Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
CHIEF CONSTABLE
DR TIM
BRAIN, CHIEF
INSPECTOR JAN
BERRY, CHIEF
SUPERINTENDENT IAN
JOHNSTON, MR
BOB JONES
AND MR
BILL WILKINSON
22 MAY 2007
Q20 Mr Browne: I understand your
point. The final question really relates to your point where you
said the worse case scenario is you could shed about 5,000 police
officers. What are the potential implications of PCSOs because
we have seen dramatic increases in their numbers—and I think
most people welcome that—and then there was the controversy
about the 24,000 figure going down to a 16,000 figure. Do you
see that their numbers may even potentially fall or that police
authorities that have planned on the basis of having larger numbers
of PCSOs are now going to have to scale back their plans as a
result of the cash settlement from the Home Office.
Mr Jones: Clearly pressure is
going to come on all forms of staff, whether it is police officers,
PCSOs or others. I think different police authorities will look
at the needs of their area and deploy teams of the combination
of police officers and PCSOs in other ways. I can see it happening
in some areas that they may seek to change the balance slightly
favour of PCSOs and in other areas they may seek to change it
the other way around and have less PCSOs and more police officers.
But it will be a question of effective operational teams that
meet the needs of their area.
Q21 Chairman: Can I ask if Jan Berry
has a view on the idea of police forces tipping the balance towards
PCSOS?
Chief Inspector Berry: I think
I identify with the comments made earlier with regard to some
police officers seeing the role now being undertake by PCSOs as
the one that they joined the job to do, and I am aware that some
police officers are leaving the service and becoming PCSOs and
also the other way around—some are becoming PCSOs as their
method of joining the police service. I think one of the questions
that we all need to ask ourselves is how we are going to judge
whether this workforce mix is actually a success because there
is something about a feel good factor here which should not be
ignored, but there is very little evidence to either demonstrate
that a PCSO is providing value for money—that is if we know
how it is going to be demonstrated—or whether the patrolling
police officer delivers value for money. I think we need to get
to some of those questions to answer. What I do know is that the
police officer is a far more flexible resource than a PCSO because
a PCSO is only supposed to perform one function. What would be
an interesting question maybe for people to ask at the moment
is what functions are PCSOs undertaking in forces? In the force
very close to where we are sitting at the moment many of the PCSOs
are not out on the streets, they are actually inside police stations
acting as front office assistants; they are actually in police
stations telephoning the victims of crime; they are actually in
police stations recording people's particulars. That is not the
intention of the Police Community Support Officer, the intention
was for them to be the eyes and ears on the streets, and so some
of the 16,000 PCSOs—which I think the target has now been
met—are actually not out on the streets being the eyes and
ears but are actually inside police stations doing some of the
bureaucratic stuff, which, admittedly, my members do not want
to do.[1]
Q22 Bob Russell: Could I follow on with
the Chairman's question and your last answer. Does the Police
Federation regard PCSOs as part of the police family and are PCSOs
allowed to join the Police Federation?
Chief Inspector Berry: No, they
are not police officers, they are not sworn constables; the only
people who can become members of the Police Federation are sworn
constables. That is by statute. Are they regarded as being members
of the police family? There are mixed views. An increasing number
of police officers do see them as being part of the police family,
but, more importantly, every police officer recognises the function
that they undertake. Whether that function should be undertaken
by a sworn police officer or an un-sworn police officer, the visible
professional police presence on the street is absolutely imperative—not
only does it deliver reassurance; it is also there to nip problems
in the bud before they get out of hand. It is also a really good
source from a community point of view of information being gathered
and also being disseminated as well.
Q23 Bob Russell: So who provides
the collective voice of PCSOs?
Chief Inspector Berry: Different
organisations. They are not constables, they are unionised—Unison
certain for forces outside London and PCS for London.
Chairman: David Winnick.
Q24 Mr Winnick: I think all your
responses are being closely monitored by a senior official in
the Home Office, but since we leave in a free country there is
no reason why it should not be. Coming to the question of police
pay and the effect it will have—and I think the Association
of Police Authorities would be the best people to ask—I
want to come to you Ms Berry, first of all. At Blackpool you said
that changes to the basis in which police pay is negotiated could
result in industrial strike action. You are a very responsible
officer of a very responsible organisation and you know better
than anyone else that in 1919 legislation was passed, for reasons
we all know, to prevent industrial strike action by the police.
Are you telling your organisation and are you telling this Home
Affairs Committee that the situation has now reached a point where
you actually want a change in the law which would allow police
officers to take strike action?
Chief Inspector Berry: No, I am
not and I hope that we never ever reach that position.
Q25 Mr Winnick: So what was the purpose
of your remark?
Chief Inspector Berry: I think
what I was telling both our conference and what I will say to
you today is that police officers are feeling extremely frustrated
at the way that they see they are being treated at the moment
in the terms of their pay and conditions. The conditions that
are placed upon them to be on duty 24/7, both on duty and off
duty; that they are personally responsible for their actions both
on and off duty; and also their inaction—if they do not
take action they are responsible; and the fact that at this stage
they do not have the right to take industrial action. What they
see is the balance being taken away from them at the moment. The
Booth Report, which is half way through at the moment, seeks to
remove any negotiation from police officers; it seeks to suppress
police pay over a period of time; it seeks to distribute that
police pay in a divisive way, according to us. So they see that
many of the protections that they have had in the past—and
that is not to say that they have deserved protections over and
above others—are slowly but surely being removed and more
and more is being expected but without the protections. If you
remove all of those protections and police officers see that they
are giving the whole time and not being treated fairly—and
that is the important word—then they will be the people
demanding to have exactly the same rights as other workers.
Q26 Mr Winnick: Ms Berry we all know
the absolutely essential work that police officers do and, moreover,
we know that in some tragic cases their lives are sacrificed,
and anyone on this side of the table who does not recognise that
obviously is not fit to be a Member of Parliament, and we do recognise
it as our predecessors and our successors do, but it does not
alter the fact regarding your remarks because you actually did
say—unless the quote is such that it is not accurate—that
changes to the basis on which police pay is negotiated could result
in industrial strike action. So I come back to the point.
Chief Inspector Berry: I do not
have my words with me but my words were very, very carefully scripted.
Q27 Mr Winnick: I am sure.
Chief Inspector Berry: I am not
convinced that is a true reflection. What I will do is share that
section of my speech with the Committee because it was scripted
and I read from autocue and I did not ad lib during that part
of the speech, for very obvious reasons, and I will share that
with you.
Q28 Mr Winnick: I will not pursue
it except to say that, as I understand it from your answer, the
situation, wishing a change in the law regarding industrial action,
is not what your organisation is asking, am I right?
Chief Inspector Berry: We are
not seeking that at this time.
Q29 Mr Winnick: That answers my question;
thank you very much indeed. In the absence of Tim Brain, if I
can come to the Association of Police Authorities? It is argued
that the budget increase to the lower level of funding, which
is expected under the Comprehensive Spending Review, so we are
told, will depend entirely on restraining pay. Is it the case
that you say as the Association of Police Authorities that such
pay restraints will have serious consequences for recruitment
and retention?
Mr Jones: We are extremely proud
of the levels of recruitment and retention we have at the moment
and wish to see that sustained, as I think we outstrip again the
public sector and the private sector both on recruitment and retention
of police officers, but clearly we wish to see that continue in
the future. But because police pay is such a crucial component
of our total budget it is one of those that it cannot be entirely
not looked at if we are facing a significant gap, and clearly
we have to look at all elements. We very much support the unique
position of the Office of Constable and we very much support the
fact, both in terms of the Act in 1918 which barred the right
to strike gave us statutory negotiating machinery, and we very
much support, from the Association of Police Authorities' point
of view the concept set up by Edmund Davis in 1979, set up by
the Callaghan Labour Government to actually have an indexation.
However, the current indexation is not based on Edmund Davis,
it is based on the Sheehey Report of the mid 1990s where I think
almost every other aspect of Sheehey was rejected; but many of
those aspects of Sheehey were the ones that would actually save
police authorities money and part of the concept of the higher
index was to compensate police officers for those other reductions.
We ended up in this position where we did not get any of those
things which would cost us money and we are not particularly arguing
about that—many of them were ones which we did not think
would be affected, even if they would save money; but we did end
up with the higher index. We do believe it is possible to produce
an index that is more affordable, that does need the requirements
of the special nature of the Office of Constable but are ones
which will not put the pressure on police budgets because the
reality is that because it is such a massive component of our
total budget extra pressures on that one can only be met at the
cost of support to police officers or total number of police officers.
Q30 Mr Winnick: Do we take it that
there are ongoing talks with the Home Office regarding this aspect
of the Comprehensive Spending Review or is it now in a situation
where it is all finished? We are having the Minister very shortly,
as the Chair has said, and I was wondering if the whole matter
has been totally finalised?
Mr Jones: Clearly we have not
had a formal announcement of what the CSR round is and how it
impacts on both the Home Office and on the Police Authorities.
To my understanding it is pretty well finalised but we have not
heard the final headlines of that. Again, as you indicate, Mr
Winnick, it would probably be best that to the Police Minister
who may be in a better position to give you an update.
Mr Winnick: Thank you very much.
Q31 Chairman: Mr Johnston, could
I just bring you in about pay? We see that nurses have had a staged
pay award, doctors have had a staged pay award—and we know
that public spending is going to increase much more slowly—is
there really a special case that can be made for the police?
Chief Superintendent Johnston:
I think there is, and in support of what Jan Berry has said, it
is not only the detail of the pay negotiations we are in, it is
the way that officers feel that the negotiations have gone thus
far. We are not terribly sensitive, as you know, Mr Denham, but
we really feel at the moment that this has been imposed and there
is not an awful lot of negotiation going on and, as you will know,
stage payments will in fact mean less of an increase. Can I just
say that each time we debate this we are told that recruitment
and retention currently is not an issue. I am old enough to remember
when it was and we do not want to go back there, where recruitment
and retention really was an issue and that is why we arrived where
we did with Edmund Davis. So things are not going terribly well
with the pay negotiations but, having said that, I am sure that
through sensible negotiations there is a deal that can be struck.
Chairman: Ann Cryer.
Q32 Mrs Cryer: My questions are based
mainly on the comments of ACPO but since the ACPO person is not
here perhaps Mr Johnston could respond? I want to ask about the
use of police financial reserves and the long term planning and
investment impact that that will have. Would you like to comment
on the investment in key infrastructure and systems, how it will
suffer as a result of using reserves now?
Chief Superintendent Johnston:
I am allowed to pass, apparently; I am not in a very familiar
position in speaking about this. I think Mr Wilkinson is happy
to take that.
Mr Wilkinson: I will have a crack.
Reserves have come under pressure in the last few years as a means
of balancing the budget gaps and a number of authorities are now
running with reserve levels which are on the low side, below the
levels that their treasurers would advise and that were adequate.
So that is the first problem. But it is not evenly spread—some
authorities are quite well provided for with reserves. Those reserves
do have a purpose not just in covering funding gaps, they are
there to cover unforeseen circumstances and, as you say, for investment,
and to the extent that they are cut back I think the future plans
are going to come under more pressure than they would do, and
there is a massive programme of developments that would be looking
for contributions from reserves properly, particularly on the
technology side. The ACPO business areas have estimated that something
like £1.5 billion of projects were on the stocks being worked
on somewhere in the 43 forces. They are not all going to hit us
in the next few years but they are there somewhere; so there is
a built-up demand to the extent that as funding gets tighter it
is going to commit more reserves to provide the backstops on the
mainstream budget and therefore correspondingly less for investment.
Q33 Mrs Cryer: Are you able to comment
specifically on delivering workforce modernisation and shared
services programmes? Do you know anything about that?
Mr Wilkinson: I am not an expert
on it; I know broadly what is going on. It is a pity that Tim
is not here at the moment. The shared services project is quite
well advanced and I think substantial savings are projected if
it can be operated in the way that people would like it to be
operated. It is in the tens of millions.
Q34 Chairman: It is presumably things
like payroll?
Mr Wilkinson: It is back office
functions—payroll, debtors, creditors, and pensions, setting
up probably three or four service centres around the country.
The problem with it is that it will need some fairly substantial
investment to get it going in systems and start up costs, and
I think that is probably the stumbling block at the moment in
the service. If that money was available on an invest to save
basis then I think there are some substantial savings achievable.
Chief Inspector Berry: Could I
add to that while Dr Brain takes his seat? There are some really
good examples around the country of collaborative arrangements,
particularly around back office responsibilities, and some real
creative thinking around that area at the moment. For many years
we have talked about the fact that we could make savings in this
area. In addition to that there are some really good procurement
arrangements for equipment and IT and things like that, but there
will come a point when some of the collaborative arrangements
will need specific governance arrangements that are not catered
for in our arrangements at the moment. When you move from back
office, payroll, maybe control centres and things like that you
are then moving into some operational areas where there are some
really creative collaboration arrangements, and we will need to
be very clear about where primacy rests in operational matters,
and that is a piece of work which I am not sure is particularly
clear at the moment but will need to be developed.
Q35 Chairman: We will bring in Dr
Brain on the next question. Dr Brain, can I welcome you?
Dr Brain: Thank you very much.
I do apologise for being late—very heavy traffic on the
M40.
Chairman: We obviously had to start because
we had the Minister booked in for quarter past 11 and we needed
to make progress, but I am sure you will catch up the threads.
Gary Streeter.
Q36 Mr Streeter: Chairman, I would
like to ask Mr Jones and Dr Brain a question about specific choices
and compromises that need to be made in managing a tighter settlement,
but can I put it to you first that the financial difficulty you
say you are now in as police authorities and police forces is
largely of your own making. Is it not the case that over the last
10 years you have been very slow to modernise, to make maximum
use of modern technology, to streamline yourselves—which
is why people like myself, a tremendous supporter of the police,
I find that police forces up and down the country are bureaucratic,
risk averse and technologically illiterate. Do you not have yourselves
to blame? Why is it that I, at 51 years of age, have been using
my own computer for the last 10 years—whereas 20 years before
that I was dictating to a secretary—and why is it that police
officers are still taking statements in laborious longhand—it
is like watching paint dry. Do you not have yourselves to blame?
Mr Jones: I will obviously say
no. I think we have quite a good record of introducing a whole
range of technology—the airwave, a £1 billion system,
which is not just radio communications, but is enabling people
to use local data information to cut out a lot of the paperwork.
Q37 Mr Streeter: How many years did
it take to introduce that?
Mr Jones: It took a few years
to introduce but clearly a £1.2 billion project of that particular
size does actually need managing, at the same time as we are implementing
automatic number plate recognition, fingerprints, ID systems,
a whole series of improvements in command and control and trying
to join up with the rest of the criminal justice system, and one
of our biggest problems has been the problem of the fact that
much of our information needs to go into the criminal justice
system, and having a meaningful effective interface in terms of
IT and meeting the requirements of the criminal justice system
has been probably the biggest delay factor in the areas, particularly
as many of their programmes which we need to join up with, like
Libra, are running several years behind. So I think we have an
extremely good record in terms of bringing on IT but clearly these
do need to be managed. If you do not manage major projects like
that and you do not introduce them effectively and you do not
ensure that people are properly trained up to get maximum benefit
from them then I think we have gone at the right place to make
sure that once they are implemented police officers on the ground
are able to get maximum use for them, and that is a continuing
programme and we have a whole series of other IT items coming
along.
Q38 Mr Streeter: Dr Brain?
Dr Brain: It is easy to most emphatically
refute such a really rather extreme set of suggestions there.
The reality of it is that the police service has been very adept
at introducing new technology and new technology in its own right.
If I can just ask the Committee to revert to the mid 1990s when
it was the police service under the leadership of John Hoddinott,
then Chief Constable of Hampshire, who took the ball from the
office and introduced probably five to six years' earlier the
automatic fingerprint recognition system upon which the country
now has its own system based, and that was a consortium of police
forces that introduced that, largely in opposition, I have to
say, to the view of the Home Office. In terms of business efficiencies
the police services are amongst the most outstanding of public
sector organisations in terms of delivery; it has met all the
efficiency targets it has been given over the years against a
really difficult background of rising demand and expectations.
It has delivered in terms of more offences brought to justice
and it has delivered in terms of lower crime. At the same time
it has had a whole plethora of new legislation that has to be
introduced and that all requires adaptation in terms of training,
new technology, polices and procedures. I think that is not a
very helpful statement to make; the reality of it is that demands
are growing, expectations are growing and the police service has
done its absolute utmost to meet those requirements.
Q39 Chairman: That is good to know.
What specific choices and compromises have you made in terms of
police activity as you face this shortfall in your budget, and
what would the impact on crime and community safety of these choices
be?
Dr Brain: I think it is important
to recognise that the shortfall in the budget has not occurred
yet. As of 31 March this year, if we take a stock-take, police
resources, particularly when expressed in terms of people, have
never been higher. There are about 140,000 police officers, there
are over 70,000 police staff and there are approaching 16,000
PCSOs, so, at this point in time, we are not facing a crisis in
terms of the resources; it is what is likely to occur in the years
ahead, looking ahead to the end of the CSR 2007 cycle. The problem
about the squeeze on resources that is inevitably going to occur
over the next three to four years with spending projections as
they currently are is that we will see the effect cumulatively.
It will be a series of cutbacks that we will not see the full
effect of until three to four years from now and then I guess
the whirligig of time will turn, resources will be put back into
the Service and we will see them build up again, but there will
be a lag effect in terms of seeing the benefit of that as well,
so, at the moment, there is not a crisis in terms of resources.
There are other problems which the Service face in terms of rising
demands and expectations and increased workload because, whilst
there have been savings in terms of bureaucracy, equally there
have been new demands in terms of bureaucracy in terms of the
requirement of the criminal justice system. Indeed, we have seen
some very significant pieces of legislation over the last few
years, all of which have had their own powerhouse in terms of
bureaucracy, RIPA being a very clear example, but, if we actually
take it back to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act itself, that
was a huge impetus in terms of added procedures. They were there
deliberately, it was not an unintended consequence, but they were
there deliberately in order to build in new safeguards and improve
the quality of police evidence, but we should not be under any
illusion that those legislative initiatives increased the bureaucracy,
not lessened it. What the Service will have to do over the next
few years is continue to search for improved business processes,
but that is not an easy thing to do against the background of
rising demands and expectations.
1 Chief Inspector Jan Berry, Chair of the Police Federation,
subsequently wrote to the Committee to say "The Metropolitan
Police Service have used CSOs in this role. Kent Police have used
them as missing person coordinators." Back
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