Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
CHIEF CONSTABLE
DR TIM
BRAIN, CHIEF
INSPECTOR JAN
BERRY, CHIEF
SUPERINTENDENT IAN
JOHNSTON, MR
BOB JONES
AND MR
BILL WILKINSON
22 MAY 2007
Q1 Chairman: Good morning. Thank you
very much indeed for coming. We are aware that Dr Brain is unable
to be here for the beginning of this session but because we also
have the Minister coming later on this morning I am afraid it
is just not possible for us to delay the start until he gets here,
so we will have to press on and do the best that we can, and hopefully
he will join us before too long. Can I thank you very much for
coming? Just to explain, for the record, the background to this
inquiry, as individual Members and also as the Chairman of the
Committee, we have received representations from a number of people,
including the APA about the level of the Home Office settlement
and allocations for the police for the next three years. We thought
it would be useful to have a hearing about that settlement. We
intend to draw on today's evidence session and the written evidence
that we have received to produce a brief report, so there will
be some conclusions from the Committee as a result of today. Can
I ask you to introduce yourselves for the record and then we will
get underway.
Chief Inspector Berry: My name
is Jan Berry and I am the Chairman of the Police Federation.
Chief Superintendent Johnston:
I am Ian Johnston; I am President of the Police Superintendents'
Association.
Mr Wilkinson: I am Bill Wilkinson;
I am Clerk and Treasurer of South Yorkshire Police Authority and
I act as an adviser to the APA.
Mr Jones: My name is Bob Jones
and I chair the Association of Police Authorities.
Q2 Chairman: I am going to say from
the Chair that we are not going to have all witnesses answer all
questions, so do indicate if you are absolutely bursting to add
an additional point to one that has been made, but as far as we
can we will direct them to individuals. Mr Jones, can I start
with you? Do you agree with the Home Office that the 2007-08 settlement
is a fair settlement? On the face of it it is a 3.6% increase
and it is up from the previous year of 3.1% increase?
Mr Jones: Clearly it was welcome
in respect of the fact it showed a continuation of the three-year
settlement; it was welcome on the basis that it was, in terms
of general inflation, slightly above that level of inflation.
However, it did continue to cause us problems because the pressures
that we were under outstrip the level of general inflation and
our calculation is that it meets the difference between the amount
the settlement supported and actual local expenditure. We had
to put £100 million worth of reserves into the 2007-08 budget,
and on top of that a number of individual police authorities had
to make a number of efficiencies, some of which were genuine efficiencies
and some of which were potential reductions in service.
Q3 Chairman: Do you anticipate having
to prioritise some programmes over others to next year, or dropping
some activities?
Mr Jones: I think that is certainly
the case. It is already happening in a number of areas and we
are clearly in dialogue with the Home Office about some of the
national programmes, and we are getting reasonable responses in
some areas. The single non-emergency number is a case in point,
which obviously costs to implement, but as well as costing a lot
in terms of capital and revenue to actually implement also the
pilot areas, including Hampshire, I understand, indicate that
it sucks in a considerable amount of demand for further resource.
So there do seem to be areas like that where we are spending a
lot of money to cost us a lot of money, and I think the Home Office
takes the view that we will continue to evaluate the original
pilot—it is a very welcome one, and I think it is hopefully
the start of a number of areas where we will have to prioritise
a number of areas to ensure that they are affordable.
Q4 Chairman: So the single non-emergency
number is one possible victim of the funding situation. Can you
name any other areas that are actively under consideration like
that at the moment?
Mr Jones: Clearly there are discussions
and these are dialogue between all of the police partners and
often with contractual partners, but clearly with the exception
of the National Police Improvement Agency there are a whole series
of national IT programmes that are going to have to be looked
at to see whether they do have a proper business case that can
actually deliver in these particular areas. So I think the large
number of IT programmes will have to be rationalised in terms
of ensuring that we do get value for money and we do get affordability.
The problem we always have of course is that 80% plus of our expenditure
is related to staff costs and the problem is that, whilst seeking
to have maximum efficiency of resource for the remaining 20%,
there does get to a point where police authorities will be faced
with the fact that they do need to make cuts or efficiencies in
that 80% as clearly there is not anywhere else to go.
Q5 Chairman: Let us look at the use
of money. Total police revenue expenditure increased by 39% after
inflation over the last 10 years; police officer numbers only
increased by 11% over the same period of time. Can the police
authorities explain why it does not look as though a particularly
large proportion of the extra resources actually reached the frontline?
Mr Jones: In terms of the total
numbers of staff clearly the total figure between 1997 and 2007
went up from 180,000 to 227,000. 127,000 to 141,000, an extra
14,000 were police officers. In terms of civilians it went up
from 53,000 to 86,000. Obviously some people would suggest that
that is additional bureaucracy. I do feel that it enables us to
release police officers for frontline duties. Obviously some of
those are PCSOs but clearly across the whole of the service—custody
assistance, forensics, scenes of crime, examiners, control rooms,
we have seen the position where we have been able to put in specialist
police staff which has released police officers to do their mainline
business, and I do think that is part of the efficiency and one
of the reasons why we have had some extremely impressive outputs
in terms of the return of the investment that has been put in
both nationally and locally. For instance, the top level, when
I first joined the Police Authority the HR was being done by an
Assistant Chief Constable; the IT was being done by a senior police
officer; the chauffeur of the Chief Constable and Assistant Chief
Constable was a police officer, and those have all been replaced
by specialist civilians who represent much better value for money,
much better expertise and have actually freed up an immense number
of police officers to be out on the street doing their core job.
Q6 Chairman: Mr Johnston, I will
come to you in the absence of Dr Brain. There is no doubt, of
course, that crime levels overall have fallen substantially over
the past ten years, but the public, none the less, think that
crime levels are too high and that the primary job of the service
is to bring criminals to justice. We look at this big increase
in civilian staff, we look at the big increase in police numbers
and yet the recent increase in what the government call "offences
brought to justice" is almost entirely made up of warnings
for cannabis, fixed penalty notices and cautions for trivial offences.
The police have this huge increase in resources but we do not
seem to have more criminals brought to court, which, by and large,
is what our constituents think that the police service should
be doing. So how is it that the police have had this huge increase
in resources and staffing that Mr Jones has talked about and actually
had what seems to be a disappointing result in bringing criminals
to book?
Chief Superintendent Johnston:
You are absolutely, right, it is fairly complex. A number of things.
First of all, we do not seem to get much credit nowadays for the
34% reduction.
Q7 Chairman: I did at least try to
acknowledge it!
Chief Superintendent Johnston:
The credit for that is sometimes claimed by others. We do not
hear too much nowadays about the huge reduction in burglaries
and auto crime that blighted us some years ago. Nevertheless,
you are right, we have had an increase in numbers. The difficulty
for us, from our association, is about delivery now. You talked
earlier to Bob Jones about priorities. Neighbourhood policing
models, yes, we are very much in support; addressing protective
services and the gap as identified with the HMIC, we are very
much in support; but it is becoming more and more apparent that
the missing element and why the public is dissatisfied and we
do not have the public confidence at the moment is the response
policing part of the delivery, and where we are seeing some quite
ridiculous tales about the use of police resources is linked to
performance—and we will perhaps come on to that in a minute.
What I want to stress this morning is that we cannot forget both
the role of the response policing—that is our first response—and
it is all very well to put neighbourhood policing in place and
addressing protective services, we need those, but not at the
expense and to the exclusion of response policing.
Q8 Chairman: The question that is
in my mind—because you all wrote to us saying that you do
not have enough money—is that if we look at the statistics
the sharpest fall in things like burglary and car crime occurred
in the first half of the last 10 years or the first six years
or so of the last 10 years, since when the government usually
says that the BCUS say that crime is stable—sometimes it
has come down but generally it has been stable. The big increase
in police staffing has happened in the second half of the past
ten years. How can we be confident that the police service, whether
we are talking about the police authorities or the police service
in terms of professional police officers, are actually using the
money they have had, particularly over the last five years, with
the efficiency and effectiveness that you are statutorily bound
to provide, because they prove that the statistics—and I
suggest it is that—is that actually you cannot relate the
fall in crime to the sharp increase in police staffing and police
resources in any direct way. What we might have expected is more
criminals taken to court, given that we have far more police officers,
and why has that not happened?
Chief Superintendent Johnston:
I think there is a difference between criminals taken to court
and offences brought to justice.
Q9 Chairman: There is, but I have
tried to highlight that some of us are slightly sceptical that
having an explosion of cannabis cautions and fixed penalty notices—and
I am in favour of fixed penalty notices because the drunks who
get them used not to have anything done to them at all, so it
is a good thing—but it is not comparing like with like and
in terms of the core of criminals we are not bringing more of
them to court.
Chief Superintendent Johnston:
We in the police—and this is going to sound defensive—are
sometimes on the end of mixed messages as well. Is it that we
need to send more people to prison or is it we send less people
to prison? It changes every week. That is not being facetious
but we are getting mixed messages. In terms of offences brought
to justice I think that this is an opportunity for us to say here
and now today that the performance measurement, quite frankly,
is in a mess in some parts of the country as to officers knowing
exactly what they should be doing and what counts. That is why
we have arrived at some of the situations we have. I know that
the performance framework has been re-examined and ready for next
April but we still need to look at things like sanction detections,
the Home Office counting rules and the performance framework so
that officers on the frontline know exactly what it is that counts.
Q10 Chairman: We will come back to
this. Mr Jones, can I come back to you? Police authorities are
charged with ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the
police service; I think that is still a statutory role. You have
had this big increase in resources and you know that across the
country, in the forces for which you are responsible, we have
not seen more criminals brought to court. Police authorities have
written to us saying, "We need more money" but what
have you done as police authorities to make sure that the money
you have had is being used effectively?
Mr Jones: We have introduced a
whole series of initiatives and clearly the big headline figure,
of course, is in terms of the efficiency gain. The efficiency
gain since 1999-2000 to date represents 1.76 billion, 4.1% of
budgets, as endorsed by Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary.
So we believe we are at the forefront of both the public sector
but, arguably the private sector, in terms of driving out that
sort of efficiency. In terms of its impact on crime—and
of course one of the other statistics is that the risk of being
a victim has fallen from 40% to 24%, and the fact that we are
just about filling up prisons and to what degree we are deterring
crime and in particular a lot of the work in terms of partnerships,
with crime and disorder partnerships, which obviously also is
extremely effective but was still introduced without any additional
resources whatsoever, as were youth offending teams and steering
young people away from that. All those areas, where we hope that
it is not just a question of enforcement and putting people before
a court but actually steering people away from lives of crime
also costs money as well.
Chairman: Richard Benyon.
Q11 Mr Benyon: To Mr Jones and Mr
Wilkinson, in the joint submission of ACPO and the Association
of Police Authorities for the CSR bid the submission says that,
"Analysis of police budgets has consistently shown that the
police service needs annual net resource increases of at least
5% in order to stand still." However, confirmed average budget
requirement increase in 2007-08 was only 4.69% and your projected
year on year required increase is under 5% in both the following
two years. Where did this 5% minimum requirement come from if
your projected requirement is in fact barely over this in the
next financial year and under it in the following two years?
Mr Wilkinson: The 5% calculation,
each year we approach all the 43 forces and ask them for their
assessment of what it will cost to stand still and to meet new
commitments, taking account of inflation and everything else that
is happening. That calculation comes out anywhere between 5% and
7% and has done for many years. The reason for that is that it
is not just inflation which is affecting costs but there is a
long, long list of other things which add to the budget of any
service—I do not think the police is alone in this but I
think it is affected more than most. For instance, the latest
returns include about 3% for inflation, which is probably what
you would have expected it needed to be, but on top of that there
were substantial provisions in forces for the full year effect
of growth that had happened in the previous year, for the revenue
consequences of capital investment, additional debt charges and
additional charges for running costs—things like airwave
and number plate recognition systems. New systems come in but
they always cost more to run than previous ones—modernisation
does have a cost to it. Minor items like staff pensions costs—the
cost of pensions as we all know and it is adding to the cost of
police budgets. Add all those together and in actual fact it came
out at something like 6.5% and that was after allowing for some
cash efficiency savings. So that is the realistic assessment of
what forces need.
Q12 Mr Benyon: So the 4.69% was not
accurate?
Mr Wilkinson: No, it is not; the
4.69 was the actuality. We collected the figures on the cost of
standing still probably last autumn when authorities were preparing
their budgets. When the settlement came out it was obviously at
a lower level and authorities could only afford to increase budgets
by 4.69%, as you say. The way they covered that gap was from drawing
on reserves, by cutting back at the margin, by not investing as
much as they would like to do, by deferring things, and a whole
range of short-term measures like that, and that is how the two
figures are brought into line.
Q13 Mr Benyon: I understand that,
but do you also understand the importance of getting that projection
figure in your CSR submission right, because we as MPs are constantly
contacted by our police authority to put pressure on ministers
about their requirements in forthcoming years, and then if ministers
are able to come back and say that your CSR projected increase
for 2007-08 was 8%, and in fact the outcome, as you have just
said, was 4.69%, are you satisfied that your systems are right
and that all your local authorities are providing you with as
detailed evidence as they can to back up your submission?
Mr Jones: Could I jump in? We
are still confident that the projection was a correct one and
the ACPO business area forecasts the 1.2 billion committed growth
over the five years just in terms of pressure. The gap between
the 4.69% we actually got and the amount that we actually projected
is explained by the use of reserves, £100 million, reduce
of efficiencies, et cetera, so we understand that the gap is very
much a reality. Without those use of reserves, without those reductions,
without, in some cases, very substantial increases in council
tax precept that gap would have been wholly in terms of service
reductions.
Chairman: Jeremy Browne.
Q14 Mr Browne: This is directed mainly
at Mr Jones and Mr Wilkinson. Reading the background briefing
we had the figure we have been given is that 82% of Chief Constables
surveyed state that "cuts will impact on police officer numbers".
To be fair on the government there has been a substantial increase
in police officer numbers over the ten years since 1997, but it
has begun to taper off, in fact slightly drift down, but is it
your calculation that we will see further and more dramatic falls
in the overall number of police officers across the 43 forces?
Mr Jones: Clearly it is our intention
to avoid that if at all possible. We would wish to maintain the
number of police officers if at all possible, but clearly if we
do not have sufficient resources we are in a dilemma in terms
of where the savings have to come from, given that 80% is staff
related. Clearly there are some areas where there may be some
scope for continued civilianisation workforce mix, which may enable
us to release police officers, which in fact puts more police
officers on the streets but might have a negative impact on the
total number of police officers, and clearly that may be looked
at by some of my members up and down the country. But I think
they are very much committed. Our key frontline person is a police
officer and we need them out there and apart from areas where
we can change the workforce mix to use them more efficiently,
get them out on the streets more, I would think that we would
very much wish to resist any attempts to reduce them. But because
they are such an absolutely crucial part of the total budget clearly
it is very difficult to make reductions of this size without looking
at the position of the police officers.
Q15 Mr Browne: You sound reluctant
to do so, but over the three years of the CSR, if you would take,
let us say, the reductions that you talk about fall proportionately
across the board and not weighted in one area rather than another,
can you give any indication of what that would imply for overall
police numbers in England and Wales over the next three years?
Mr Jones: It is difficult to calculate,
depending on how you actually chose that mix but clearly you could
be talking about a move down to the 135,000-136,000.
Q16 Mr Browne: What is it now, 141,000?
Mr Jones: 141,000.
Q17 Mr Browne: So 5,000 fewer police
officers in three years' time, compared to now?
Mr Jones: If it was all concentrated
on police officers. I do not think many police authorities would
take that particular concept.
Q18 Mr Browne: But the worse case
scenario would be 5,000?
Mr Jones: That is an absolute
worse case scenario and clearly all police authorities will be
committed to avoiding that.
Q19 Mr Browne: I come to a related
question. In some sections of the police service there is quite
a lot of antipathy towards Community Support Officers, although
in others I get a sense that the view is a bit more positive about
the role they can play. I have had some police officers in my
own area that have said that they quite envy PCSOs because they
regard PCSOs as doing the type of traditional policing that brought
them into the force in the first place 15 to 20 years ago in terms
of community relations and so forth. I know this is a sensitive
area but do you think there is any scope for putting a greater
amount of money, a greater amount of emphasis into the role of
PCSOs, even if it means that it is to the detriment of the overall
full time policing numbers?
Mr Jones: Clearly we think that
decisions about how you deploy combinations of police in terms
between police officers, PCSOs and police support staff should
be made by local Chief Constables in consultation with their local
communities in terms of the needs of particular local policing,
and clearly it is a strategy that may be pursued in some areas.
But clearly the role of the PCSO is different and is meant to
supplement that of police officers, who are meant to be the eyes
and ears and visible presence of police officers on the ground,
and there is a limited amount where you can substitute a PCSO
for a fully trained police officer with powers. I think the advantage
of the PCSOs is the fact that because they have not been involved
in that degree of training and they are not involved in issues
like arrests, et cetera, they are able to stay out on the streets
and not be involved in extensive paperwork, court cases, et cetera,
so clearly substituting PCSOs for the role of police officers
would actually undermine their greatest advantage.
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