Blears: No reason for drop in police numbers
The Home Affairs Minister Hazel Blears has told a committee of MPs that she sees no reason why police numbers should fall next year.
Last week, representatives of police forces from across England and Wales visited Parliament to lobby MPs over what they claim is a potential £350 million shortfall in funding for next year.
This, police warn, could lead to a cut in frontline police numbers.
The supposed shortfall is based on police claims that they need an increase of 5.5 per cent to meet new responsibilities and technology, but police believe they are only in line to get a three per cent increase in central government funding, and with the Government determined to ensure that there are no large council tax rises, sufficient extra revenue cannot be raised from that source.
Giving evidence to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday, Ms Blears said that a statement about the grant would be made in November, insisting that a good grant with a reasonable council tax increase alongside efficiency savings there was no reason why current levels of policing could not continue.
She added that she would expect the current level of officers to be maintained.
Ms Blears said though that she took chief constables’ concerns “extremely seriously” and said that no decision had yet been made on the police grant, or on the level of precept (funding drawn from council tax levies) that police would be entitled too. However, she acknowledged that police concerns about restrictions were not impossible.
On more general issues, she said that the next stage of police reform would be focused on instilling a “customer service culture” within the force and involving the public in the priorities of the police. Ms Blears said that reform is currently being discussed across government, and there will be a new white paper published in early November.
One of the major focuses of this will be call handling, she said, pointing out that a great deal of the public’s satisfaction with the police was directly related to the first contact. Ms Blears confirmed there would be minimum standards in this regard alongside the introduction of a single non-emergency number. This was the basis of the so-called “Coppers’ Contract”, she added confirming that HM Inspector of Constabulary’s work on call-handling would feed into this before implementation in November 2006.
On diversity, Ms Blears said she has been “appalled” and “shocked” by the Secret Policeman documentary which showed police recruits engaged in overtly racist behaviour, and that she had been “doubly galvanised” by it to ensure that no one with the views reflected in the documentary thought the police service was the appropriate place for them.
Telling the MPs that “significant progress” had been made in rooting out racist behaviour in the police, she noted that BNP membership was now not tolerated among officers, and would soon be added to the application form, and a new rigorous diversity test was in place. The test placed recruits in a range of situations to test their attitudes to race, age, disability, sexual orientation and gender.
So far, 145 recruits have failed the role playing process, the Minister told the Committee.
In July the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) agreed that any officer joining the BNP could face dismissal. Government proposals to include a question on far right organisation membership are currently with the Police Negotiating Board.
