Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-43)
Zoë Billingham, Sir Denis O'Connor.
Q1 Chair: Sir Denis and Ms Billingham,
thank you very much for coming to give evidence. I think, Sir
Denis—I may be wrong—that this is the first time you
have been back since your confirmation.
Sir Denis O'Connor: Indeed. I
have had other exposures, but this is my first time back here.
Q2 Chair: Indeed, you have had
a lot of exposure, and that is one of the things with which I
would like to start. Whenever you are exposed—to use your
statement—it seems to me that you point out failings in
the police service, which is part of your job that perhaps ought
to have been remedied in the past. Do you feel that, in your capacity
as chief inspector, you are picking up a lot of issues that should
have been dealt with in the past?
Sir Denis O'Connor: That is true
to a degree. When you look at the police service using the best
of your professional knowledge from the outside in and then reflect
back on how the public experience policing every day, you see
that it takes you to a slightly different place in terms of the
questions you ask and the things you look at. In all of the things
that we have looked at, whether it's G20 and adapting to protests,
the leaks inquiry, or the everyday responsiveness of policing,
we have found a general willingness to do things, but there is
always a difficulty with particular issues. We always endeavour
to find, as we did, for example, with antisocial behaviour, both
the shortcomings—the ability of police IT to deal with repeat
callers, for example, which is a very good reference point for
problems down the line—and where people are doing things
well. We always try to point towards not just sadness, as it were,
but the possibility of things getting better.
Q3 Chair: That always seems to
happen on Radio 4, but how many inspectors do you have?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I have myself
and four other HMIs, who have the royal warrant.
Q4 Chair: On the radio today you
issued a statement on police authorities, in which you said that,
of the 22 authorities that you looked at, four are doing their
job okay and the rest are not up to scratch. That is quite a serious
indictment of the system that we have at the moment. Surely someone
should have been advising the Home Secretary or providing advice
to those police authorities, in a way that is different from that
which has previously been provided, on the way in which they conduct
their duties. Ms Billingham, I understand that this is your report.
Zoë Billingham: Yes, it
is. We found that seven police authorities are performing rather
well. The four to which you have referred are the authorities
that are doing the things that we think, looking forward into
the future, all police authorities need to be good at. The report
that you are talking about was issued today, and it is a summary
of the 22 inspections that we have carried out. Each of the inspection
reports for each of those police authorities has been made public
and has been made available to the police authorities themselves.
The police authorities have acted on the clear messages that we've
identified in those reports. We did that inspection work over
a period of some time, and today's report is a summary of the
key findings from those 22 inspections, which we hope will inform
police authorities moving forward so that they focus on the issues
that we think are important in the new financial environment.
Q5 Chair: We will come to that
in other questions. Sir Denis, before the comprehensive spending
review you made several statements on the effects that a 12% would
have on police budgets. The cuts, of course, are now going to
be much bigger than that. Are you still confident that there is
waste in the system and that that waste may be dealt with and
reorganised without redundancies? Will the police in this country
be able to conduct their duties in the way in which the Government
and the public want, or are there going to be problems ahead?
Sir Denis O'Connor: We have a
very big challenge ahead, let's be absolutely honest about that.
Do I stand by the prospect of achieving greater efficiency in
policing? Absolutely, I do. What one needs to note, though, is
that, even to achieve the 12% figure, there needs to be a system
redesign in policing. In other words, a number of the things that
were taken for granted during the period of growth and during
the past can't stand if you want to achieve even the 12% efficiency
gain. If we don't tackle those issues, I think that there will
be even more pressure on all of the people at the front end, as
it were. That is the only other way of potentially saving money
easily. That is why I am so keen to look very hard at efficiency.
I can say a bit more about system redesigns, if that would help
you.
Q6 Chair: Yes, you can, but Mr
Reckless will probe you on that a little bit later. I am concerned
about the reports of inspectors and the purpose of HMIC. Basically,
why are you all there? The public need to know your purpose. If
it is just to produce reports after the event, rather than to
provide support during a problem, why—I know that you weren't
there 13 years ago, Sir Denis—has it taken HMIC 13 years
to try to redesign the system? If there is waste and inefficiency
in the system, why wait until now?
Sir Denis O'Connor: We could even
go back to 1856, and some people think I do, but the point is
that the inspectorate was originally set up as a professional
advice body looking in towards the sector and advising Ministers.
The break in 2008 was to say, "What about an inspectorate
that looks back from the public's point of view and uses its knowledge
to expose some issues?" What we are trying to do—we
may not succeed—is to identify some of the issues in sufficient
time for people to be able to do something about them. Whether
we are talking about the police authorities and their big challenge—many
of them want to do well in that—or about how we handle money
in future, we are trying to identify how you might do that from
what we know about the police market.
Q7 Dr Huppert: I want to follow
up something you asked earlier, Chair. In the comprehensive spending
review statement, the Chancellor's exact words were:
"Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary
found in his recent report that significant savings could be made
to police budgets without affecting the quality of front line
policing."
Would you stand by that?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I would stand
by that, plus what it says in the report:
"A re-design of the system…has the
potential, at best, to save 12% of central government funding,
while maintaining police availability."
The redesign of the system has not occurred yet.
Q8 Chair: No, and it will be a
bigger cut for you, will it not?
Sir Denis O'Connor: The alternative
to redesign is the cut. First, it is bigger than 12%, and secondly
it will fall less well for the public in terms of the public-facing
services that we all depend on.
Chair: We will come back to that.
Q9 Mr Burley: I want to ask the
Chair's question in a different way. Rather than asking why didn't
HMIC identify the £12 billion of savings sooner, why haven't
the police forces themselves identified that 12% saving or, secondly,
done something about it? What is intrinsic to police forces that
they cannot drive out inefficiencies and have to wait for HMIC
to point them out?
Sir Denis O'Connor: The issue
about policing is twofold. The organisation is a very can-do and
everyday one. It finds it difficult to do change at 50 miles per
hour because it is constantly doing things. Standing off things
is quite difficult. Its focus is very local most of the time,
and appropriately so. The only way to extract savings is by having
a much bigger picture and bigger deals with the private sector
and others on many commodities in policing. But that requires
them all to act together, to sit back from it and look back on
it, and say, "What could we do?" rather than doing unilateral
deals or one-off bilateral deals to look at what we could with
these big commodities—whether the fleet or anything else—as
a whole.
Q10 Mr Burley: On that, why aren't
chief constables or indeed the police authorities that are supposed
to govern them doing that as a matter of course? Why aren't they
looking at their neighbouring police forces and saying, "Why
don't we get together and procure uniforms or cars, or try to
obtain greater purchasing powers from the private sector?"
Sir Denis O'Connor: Let's be fair.
Some are doing just that. The report that Zoë referred to
showed around 2% cashable savings year on year over the past few
years, so they were doing some of that, but the scale between
that and the ask now is substantial, to say the least. That is
the first thing.
The second is that it tends to rely more on
personalities, and police forces' ability to get along—Kent
and Essex, Durham and Cleveland, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire—which
is good up to a point, but you won't get the best deal from BT
on a two by two basis. If there are 20 of you, you will get a
dramatically different saving. I can illustrate that.
Q11 Chair: That is what Peter
Neyroud was supposed to be doing, and that is what the NPIA was
all about. Why have we not done this already? That is what the
Committee wants to know.
Sir Denis O'Connor: Well, I might
say that it would be best to direct that to Peter Neyroud, but
part of his issue was to try to get decent information in the
police landscape. Getting people to look at the thing in the round
rather than at their own particular interest is quite a big thing
to do. Police authorities and chief constables were operating
in a period of growth when, brutally, pressure from the centre—that
must include the Home Office and others—was not as sharp
as it might be. We haven't mentioned that yet, so I thought I
would.
Chair: No, we will mention everything
in due course.
12 Mr Winnick:
Sir Denis, it will be no surprise to you that constituents constantly
ask their Members of Parliament for more of a police presence,
and, accordingly, we write to the police authority. The latest
information from the chair of the finance committee of the West
Midlands police authority is that, arising from the Chancellor's
statement last week, it is estimated that, within four years,
there will be more than 1,000 fewer police officers in the metropolitan
area of the west midlands, which is obviously bound to have an
impact on my constituency and the Walsall borough. How far do
you feel that, if there was such a reduction, it would have a
severe, or any, effect on tackling criminality?
Sir Denis O'Connor: It would depend
on how Chris Sims and the police authority use all the other assets
that they have apart from the 1,000 they lose. The way it works
in terms of your constituents is that there are two key decisions
in relation to what you end up with and what they come to your
surgeries about.
The first key decision is how much do I put
in the forward-facing visible end of the spectrum? They put different
amounts in across the country, but once you put something in at
the top, and after you suffer the shift systems and attending
court, you get a certain amount at the bottom. The less you put
in, the less you get out. The second main decision is what shift
system do they operate to, and those two convert into something
that you see or don't see. Chris Sims is actually quite vigorous
in looking at both of those issues. The more rigorous he is, the
more you will have left once the 1,000 others have left for other
purposes.
Chair: Thank you. We now move on to Alun
Michael.
Q13 Alun Michael: We heard earlier
about the tension between, on the one hand, being effective and,
on the other hand, having the confidence of the public. If I can
explain that by saying that we hear that the police are much better
at using data, analysing data, and targeting and reducing offending,
but the public, at the same time, don't feel that they know what
is going on and don't trust crime statistics. Against that background,
do you think that we need to change the way that we measure and
talk about crime?
Sir Denis O'Connor: It is a fundamental
duty of the authorities and Government that people believe the
information that they get from them.
Q14 Alun Michael: Why do you think
that they don't?
Sir Denis O'Connor: It should
be a big priority to all of us that if people don't believe in
these statistics, it begs a very big question about what we are
about, doesn't it? As for why they don't believe, you saw some
of the reasons for that in the report we did on antisocial behaviour.
The bottom line is that we have things that get categorised as
crime as a result of legislation, and then we have things that
the public think are crime, which are not all categorised by legislation
in a comfortable way that meets all the rules. For most of us,
if we see rowdy and bad behaviour in front of us, we think that
it is crime. If we want people to believe in the information,
it has to roughly look like what they see, otherwise what they
hear from statisticians or, dare I say, politicians will not be
believed.
Q15 Alun Michael: Sir Denis, I
have a photograph on my desk of you and me and a meerkat, from
when we were propounding precisely that point some 11 years ago.
Sir Denis O'Connor: I hoped you
wouldn't reveal that.
Alun Michael: The problem is not new,
and I agree with the way that you have phrased it, but the fact
of the matter is that there is still this tension between performance
and confidence. Going back to the question, do we need to change
the way in which we are measuring or communicating details about
crime? If an issue has been around this long, and you have been
working at it for this long, and it is still a problem, how do
we deal with it?
Sir Denis O'Connor: Actually,
it is a severe problem. Last summer, I even stood in a hall with
100 people from different parts of the country—all the cities—and
I asked them how much faith they had in information that they
were getting from the centre. At one point, the score was so derisory
that it is probably not proper for me to say, but it was very
low. People just did not believe, and I found that degree of disbelief
unnerving. There are at least three steps to heaven here.
Q16 Chair:
Could you give us the steps very quickly?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I could. Very
quickly. Step number one, I would not just release things we consider
to be crimes at the moment, I would release disorder data. I think
that that is a bit closer to the picture that the public see.
Secondly, I would offshore the publication of that data from a
Department or anybody who is seen to have a particular interest
in its outcomes. It is probably in everyone's interest if it moves,
at some point, away from the Home Office. Thirdly, I would localise
the information so that people can easily find out what is happening
locally.
Q17 Alun Michael: At community
level.
Sir Denis O'Connor: Yes, absolutely
at a community level so that there can be some interplay, so that
they feel it is part of their life and that they can have some
effect on it—that it is not something done remotely by people
in white coats.
Q18 Alun Michael: I thought that
was already done, or supposed to be.
Sir Denis O'Connor: It's been
done to a degree in crime mapping. It is at a relatively bland
point at the moment, but there is a huge opportunity to develop
that.
Chair: Thank you. We will develop it
further in questions from Lorraine Fullbrook.
Q19 Lorraine Fullbrook: Sir Denis,
following on from your report "Getting Together" last
June, I would like to talk a bit more about the positive benefits,
performance benefits and, as we heard earlier, cost benefits of
collaborative working for forces. What do you think the Government
can do to assist forces to engage more in collaborative working
and where do you see the National Crime Agency in helping that
process along?
Sir Denis O'Connor: Just quickly
on the National Crime Agency, which probably merits a very good
debate because it is a very big decision to make, I think it is
about the division of labour between themselves and the larger
and other forces. That has not been properly scoped at the minute
and perhaps we can come back to that, but if you have a decent
agreed division of labour then you are en route to doing something
collectively well together. I think much is said about collaboration,
but the truth of it is that unless there has been Government money
beside it—or in some particular cases, as I suggested to
Mr Burley—then it really is not a substantial part of police
business. The reason for that is that people are focused on their
local issues and how their resources are being used locally, and
their ability to make contact with either public or private sector
players depends to a degree on what information they get.
What I think has been a problem is that there
is no mandated information that exposes the cost choices a police
authority makes so that we can all see it very clearly. If you
looked at our report, "Valuing the Police", you saw
some of the choices being made in forensics that showed some people
paying quite a lot more than others. Now, they would debate this—although
it is their own data—but the fact of the matter is that
that exposure of those choices has not been made. So we have a
market operating without good information. This is not a good
place to be. We should at the very least have a mandated requirement
for good information that we can all see—the public as well
as the police authorities. This would help you to move people
towards either public or private sector collaboration.
Q20 Mr Burley: On that last answer,
do you think that there should be mandated collaboration on purchasing,
not just on data?
Sir Denis O'Connor: Where we have
commodities that are obviously that, then I think that there is
a huge case for it. In fact, in the circumstances we are in right
now, there is a very, very big case for it, because otherwise
we will get poorer value for the taxpayer.
Q21 Mr Burley: The reality is
that a police uniform is essentially a police uniform, so why
not mandate all 43 forces to buy the uniforms together?
Sir Denis O'Connor: Indeed, why
not? Except that, as you know, the saving is pretty modest. It
comes down to how much of the budget you look at. The really smart
thing here is to look at sufficient elements of that budget to
get significant savings to avoid losing lots of staff at the front
end of the business. We are really, to be honest, still at the
foothills of that. This isn't because of a lot of chiefs and others
are not willing. We just haven't had the right market incentives
and information to help us get there in our lifetime.
Mr Burley: Well, a 4% reduction year
on year is probably the best incentive there is. My real question
was about bureaucracy. You published a report in the summer that
showed the number of pages of guidance that were issued in 2009—2,500.
I think the HMIC was planning to complete a review of working
practices and duplication by October this year. Is that on its
way, and can you give us an idea of the kind of themes that are
coming out of that review on duplication and bureaucracy?
Sir Denis O'Connor: We are doing
a report for the Minister on that issue. What we have decided
to look at there are super-outputters of bureaucracy, rather than
just going for the property forms or something limited like that—the
things that really chuck it out. So there is the integrated competency
framework and the national intelligence model. These are things
that are all worthy, but they've grown like Topsy. We have identified
a whole series of those. But we have also looked quite hard at
why bureaucracy has not landed in a serious way, so that the front
end of the business knows it and, more importantly, the public
do because the police are outside the police station and we see
the lesser spotted constable that we all want to see.
Q22 Mr Burley: You've mentioned
reports and the NCA. Does the HMIC feel that it has had an adequate
role in the establishment of the NCA, given that a lot of the
reviews of the last decade will now sit under the NCA?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I just want
to be sure that I understand.
Mr Burley: The sort of reports that you
would carry out.
Q23 Chair: Are you involved in
the process of the creation of the new landscape of policing?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I hope to
be involved in it. At the moment, the process is being run by
officials who are putting together proposals for the Minister.
I think at some point they will speak. We have reported not just
on "Closing the Gap" but on SOCA and Her Majesty's Revenue
and Customs. We would have things that would be helpful to say.
Q24 Chair: The Committee feels
you would be very useful. I think Mr Burley is trying to find
a round-about way of inviting you to his constituency on 22 November
for the Select Committee summit into this matter, which I hope
you will attend so you can tell us your views.
Sir Denis O'Connor: May I say,
Chairman, that I am delighted to have the opportunity, because
I think it is a serious issue that needs serious consideration.
Mr Winnick: The American President might
be there as well.
Chair: By satellite.
Q25 Mark Reckless: What I take
away from your report, "Valuing the Police," is that
the focus of the public was not so much on lowest cost, but on
police effectiveness in its widest sense. For them, effectiveness
was linked with visibility. In that context, do you share my concern
that the focus many forces appear to be developing is to slash
the number of PCSOs to cut costs?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I have a big
personal stake in the whole nature of policing development, of
which PCSOs are a part. One part of the motivation for releasing
this report was to say, "Can we please look at every other
possible thing we can do and be prepared even at a national level
to change what we do in order to safeguard that?" The answer
is, yes, I am concerned. That is why we did that report.
Q26 Mark Reckless: But aren't
the projected cuts to PCSOs a corollary of not being able to make
police officers redundant?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I think they're
a corollary to not being able to leverage all the resources in
the business, Mr Reckless. Here's the thing: if you consider the
back office part of this business to be about 10% to 14%, even
if you go hard at it—in HR or finance—you're only
going to get so much out of it. But I would be for going hard
at it. If we looked at the business differently, the whole transactional
bit around the criminal justice system is a massive machine. On
the whole series of the other big transactional things policing
does—we call it the middle and back office—you could
get up to about 25% to 27%. If you put that into play, you either
go to serious public collaboration—we have to believe that
is possible—or private outsourcing. You could save quite
a lot of money, which might enable you to save on people.
It is partly about how you see, as it were,
the liquidity of policing and how you see the ability to extract
money to put it into the things the public value. The service
needs help, assistance and support on that. We say that it has
had some of that in the past, but that was not on a serious resource-leveraging
basis. This is a great opportunity to really go at that, as well
as everything else. But it will need some strength and support
from the centre. There should not just be a hands-off approach,
otherwise we will have at least 43 ways of doing it—we will
not get good value for the taxpayer and you will be reading about
the PCSOs and other issues more and more. That's why I'm very
keen for somebody to look at the system in the round and say,
"What are we going to change here?" I know about the
cuts. That's a longish, big incentive, but we need to change the
rest of the market operation. So, for example, you get Government
grant in this country on an unqualified, unconditional basis,
even if your spending is not great. Is that a smart place to be
in the environment we are in? I don't think it is.
Q27 Lorraine Fullbrook: Sir Denis,
while we are looking at changing the system in the round to get
better policing and value for money, do you think that the neighbourhood
policing grant should continue to be ring-fenced to keep visible
policing on the streets?
Sir Denis O'Connor: The reason
we retain the grant is effectively to try to safeguard what Mr
Reckless was just talking about—we feel that if it is hypothecated
it will be safe. As an interim measure I can understand it. When
you have to find the scale of cuts that some forces have to find—it
would be useful if the Committee could get some of those projections—this
falls variably across the country, depending on the national grant
and precept and so on. But if you wanted to hold up neighbourhood
policing for an interim period, it's an option. It's not a great
option, to be honest. I would hope that people cared enough about
the front end, and what you are going to be facing from your constituents,
to make that the last consideration for cuts. We know that since
we have had this investment, something very good has happened.
Since 2003-04, confidence in policing has risen year on year on
year. This is a turnaround from where we were in the '80s, when
confidence slid year on year.
Q28 Chair: So more money, more
confidence?
Sir Denis O'Connor: Well more
investment in things that connect directly with the public about
their issues, a rise in confidence. That was the neighbourhood
policing research finding.
Q29 Lorraine Fullbrook: Sir Denis,
do you think that constabularies may take the easy route to balancing
their budget and cut front-line services, as opposed to looking
at the system that they operate and being more inventive and entrepreneurial
in how they work? Do you think that they will initially take the
easy route and cut front-line services?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I have to
be absolutely honest with you. Given the scale of the cuts, I
don't think there is any easy route for them. I think they will
look at where they can make savings comparatively easily. The
savings on people you can— for want of a better phrase—let
go, are made easily, which is why I am hugely keen that the centre
reassert itself, given that it is the major shareholder in what
police authorities get. By that I mean the Home Office and people
around the Home Office. DCLG has a small role in this as well.
There is a big public interest issue about them taking some responsibility
to help forces to leverage their resources better, either together,
or with the private sector.
Q30 Alun Michael: You have referred
a couple of times now to more help for forces in terms of research,
or in terms of clarification, expectations and all the rest of
it. Is that not essentially what the inspectorate is for?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I think the
inspectorate would be seen in many ways, but not always as helpful,
by police forces because sometimes we give hard messages.
Q31 Alun Michael: Are you suggesting
that we need somebody who is going to give soft messages? I am
not quite clear what you are suggesting. You seem to suggest that
there is a gap.
Sir Denis O'Connor: There is a
gap.
Q32 Alun Michael: The gap seems
to me to be shaped along the lines of what the inspectorate was
meant to do. That is my point.
Sir Denis O'Connor: The inspectorate
was a help and support mechanism prior to the NPIA. Our focus
has been more directed towards exposing the issues and the possibilities.
You need somebody who can devote some time and energy to get alongside
the West Midlands or the 16 forces that Zoë looks at. To
give you an example, in the health service there is a regulator
who may or may not tell you what you need to know and there is
also an institution called NICE, which will tell you whether a
treatment is good value and whether you should be doing it. We
do not have a NICE in policing; we have a regulator now who tries
to look at things from the public point of view.
Chair: Indeed, but that might all have
been part of the discussion on the new landscape.
Q33 Steve McCabe: I want to ask
you two quick things about the antisocial behaviour agenda. First,
we have had quite a long time with the Respect-type initiatives.
What are you recommending? Is it broadly more of the same or are
you suggesting something particularly new and different?
Sir Denis O'Connor: From memory,
I think that we recommended five things. One, tell the public
about the disorder issue, and we haven't published decent data
on that.
Q34 Steve McCabe: My point is
that that is part of the Respect agenda. That sort of stuff has
been happening. We might argue about the scale of it or the degree
in certain areas, but all of that has been going on. Is there
anything that we're missing that you think has to happen?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I'm hesitant
about disagreeing with you, sir—
Q35
Steve McCabe: Feel free.
Sir Denis O'Connor: I will feel
free because the brutal fact is that we have not been publishing
antisocial behaviour incidents nationally. We have not been publishing
them—
Q36 Chair: Do you mean the Government
when you say "we"?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I mean the
Home Office and NPIA have not been publishing that data. We published
them for the first time in that report, where you could see the
scale of it: 3.5 million incidents. We have not required police
forces to publish them consistently, which is why we were able
to name only a few that had. The first thing to do is tell the
people what the problem is. That might help to make them believe
more in things that they should believe in.
We should look very hard at some decisions to
grade out-response, particularly to repeat callers, because we
know that they are vulnerable. Do not think that this is part
of what we are saying in Respect; this has been about being much
more forensic about how to deal with the problem. It wasn't part
of the Respect agenda. On looking at the partnership effort, we
think that an awful lot of money has been spent, including on
asking officers to come from neighbourhoods to lots of meetings.
I'm looking at only 43—one in each police force across the
country. The University of Cardiff, which looked at it for us,
did not find that to be associated with a lot of convincing action
for victims, so we said, "You should look at this. There's
a lot of money in it and, for a fair bit of it, there's not much
product." Those give you three opportunities to do things.
I am in favour of early intervention, because if we do not do
early intervention with this, it only gets worse for the public.
Q37 Steve McCabe: On that point,
what's the practical thing that the police can do? We have the
problem that some things are crimes but some things are not. We've
all heard, "Oh, we can't arrest them for that." We say
that people should stand up to them and not let them get away
with it, but you report on the number of people who suffer retaliation.
What practical things can the police do to support victims that
aren't happening at the moment?
Sir Denis O'Connor: There are
some very good practical examples, but the most practical thing
of all is to hold up the response and neighbourhood element of
policing so that there are people available, not only to respond
but to prevent some of this and hit it early, rather than when
it's escalated to the point where people are fearful of living
in their own homes. That is why, in valuing the police, we attach
so much importance to holding up the front end of policing in
a focused way, which is what a lot of the conversation has been
about today. In the report, we tried to say what works, and what
works is having people available, and what doesn't work is cutting
people off arbitrarily because the call system is not very good,
and, frankly, a lot of partnership work looks, to us, to be not
very effective. Those are good opportunities to do things. We
should be looking hard, shouldn't we? I know one person who would
be very interested in that and in what partnerships at least are
yielding for us, because we are spending a lot of money in them.
Chair: Mr Michael will ask a very brief
question if we get a brief reply, because we are very over time.
Q38 Alun Michael: When you referred
to the absorption of time, were you talking about things such
as the PAC meetings?
Sir Denis O'Connor: The PAC meetings
are with the public; I am talking about all the things that the
agencies do together.
Q39 Dr Huppert:
Can I move on to a different topic? We heard last month that the
review of how the police handle rape cases—which you were
supposed to be running—had been cancelled, because the Home
Office withdrew the money, as I understand it. Why did it withdraw
the money? Perhaps more importantly to people around the country,
what will you be able to do to rectify the failures in rape policy
implementation?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I think you
should ask the Home Office why it withdrew the money, to be fair.
Part of the thinking may have been that we have had the Stern
review, which has taken a good look at victimisations, and Sara
Payne's excellent considerations around the victim. That was going
to be part of what I said to the Committee when I was here to
be confirmed.
On what we can do and what we are looking at,
there are two things. The first is in sampling; how the police
manage cases to see if there is good way of managing so you can
recognise risk. The second is that we hope to move on to look
at serial rapists. Those are things that can't be done easily
otherwise. So, we haven't given up on the topic. We are now narrowing
the scope and focus and over the next few months, we will be doing
some work on that.
Q40 Dr Huppert: Are you able to
do part of the work for the plan in any sense—a quarter
of the work, or a tenth?
Sir Denis O'Connor: It's going
to be quite a bit more focused, because we are moving other bits
of our budget around to enable to us to have that tighter focus.
We assume that you would be reasonably content that you did have
a view about the victim from Baroness Stern and Sara Payne, so
we don't feel the need to repeat that. But we think there are
some issues arising from some cases that it would be useful to
inform you and others about.
Chair: Thank you, Dr Huppert. This is
a very brief final question.
Q41 Mark Reckless: Turning to
Ms Billingham, I haven't yet had the opportunity to read your
report that came out at midnight, but I look forward to it. Over
the next 18 months, we are telling police authorities, "We
are going to abolish you and replace you with elected police commissioners."
I support that process, notwithstanding my membership of one of
those authorities. At the same time, we are asking those police
authorities to oversee very significant reductions and potentially,
the restructuring of police budgets. How serious do you think
the risk is in the juxtaposition of those two processes? What
advice, if any, would you have to mitigate that risk?
Zoë Billingham: This
goes back to what was almost the Chairman's opening question,
which was a good example of where HMIC has looked at what has
happened over a series of inspections, and has drawn lessons out
that can be applied moving forward. You are absolutely right;
police authorities in the next two budgets are going to have to
make two thirds of the 20% reductions in central Government funding.
In order to do that, we have identified where they need to focus
now. I think that there will be a risk that they won't achieve
the savings in the correct way if they don't focus on the strategic
direction and on value for money. It is absolutely essential that
they do so. In the report, we set out a number of key issues that
police authorities have got to ask themselves. We are saying that
they need to take a long, hard look.
My simple answer to your question is that the
police authorities are here today, tomorrow and for the next 18
months. They have got to act as though it is business as usual.
They have to set aside the fact that they are being abolished,
and they have some really tough decisions that they need to take
now and next year. We are really extolling them in this report
to take those decisions and not put them off till tomorrow, when
the new Governance arrangements come in. If they put them off
until tomorrow, they are putting the public at risk and they are
not going to be able to achieve the efficiencies and the savings
that we've talked about. They also won't be able to protect that
front-line public face of policing that we say is so important
to them.
Q42 Mr Burley:
We've talked a lot about structures in the Home Office this morning.
Do you think the ministerial structure is fit for purpose, or
do you think it is about time we had a Minister responsible for
collaboration, efficiency, savings and reducing bureaucracy?
Sir Denis O'Connor: I'd be very
hesitant to tell the Ministers how to organise themselves. It's
bad enough with the police and God knows, I bear the scars. All
I would say is that I commend to the Minister and others that
they look at the police market and say, "How do we make this
market really ramp up?", because I am worried about the issue
that Mr Reckless raised.
Q43 Chair: Sir Denis, the fact
is that every member of the Committee is very interested in your
work and grateful for the evidence you have given. We know what
happened to you and Mr Michael, but we still don't know what happened
to the meerkat that was in this particular picture.
Sir Denis O'Connor: The answer
is that I was captured live, responding to a meerkat, as I had
been warned not to. Do you know the pose they strike? I struck
the pose. I was in uniform and it was on the front page of a newspaper.
Chair: Excellent. We look forward to
seeing you on 22 November in Cannock Chase. Ms Billingham and
Sir Denis, thank you very much.
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