Speeches and Statements
Search for press releasesPolicing for the public speech
15 July 2009
This speech, by the Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP, Home Secretary, was given on 9 July 2009 at the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and Association of Police Authorities (APA) annual conference in Manchester.
I’m really pleased to have this early opportunity to speak to the people who lead the fight against crime and are crucial to the safety and security of our country.
May I begin by saying farewell to Sir Ken Jones, who I think has to change his name to Bruce in order to secure his new role in Australia as Deputy Commissioner for the Victoria Police. His contribution over the last 3 years has been immense. He has led the establishment of the police counter-terrorism network, which is a vital element of CONTEST and has been instrumental in driving forward implementation of the policing pledge. On behalf of all three Home Secretaries he has worked with, I wish him well.
And sadly, it’s also time to say thank you and farewell to another member of the Jones clan - Bob. In his four years as Chair of the APA, he has been a doughty defender of police authorities and their role of engaging with the public. He will be a tough act to follow, and I look forward to an equally strong relationship with his successor.
I’d also like to welcome Sir Hugh Orde as incoming president – he will be greatly missed in Northern Ireland where he has done so much to establish the PSNI, but his experience and expertise will be a huge asset for ACPO over the next three years.
ACPO has long been appreciated by the Home Office for its skill and dedication, but I see from an article in the Times last week, that it has won new admirers, having been shortlisted for the Golden Bull prize by the Plain English Campaign. The potential prize-winning sentence, submitted as part of the consultation on the policing Green Paper last year reads as follows:
'The promise of reform which the Green Paper heralds holds much for the public and the Service: local policing, customised to local need with authentic answerability, strengthened accountabilities at force level through the reforms to police authorities and HMIC, performance management at the service of the localities with targets and plans tailored to local needs, the end of centrally-engineered one size fits all initiatives, an intelligent approach to cutting red tape through the redesign of cultures and processes, a renewed emphasis on strategic development so as to better equip our service to meet the amorphous challenges of managing cross force harms, risks and opportunities.'
I had no idea ACPO was so in favour of longer sentences.
Let me just record my admiration for the ACPO spokeswoman, who responded to the article by saying, 'That’s how civil servants speak.'
When Sir Robert Peel set out his nine principles of policing, he said: 'the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.'
It goes without saying that the face of policing has changed remarkably since 29 September 1829, when the first police force was established.
The challenges have changed a bit over 180 years. It is unlikely that today, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police force would issue a warning to the public not to leave their washing hanging out in case it got stolen, as Edmund Henderson did in 1871.
Nor is it likely that Sir Paul Stephenson would consider that cab drivers who didn’t know their route were a threat to public order as his predecessor, Sir Richard Mayne, did in 1851.
It was Mayne who in response to complaints from Londoners established “the knowledge for Hackney Carriage drivers. So life has changed for the police.
But Peel’s expression of their fundamental purpose, is as relevant as it was 180 years ago.
Even the most cursory glance at the police’s record over the last 12 years, shows that in fulfilling that purpose, they are more effective than ever.
I won’t repeat the statistics, because you know them too well and as I said in a speech last week, this is an area of government where statistics are meaningless to the affected individual.
A patient suffering from cardiovascular disease can draw comfort from the fact that premature deaths have fallen by 44%.
A parent sending their child to secondary school can be encouraged by the fact that the number of pupils gaining five or more good GCSEs has increased by 44% since 1997.
But it’s no use at all telling a victim of crime that they were statistically less likely to be robbed, attacked or burgled than at any time since 1981.
Avoiding the constant repetition of the statistics doesn’t detract from their validity. They reflect greater investment and more police officers and support staff, but more importantly, they demonstrate how hard everyone in the police service has worked to use that extra investment to good effect.
If the job of Home Secretary is a poisoned chalice, to quote the tired cliché wheeled out with every reshuffle, then the record of the police over the last 12 years in tackling crime helps to remove the malice from the chalice, so to speak.
One year after its publication, the Green Paper has put the focus clearly and remorselessly on neighbourhood policing, and building a stronger relationship with the public – with 3600 neighbourhood policing teams now operating across the country.
When I went on my first walkabout with a local police team on my second day in office, they explained that this was how policing used to be. It’s certainly how the public want it to be and we need to do more to be sure that they are fully aware that this is now how it is.
And whilst the extensive array of national targets may have been necessary once, they are not any longer. There is now only one, which focuses attention on what really matters – the confidence of the public in how the service deals with crime and antisocial behaviour in their neighbourhoods.
There are no accompanying diktats from government that tell police forces how this target must be delivered. It is up to police authorities and local police forces to determine what will have the greatest effect in the communities and neighbourhoods they serve.
And as the HMIC look at how forces make progress on how the policing pledge is being delivered, I am sure they will be mindful of the need to limit the bureaucratic burden of actually measuring the target It’s no use having one target if hundreds of sub-targets emerge to measure it.
So as I begin my tenure as Home Secretary, I don’t pretend to have all the answers or that I’ll ever find them without your help. But I am clear about four things:
- there will be no new national targets
- no radical restructuring
- no reorganisations
- and no directly elected police commissioners.
Sir Hugh says that every professional bone in his body tells him that directly elected commissioners is a bad idea. I can tell you that every political bone in my body tells me the same thing.
The issue of local accountability is a serious one. We do need to look at how the current system responds to the needs and concerns of the public.
You’ll have already heard from my friend and predecessor, David Blunkett, who has given you a flavour of his imminent report on what more can be done to improve police accountability.
This is one of the strands that the White Paper on policing will look at in the autumn. As the paper begins to take shape, I look forward to hearing your views on what further steps we should take to make the current system work better for the public and the police.
The focus on improving public confidence is critical because the historic fall in crime has not been matched by a similarly dramatic fall in people’s fear of crime.
We know that fear of crime and lack of confidence in the police and local authorities are in themselves debilitating.
The task of improving public confidence, gets harder when rare but shocking events diminish the public’s faith in the criminal justice system.
I know that preventing such brutal crime is one of your main motivations.
Yesterday, you were discussing the Protective Services Framework, which will support police forces and authorities in this task – particularly in its emphasis on collaboration, and how police forces and authorities can work together to protect vulnerable people and to manage known and dangerous offenders. There is no better example of how this can work effectively than here in Manchester, as I’ve seen for myself this morning.
I strongly support the leadership that ACPO has shown on encouraging greater and more effective collaboration – both between forces and authorities and across the whole of the criminal justice system. I look forward to working with you on this exciting agenda.
On Monday we will publish the strategy designed to give renewed impetus to tackling the constantly evolving threat of serious and organised crime, which as you will know, has an enormous social cost. If it’s allowed to take root in communities, it creates a vicious downward spiral of fear, intimidation and economic decline.
We are all well acquainted with the factors that inspire public confidence and those which deflate it. When people see known offenders or perpetrators of antisocial behaviour getting away with it, their confidence declines.
In contrast, when they see evidence of offenders being brought to account - when they see the criminal justice system working for them rather than those who offend against them – it increases.
Whether that’s young offenders cleaning up graffiti on a Friday or Saturday night, or offenders carrying out their community sentences in high visibility jackets, the more the public appreciates that the criminal justice system is on their side the safer they will feel.
If they can have a say in how the proceeds of crime reclaimed from criminals can be invested in their communities, they’ll be even more convinced that justice seen is indeed justice done.
To improve public confidence, we also need to take tougher action on antisocial behaviour. As I said last week, I want to do more to galvanise local action on this issue - making the people responsible for dealing with it more accessible and accountable, and speeding up the process by which the most persistent perpetrators of antisocial behaviour are brought to account.
Some people suggest that this is somehow an attack on young people, but too often, in my experience, it’s young people themselves who cower in their bedrooms because they daren’t step outside. The young are as much the victims of loutish behaviour as the old.
Neighbourhood policing is about providing a visible police presence, and ensuring that people feel informed about measures that the police are taking in their area. When this happens, people feel that crime is being properly dealt with.
The policing pledge set out for the first time, the minimum standards that the public can expect from police and the priorities of their local force.
Its aim is to give the work of the police greater visibility to the community, and give the public the opportunity to help determine local policing priorities.
Many forces across the country have made great progress in implementing the pledge and in making their neighbourhood policing teams more visible to the local community.
I was deeply impressed by what I saw this morning at Green Hayes police station. Officers there were telling me about how they hold regular surgeries with the public – not in the police station – but out in the community, in local cafes and other public meeting places.
But in other neighbourhoods, the work of the police can still seem obscure.
At a time when people cite crime as their biggest worry after the economy, it seems incongruous that there are many who wouldn’t know how to contact the police if they notice something suspicious, or if they see property being defaced in their street. Incidents that wouldn’t necessarily warrant a 999 call, but that still deserve attention.
As I’ve mentioned, Robert Peel, in his nine principles of policing, talked about the police’s role in ensuring the welfare of communities.
Today, police forces need to be seen by the public as part of the fabric of their communities – visible and accountable to local people, names, rather than numbers reflecting the needs of the neighbourhoods they serve.
Focusing on neighbourhood policing does not need to happen at the expense of what has traditionally been seen as the core business of the police – dealing with violent, and serious and organised crime. The two are intimately connected.
As Hugh pointed out in his speech on Tuesday, policing disciplines do not fit easily into simple categories.
The police have to be both a police service for the law-abiding majority, and a police force for those who engage in criminality.
These two objectives are not contradictory – as any police officer knows. Where there are good relationships between the police and the local community, people are much more likely to come forward to help them tackle serious crime.
And just as police services need to become more enmeshed in communities, so the police have the right to expect other local services to play their part in preventing crime.
You will have come across the serial offenders – who’ve grown up in chaotic households, who start off as long-term truants and small-time trouble makers, but by the time they reach 18 are in and out of the criminal justice system and causing substantial harm and distress to people in their communities.
And you will also be only too well aware of the role that alcohol plays as a contributory factor in crime and disorder. Nearly half of all violent crime is linked in some way to alcohol. I’m deeply appreciative of the work that ACPO are doing across the country to look at what more can be done to tackle alcohol-related crime, and I want to explore what more we in government can do to help.
While historically, the police force was established to prevent crime as much as it was to catch criminals, it cannot do this job on its own. Strong partnerships with local authorities and other local services will always be absolutely critical to the police’s work – Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships may not have a title that sets the pulse racing, but they are a vital component in tackling both crime and its causes.
And we know from the success of specific programmes such as Safer Schools Partnerships and Family Intervention Projects that these collaborations work.
I know that there has been much discussion this week about the challenges of the current financial climate, and the scale of what the police are expected to deliver.
It can feel like an uncomfortable squeeze between meeting rising public expectations and improving efficiency.
I believe that the three year settlement up to 2011 agreed by my predecessor in 2007 is a good one for the police – it locks in an accumulated 20% increase in funding since 1997.
We will not cut into that settlement as our political opponents have proposed. And neither will we interfere with the three year pay settlement agreed last year.
But the police, along with others in the public sector, are rightly being asked to improve productivity and efficiency.
This is not a licence to abandon or scale back ambitions on neighbourhood policing. Nor is it a reason to claim that a greater drive on efficiency must inevitably hit policing numbers.
Greater productivity and efficiency is not a euphemism for cutting frontline staff. Many police forces across the country are already proving that they can increase productivity without such cuts.
All public services have had to respond to the fact that public expectations continue to rise – they do not diminish as public services improve, they increase.
Forces such as Norfolk have not only made substantial savings by restructuring – they have simultaneously established 100 extra police officer posts and reduced vehicle response times across the whole county to under 30 minutes.
And Kent and Essex constabularies are exploring how they can make savings by merging their procurement functions.
These are but a few of the many, many examples.
Through QUEST, where staff are given licence to scrutinise day-to-day practices and examine where they can save time or reduce bureaucracy, many forces are freeing up officers to spend more time policing the streets.
Officers in Cheshire have reduced the time to resolve a crime from 22 days to five. And officers in Wiltshire have saved and reallocated 63,000 police hours – the equivalent of 53 police officers.
Following the Flanagan Report, there has been substantial progress in reducing bureaucracy.
Whereas in the past, it would have been fair to say that at least some of these burdens were imposed by central government, it is not as true today.
We have removed or significantly reduced 36 data collection requirements, including scrapping activity-based costing, freeing-up an estimated 260,000 hours of police time.
Police officers no longer have to fill out the foot-long Stop and Account form, which should save a further 690,000 hours per year and we have also said we will reduce the recording requirement for stop and search encounters too.
The 20,000 extra hand-held devices provided for frontline officers are saving them half an hour every shift.
Significant though these changes are, many frontline officers still feel that excessive paperwork removes them unnecessarily from frontline duty. But central government does not have a monopoly on bureaucracy creation. We also need to address the local barriers that can stop police doing their jobs effectively.
Jan Berry’s forthcoming review will look at these issues. Building on projects like the proportionate crime recording project, piloted in four police forces last year, which encourages officers to act proportionately when dealing with minor incidents.
A good example is a case I heard about recently, when residents became suspicious of two boys who were going door-to-door, fraudulently collecting money, claiming they were doing so on behalf of a local charity.
Instead of marching them down to the local police station and putting them through the criminal justice system, the investigating officer, with the support of the boys’ parents, got them to return the money and to apologise personally to each of their neighbours for their actions. All of the residents were happy with this outcome, it had a profound impact on the two boys in question, and it saved the police time.
There is no doubt that the challenges faced by today’s chief constables and police authorities are far from straightforward.
But as any police officer knows, the overriding principle is very simple.
Keeping people safe, providing them with security and serenity so they can get on with their lives is the most basic duty that any government owes its citizens. For the public, the police embody this duty.
And the challenge of police leaders is to make sure that that in the communities they serve, that simplicity of purpose is palpable.
My role is equally simple. It is to support the police in the difficult, dangerous work that they do.
I am not in this job to lift my public profile, or second guess your decisions. Like you, I am here to serve.
And like you, I believe that it is through greater engagement in neighbourhood policing, effective collaboration, strong leadership that we can ensure that policing is carried out both for the public and with the public, and in the sense of Peel’s nine policing principles, by the public.
This job is a chalice that any politician should feel proud and privileged to have passed to them and I intend to thoroughly enjoy my time working with you.
