Press comment on the government's recent consultation document Policing in the 21st Century, centred on the Tory's manifesto commitment to introduce directly elected police commissioners. Much more though is afoot; the Home Secretary is making proposals that fully justify her claim to be introducing "the most radical change to policing in 50 years".

What are these changes, and what chance is there that the government will succeed in overcoming the entrenched attitudes and special interests that for far too long have frustrated efforts to drag the 'last great unreformed public service' into the 21st century?

Robert McFarland

Policing for the people The origins of the government's proposals are to be found in a Conservative party policy review pamphlet written in 2007 by the current police minister, Nick Herbert. Policing for the People attacked the centrally imposed rules and targets that compromise police professionalism, result in unproductive bureaucracy and disempower local communities. The proposal to replace police authorities by directly elected police commissioners reflects the perceived need to return powers over local policing to local communities and, specifically, to ensure that the police become more locally accountable.

At a national level the pamphlet highlighted the necessity for the police to be much more effective in fighting serious and organised crime and dealing with cross-border and international criminality. In this context Herbert accepted that the current structure of 43 forces was no longer viable, while rejecting the mainstream reformist view that the answer lay in merging the 43 forces into a number of regional police forces under direction from a central leadership. He argued that big was not necessarily beautiful and that having fewer, larger forces was irreconcilable with 'the new localism'.

Herbert suggested two models, both based on the current 43 forces, were viable; 'locally accountable forces matched with effective leadership from the centre to ensure collaboration, or locally accountable forces operating alongside a national Serious Crime Force.'

The pamphlet didn't choose between the two, though there is an inference that if the first model didn't deliver, the second, two-force solution would.

Imperatives of office

On taking office coalition Home Office police ministers were confronted by two imperatives: the need for financial savings and the vulnerable state of the protective services. The Chancellor's decision to reverse the Labour government's exemption of the police from the effects of the financial crisis left the service reeling.

Finding savings of at least 25% of the police budget (around £3bln in total) makes significant reform of police structures and ways of working essential. Home Office ministers have already indicated that radical cuts are on the way and that the days of the 43 fiefdoms doing their own thing are over. Announcements include removing the shibboleth around maintaining police officer numbers; a review of police pay and conditions; and the intention to mandate centralised procurement and shared services.

Public safety is the first responsibility of government and the state of the nation's protective services; that part of policing dealing with serious and organised crime; from drugs, fraud, and cybercrime through to protection rackets and people trafficking, has become an ever more urgent issue. Since Denis O'Connor's 2005 HMIC report on the protective services in which the existing 43 force structure was deemed to be 'unfit for purpose', senior police officers have been pressing the government to act. There has been some progress; the setting up of the Serious & Organised Crime Agency in 2006, the introduction of the lead-force concept for counter-terrorism, fraud intelligence etc, as well as a number of collaborative initiatives co-ordinated through ACPO.

It has not been enough. Recently the Met Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, said that police resources devoted to addressing the threat of organised crime were 'uncoordinated and, in effect, inadequate and have been for many years … which is unsurprising given the continuing absence of a coherent delivery structure'.

It is the need for near certainty in the delivery of these twin imperatives; major savings and more effective protective services, that has pushed the government towards the second of Herbert's 'viable structures', the one introducing a two–tier force structure.

Any doubts among ministers that this may be going too far too fast must have been assuaged by the fact that a two-tier police structure makes it easier to realise the government's manifesto commitment to localise decisions on local policing and to make the police more locally accountable.

The separation of national and local

Prepared in obvious haste, the consultation document is hardly a model of clarity, too many different audiences to woo and different interest groups to mollify for that. Afraid of frightening the horses, the tone of the consultation document is meant to be reassuring; it waxes lyrical about not breaking 'the golden thread that runs from local policing across force boundaries and internationally; insists that the government wants merely to re-balance the tripartite relationship; and stresses collaboration as the instrument that will 'save money … and tackle serious and cross-boundary criminality more effectively'.

However the bottom line is that the proposed consultation is largely a PR exercise, seeking advice on the hows not the whats. The key decisions have already been taken.

The government has seen the need to establish a clear distinction between national and local policing. Reformers have long been arguing the necessity for such a separation, but what is fresh is that the government's proposals eschew the standard solution, force mergers, instead proposing what is in effect a two-tier policing structure similar to that present in many, if not most, western democratic jurisdictions.

The proposed top-tier is a new National Crime Agency (Herbert's national Serious Crime Force) 'to lead the fight against organised crime, protect our borders and provide services best delivered at a national level'. The NCA will absorb the existing intelligence–led Serious and Organised Crime Agency but, unlike SOCA, will be operationally focussed under the leadership of a senior Chief Constable who will oversee a number of operational commands 'for example, an organised crime command, a border policing command , and (potentially) an operational support command'. In other words it will be a police force like any other.

The NCA's operational support command would take over many of the force support functions of the disbanded National Policing Improvement Agency; as well as the national support services currently under the aegis of ACPO. Ultimately the NCA will have the resources, the professional expertise, and the authority to enable it to be held directly accountable for delivering more effective protective services, developing police professionalism and improving efficiency throughout the service.

For the existing 43 forces separation means that their main responsibility becomes the provision of local policing services to the 370 odd local authorities and their neighbourhoods. They will also have an important role both in providing key logistical support, mainly manpower, to the NCA, and in collaborating with the NCA's operational support unit and others to streamline processes, improve efficiency, share services etc.

Separating the local policing function allows the government to cede control over local policing policy and priorities to local communities without compromising the national service. The centre can now disengage from the minutiae of local policing priorities and plans and give up on unwarranted and unnecessary interference in the way local communities are policed. In the process, or rather in the absence of it, bureaucracy is reduced and money saved. This represents a genuine devolution of power.

How is the new structure to be made accountable? The consultation document explicitly leaves open the NCA's governance structure, though ultimately it can only be to the national government. Originally the Tories wanted accountability for the 43 forces to be to the local electorate through directly elected police commissioners, replacing the existing police authorities. This idea was emasculated in the coalition agreement when it added the rider that the commissioners would 'be subject to strict checks and balances by locally elected representatives'. This has led to the proposal to set up 43 local authority-led Police & Crime Panels, a move which raises more questions than it answers.

Consequences It needs to be admitted that the consultation paper never specifically refers to the separation of the national from the local. But proposals, like actions, have foreseeable consequences, some of them doubtless unintended.

Collaboration – the fatal flaws

The consultation document's rhetoric assumes that results will be delivered by collaboration; between forces, between forces and the NCA, and between police commissioners, the NCA and other forces; in fact between Uncle Tom Cobley and all. The snag is that no one; neither government, chief constables, nor local councillors believe collaboration works. In an effort to combat this widespread scepticism the consultation document talks of strengthening 'the current duty to collaborate ... so that the Home Secretary … can direct forces' and of introducing a 'transparent operational protocol between chief constables and the NCA'. But this mixture of threats and more bureaucracy is no answer.

Collaboration may deliver some benefits eg through shared back-office services and some procurement decisions, but at an operational level it is a fatally flawed concept. The flaws are around fairness and accountability. Any operational command will, by definition, be constantly making decisions about priorities. The criteria will be the seriousness of the incident and the human costs involved. Being 'fair' to ensure a proportionately equal deployment of resources across the collaborative's constituent areas won't come into it. Accountability is an even more serious problem. Under existing structures a commander of a collaborative venture is either not accountable to anyone or is accountable to each and every one of the chief constables who are party to the collaboration. If the latter, chaos ensues. If the former not only is it patently unacceptable but it begs the question of how chief constables can continue to be held responsible for their geographical area if they don't control the decisions about priorities or the deployment of resources.

The NCA and the 43 forces

The NCA is to be operationally focussed, headed by a senior chief constable responsible for a number of operational commands. Co-ordinated nationally, each command is likely to be operationally based in strategic regions (the 2005 HMIC report described just such a model). The resources required can only come from the existing 43 forces, how else to reduce duplication (43 of everything) and deliver the savings required by the Treasury. It's at this point, however, that the consultation paper fails to confront directly the autonomy of the 43 chief constables.The proposals insist that even if chief constables don't have command over the resources (and even when those they do control are under a strong statutory duty to collaborate), they are to remain solely accountable for the protective services in their geographical area. This is not sustainable.

Local Control and Accountability

The government's realisation that it can only meet its commitment to decentralise control over local policing by strengthening central control over the protective services represents, in a British context, a significant breakthrough. Having proposed setting up the NCA, a national police force by another name, it has been able to go much further than anyone thought possible in ceding control over local policing policy and priorities to local communities. And the process could, eventually, go much further. The consultation document at one point proposes giving the Police & Crime Panels the power to call for a referendum on the police precept, in effect giving them a veto over the police commissioner's budget. If the government ever agreed to pass back to local authorities the police proportion of the business rate, the whole of the local policing budget could revert to local control.

The boldness of the decisions about local policing and the de facto emergence of a two-tier structure makes the manifesto commitment to introduce directly elected police commissioners problematic and, ironically, irrelevant. The general case against PCs has been well rehearsed both by chief constables and local councillors, but proposals in the consultation document also undermine the concept; The police commissioner's main role as the champion of the interests of local people is heavily compromised by placing on him/her a 'strong duty to collaborate', with the added threat of statutory enforcement.

PCs are to be monitored by local authority-led Police & Crime Panels, who would have a veto over certain decisions, including the police budget. It is unclear how the PC can be held accountable if in practice the funding comes from a parallel elected body. Not always even parallel as while some force areas are co-terminus with a precept raising authority, most are not. Even if party politics doesn't intrude, it is difficult to see how this arrangement can work.

Then there is the expense both of the elections in 42 unique constituencies (London is excluded) and of providing police commissioners with offices and support staff.
Overall the PCs' job looks an impossible one, with incumbents pulled in even more directions than the police authorities they are meant to supersede. The government, which is in favour of force mergers providing they are voluntary, will also surely want to avoid making 43 police commissioners constitutional fixtures.

Endgame

The government's proposals offer the dizzy prospect of a robust national police capability and, at the same time, a local policing settlement involving a transfer of power, free of diktats from London. This is real progress in an area of public policy for far too long seen as intractable.

Will the government be able to push the reforms through? There is something in it for almost everyone and the financial imperatives will concentrate minds. Some backwoodsmen among chief constables may be upset, but their more forward thinking colleagues should be able to swing the argument. The rank and file police constable also won't relish what will be seen as demotion to a second division and there will be mutterings about tradition and the sanctity of royal oaths.

The crucial test will be the reaction of MPs when the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill is introduced in the autumn. It would undoubtedly help bring local authorities and chief constables fully on board and influence MPs positively if the government quietly did a U-turn on police commissioners. Whatever merit the idea may have had has been lost in the greater debate.

Robert McFarland is 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

The first annual Police Foundation conference - Policing and the Recession, 7 September 2010