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Nick Herbert: I will not be drawn into commenting on the precept to fund the Olympics, but it is true that the public will need to be reassured that PCSOs provide value for money. In that respect, the latest Home Office-sponsored official assessment of PCSOs, which indicated that there was no evidence that they reduced antisocial behaviour in the areas where they operate, by comparison with areas where they did not operate, is, I expect, a source of concern in all parts of the House. We
 
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do not wish the deployment of PCSOs to be undermined, but it is important to demonstrate that they provide value for money for local communities and are doing the job that they are employed to do.

The third way in which increasing central direction will be problematic for police forces is that it undermines the freedom of chief constables to innovate. The existing structure does not allow chief constables to manage their forces flexibly. There are many police authorities and chief constables who would prefer to take different decisions about whether or not to hire PCSOs or police officers, but they are told by the Government that money is available only for certain purposes, and the substantial sums that have been made available for PCSOs are ring-fenced for that purpose. For chief constables who might decide instead to take on fully-fledged police officers, it is not possible to do so.

If we are to ask police authorities and police forces to continue to make efficiency savings as they have done in recent years, and to improve on those savings, we will have to give chief constables more flexibility in managing their work forces. That is not an issue that the Government have been willing to address.

Michael Fabricant: My hon. Friend supports the introduction of PCSOs, and I agree that we would rather have them than have no police presence at all. However, what would he say to my constituent who is a serving police officer in Staffordshire police—I had better not reveal his name—and who says that PCSOs are not real police officers because they have no powers of arrest, and besides if they were any good they would be policemen instead?

Nick Herbert: I would say to my hon. Friend and to the person who made that comment that PCSOs can perform a valuable role in the community in augmenting a uniformed presence and in helping to prevent crime. The absence of their power of arrest, which is controversial, can help them to remain on the streets in their neighbourhoods, which is what is wanted of them, without being detained in police stations for prolonged periods processing arrests. PCSOs also provide a recruiting ground for people who may wish to move on to become fully fledged police officers; and they have succeeded in recruiting from a much broader spectrum of the community, particularly among ethnic minorities, than our regular police force.

For all those reasons, we believe that PCSOs are a welcome development. Indeed, we would like to see an extension of the principle of the police family to provide more wardens and local authority guardians of the kind successfully pioneered by Westminster city council. However, that will depend on funding being available for such positions and, equally, on resources not being wasted on unnecessary amalgamations for no real gain.

Mr. Pelling: Is not my hon. Friend's point about the good calibre of many PCSOs supported by the fact that in the Metropolitan police service 230 of them have gone on to become police officers? Does he agree that there is concern about the speed with which PCSO teams are put together and about the recruitment of the best quality sergeants, who will have a difficult task in managing new members of staff as PCSO teams are put together over a two-year period?
 
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Nick Herbert: Those matters will need to be addressed in a proper assessment of the role of PCSOs. That should be conducted against the background of a general acceptance of the principle of having a more flexible policing structure, with a uniformed presence that does not just mean a regular police officer, but can also mean the extended police family.

Chief constables' ability to innovate will be important if we are to see the efficiency gains necessary to ensure that police forces continue to deliver against difficult financial settlements, such as the one that the Government have announced. There are good examples of local forces showing such innovation and modernising their work forces in a way that drives up productivity substantially. In relation to offender management and custody, Northumbria police have introduced an integrated criminal justice process by developing a range of complementary police support officer roles. A 7 per cent. increase in constable strength at the front line was achieved by releasing police officers from custody and associated duties. Performance has improved, with higher file quality and timeliness; custody-related complaints have fallen by half; and detection rates, which have been a source of concern nationally, have increased by up to 14 per cent.

Similarly, in Surrey the police CID office has been transformed to improve investigation. It was reorganised in order properly to meet public expectations, and the mix of staff was altered to include 60 per cent. of police support officers working with constables in teams led by advance detectives, which has delivered a better service. It has investigated 35 per cent. more crime, halved investigative delays, and tripled follow-up with victims. Moreover, it has improved results. Twenty-five per cent. more offenders are caught, with greater efficiency—in other words, at a quarter less cost. The use of support offices to perform roles that uniformed officers had undertaken can dramatically increase productivity.

Humberside police have reconfigured their major incident rooms by employing police support officers in key roles. That has improved quality, created increased capacity and almost halved costs, which have been reduced by 43 per cent. West Yorkshire police have integrated their investigative support officers and investigation officers into their homicide and major incident teams, again increasing capacity and significantly reducing overall costs.

Some senior police officers estimate that the savings achieved as a result of such work force modernisation could be as much as 20 per cent. It would take a very substantial increase in resources to match that level of improvement. That demonstrates that the input-led approach to policing, which has often been taken, is no longer appropriate when considering their performance. The point, surely, is not that spending on the police has increased: what should matter to us is outcomes. The competing claims that are made for putting police officers on the streets mean nothing if they will not actually be on the streets because they are tied up doing unnecessary jobs.

If we are properly to examine the performance of the police and work out whether it is possible for them to improve their efficiency and make productivity gains—I remind the House that the success of policing under the funding arrangements that the Minister announced
 
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depends substantially on significant continuing efficiency gains—in fairness to them, and so that the public can judge the effectiveness of spending on the police and of additional spending, it will be necessary to have more robust measures of police performance and of crime.

On the measure of recorded crime that the Government no longer like, one crime is committed for every 38 people living in England and Wales and 10 crimes are committed for every police officer. The Government prefer the British crime survey, but that still shows, comparing the levels of extra resources with the outputs of the service, that productivity has fallen. The survey showed falls in crime in the years before steep rises in police funding, which were of course partly borne by the local taxpayer. The rate of the fall in crime as measured by the survey has been unaffected by spending increases since 1999–2000. The arrest rate has fallen slightly since those spending increases, as have detection rates. The number of undetected crimes has reached more than 4.1 million—about a quarter of all crimes committed.

I therefore welcome the Home Secretary's announcement that the way in which crime is measured will be independently reviewed. We are co-operating with the review team that he announced. That review should go alongside a simpler performance assessment framework so that the police can be properly held to account by the public.

Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con): I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the rest of the House. I had to leave shortly after the beginning of the debate because there was considerable anger locally about the statement on police reorganisation, and I had to address that outside the House.

I go back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). Is he aware of the recent study by the Federation of Small Businesses showing that nearly 60 per cent. of businesses questioned were victims of crime during the survey period but that over a quarter did not report the crime because they felt that the police would not be able to catch the criminals? The federation believes that there is massive under-reporting. As the Minister seems to be part of the taskforce with the Home Secretary, will he make sure that he involves the Federation of Small Businesses?

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