Police reform: more than tying up 'loose ends'

The recent report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary showing how the police give insufficient priority to anti-social behaviour gave the home secretary a heaven-sent opportunity to demonstrate her determination to decouple local policing from central government. Theresa May suggested that once the national government had ensured that the police possess the necessary powers, it was local communities who needed to be "at the heart of the solution, influencing and working with the new Police & Crime Commissioners (PCCs)". Something that under the previous regime would have set off a raft of centrally-driven initiatives instead promised to rattle the teacups in hundreds of local council chambers. Nonetheless there is an element of bravado in the home secretary's stance. The new PCCs are not yet a done deal. Moreover the outcomes of the consultation process on the government's comprehensive police reform proposals do not augur well. The proposals justly claim to herald "the most radical change to policing in 50 years". At their core is the separation of local policing; its planning, priority setting, and governance, from the national framework. The vision sees the existing 43 police forces becoming primarily responsible for local policing accountable to directly elected police and crime commissioners, who in turn would be overseen by local authority police and crime panels. At a national level there is to be a new body, the National Crime Agency, which would be ultimately responsible for national policing and separately accountable. Public consultation Inexplicably the government has not opened these major proposals to public consultation. This is odd as, except for the PCC concept, neither coalition partner can claim a mandate for police reform. The consultation document - Policing in the 21st Century - is in effect a white paper, setting out the content of proposed legislation. It only offers limited consultation on the 'how' of implementation. The document was clearly written in some haste. The proposals are often ambiguous, sometimes conditional with likely consequences implied rather than stated, while a virtue is made of loose ends – tying them up being one purpose of the consultation. Critically too, while the need to contribute to deficit reduction is stated as an important driver of change, there is no financial quantification, so the relative contribution of each proposal to greater efficiency is unstated. This lack of clarity and denial of debate on the main issues has allowed respondents to avoid engaging with the government's genuinely fresh approach or shifting very much from established positions. Thus both the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Superintendents' Association express regret that the force merger route has been rejected, while assuming that the NCA is only a slightly beefed-up version of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. The Police Federation takes comfort in a similar view and continues to insist that only warranted officers, ie members of the 43 forces, should face the public. Predictably both the Association of Police Authorities and the Local Government Association marshal strong arguments against the PCC proposal, which is indeed an ill thought through idea, and virtually ignore everything else. All judge collaboration to be a necessary but far from sufficient means of driving improved efficiency, though the implications of this for the proposed structures are left unexplored. History tells us that police reform is difficult precisely because nothing changes without a consensus having first been reached between government, police, and local authorities, so the fact that this consultation process has failed to move the arguments forward is bad news. The financial crisis presents a unique opportunity to order our police services differently, and the government's proposals are directionally right. To lose all because of a botched consultation exercise would be little short of tragic. Robert McFarland was formerly a chief executive with the BOC Group. More recently he has been involved in government reviews, all associated with aspects of the criminal justice process