CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1038-iii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

POLICE REFORM

 

 

Tuesday 12 October 2004

SIR KEITH POVEY QPM and MR PAUL EVANS

Evidence heard in Public Questions 178 - 296

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is a corrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
2.	The transcript is an approved formal record of these proceedings. It will be printed in due course.
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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 12 October 2004

Members present

Mr John Denham, in the Chair

Mr James Clappison

Mrs Claire Curtis-Thomas

Mrs Janet Dean

Mr Damian Green

Mr Gwyn Prosser

Bob Russell

Mr Marsha Singh

Mr John Taylor

David Winnick

________________

Memoranda submitted by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Home Office

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Sir Keith Povey QPM, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary; and Mr Paul Evans, Director, Police Standards Unit, Home Office, examined.

Q178 Chairman: Good afternoon, gentlemen, thank you very much indeed. Sir Keith Povey, I wonder if you could briefly introduce yourselves and then we will get under way.

Sir Keith Povey: Certainly, Chairman. Good afternoon to you all. My name is Keith Povey and I am Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary for England and Wales.

Mr Evans: Good afternoon, sir. I am Paul Evans, Director of the Police Standards Unit.

Q179 Chairman: Thank you for coming this afternoon. This is the third session in a brief inquiry the Committee has undertaken to look at progress since the police reform programme began. Sir Keith, if I could start with you. It is three years, arguably four years if we go back to the Lancaster House discussion, since the reform process was kicked off. From your position, how much progress do you think has actually been made in police reform on the ground since the discussion of police reform began?

Sir Keith Povey: A short answer to that would be substantial, I believe, because HMIC and ACPO were involved in Lancaster House in 2000 and that was where the reform programme was born. The differences that have been made substantially are around the performance culture. Now we have almost real-time information from iQuanta, there is a real performance culture within the Home Office and even permanent under-secretaries have targets of reducing crime. There is an absolute acknowledgement by chief constables and police authorities that performance outcomes are the name of the game. There has also been a strengthening in the Reform Act of the Inspectorate in that we act as the gateway to powers of intervention if those are required. Those have not been exercised in a statutory way as yet but the threat is there, if you like. Then when you look at the massive resource input into policing since the reform programme started: more police officers in this country than at any other time; more police staff and, of course, the advent of Community Support Officers. Having travelled around the country certainly over the last 12 months and sat in on focus groups, Community Support Officers are a real win-win, both from their point of view and from the police constables' point of view. I have sat in on numerous groups where patrol constables have sung the praises of CSOs. There are some real positives but I think there are still some areas where there is quite a way to travel.

Q180 Chairman: Mr Evans, you have a different history on this. You came to this a year ago not having been involved in the reform process. How easy has it been for you to make any sense of the police reform process? Could you easily identify for us what you think the problem was that people had identified and whether it was being tackled in a coherent way?

Mr Evans: I think I will probably be reiterating much of what Sir Keith has said. It appears that accountability is absolutely critical to police reform in embedding a performance culture within the organisations where data is driving performance and throughout the organisation, at every level of the organisation, people are held to account, people are very, very clear as to what their goals and objectives are, the budget planning is all lined up in a performance culture to reduce crime. I think that is something, particularly in some of the engagements that we have been involved with, that you can see, that embedding where people have real-time data, they are responding to that data, they are analysing that data, and you are seeing the results in significant drops in crime, particularly the volume crimes of robbery, burglary and vehicle theft.

Q181 Chairman: Coming into it as you have done in a relatively new way, have there been any issues that you have looked at and you have said, "Why are they not tackling this problem? Why is the priority here and not there?"

Mr Evans: In the first paper, if you will, there was a need first and foremost to deal with accountability, to have that performance embedded and I think you have seen the very real results of that. Once you have begun to really achieve that, now you go to the second level which I think you will see in the upcoming White Paper which deals really with customer satisfaction. My sense is when you talk about issues of customer satisfaction you deal with the little things that drive people in neighbourhoods to distraction. That is something that we have been working on, the issues of antisocial behaviour, alcohol, driving, some violence and what have you. I think putting structures in place was absolutely critical. As I come from a different environment, one of the things that I have seen is clearly some issues surrounding alcohol that need to be dealt with.

Q182 Chairman: The issues that you mention are issues that get politicians exercised, are the things that keep the public satisfied. Are they issues that are the right priorities from a policing point of view?

Mr Evans: Based on my experience, if you take care of the little things the big things take care of themselves. If you take care of issues like alcohol, the antisocial behaviour and the thuggery that comes as a result of that, I think that will drive down some of your serious crime. If you take care of low level drug dealing I think that will also go a long way to dealing with much of your crime. Again, when you take care of the little things, the things that distract people in neighbourhoods, I think it goes a long way to dealing with the big issues also.

Q183 Chairman: One of the things that the Home Secretary said when launching the original Police Reform White Paper was that the detection rates were far too low. Three years later detection rates are worse than they were when the Police Reform White Paper was published. Why has the police reform process not been successful in increasing the number of crimes that are successfully detected, Sir Keith?

Sir Keith Povey: I think that detection has only become a priority in the latter phase of the first part of the reform programme. Certainly in the first part of the reform programme the emphasis was on crime reduction. Having said that, if I was looking at a crime reduction strategy that did not include something about detection of prolific and priority offenders then I would not give that strategy many marks out of ten. Although there has been a reduction in certain areas of crime, because of the National Crime Reporting Standards there have been increases in other areas. As crime increases, even if the number of crimes detected stays the same then the detection rate will actually reduce. Having said that, the service has laboured with poor detection rates for a number of years and currently stands at about something like 23%, and 18% is another figure looking just at recorded crime. That is not sufficient and I think part two of the reform programme, looking at the PSA targets, will make forces to a great extent put more resources into and concentrate on the detection of crime as well as reduction. As far as I am concerned, the two run in parallel.

Q184 Chairman: Does the Standards Unit have a view on what can be done to improve detection rates in the near future?

Mr Evans: Yes, I think we do. We are working with a number of other Home Office and ACPO individuals right now to look at the area that, as Sir Keith has indicated, has become a very real priority. I think some of it is housekeeping, making sure you are keeping the books right, taking the credit for all the detection, that has been a problem. All along it has been a problem that I have experienced throughout my career.

Q185 Chairman: Can I be clear. Are you suggesting that actually more crimes are detected in practice, ie police officers are fairly certain they know who did it, than get recorded as detection?

Mr Evans: Yes. It has been my experience that we do not take credit for the things that we do. If you will, it is sloppy bookkeeping. That has been one of the focuses, making sure that you take credit for all the sanctioned detections. Certainly that is not it alone. We are doing an awful lot on professional investigations, how do you conduct interviews and take statements that will lead to detections. There has been tremendous work done in the whole area of forensics, DNA and what have you. We believe that will result in increases in sanctioned detections. As Sir Keith has said, it is really a priority now.

Q186 Chairman: Can either of you gentlemen give the Committee an idea of what sort of level of detection rate you or we should regard as satisfactory in, say, four or five years' time? Either of you, or both.

Sir Keith Povey: I think the PSA target is to increase the detection rate by 7 or 8% by the year 2008. That would not seem to be overly ambitious in my book.

Q187 Chairman: That would take us to about 30%.

Sir Keith Povey: About 30%.

Q188 Chairman: That is not overly ambitious?

Sir Keith Povey: I do not think that is overly ambitious.

Q189 Chairman: You think with a fair wind the Police Service should be able to achieve more than that?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, I do. Given the technology that is coming on stream, the forensics that are coming on stream, the DNA, the automatic number plate retrieval, all stuff like that will make substantial inroads. Just talking about a detection rate is a little misleading because in different categories of crime the service is more successful or less successful. In terms of violent crime, murder, homicide, the detection rates there are substantially higher. In vehicle crime and criminal damage they are substantially lower because of the nature of the offence. I feel slightly uneasy even having a target of an overall detection rate. I think we should be perhaps a little more sophisticated than that.

Mr Evans: I think the ultimate goal is to bring more offenders to justice, if you will. Part of the dip in the sanctioned detections has been the charging scheme where you have CPS engaged much earlier. There has been a dip and what we have found is that over time there has been a dip but we have recovered from that dip both in Lancashire and in the Met. Ultimately the offenders being brought to justice is the goal that we are pursuing and with all that Sir Keith talked about we are going in the right direction.

Q190 Mr Taylor: Can I ask both of you perhaps, what is the division of responsibilities between HM Inspectorate and the Police Standards Unit over the assessment and improvement of police performance? In operational terms, how do you liaise?

Sir Keith Povey: Shall I lead on that? I became Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary at the time the Standards Unit was born.

Q191 Mr Taylor: When was that, Sir Keith?

Sir Keith Povey: 1 January 2001. It almost coincided to the day with the Standards Unit. At that time there was a real confusion both within the Home Office and outside about who these people are and surely there was a massive overlap between what we are doing. I felt that as well. We are now two and a half years into it and I think we have fairly clear blue water between us, that the Inspectorate has a responsibility for reporting on the efficiency and effectiveness of the 43 forces throughout England and Wales, and the Standards Unit, Paul will speak for himself, is concerned with giving support to under-performing forces and in the past have been engaged with about eight of those forces. That support can be triggered by HMIC giving an adverse report on the performance of a force or it can be triggered by some of the statistics coming out of the Police Performance Assessment Framework. The Standards Unit is more into support, developing, identifying good practice and what works and bringing under-performing forces on; we are more concerned with the performance of forces throughout the whole of England and Wales.

Q192 Mr Taylor: As a matter of interest, Sir Keith, and it is not part of our inquiry but just my own curiosity, did you follow Sir Geoffrey Dear into your position?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, I did. Not into this position, I followed Sir Geoffrey Dear into the regional HMI position. I replaced him just seven and a half years ago, in fact.

Q193 Mr Taylor: Did you want to add anything to that, Mr Evans?

Mr Evans: Only that the Police Standards Unit measure and monitor police performance. We use tools like iQuanta, PPAF - the Police Performance Assessment Framework - and performance monitors and when we see serious variations between forces we try to support those forces, look for good practice that is being achieved elsewhere and appropriate performance. We rely heavily, myself personally, on Sir Keith and if I have any issues I will go to him for guidance. I think in many ways we complement each other. We look at the numbers but then we go to folks like Sir Keith and his HMIs and say, "What is the story behind the story? Give us the substance of what may be going on in this force which will cause the numbers to be poor in some cases?" and we will get the background of what might be going on in a force that may be involved in a change initiative or what have you. In many ways we complement each other in that we look at numbers and they give us the story behind the numbers.

Q194 Mr Taylor: May I put to either or both of you the view and comment of Mr Kevin Bond, the previous Director of PSE, that a further merger between HMIC and PSU "makes sense", and I am quoting him. Does that ring true with you, Mr Evans?

Mr Evans: No, I disagree. The Standards Unit works out of the Home Office and the HMIC is independent. If you merge those units what you have in some ways is that the independent Inspectorate is now evaluating some of the work of PSU, which is Home Office, so you create a conflict. I think there is something to be said for a totally independent HMIC. Once you start merging those it loses its independence out of necessity.

Q195 Mr Taylor: Do you have anything to add, Sir Keith?

Sir Keith Povey: I would agree with that. Within the service there is clarity of vision on the role of HMIC and the role of PSU. I think where the complexity and confusion arises now is between the role of PSU and the role of the National Centre for Policing Excellence. I think there is more of an overlap there than there is between HMIC and PSU.

Q196 Mr Taylor: Some of our witnesses have expressed concern about duplication of work, and not just between PSU and HMIC but also with other bodies such as the National Centre for Policing Excellence, to which you have just referred, the central Home Office and ACPO. How big do you think the problem of overlap of responsibilities is, Sir Keith? Are there too many people in the kitchen?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes. Certainly I think there are too many people on the HMIC playing field, but I would say that, would I not? You have HMIC, who are the only statutory Inspectorate in the country, and PSU have their role, but if I was a force chief constable I would be pointing out that the Data Protection Commissioner comes in and undertakes inspections, the Health and Safety Executive do, the Audit Commission do, District Audit do, the Office of Surveillance Commissioner do, so there is all this activity in forces and it is no wonder that they feel they are being over-inspected and over-audited. In fact, over the last few years HMIC have worked hard at reducing the burden of inspection, going to more risk assessed based inspections, baseline inspections, and as we have pulled back from that other organisations have moved in. I would make a case that HMIC as the Inspectorate should act as the gatekeeper and guardian and co-ordinator of all of this activity that takes place in forces. That is just inspection activity. If I was then to talk about monitoring and review activity that takes place from within the Home Office then that is a whole new ballgame because for almost every initiative that is set up there is a task force set up alongside it. You now have an Antisocial Behaviour Task Force, a Persistent and Prolific Offender Task Force, a Street Crime Action Team, and that can go on and on and on, and these people are seeking stats from forces. I can understand why, the government needs to monitor what is happening in forces, but if I was on the receiving end of that I would feel fairly besieged by these constant claims for information. That does not even mention what is happening in the Government Offices in the regions, the ten regions, where they are also playing a part in monitoring activity of crime and disorder reduction partnerships but also Police Service and a whole raft of other bodies that undertake that role. Finally, you have also got to look at the local Criminal Justice Boards and narrowing of criminal justice gap targets that also have an impact on the service. Sorry that is a long answer, Mr Taylor, but there are a lot of people on that playing field.

Q197 Mr Taylor: I can see why it is a long answer, Sir Keith, and you owe us no apology for that but it is a matter of some concern. Would you like to see some redefining of who does what and a little bit of clear water between this body, that body and the next body, because it sounds a very crowded playing field indeed?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, it is, and yes, I would. I think that HMIC are the natural guardians of that sort of activity. I remember Leigh Lewis, one of the permanent under-secretaries, had a conversation with Norman Bettison, the Chief Constable of Merseyside recently, and Norman Bettison was making a plea for having some sort of delivery manager who would have charge of that force and all the inspection activity that took place within it, and Leigh Lewis said to him, "That is a good idea, Norman", and Norman Bettison said, "They used to be called HMIs you know".

Q198 Mr Taylor: Can I shift the ground very slightly now on to the fact that some of our witnesses have suggested that the National Centre for Policing Excellence has not yet had much of an impact. What do you think?

Sir Keith Povey: I think that is correct. I do not think that is a fault of the National Centre for Policing Excellence. The National Centre for Policing Excellence was absolutely the right concept to set standards, to raise the game, to have codes of practice that applied nationally against which we would inspect and then we would feed back into the NCPE and it would be a continuous virtuous loop, if you like. I do not think the NCPE, to be fair, have been given the political or financial impetus to achieve what it was originally intended they would achieve. I think one flaw was making NCPE a department of Centrex almost so they have suffered from the budget cuts that Centrex have suffered from, they just have not had the resources to achieve what they originally set out to achieve. They have created four codes of practice and they are working on another four but I think they could have gone much further.

Q199 Mr Taylor: You mentioned resource just now. I believe you have argued, possibly in your written submissions to us, that the Centre currently lacks "appropriate levels of political support and funding". Going right back to your most recent remark about resourcing, do you wish to stand by that observation this afternoon?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes. I think those remarks were made in relation to the National Centre for Policing Excellence in particular.

Q200 Mr Taylor: I believe they were. I have one final question. What is your opinion on the proposed creation of a National Improvement Agency? Could such an agency do anything that the Police Standards Unit, the National Centre for Policing Excellence and HM Inspectorate cannot already do? So, can the National Improvement Agency move in and cover ground that is not being covered at the moment?

Sir Keith Povey: It can if it is structured in the right way. I am not quite sure just what a National Police Improvement Agency will look like. There is some confusion within ACPO and within the Home Office around it. If it is going to be another bureaucratic layer then I do not think it will achieve anything. If it is going to bring some rationalisation to PITO, to Centrex, to some aspects of PSU, to NCPE and then act as an agent for change and driving improvement forward within ACPO, then I think that will fill a gap and will bring some rationalisation to the bodies that play there at the moment.

Q201 Mrs Dean: Sir Keith, what is the state of progress with introducing a baseline assessment system at the moment?

Sir Keith Povey: Baseline assessment has been a success story for HMIC. Interestingly, I have had a number of letters from chief constables actually emphasising that, yes, this is the way forward and how pleased they are to see it. In fact, I mentioned Norman Bettison earlier and he sent for my eyes a draft statement to appear in the Police Review Magazine singing the praises of baseline assessment. The object of the exercise was to bring some cohesion to inspectorate activity in forces, to recognise those forces that are performing well and to identify those forces that are under-performing. We look across 26 performance indicators at forces, grade them on a four point scale of excellent, good, fair or bad, and come to a judgment about the performance of that force. Ultimately the object of the exercise, and we are not there yet, will be to identify the better performing forces and reduce dramatically the burden of inspection, so that where you have a force that is performing well, they have got good systems there, they have got good internal inspections and quality assurance departments then we would not inspect them for 12 months, maybe two years, and concentrate resources on those forces that we have identified as under-performing and the ones in the centre, to concentrate resources on those areas of the 26 where they need additional support.

Q202 Mrs Dean: What is your timetable for introducing self-assessment of those forces?

Sir Keith Povey: The first baseline assessment took place during the spring of this year and was published in June of this year. We have just gone through a technical exercise to update those because they were based on data that ended December 2003. That exercise will bring us into line with PPAF, so the next full scale exercise will take place next year and then it will be a rolling programme and we will be able to marry the baseline assessment into PPAF, the Police Performance Assessment Framework indicators, and measure a force improvement or otherwise against that original baseline assessment.

Q203 Mrs Dean: Could you tell us how many forces do you think will be involved in that self-assessment and what criteria will you use to choose them?

Sir Keith Povey: There are 43 forces in England and Wales and those are the 43 forces that we inspect and those are the 43 forces that will be subject to baseline assessment. Out of those 43 forces I would hazard a guess that six or seven would be so good that we could withdraw inspection activity from them in recognition of that, and at the bottom end of the scale there would be perhaps three, four or five that are so poor that they would be subject to substantial Inspectorate activity and then you have got the raft in the middle.

Q204 Mrs Dean: Does it not create a risk of having a two-tier inspection regime?

Sir Keith Povey: Not a two-tier inspection region because within each of the regional offices there is one staff officer of chief superintendent rank who has responsibility for two or three forces and liaises with those forces on a quarterly basis. Every force is subject to the same activity to that extent, to a greater or lesser activity in relation to the outcomes of the baseline assessment but the activity is the same. If you are saying two-tier is no inspection for the better forces and strong inspection for the weaker forces, then, yes, it is, but the inspection activity in those forces is the same in relation to each of the performance areas.

Q205 Mrs Dean: Will there be a mechanism to introduce full external assessment if a "trusted" force proves to be unworthy of that trust?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, there would have to be. The beauty about it is, and this is a real benefit of the reform programme, when I first started inspecting forces I was working on data that was 12 months out of date whereas now I have got almost real-time data that is only a month out of date, so you can quickly identify where a force is slipping or improving and it is something that would have to be monitored fairly carefully.

Q206 Mrs Dean: Can I turn to Mr Evans. How great is the variation in performance between police forces across England and Wales? What gives you particular cause for concern? Could you also tell us what progress is being made in reducing unacceptable variations?

Mr Evans: Initially when they began the measurement process, I believe it was in March 2003, there was established at one point a goal that no force would be more than ten per cent below the most similar forces with the commitment that all citizens are entitled to a certain standard of policing. At that time I believe there may have been as many as 11 forces that did not meet that standard and at this time I believe five of the forces have met and surpassed that standard, another five are on trajectory to meet the standard and one force we have recently become engaged with we are working with and I am pretty confident that they will be on target to meet the standard. I guess the short answer is the variation is getting lower and lower, if you will. At our peak we were working with eight forces, we are currently working with seven forces and three of those forces we may be disengaging from because they will have met the criteria for disengagement within the next few months.

Q207 Mrs Dean: Could you talk us through a typical example of specific action that you take to improve a police force's performance?

Mr Evans: PSU being in its third year, how we operate has evolved over time. I think when PSU first came into existence we would go into a force and throw grants and money at a number of different initiatives, some of them may be thematic. If they had a burglary problem we would give them money to address that. What has changed over time, and it is part of our learning process, is we still do that, we go in and say, "You have got a drug problem, here is some money for drugs and burglary and what have you", but we go in and look first and foremost at a comprehensive diagnostic of the force, what kinds of structures do they have in place, do they have real-time data, do they have accountability structures. We are looking at the management process, if you will, to make sure that there is accountability that all the people in the department at various ranks know what the expectations are, that there is an alignment between the goals and objectives, the priorities of the organisation in the planning, in the budget, in the cadres and what have you. A lot of what we do now is try to do a symptomatic comprehensive diagnostic of do the systems work and when we find problems then we try to work with the chief constable in his ACPO command to make sure that we are putting in place structures that are conducive to good performance.

Q208 Mrs Dean: The Police Superintendents' Association stated that though the PSU has helped spread good practice, its role is not understood by many senior officers who are fearful of its "invasive nature...in the day to day running of their commands". Is this a widespread view among senior officers? What are you doing to reassure such officers?

Mr Evans: The fact that PSU has only been in existence for three years probably contributes to that. We have only been engaged with a limited number of forces, so not the entire service has experienced PSU. I think that is beginning to change. I think the word of our engagement and how we have engaged with forces and their perception of how we have engaged will change that. We have worked on an alcohol campaign and a violent crime campaign. Recently we have issued guidance on issues like burglary, robbery and vehicle theft. PSU recently issued a performance management guide that has been very well received. We are holding a conference next month on the alcohol misuse campaign and putting out alcohol guidance. I think as we get more and more into areas that a force that has not engaged with us is also involved with, particularly in alcohol and violent crime, I think perceptions may change in that area.

Sir Keith Povey: Could I add to that. You are right, there is that perception there and intervention is a massive nuclear tool, if you like, if you have the Home Secretary formally intervene in a force. When the PSU first came into existence there was this fear. When the Reform Act went through Parliament that was addressed by making HMIC the gatekeeper to that intervention because there was a perception, rightly or wrongly, that PSU were the Home Secretary's arm of enforcement, if you wish. To bring some professional judgment before the Home Secretary can use that intervention, HMIC have to certify that that force is inefficient or ineffective, or likely to become so, wholly or in part, and it is only then that intervention can take place. There is that safeguard, and I think it is a necessary safeguard, particularly given the length of time the PSU has been in existence. It is a necessary safeguard and one from which the service draws some comfort.

Q209 David Winnick: Mr Evans, as a senior Home Office official you come with a great deal of experience. You were a former Police Commissioner in Boston. How long were you the Police Commissioner there?

Mr Evans: Ten years, sir, just about ten years.

Q210 David Winnick: I see that the Home Secretary has stated that your track record in reducing crime in Boston was extremely impressive and you are the best person for heading this unit and driving up performance standards in the Police Service. That is quite good for your CV apart from anything else, is it not?

Mr Evans: Yes, sir.

Q211 David Winnick: Tell me, Mr Evans, at the moment we are plagued, as you know, by what may be described as youth gun crime, an increasing number of young people who carry a knife almost as part of their clothing but, unfortunately, also guns and are using guns. With your experience as a Police Commissioner in Boston with its crime record, how far do you feel that your experience can help in assisting the police in dealing with this problem here?

Mr Evans: I think there are strategies that we utilise over there that can be transferred. One of the things that is absolutely critical when you are dealing with gun violence is identifying the sources of the firearms, the guns that are coming into play, and to make sure there is a heavy price to pay for those individuals who supply firearms, weapons, to young people. That is absolutely critical. We used to have special statutes for trafficking in firearms for individuals who would supply firearms to juveniles and what have you. Making sure you are getting the people who are supplying the firearms is absolutely critical. My sense is then you have to have a very, very good handle on intelligence on your drugs situation. What I have found is that drugs and handguns go hand-in-hand. Many people in the drugs business will use firearms to help them conduct their business. It becomes absolutely critical to have a national intelligence model, if you will, that does a real good job identifying those individuals who you believe are carrying firearms. I think one of the lessons learned that I can probably bring is that sometimes we would have gun violence and then every young person in the neighbourhood would be subject to police stops, police searches and what have you. It is absolutely critical that the police have a pretty good idea of who is engaged in carrying guns, dealing drugs, and that we target those people and, in fact, in some ways, go to the point of marrying those people, focusing our attention on the, call them what you will, impact players. Usually what you will find is that these individuals are no strangers to the criminal justice system, they will probably have been through the system multiple times, so making sure that we bring to bear the system on them of police, probation, looking at their behaviour, is critical. Again, you have got a very, very small gun problem here compared to what I have experienced, but I think the one thing you want to make sure is that it does not snowball out of control.

Q212 David Winnick: It is nothing comparable to what you experienced as Police Commissioner in Boston?

Mr Evans: Exactly, but clearly you want to nip it in the bud and make sure that there are consequences for individuals who carry firearms. There was a minimum mandatory sentence, anybody caught with a firearm automatically did a year, and that even went to juveniles. It was pretty tough but it was absolutely necessary.

Q213 David Winnick: You had a system in Boston where there was a broad alliance including the police, churches and other community organisations. Do you feel there is any way in which that could be undertaken in Britain involving the churches or is the situation here in the UK so different?

Mr Evans: The short answer is yes. I think what we did in Boston was we reached out to people who we felt were leaders in the community and could have a major impact, who we could share our strategies with, ask for their advice and in the end get almost their imprimatur, their stamp of approval, as to how the police were operating. At the time those were the clergy. They were the most visible, powerful individuals, particularly in the black community and that was the community most impacted by violent crime. The one thing we did was work very, very closely with that community and the leaders of the community and in many ways what we said was, "Here is our strategy, it is a comprehensive strategy. We are here to help young people who need our help. We will get them services and what have you, but clearly if they are engaging in violent behaviour there will be consequences". There was a comprehensive approach. There was prevention, intervention and enforcement. Very clearly what we tried to do was speak as one. There would be police, prosecutors, probation officers, street workers, clergy, and community health workers, all saying, "We will get you assistance but we are not going to let you kill each other". So, in essence that is something that certainly is transferable. What there has to be is buy-in from community leaders and those leaders are going to be whoever the leaders of the community are.

Q214 David Winnick: Can I ask you briefly, Sir Keith, because I want to turn to race, listening to Mr Evans and knowing his views and experience, do you feel that what was done in Boston relates to the United Kingdom and can in some way help in reducing gun crime here?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, I suspect that it can. The HMIC undertook a thematic on the criminal use of firearms at the beginning of this year and there was great emphasis in there on (a) having a national intelligence database of firearms that have been used in crime, and (b) having the database in NCS of tracing firearms and the two complement each other. The real impact can only be made by involvement of the communities and that was clearly identified in the thematic. Paul is right that gun crime in this country, firearms, accounts for less than 0.02% of all crime, the trouble is that disproportionately it has a massive impact on the fear of crime and public fear of crime.

Q215 David Winnick: Rightly so, surely. Look at what happened in Nottingham.

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, absolutely. 41% of all gun crime is committed in the Metropolitan Police area, the rest in the main in West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Nottinghamshire to a lesser extent. Within these forces, within certain areas, there is this culture, and it is drug driven, of "it is good to carry guns at a young age". It is getting into the community so that the community are identifying that is not the way forward, that this is bad news, and they are working in partnership with the police to try to bring some stability there by (a) identifying the sources and (b) identifying the people who are using these weapons.

Q216 David Winnick: Many of the victims of gun crime are black and the victims have been described in the media in broad terms as Yardie gangsters. Some of these gangsters are illegal immigrants. Is it not surprising that there is not much more action taken, insofar as some of these people are undoubtedly illegal immigrants, to get them out of the country?

Sir Keith Povey: I have not seen the research that would actually convince me that the proportion of gun crime is committed by illegal immigrants.

Q217 David Winnick: I did not quite say that.

Mr Evans: I think anecdotally there is a major problem in some of the Jamaican gangs in relation to carrying guns. You have only got to look at the operations in West Midlands and Greater Manchester and the Metropolitan Police with Operation Trident, which is about black on black killings, that are making substantial inroads into that culture. The success rate of Operation Trident is substantial. Forces are aware of the issues and are desperately trying to involve communities in some resolution of that, but there is some way to go. As I said earlier, although in statistical terms it is a small problem, in perception and public fear and public outreach terms it is a big problem.

David Winnick: What we saw in Nottingham last week.

Q218 Mr Clappison: Just on this point about the extent of the problem, it does look very much to be the case that although you have talked about the scale of the problem, in particular forces and in particular localities the problem seems to be concentrated, it seems to be localised in certain areas. The question that I would like to put to both of you is that given what Mr Evans has said about what needs to be done at a community level and enforcement level and the transferability of the experience from some parts of the United States, how can we get this process started in the areas where it needs to start before it spreads elsewhere?

Sir Keith Povey: I think substantial work is already being done in those areas. In 2001-02 the number of people killed in this country by firearms was 93, in 2002-03 it was 81, so a fairly substantial reduction. Who is to say how that came about? It is very difficult to measure intervention by police, involvement by the community and the outcome. Certainly the forces that I have mentioned, the four in particular, are well aware of that issue, well aware of the areas in which this takes place, but it is very, very difficult to overcome the random shootings, such as took place in the last couple of days in Nottingham. If it is going to be sustainable, if it is going to be long-term, then the only way forward is to get into those communities so that the communities are accepting that this is not appropriate behaviour.

Q219 Mr Clappison: How do we get into those? Who is going to start this off? Where is the impetus going to come from?

Sir Keith Povey: The impetus has got to come from the Police Service initially because it is going to be seen as a police problem, but it is a case of involving the Drug Action Teams, the Crime Reduction Partnerships, the local clergy, the local stakeholders, and it is only by that sort of partnership approach that we will get the results we want. I think what Paul was saying reflects what is happening, in actual fact, in the Metropolitan, West Midlands and Greater Manchester areas.

Mr Evans: I have sat through presentations of the Met's gun project, if you will, and many of the things that I touched upon as ways to success are things that they are implementing and have implemented: the idea of a close working relationship with the community, community engagement, also the education piece of trying to make sure that young people know that that type of life is a dead end and the whole intelligence piece of focusing on that small number of people who may be involved in drug trade or who your intelligence tell you have to be monitored very closely. I think that the reduction in gun crime and gun homicides in the Met will point to some of the successes they have had in recent years.

Q220 David Winnick: We have had evidence on a number of occasions from senior police officers, chief constables, telling us that combating racism in their own police force is a priority, they are trying to deal with what is described as the "canteen culture", or whatever it is called, but then we see a programme on television called The Secret Policeman, which presumably both of you have seen. How far can we take it that the Police Service and the Home Office are able to deal with the sickening racism that we saw featured in that programme by certain police officers? Mr Evans?

Mr Evans: Racism is a problem in society, period, and certainly -----

Q221 David Winnick: That is a pretty complacent attitude.

Mr Evans: Let me say that there is probably no bigger issue right now in policing in the United States than the whole issue of racial profiling and it is something that we are all dealing with. In many ways it is an issue that all police forces around the country must deal with. Unfortunately, when we hire brand new recruits we cannot mould them, they come with their biases and their prejudices, that is the reality. What we have to clearly state is that absolutely will not be tolerated within any police force and make sure that where it is experienced there are consequences to be played. Again, it is the training that is absolutely critical in that area on the consequences of racism and the damaging impact it has on the police. The communities that need us most have to trust us and basically that trust has to be a real trust and if there is any hint of racism that trust will never embed itself.

Q222 David Winnick: The Home Office have a national target of 7% minority ethnic staff by 2009 and the present percentage is about 2%. As I understand it, and you will correct me if I am wrong, in the United States in virtually all of the police forces, including in the south where white racism existed in such a powerful form for some 100 years, there are now police officers who are black of every rank from the most junior to the most senior and it is a feature of life, totally unlike the United Kingdom.

Mr Evans: Your assessment is probably correct but in many instances that came about as a result of departments being sued for hiring practices that violated civil rights. In many ways it came about as a result of consent decrees being imposed upon many big city departments because they failed to hire sufficient minorities. What I have found to be the key is good recruiting, aggressive recruiting, of qualified minorities is the way to address that issue. That is not going to happen overnight but aggressively recruiting is a way to deal with that issue.

Q223 David Winnick: What is your assessment of reaching anywhere near the target of 7% if we cannot reach it as matters now stand? Are there any other steps that should be taken?

Sir Keith Povey: If we carry on the way we are then we will not reach that target, of that I have no doubt, and the Metropolitan Police will not reach their target, and if they do not reach their target then nationally the target will not be met. It is a case of how far do we want to go down the road of different action that would actually encourage ----

Q224 David Winnick: Positive action.

Sir Keith Povey: Positive action. Paul might be better qualified to speak on this than I am because I know that many, many years ago New York went down that path and it ended up as a very divisive force. They went down the path of positive action not only in recruiting but also in promotion. Without going directly to positive action, there are still things that can be done, and I read Ian Blair's evidence to this Committee and the points that he was making were very valid on bringing on people who would add value in relation to language, in relation to contact with the community and yet still treat people equally at the recruiting stage. On The Secret Policeman issue, that was another wake-up call for the service. I think anyone who watched that programme must have been embarrassed and excruciatingly frustrated.

Q225 David Winnick: And ashamed, I would think.

Sir Keith Povey: Absolutely. Significantly, three days later most of the officers involved had been sacked or had left the service. ACPO came out with a ten point plan immediately. Indeed, a week on Friday I have the pleasure of giving evidence to the Commission for Racial Equality on this very issue of racism within the service, recruiting and the rest of it. I do take heart from what is now the National Assessment Recruiting Centre which is trying to identify right at the recruitment stage those inappropriate behaviours, unacceptable behaviours, and if there is an element of doubt about that person in relation to diversity then that acts as a total barrier to proceeding any further within the National Assessment Centre.

Q226 David Winnick: One final question. Mr Evans, positive action in the United Kingdom to try and rectify this problem?

Mr Evans: I come with a history. The department I just left was under a consent decree for 26 years and it was under a consent degree when I left. When I joined the department in 1970 I think we had 1% or 2% of the department that was black or Hispanic, but when I left it was closer to 38% but, again, it fell under the auspices of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. It was a painful process. It impacted on our hiring practices and promotional practices. In the long run I would say to you that we were a better department when I left because we represented the community we served and as I was leaving we were putting in place a number of schemes, for instance, looking at skills, hiring officers with specific skills. If they could speak specific languages - Cape Verde Creole, Spanish, French Creole for Haitian - we did not particularly care what colour they were, but we were looking at specific skills that could help us in those communities. We also had what we called at the time a cadet programme where we would hire young people who would do probationary services, helping in police stations, and then they would get preference to become police officers. So there was a number of things that we tried to do to increase outside the consent decree, but the consent decree was a very painful process that the city went through and the department went through but in the long run I think I can say 25 or 26 years later we were a better department for it.

Q227 Bob Russell: Gentlemen, as you know, we are doing an inquiry into police reform, and one of the 11 principal areas we are looking at is that of police training. Were you aware that five years ago the Home Affairs Select Committee conducted an inquiry into police training and recruitment? Indeed, we made 49 recommendations - I have the report here. Can I just ask, gentlemen, whether as part of your remit this tome is ever looked at?

Sir Keith Povey: I actually gave evidence to that Home Affairs Committee so yes, I am aware of that, and in fact, some of the recommendations that came out of that also coincided with a thematic inspection, Managing Training, which was undertaken by myself. One of the recommendations that came out of that was the appointment of a lay HMI with no police background to major in training and recruitment. It is five years ago now and we did in fact appoint Mr Robin Field-Smith as an HMI with responsibility for the inspection of training and recruitment, and he has now taken on the human resources side.

Q228 Bob Russell: As a result of that and our recommendations, has there been an improvement in police training five years on?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, I think substantially, and certainly the framework, in that now there is a national strategy for police training, there is a Skills for Justice body looking at development needs, there is a more effective PADR system, identifying training needs, and there are costed training plans within each force. I think there has been substantial progress made within the whole arena of training as a result of those things.

Q229 Bob Russell: It has been put to me that the 43 chief constables are doing their own thing when it comes to training, both in new recruits and in-service training, that they are picking and mixing as to what part of the training they take on board. It has been suggested to me that in one county police force none of its new recruits are trained in riot control.

Sir Keith Povey: There is a national curriculum in relation to probationer training. That is going through a metamorphosis at the moment in that there have been recommendations that instead of taking these people and training them centrally at district training centres, they are trained in forces, within the community, not taking them away from their homes. There are a number of forces piloting that at the moment, of which one is Lancashire, who are speaking very highly of that type of training. But there is a national training strategy, and within each force there is a force training strategy so that the training should match the performance indicators and desired outcomes of the annual policing plan within that force. So I think the point that you make about mixing and matching and picking is perhaps not as bad as you were portraying.

Q230 Bob Russell: This Committee may need to revisit that on another occasion, because all members of this Committee have been told that the Police Superintendents' Association, the Police Federation and the Association of Police Authorities all express concern about the cuts in the funding of the police training body, Centrex. The Police Federation makes a series of criticisms about training, alleging that training is disproportionately targeted at the higher ranks, that there is a paucity of refresher training for custody officers, and that other European countries give a higher priority to police training. Is that a correct commentary?

Sir Keith Povey: In the main, yes. There are a number of issues there. Certainly, the budget of Centrex was cut this year, and the budget of a number of departments was cut, but Centrex produced a plan that shows that they will still be able to deliver the bulk of their training. Those cuts have resulted, for example, in a reduction of the probationer training programme from 15 weeks to 12 weeks, so some things have had to go.

Chairman: Can you just confirm, Sir Keith, that that reduction of 15 to 12 weeks was as a result of the budget cuts, not as a result of your report or anybody else's reports concluding that 15 weeks was a waste of time and all the work could be done in 12 weeks?

Q231 Bob Russell: I am grateful, Chairman, because I was actually going to ask who was driving the cuts.

Sir Keith Povey: My perception is that the reduction from 15 weeks to 12 weeks was as a result of the budget cuts, but the reduction was justifiable when you looked at some of the dross that was taken out of the curriculum, so with the actual core subjects, I do not think the probation training has suffered as a result of that cut. It has just taken out some of the extra-curricular stuff. Coming back to the points the Federation were making - and I think 12 months ago they would have been absolutely right - there has been a preponderance of training at senior level, and what has happened at senior PC, sergeant and inspector level is that there has been a dearth of training. I chair the Police Leadership Development Board, and that was identified by a working group of that Board over 12 months ago, and as a result of that, there is a programme - Core Leadership Development Training, it is called - that is directed purely at PCs, sergeants and inspectors, to bring them on.

Q232 Bob Russell: Who has actually driven the cuts in the training budget?

Sir Keith Povey: I think that came from the Home Office.

Q233 Bob Russell: We have the Home Office telling us about all the additional police officers that have been brought into service, coupled with a cut in the training budget. Does that not indicate that perhaps the modern police officers joining the police service are not as well trained as those who went before?

Sir Keith Povey: No, I do not think you can make that assumption.

Q234 Bob Russell: Lower costs, greater numbers. I used to be the publicity officer at university and I know exactly what happened there: greater numbers at a lower cost.

Sir Keith Povey: I am not here to defend Centrex or the budget cuts or anything else. My perception is that the reduction in training from 15 weeks to 12 weeks has not been detrimental to the outcome of probationer training. It may well be - and perhaps I am unsighted on that, Chairman - that there was running parallel to that a review of probationers' training that might have resulted in that, but I still think - perhaps the sceptic in me - that the reduction was in fact budget-driven.

Q235 Bob Russell: Sir Keith, I must pursue this point, because the Association of Chief Police Officers also criticises a lack of adequate funding for the National Centre for Policing Excellence and a lack of separation between the training function of Centrex and the policy-making function of the NCPE. Then we are told that Her Majesty's Inspectorate carrying out an inspection of Centrex earlier this year found the organisation to be "inconsistently effective." I understand that Centrex has responded with an action plan which is currently being considered by the Home Office. Bearing in mind that these respectable organisations within the police service are all being critical, how much progress has been made in modernising police training and are sufficient resources being devoted to this?

Sir Keith Povey: Going back to the point in relation to training, resources in training are about 6-7% of total budget and a case can always be made, I think, for more resources to be put into training. But Robin Field-Smith, the HMI that I spoke about earlier, did undertake that inspection of Centrex and did find it lacking in certain areas. Bearing in mind that Centrex covers a lot more than probationer training - it covers leadership training and many other aspects of training - it was not just focused on that sort of training.

Q236 Bob Russell: So presumably the main problems have been identified?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, indeed they have, and as I say, there is a framework now of the National Policing Training Strategy, the Skills for Justice, that is identifying in a much more sophisticated and scientific manner what training needs there are and how they can be satisfied. Can I just agree with you on your earlier point as well, and that is NCPE and Centrex, and I think, as I said in my submission and earlier today, that NCPE has been under-funded. I actually think NCPE should be quite distinct from Centrex. NCPE is about standards, about improvement of performance; Centrex is about training. Yes, there are overlaps, but I think they are sufficiently distinct to be treated as two separate entities.

Q237 Bob Russell: I am grateful for that observation. Finally, you are confirming then that the problems that were identified with Centrex have been identified, follow-up action is taking place, so in a year's time all those issues will have been tackled and resolved?

Sir Keith Povey: They should be, because there is an action plan that Centrex are working to, and that is overseen by the HMI on training.

Q238 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I have two questions. If I look at the number of cases which are successfully prosecuted by the police through the courts, it is a tiny minority in comparison to the number of cases that files have been developed for. When I spoke to the Crown Prosecution Service about this, they said one of the primary problems centred on the ability of low-ranking police officers to adequately collect evidence and to make good statements. My question to you is, are you happy that junior police officers, who are placed in a significant position when it comes to detection of crime and reporting of crime, are adequately trained in the production of statements and the taking of evidence at those initial interviews, and secondly, are you also convinced that, by allowing police authorities to adopt their own training programmes, you have a consistent standard throughout the police authorities? Certainly we have taken evidence here which would suggest that the plethora of training initiatives at this time is leading to multiple standards, and what we need to be seeing is a far more consistent standard across the whole of the forces within the UK.

Sir Keith Povey: As regards the first part of that question, in relation to the investigative skills of police officers, I think they are not as good as they should be. You have to go back a little in time. In training, the service lost its way a number of years ago, and we came to this what I call this "love me, hug me, kiss me, sit on my knee, cry on my shoulder" type of training where it was not actually teaching what the ingredients of the evidence were to ensure a conviction. It was much more concerned with the softer aspects of policing rather than the enforcement aspects of policing. I think the service has recognised that. The NCPE are in fact looking at a programme called Professionalizing the Investigation Function, which is designed just to achieve that. Another downside to that was there was something called "tenure" in the police service about five years ago, where you actually took skilled investigators who had done five years in CID and put them back into uniform. Although it was designed to encourage movement, to give people opportunities to go into departments that they would not have had, it actually had the effect of de-skilling the organisation in certain areas, and so the service over the last few years has not been as good at that level on the investigation process as they should have been. However, again, that has been identified and is being addressed by what the NCPE are doing and by a programme of investigative interviewing technique training that was started a number of years ago and should actually address that. In relation to the second point about a difference in standards, something like 90% plus of all training takes place in forces. It is only a very small proportion of training that is actually undertaken centrally by Centrex or at a district level, and so you would expect some differences but they still should operate to a standard, to a national curriculum and to a national policing standard. The trainers are actually trained centrally by Centrex and then they cascade that training down, so that is another way of trying to achieve that standard in training and standard in trainers.

Q239 Mr Green: Can I move the discussion on to the National Policing Plan. What do you see as its main strengths and weaknesses and in particular, what practical, day-to-day usefulness does it have on the ground?

Sir Keith Povey: Practical, day-to-day usefulness at PC level I would think is negligible, but practical usefulness at a strategic level and at force level, the strength of the National Policing Plan is that it has given greater clarity to forces about what government expectations are and what government priorities are. It also highlights greater accountability for delivery of those priorities. The first National Policing Plan, as with firsts in many things, left room for substantial improvement. Here we had the first National Policing Plan and everyone wanted something in it about their particular area of expertise or concern, and even now that we are on the third one, I know that government ministers have had to enter into negotiations with other departments who are saying things like "Why isn't there anything in about roads policing? Why isn't there anything in it about this?" There were so many priorities that what was a priority? There was also a major concern about whether that was skewing activity at a local level, where local communities were identifying priorities that were not articulated within the National Policing Plan, and I think that was the case. I think what is happening as we go to the second and then to the third National Policing Plan is that there is a reduction, a contraction, in the number of priorities and I think there is a genuine endeavour to give local communities the ability and room to actually identify their own priorities and encapsulate those within their own policing plans.

Q240 Mr Green: So what changes would you like to see in the next one?

Mr Evans: As Sir Keith has indicated, you have gone from the establishment of a performance culture that dealt with national standards, and I think what you will see now is a move towards local accountability, in that probably we will see more interaction with the officer on the beat, working with other members of community partnerships, to deal with issues that have local significance - anti-social behaviour, alcohol, abandoned cars, that type of thing. It will probably depend on the neighbourhood - as we push now local priorities. I think you are going to see more accountability at the local level which will probably be pushed further down the chain of command.

Q241 Mr Green: When we talk about local priorities, do you mean at force level, at BCU level?

Sir Keith Povey: That is a challenging question, because the move forward in the White Paper I am sure is about more local accountability, more community involvement, more community identification of priorities. I think we are going into uncharted territory in a way, because how do you identify that community, and where is the accountability of the BCU commander, for example, for delivery of priorities identified by that community? Cornwall is a BCU with a BCU commander. Where is the community in Cornwall that is going to identify the priorities to which the local commander is going to be held to account? You have to go even further down to very neighbourhood policing, inspector, sector policing. But although most people would sign up to empowerment of local communities in identification of priorities and holding deliveries to account, that is fine; the devil is in the detail and in the implementation of that.

Mr Evans: I have had an opportunity to go around to many forces, and what I am seeing is a geographic accountability. I have visited Graycliffe just recently, where the Chief Superintendent took me around to four different local community policing teams, right in local community housing, situated in a number of things where they were really in touch with the community, met with the community on a regular basis and knew the community's concerns and did their best to accommodate those concerns. So in many ways it is happening, that kind of geographic responsibility, accountability, and meeting with the community and trying to address those community concerns at the lowest levels of some organisations.

Q242 Mr Green: You both paint a picture that in a sense is going to have to become more complex in terms of setting targets if there are different geographical levels where they are appropriate. Do you find that target-setting is actually a driver of improved performance?

Sir Keith Povey: Most certainly, yes. I would actively encourage target-setting, provided that you have identified the priorities, you know what the performance measures are, you know what the targets are to achieve those priorities and there are not too many of them.

Q243 Mr Green: Do you think there are too many targets now?

Sir Keith Povey: I do not think there are too many priorities now. In the Policing Plan coming out I think there are going to be five, but I did make the point at one meeting I was at that there are five priorities in the first chapter, and as you read through the Plan, there are other targets, targets about ethnic minority recruiting, there is a target about sickness levels, there is a target about medical pensions, and if you pull all those together - and I suggested they be pulled together in an annexe but it was voted down - then it becomes a little bit less manageable, I think. What BCU commanders and what chief constables have to do is identify those targets that are important to their areas and will impact on their communities and then major on those. If I could just pick up on one thing, it is this word "accountability" that I think is difficult, because if you have a neighbourhood policing team that is working in partnership and in close relationship with communities and trying to delivery priorities, that is fine. Accountability to me infers some degree of sanction where it is going wrong, some ability to actually move people, discipline people, and the rest of it. That is real accountability. The only person that can do that within the force is the chief constable, and I think you need absolutely clear lines of accountability throughout the organisation from PC through BCU commander, but when we start talking about accountability to communities, I think we need to find a different form of words that imply what it is that community wants from that deliverer, and what it is that deliverer can do, and what happens when it falls down, when for one reason or another the targets are not being met.

Q244 Mr Green: Do either of your organisations actually try and measure the impact of targets on performance?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, on a regular basis. All the targets within the annual Policing Plan are those targets that the inspectorate activity will look at in relation to achievement.

Q245 Mr Green: You can disaggregate that from everything else that may be going on inside a particular force?

Sir Keith Povey: No. I suppose that is the strength of the inspectorate. Whereas, as Paul said earlier, PSU is about statistics, is about targets, is about achievement or non-achievement, HMIC is about actually applying a professional judgment to that and putting that whole performance in the context of everything else that is happening within the force that would not even show up on the Police Performance Assessment Framework radar. One simple example: if you look at Cambridgeshire and you look at what happened in Soham and the massive resource that was dragged into that, of course, performance went down and targets were not met, but you need to put all that in the context of what was happening at the time.

Q246 Mr Green: One final question is the standard attached to the new PSA target 2 is to maintain improvements in police performance as monitored by PPAF. Is that not a bit vague? Can you not say that target has been met even with fairly trivial improvements?

Mr Evans: One of the targets - PSA 1, I believe - will be a reduction in crime by 15%, which is a significant amount. What is not happening is identifying the specific: there will be so much in burglary, vehicle crime or armed robbery. Basically, it is about the crime that may be the priority of the local neighbourhood. I think another one of the targets will be 1.25 million offences brought to justice. So there continue to be significant performance measures that must be met.

Q247 Mr Green: What value is added by this standard then? I take your point that those are specific targets against which performance can be measured. This standard just feels like verbiage really.

Sir Keith Povey: I do not set the PSA target, but there is a point. When you look to maintain or improve performance, you have to give some clear steer as to what that means for each individual force, where they want that to get to, otherwise an improvement of 0.1% would mean that they had achieved that particular target. I am not sure whether the National Policing Plan will put some flesh on the bones of that PSA 2.

Q248 Mr Prosser: I want to continue with the issue of local accountability at community level and district level. The Government has set out a number of different models for its level of accountability. Can you give us your view of which ones are desirable and which ones are not, and why?

Sir Keith Povey: As I was saying earlier, I am absolutely signed up to that neighbourhood level, local level and district level, that forces, BCUs, sector teams, embrace those communities, identify what the community priorities are, and set targets to actually deliver those priorities, and are then called to account when those targets are not met. The point I was making about accountability is a different one. I think the complexity of it is - and in Wales, I am sure, you would have clearly identified communities at neighbourhood level - in some forces, some of the major metropolitan forces, even in the Metropolitan itself, with 32 BCUs, some of which are bigger than forces, how do you actually identify that particular community? I am not saying it is impossible, but it is a challenge, and it is a challenge well worth going for.

Q249 Mr Prosser: Are you saying there might be different models of accountable groups in different areas of the country?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, I think it would have to be like that. You would have different models to identify different communities, and it could be a geographic community, it could be a vested interest community, but then what sort of model would you have to call to account that inspector, that superintendent, that chief constable? At the force level, obviously we have police authorities. I think you need some sort of other board at district level, but again, I go back to something I was saying earlier, tangential to this: at district level now you have drug action teams, you have the government offices in the region, you have the local strategic partnerships, you have the crime and disorder reduction partnerships, you have local area agreements coming on, and all those people are within that accountability framework, then the local criminal justice boards. I think there needs to be some rationalisation to that, not just another body to hold these people to account, but surely to bring a lot of these bodies together in one. Otherwise, you will have BCU commanders and sector inspectors spending all their time going to these meetings and being called to account and explaining performance rather than doing the job that they should be doing.

Q250 Mr Prosser: On that theme, what is the danger of having too much local accountability, in that the local police force will start responding to a populist demands and to try to reassure local communities rather than using the most effective way of combating real crime? Is there a danger of that?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, except that the community should have a mechanism of identifying the priorities for their area. Yes, there is a danger of the vested interest and the person who shouts loudest gets the most resources, but I think the whole thing - you must not lose sight of the fact, although you have this local operating - has got to operate within a framework of corporacy, a framework of corporacy from the BCU and a framework of corporacy within the force.

Q251 Mr Prosser: What is your view on possible proposals to replace police authorities with local agencies with responsibility for safety?

Sir Keith Povey: I think police authorities are getting better at what they do. At one stage just a few years ago there were no independent members on police authorities. Now there are five on each authority. When that was first suggested there was an outcry. Most police authority chairmen now, most locally elected members of a police authority, will say that those independent members have brought a real benefit to the authority. I still think the concept of a police authority is right. It may well be that the make-up and the membership of that authority would benefit from some degree of scrutiny.

Q252 Mr Prosser: In your written evidence to the Committee you talked about some partnerships being positively dysfunctional rather than being supportive and helpful. Would you like to give us some details of that?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes. It is like the curate's egg. You have a number of partnerships that do work cohesively, that do share intelligence, that do have joint targets and that work together, but there are a number of other partnerships where exactly the opposite appertains. Health, for example; they have a different agenda and their targets do not synchronise with police. You get some partnerships where sharing of intelligence is very difficult. I undertook a thematic inspection three or four years ago called Calling Time on Crime, which identified these very issues and in fact made a number of recommendations about sharing information, about coterminosity. I think the Government has an obligation here in trying to identify common objectives, common targets, common performance indicators across the whole community safety framework.

Q253 Mr Prosser: You also say in your evidence that there is a regulatory gap in the way police authorities are governed or regulated. Should there be actual external regulation of authorities, and if there is, what is the danger of them losing that independence?

Sir Keith Povey: I passionately believe that police authorities do need to be subject to some form of scrutiny or inspection. They operate in disparate ways, have disparate resources. I am not saying one model fits all, but although they are independent and have oversight of the police force, police authorities surely do have some means of accountability. There should be some means of holding them to account. Bearing in mind it is the police authority who ultimately are responsible for the annual Policing Plan within that area, it is the police authority who are ultimately responsible for ensuring that that Policing Plan reflects the government priorities in the National Policing Plan, they should be inspected. If you have a police authority and a police force, and HMIC are inspecting the police force, to my mind it would be ludicrous to have anyone other than HMIC inspect the police authority.

Mr Prosser: You have answered my last question.

Q254 Mr Singh: Sir Keith, do you think we would have a more effective police force if it were national?

Sir Keith Povey: No, I do not, and that is a big political question as well. I am presently holding a remit from the Home Secretary to actually look at the structure of the 43 police forces in England and Wales - I know you are aware of that - and it is a piece of work we are doing at the moment, but the more you go into that, the more complex it becomes. If you were starting from scratch, I am sure you would not have 43 forces, and you would not have forces the size of Bedfordshire, Dorset, Cleveland, Gloucestershire. So you could make a case for a force being of an optimum size of 3,000-5,000 but all the evidence that we have gathered shows there is no correlation between size and performance and outcomes in relation particularly to volume of crime. So we are coming at it from another angle at the moment, looking at what the aim of a force is. The aim of a force is to protect the community, so how good they are, whether they have the capability and the capacity to protect that community from serious and organised crime, from terrorism, from the major, level 2 criminality. If they do not, how can they get that capacity? Would it require mergers or would it require greater collaboration? That piece of work is currently being undertaken, and I am not too sure what the outcome will be.

Q255 Mr Singh: You mentioned Cambridgeshire earlier on in your evidence, and in relation to that, would a national police force not have been helpful in that situation by moving resources around and not impacting on the effectiveness in Cambridgeshire? Secondly, if we are talking about Soham, information moving to Cambridgeshire was very poor, was it not? Information moving from one force to another let the community down.

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, there was a whole Bichard impact there. Can I park that for a moment and come back? What did happen in Cambridgeshire ultimately was there was massive mutual aid coming from other forces, and that might be the way forward. Most forces, even the bigger forces, would have had difficulty coping with a Soham, so at some stage there has to be a movement of resources, but it is a case of is the pain worth the gain? To actually merge forces is massively disruptive in relation to performance, finance and human resources. It would also have an impact on government objectives and outcomes. So it is a case of trying to get an evidence base that will actually show that this is an optimum force, this is what a force should look like if it is going to have the capability to protect the communities that it serves, and then, on that evidence base, move to whatever mergers that needs.

Q256 Mr Singh: Would it improve the sharing of information and access to information at a national level?

Sir Keith Povey: That is a different issue. You could even have difficulties within forces of BCUs sharing information, and I think until such time as we have a system that is applied nationally, that is backed by technology that will allow information-sharing on a basis that did not happen in Cambridgeshire at the time of the Soham incidents... If you look at what is happening in Scotland at the moment - and Bichard identified it - Scotland have a national intelligence database system, where the eight forces in Scotland can actually share their information with no difficulty. PITO are looking at adopting a similar system called Impact at the moment within forces in England and Wales. I think that will be about two or three years off. It is something that the service is addressing but it is a weakness.

Q257 Mr Singh: You were talking about local accountability earlier. What would happen to local accountability in a national police force? Would it exist?

Sir Keith Povey: If you had a national police force, you would still have local accountability. The impact on the officer dealing with a burglary and speaking to the community of regional forces or a national force I think is zero. That is an administrative function, in a way. There is also this protection approach. Local delivery is not in any major way dependent upon the structure of that particular force or that particular region.

Q258 Mr Singh: So there could still be local accountability for local delivery?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes.

Q259 Mr Singh: In the Green Paper the Government has ideas of strategic forces and lead forces. What are your opinions about those two ideas?

Sir Keith Povey: Again, that is something that we are looking at at the moment. A strategic force I see as a force that would have the capacity and capability within its own resources to deal with all those issues that we have just discussed but it may well be, instead of going through the upheaval of getting to that, that you could identify forces which were particularly good at particular functions and let them take the lead in that function, supported by surrounding forces, whether that be within a region or cross-region. Again, we could all sit here and draw different maps, collapsing those 43 forces into a smaller number, but I think if I am going to advise government, it has to be evidence-based. I have to be able to say quite categorically, and we are actually working with ACPO, with the National Centre for Policing Excellence and the Association of Police Authorities at the moment so that we come to a consensus on what the shape of the structure will be.

Q260 Mr Singh: In a sense, we already have a lead force in counter-terrorism: the Met. What other examples of lead forces could there be?

Sir Keith Povey: City of London could be a lead force in relation to fraud investigation. West Midlands and Greater Manchester could take the lead on major crime investigation. There are a number of functions located around the country.

Q261 Mr Singh: Is it a concern that, if lead forces came about - and they are virtually there anyway in those three areas you mentioned - other forces would lose their specialists to those lead forces and be unable to do their own police work?

Sir Keith Povey: That is a very good point. My view is that if you went down the path of lead forces, in a period of time - and it would be short-term I think, three to five years - there would be a natural merger of those forces as the smaller forces lost their functions.

Q262 Mr Singh: Who would a lead force be accountable to? To a minister or a police authority as at present? If they became accountable to ministers, for example, would that affect the tripartite structure between a chief police officer, the Home Secretary and the police authority? Will it undermine that?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, it would if they were accountable to ministers. I think the accountability would be much the same as it is now within the tripartite agreement.

Q263 Mr Singh: So it would not be affected then?

Sir Keith Povey: No.

Q264 Chairman: Mr Evans, three years ago the Home Office published a study showing that police officers spent 47% of their time inside a police station. They then initiated a huge programme of bureaucracy reduction and so on. If a diary were done today, what difference would it make to how much time the average police officer spends inside a police station?

Mr Evans: Based on the evidence that we have, I think we are looking at 63% of an officer's time being spent on front-line duties, with the goal of bringing that up to 73%, I believe.

Q265 Chairman: If 64% of a police officer's time is spent on front-line duties - and that is not just patrolling the streets, dealing with crime, making inquiries, surveillance and interviewing suspects; it also includes case file preparation - what on earth are they doing with the other 36% of the time?

Sir Keith Povey: I think the other 36% of the time is undertaking those functions that were identified in The Diary of a Policeman. Officers in stations filling out forms that will support the evidential nature of the case ----

Q266 Chairman: Sorry. Is that not case file preparation?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes.

Q267 Chairman: That is included in the 64%.

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, it is.

Q268 Chairman: It is the other 36%, which is not patrolling streets, interviewing suspects, investigating crimes or doing case file preparation that I am interested in. This is a third of all the time of police officers. What are they spending their time doing?

Sir Keith Povey: What I was saying was that case file preparation is paperwork in a station, but counts towards the 64%. There is a lot of other form filling, unfortunately, that they still have to do that is not case file preparation that will account for some of that. Some of it is accounted for by refreshment breaks, time spent in the station undertaking relief functions in custody suites. I think The Diary of a Policeman snapshot actually did identify those functions. The activity-based costing that has been taking place recently is indicating that more time is being spent outside than hitherto but there is still a long way to go. I still think the 73% is achievable given the work that has come out of the David O'Dowd bureaucracy-reducing task force, but to be fair to that, there is still some way to go in relation to reducing bureaucracy.

Q269 Chairman: Mr Evans, I know your focus on performance is on the outcomes of policing rather than the inputs, but when you have been to look at poorly-performing forces, have you found that they tend to be the forces that make very poor use of police officer time and fail to get people out on the streets and doing the job, or is there not a correlation between performance and the effective management of the police force?

Mr Evans: There has not been a correlation that we have been able to make. Obviously, one of the things we do look at is where you have your front-line officers, and what times you need them most. That is something we have been very actively doing with a number of forces to date.

Q270 Chairman: I am not quite sure, gentlemen, whether anything very much has changed in the last three years despite all the emphasis on police bureaucracy. Would you have said that a police officer who perhaps for some reason had been out of the country for three years who went back into his local police station today would say, "Wow! This has changed a lot since all this fuss about bureaucracy three years ago" or would it look and feel pretty much like it did when the report was being published?

Mr Evans: I was not here when the report was published, but based on my sources, I can say that 27 out of the 52 recommendations have been implemented. Others are awaiting IT legislation, but, for instance, fixed penalty notices get the officers out of the arrest business, take them away from that, and the video parades, where before they would be tied up doing that. Airwave is looked at as a way to do it. I think just the fact now that we are in the business of measuring bureaucracy and insisting on efficiencies has resulted in some gains. Each force now is required to have a bureaucracy officer who is paying attention to that issue. I think there is an ACC whose sole responsibility is to go around and look at those issues. Like an awful lot of things, it is something that we are focusing on. I think the goal is to get up to 73%, and that will be the equivalent of another 12,000 officers, so there is an awful lot of work going into achieving that.

Q271 David Winnick: Leading on to some extent from what the Chair has asked, my question is about the position over the Government's agenda in trying to reform police pay and conditions and working practices. If we take one factor, sickness absence, I understand it has fallen from 12 days per officer to some 10.4 in the year 2003. Is it intended to try and achieve much more of a reduction?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, it is. In fact, the next target is to get down to eight days a year. There is a bit of a success story there actually in reduction of sickness. The target was originally set at 11 or 10.5 and certainly they achieved that, but because there have been achievements in occupational health, because there has been money put into that, I think it has affected sickness.

Q272 David Winnick: Let us be blunt about it: how far is there a feeling that sickness absence has been widely abused?

Sir Keith Povey: I think there will always be abuse of sickness in any organisation, but I think now the police service, given the dangerous nature of the job that they do as well ----

Q273 David Winnick: Which is not in question.

Sir Keith Povey: ---- the number of officers assaulted, I do believe that the police service now compares quite favourably, more than favourably, certainly with the prison service, the fire service and the civil service, all of which have higher levels of sickness than the police service.

Q274 David Winnick: As you say, it is intended to reduce it further. Within what period of time did you say?

Sir Keith Povey: I think it is within the next two to three years.

Q275 David Winnick: As regards police pay and conditions, as far as the ordinary police officers are concerned, would you say there is less concern than there was about their pay and conditions? I remember, for example, at conferences the Home Secretary of the day would be booed when it came to such matters. Is the situation different now?

Sir Keith Povey: Police pay has kept pace with inflation. There are some issues around the PNP agreements in relation to Special Priority Payments and areas of that nature, but I think the general level of pay throughout the service is reasonable.

Q276 David Winnick: That is your view, but should we say that there is less agitation on the subject than previously? Is there less representation over pay matters?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, most certainly. There is this pay formula that gives them an increase every September, and certainly there have not been police officers marching on Whitehall recently.

Q277 David Winnick: So we have noticed. Other people have, but not police officers of late. When the Association of Police Authorities gave evidence to us at our last session they criticised the new system of appraisal of chief officers by your organisation, Sir Keith, arguing that police authorities should have the primary role rather than your organisation. What would you say to that point?

Sir Keith Povey: Could I just go back in time? About two years ago I sat on a working group that was looking at this particular issue and government had required that chief officers be appraised. ACPO did not want to be appraised by chairmen of police authorities, on the basis, they said, that they did not have the necessary skills to do that. They made the plea that the only group of people with those skills are the regional HMIs, four of them, all of whom have been chief constables and have been appraising people throughout their careers. This is not a piece of work that HMIC were desperate to get, because there was quite a resource implication to that. To actually undertake that work necessitated at least two days out of the year, seeing the chief, seeing the chairman, doing the documentation. Each HMI has got about 12 forces. That is 24-25 days a year, which is an additional five weeks of work. So it was not something we were desperate to get hold of. Having said that - and we have only been doing it for a year - my colleagues tell me it is working very well and has given them substantial down-time with chiefs and with chairs. I still think I would reflect the ACPO view that some chairs of authorities are excellent and do have the skill set in that area, and in fact do undertake almost parallel PDRs with their chiefs in addition to the one undertaken by HMIC, but there are others that perhaps are short in that particular skill area.

Q278 David Winnick: Since this seems to be somewhat of a tussle, are you proposing to have informed talks with Ruth Henig and her colleagues to see if there could be a satisfactory outcome?

Sir Keith Povey: We do. In fact, I meet with the APA executive every six months, and this has been an ongoing discussion. At the moment, the way it is couched is that it is our responsibility, with a responsibility to consult with the police authority. It will be interesting to see what the White Paper says on that, because I think they have been making representations in that area as well.

Q279 Mr Prosser: Sir Keith, in July you published a document on the modernisation and civilianisation of the police force. Can you tell us what responses you have had to that paper?

Sir Keith Povey: In fact, the response has been fairly muted. The Federation did not welcome it. They saw it as an attack on the office of constable, and Sir Ronnie, who actually did that piece of work, at a bilateral meeting we had with the Federation said that that was not the issue at all, but there is a need to move into the 21st century, to look at the skill set that individuals need to deliver that particular service, and surely we are now coming to a point of view where you do not necessarily need all the powers and training of a constable to undertake certain of those areas. Community Support officers are a perfect example of that, but I think we need to go further than that because we could train people as investigators, we could give them the interviewing skills and the investigative skills, and set them up as investigators, without having to go through the whole panoply of training in relation to uniformed police constables.

Q280 Mr Prosser: So can we say that the rank of constable is under threat in the future?

Sir Keith Povey: Not at all. There will always be a need for the office of constable, the integrity of that office, the Crown appointment of that office. I do not see that changing. I think there is a commitment, and I have heard the Home Secretary say that there is no intention to reduce the current 140,000 officers in this country, that anything else will be complementary to that.

Q281 Mr Prosser: What scope is there for bringing in a unified pay and conditions structure throughout the police service, taking into account civilian staff and police officers?

Sir Keith Povey: I think that does need addressing because, although there are national pay scales for the police officers, the police staff pay scales are determined at a local level and there is disparity throughout the country and throughout regions, of course. So you can still have national frameworks for those pay scales. The whole object of the exercise of police staff going back in time was to get them to undertake functions that police officers were undertaking to release them from outside duty because they were a cheaper resource than paying a police officer to undertake functions for which they did not need that sort of training. At the moment we have the situation where in a control room, for example, you will have a PC sat next to a police staff member, and the PC will be paid substantially more than the police staff member doing exactly the same job. That is a result of history.

Q282 Mr Prosser: Taking that a bit further, how useful or otherwise is it to continue to have this fundamental distinction between the police officer of the Crown and the civilian staff member? Is there a need for that?

Sir Keith Povey: Perhaps from a public perception, yes, they need to know that what sort of status the person they are dealing with has. But I think as we have come on, in the last five years certainly, and we start talking about an extended police family, and we start talking about responsibility for delivery, that demarcation begins to blur, and perhaps in another four or five years it will blur completely as we encourage more and more police staff to undertake those functions that I was talking about earlier that have traditionally been undertaken by police officers.

Q283 Mr Prosser: In your earlier evidence today you gave us an indication of how supportive you are of this new role of Community Support Officer. Should they be confined to particular areas of responsibility?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, they should, because the more you widen their area of responsibility, the more you run the risk, coming back to the point the Chairman made - at the moment CSOs spend something like 90% of their time out there, which is what they were employed for - of bringing them more and more into the station and doing things that they should not be doing, or doing things that detract from their primary role.

Q284 Mr Prosser: I get the impression that different forces have taken up this issue of the CSOs with different levels of enthusiasm. First of all, is that the case, and how do you overcome that if you want to spread CSOs throughout the 43 constabularies?

Sir Keith Povey: I think all forces now have embraced the concept of CSOs. Some do in fact want to widen their area of responsibility; others want to restrict it. I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing. It is a case of, provided there are national parameters outside which they should not go, then there should be a degree of flexibility within that as to what the chief officer determines will be their role and function within that particular force at that particular time.

Q285 Mr Prosser: The Home Secretary has just told us that he is going to appoint a further 20,000 CSOs within the next three months, and we are in a position where the first 4,000 CPOs have not really had their formal assessment, which I think is coming out at the end of this year. Do you think that is wise timing?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, I do because I think although the formula of evaluation is not yet complete, findings are emerging from that and, as I say, travelling around the country, sitting in numerous focus groups, I just have not heard any criticism of the role of CSOs. In fact, they have been broadly welcomed. I think most forces would actually be fairly pleased at the resource of an additional number of CSOs, particularly as they are provided free of charge.

Q286 Mr Prosser: Finally, you have said that there will probably always be some distinction between the roles and functions of the Community Support Officer and the mainline policeman but the Government is talking about giving them wider responsibilities and more powers. How do you welcome that?

Sir Keith Povey: As I say, the downside is that the more you widen their role, the more you run the risk of detracting from what they were first put there for, and that was massive visibility. It is in its very early stages, so I have no doubt that there is room for growth. It is just a case of balancing those tensions and making sure that you do not do it to such an extent that you do detract from its original purpose.

Q287 Bob Russell: We have heard about the CSOs, the expansion, the culture change in a way, with the blurring of part of the police family. Do you think that those CSOs should be represented by the Police Federation - I understand at the moment they are not allowed to join - or do you think they would be better off joining the Transport & General Workers' Union?

Sir Keith Povey: At a meeting with the Federation executive about three months ago I actually said to them that they should stop the in-fighting with CSOs and embrace them within the Federation, and I see that as a clear way forward. So my answer to that would be a resounding "yes."

Q288 Mr Taylor: The voice of reaction: you are either a policeman or you are not. Part of my deal as a citizen with the police is that a policeman shall have more powers than I have. I am happy about the deal because he is protecting me; he stands between me and violence. So, Sir Keith, you are either a policeman or you are not. Would you care to respond to that?

Sir Keith Povey: Yes, you are, and you are quite right; police officers do have substantially more powers than you to protect you.

Q289 Mr Taylor: I am content with that.

Sir Keith Povey: CSOs are not, and never have purported to be police officers. So I think there is a clear distinction, different roles, and different measures of performance. No, I do not have a difficulty with it.

Chairman: Mr Taylor clearly has not tried parking in Islington recently!

Q290 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: My question is directed to Mr Evans. I live in a seaside resort and we have an awful lot of problems with quad bikes, and when we do, my constituents rush up my garden and say, "What are you going to do about it?" and I rush down my garden with my digital camera and photograph them, and then I seek to hand on this marvellous evidence to the police. At that point I am told, "I am sorry, that evidence is not good enough." It seems to me that IT has come a long way, and when I look at police officers on the street, with bits of flimsy paper and booklets, I wonder why no digital camera, why no link-up directly with head office, why not embrace modern technology and all that it brings in order to make the jobs of people on the ground a little easier? From where you stand, given your remit, what about the role of IT in the police today, and where do you think we are in terms of delivering the potential of IT?

Mr Evans: I think we are on the way. I was in Derbyshire last Friday, where they were working with their crime lab, which was taking fingerprints at a crime scene and transmitting them directly into the national automated fingerprint identification system. The result was that within four hours, for instance, of a burglary, they were actually getting the print back, something that would normally take days and possibly weeks. From the chief superintendent's perspective, what did that mean? It is their experience that if somebody starts breaking into houses, they will just continue until they are caught, so by moving very quickly to identify the fingerprints, they can head off six or seven burglaries. That type of IT, DNA/forensic stuff, is all cutting-edge and it is happening. My experience is that the problem with IT is what you get today in six months is antiquated. The key to science and technology is making sure that you get systems across the board that are interoperable, that can talk to each other. One of the things I am finding is if systems do not talk to each other, you run into real problems. It is establishing standards so that when you have the money to spend on IT, and it is well spent, it can be shared right across the board with the 43 forces.

Q291 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: That is one example of good practice. Is it indicative of what is going on throughout police forces in the UK? How much of a job have you got to do in terms of copying that good practice into other areas?

Mr Evans: It becomes an increasing priority. When we were dealing with the issue of police bureaucracy, I missed the idea of Livescan. There are 198 sites in the UK now that do fingerprints, not in the old inked way but immediately electronically transfer them and identify people who may give false names. So there is a tremendous advancement going on in technology in a number of different fields. Again, video parades is another example. ANPR is another one in the detection arena where I think some of the officers are averaging 100 arrests a month based on the Automated Number Plate Recognition scheme. So where I am coming from, probably nobody is as sophisticated in the use of technology, whether it be CCTV, ANPR, forensics, as the UK is. Does there continue to need to be advancement in that area? Absolutely.

Q292 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Would you play a significant role in developing a strategy for IT within police authorities given the significant nature in terms of performance?

Mr Evans: Yes. Currently we are exploring, for instance, forensics, getting the very best forensic processes in place, IT systems in place, so that we can do the turn-around time, whether it is DNA, fingerprints, or whatever other evidence, very quickly, so we can make cases much more quickly. One of the things that PSU has done is when it has seen promising technology that can make a significant contribution to policing, we have invested in it: the ANPR, the video parades, whatever is out there, we are willing to commit the limited resources we have to see if we can pilot it and make it successful.

Q293 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I do not know if you heard this morning the Health Minister talking about finding a system for the health service, an IT system which spoke one language and allowed a significant degree of connectivity between the various health authorities operating in the UK. Given what you have said today, do you sense that that holistic approach, a fully integrated system, would be of invaluable benefit?

Mr Evans: Absolutely. Record management systems exist such that if you feed in, for instance, a description of a subject that may have tattoos, or give partial number plates, you can scan all the various databases and almost immediately come up with a list of suspects. The more you have the ability to share all the databases, the greater your ability to as quickly as possible identify perpetrators, so your ability to get IT systems that can talk to each other is going to enhance your information-sharing ability. I think that is certainly the case.

Q294 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Would it be down to your unit to produce the terms of reference for that review for IT systems?

Mr Evans: I do not believe so. I think that is more appropriately in PITO's area.

Q295 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: One final question: have you identified difficulties with call handling in your work? Is this an issue for the authorities that you have been working with?

Mr Evans: I think Sir Keith and the HMIs have done a thematic on it and he can probably speak far better on this subject than I can, but in our work with one of the forces, West Yorkshire, we have dedicated some finances to try to help them to deal better with their call handling abilities. I think across the 43 forces it is probably an area that has to be looked at closely. I know right now we are looking at the whole idea of diverting non-emergency calls away from 999 and what-have-you. That is again an area where first contact with the public is absolutely critical and we need to get it right. A probable starting point will be the thematic coming out of Sir Keith's office.

Q296 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: You made some comments concerning gun crime. Are you more concerned about gun crime or knife crime in this country?

Mr Evans: When you look at volumes, certainly knife crime is of greater significance. Both of them are very, very serious, life-threatening positions. Sometimes it is just focusing on both of them. I think gun crime probably gets greater play in the media, but I think they both have to be top priorities.

Mrs Curtis-Thomas: My parliamentary question last year indicated that knife crime in this country runs at ten times greater than gun crime, and I am pleased to hear what you have had to say today.

Chairman: Gentlemen, you have been here for over two hours. The number of questions shows how much interest there is in the Committee. Thank you very much indeed.