Beat surrender: minister calls for fresh thinking on police

With the Home Office's budget cut by 25% there is a serious danger of having less officers on the street, no matter, new criminal justice minister Nick Herbert wants them to be accountable to the community with 'beat meetings'

The new coalition government has begun to outline its policy for policing and criminal justice, against the backdrop of budget cuts to the Home Office of up to 25%.

Yesterday, in a speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank, the minister for policing and criminal justice Nick Herbert called for "fresh thinking" on policing, to save money and to bring police closer to the communities they serve.

Herbert said that police forces would be required to hold regular "beat meetings" to allow local residents to hold them to account.

A police reform and social responsibility bill, which would guarantee the operational independence of the police, would replace police authorities with directly elected individuals.

A payment-by-results system, used to reward private groups that help the unemployed back to work, will be used for groups that succeed in introducing prisoners back into the community. "We must get the incentives right in the criminal justice system," he said. "Targets are poor incentives, and often drive perverse behaviour and outcomes."

Herbert's speech came against the backdrop of the emergency budget, in which the chancellor George Osborne announced cuts on average of 25% in departmental budgets.

Professor Colin Talbot, professor of public policy and management at Manchester Business School, yesterday outlined what a 25% cut in the Home Office budget might look like.

He said that could equate to more than 70,000 jobs lost in the Home Office alone, including 35,000 police officers, 4,000 community officers, nearly 20,000 police administration staff, 6,500 Home Office staff and 4,500 from the Borders agency, plus some from smaller agencies and units.

"There is zero chance cuts of this magnitude can be implemented without affecting 'frontline service'," said Talbot, pointing out that cutting back so-called back office staff will almost certainly mean more police officers sitting behind desks, doing administrative jobs.

His analysis comes as senior members of the government warn that the 25% cut outlined by Osborne is the average across the whole public sector. With the NHS and international aid budgets ringfenced, and education and defence singled out by Osborne for some kind of protection from the fiercest cuts, some departments will inevitably be looking at cuts of more than 25%.

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