his journey to and from work
should be considered as part of that on-duty exercise.
163. Can I ask the Home Office then, does
the same rule apply if there is a major fire and they have to
call in extra fire service personnel or if there is a major disaster
and they have to call in extra ambulance crews and so on? In their
travel period to work, if they have an accident, do they get the
same coverage as the police?
(Mr Omand) I would need to research that, but
our proposals, which we will be publishing next month, will cover
the fire service as well. I would need to let you have a note
specifically on the differences in the sets of regulations between
the fire service and the police.[6]
164. One can see that if it is a uniformed
policeman travelling to work, he may be a target inevitably because
he is in uniform, but a lot of the officers are in plain clothes
and, therefore, are not self-evidently targets. I would appreciate
again, to save the time of the Committee, since I do not think
we are going to get far with this "it is there because it
is there" as an answer, would you perhaps give me a longer
"because it is there" in black and white from the Home
Office?
(Mr Omand) Yes.
165. Do you have any idea, incidentally,
as a result of your personnel computer how often such a situation
arises?
(Sir Paul Condon) Yes, we do.
166. That is great!
(Sir Paul Condon) If you were looking for an analysis
of injuries on duty, then travelling to and from work does not
feature highly in the classification. The prime cause of injury
on duty is injury in a police vehicle accident.
167. In a police vehicle accident?
(Sir Paul Condon) Yes. Whiplash and neck injuries.
Part of the emergency response challenge is that we are dealing
with 1.7 million emergency calls, we do over 80 million miles
around London every year——
168. Are you telling us more policemen are
injured in their police cars and police vans than are injured
in their normal duties other than in vehicles?
(Sir Paul Condon) When you break down all the
classifications of injury on duty, injury in police vehicles is
a highly significant grouping.
169. You must have a terrible insurance
policy!
(Sir Paul Condon) We cover our own risk.
170. And you do not have any no-claims bonus
requirement!
(Sir Paul Condon) If I take the last year in question,
1996-97, the Met had 12,276 injuries on duty. Within that 12,276,
3,280 were actually assaults, the remainder were a whole variety
of industrial injuries, accidents and so on.
171. I have not taken a note of those figures
myself, but could you let us have a copy of your piece of paper
which gives the break down[7]?
That would be helpful for our consideration.
(Sir Paul Condon) Yes, of course.
172. Finally, a thought had occurred to
me as I was listening to you when you quoted—I think it
was to Mr Page—"absence makes your friend work harder"
appearing in many police stations, and it did seem to imply that
your men are perhaps a little more cynical about their colleagues
than you are.
(Sir Paul Condon) That was a management initiative.
They are not appearing as an impromptu response from colleagues.
173. So it is not a reflective piece on
their part?
(Sir Paul Condon) No.
174. Can we look at Figure 12 on page 25?
This is the number of working days lost through spells of short-term
and long-term sickness by division. We go from, on the left hand
side, a loss of 8, to the right hand side, the worst division,
where the figure is 31, four times as bad. Which division is 8
and which division is 31 and why?
(Sir Paul Condon) 8 is Hackney, the top end is
the airport. The range is from Hackney at 8, Wembley 9, Brixton
10, Hammersmith 11, Holborn 12. Then at the other end, the airport
is the highest, then Enfield with 25, Havering 25, Hillingdon
21. The explanation is partly a product of the age and experience
profile at various police stations. We recently introduced a tenure
policy which was about trying to get a more equitable distribution
of age and service around the Met. The problem with the airport
is that historically it has had the highest sickness rate and
we do not deploy new officers there because we feel they must
have experience of general policing before they go to the airport.
So we do not have the youngest, fittest officers deployed at the
airport. That skews the sickness record. It is a challenging working
environment and at the moment they are carrying a small number
of very long-term sick officers which has led to that situation
in relation to the airport. What I have done is two things. One,
I have set up a special team that is specific to the airport,
which involves a doctor, an occupational health adviser, a counsellor,
to try and bring that specific problem down.
175. What is interesting is that the gulf
is large also in the spells of more than seven days, the light
green sector, where it is six days in Hackney but the right hand
figure, minus the dark green, becomes 29 days, which is five times
as much. Why is the longest spell five times as much at the airport?
(Sir Paul Condon) It is a product primarily of
age profiles at various locations. You only need a small number
of officers to be long-term sick to skew those totals. That is
the situation. I think, as the NAO report accurately says, 70
per cent of the working units are within the fairly narrow band
of performance. The extremes are where we are carrying a small
number of long-term sick officers, which is partly accident—you
may find you have three or four officers for quite separate reasons
who are long-term sick in a unit—but that can skew dramatically
their position on this chart.
176. Again, could you let us have a note
giving us a response to that in more detail1?
(Sir Paul Condon) One of the things we are doing
in the next financial year is training 2,000 first line supervisors
around these issues. We are targeting first those police stations
which are at the right hand side to make sure that even if they
have got clusters of long-term sick, we are not missing the opportunity
to treat that.
177. You had better be careful, at £57,000
a time you may get a big increase in your retirements at those
stations!
(Sir Paul Condon) That is the challenge.
Mr Davidson
178. Can I come back to the question of
the correlation between long-term sickness and the pending nature
of disciplinary action? Did I pick up correctly that you were
saying there were only 34 officers over a three year period who
come into that category?
(Sir Paul Condon) Yes. If the anxiety is, are
officers who are involved in disciplinary proceedings utilising
the sickness provisions in a way which we feel is not in the public
interest—and again, quite properly, we have anonymised cases
because many of them are still on-going—my feeling is that
it is about 34 officers over a three year period.
179. So that if the appeal you have made
to the Home Secretary via various routes is picked up, presumably
that, hopefully, will alter your figures for future years and
presumably you will be able to make adjustments to the targets
you set since Jack Straw will help you achieve your targets?
(Sir Paul Condon) I think the numbers involved
are so small in the context of the larger figures, although they
are very important symbolically, they are not statistically significant
enough to make the challenge of the 11 per cent move to 12 per
cent.
6 Note: See Evidence, Appendix 1, page 28 (PAC
218). Back
7
Note: See Evidence, Appendix 2, page 39 (PAC 245). Back
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