Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260
- 279)
TUESDAY 12 OCTOBER 2004
SIR KEITH
POVEY AND
MR PAUL
EVANS
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.
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