Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

OVERVIEW
“Another attempt at changing police
pay and conditions of service (the
Winsor Report) provoked Police
Federation opposition.”
and conditions of service (the Sheehy
eport) failed because of significant
Police Federation opposition, but the
Police and Magistrates’ Courts Act 1994
gave the Home Secretary increased
central authority while reducing the
local representative element in police
authorities.
There were also some measurable
successes. Police management structures
were streamlined and some national
agencies created. Irish republican
terrorism, a deadly problem since the
early 190s, was successfully constrained,
although it would be the succeeding
Labour government that would conclude
the political agreement that effectively
ended the terrorist campaign.
Public perception
Problems, however, dominated perception.
ecorded crime began to decrease from
1994 but it was not clear that this could be
sustained. The police faced criticism over
failures to address victims of racist and
gender-based crimes, and to become more
representative of the ethnically diverse
society that was developing around it.
Police numbers fell during an economic
recession. These, together with the
government’s failure to address antisocial
behaviour, the principal concern of many
local communities, gave a re-oriented
Labour party, under Tony Blair, the
opportunity to wrest the political initiative
from the Conservatives.
Labour in the 190s had focused its
policing policy on increasing political
influence and control, but because this
was largely irrelevant to most peoples’
personal experience, it gained the party
no electoral advantage. Blair, in contrast,
would be pragmatic. He would be ‘tough
on crime, tough on the causes of crime’.
His policing policy focused on delivering
crime and disorder reduction through
partnerships between the police and local
authorities, neigbourhood policing and
tough penal policies, all driven through
with comprehensive legislation, powerful
central controls, detailed targets and
intrusive inspection regimes.
Labour increased police numbers
(including a vast growth in ‘civilian’
support staff), adding almost 60,000 posts
between 199 and 2010, thus enabling
an expansion of both investigative and
neighbourhood policing.
Successive Labour Home Secretaries,
audaciously annexing the Conservative
slogan ‘Police eform’, forced through
changes in police culture and practice,
particularly with respect to ethnic diversity
following the Macpherson eport
(1999) into the murder of the black
teenager Stephen Lawrence, and to pay
and conditions of service, adopting or
modifying several of the Sheehy eport
recommendations. New national agencies
were created to deal with serious and
organised crime, training, technology and
general support.
In partnership with ACPO and
the Inspectorate of Constabulary it
restructured counter-terrorism policing
along regional lines, part of a major
overhaul of national counter terrorism
following the 911 and attacks in New
ork and London.
ACPO’s development of its own
extensive national doctrines and policies
accentuated Labour’s centralising
tendencies, but it was the government
that gained an unenviable reputation
for micromanagement which frustrated
many professional managers and frontline
personnel. Changes in recording practices
obfuscated the genuine decline in crime
while the continued presence of antisocial
behaviour in many neighbourhoods
limited the electoral advantage of its
political and financial investment.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke seriously
miscalculated opposition to his 2005-6
force-merger proposals, the abandonment
of which presaged the decline in Labour’s
perceived grip on the law and order issue
which characterised its remaining years in
office, particularly under Gordon Brown’s
premiership (200-10).
Period of experimentation
A rejuvenated Conservative opposition
under David Cameron promised to slash
bureaucracy, introduce management
freedoms and increase local accountability,
and it was these policies that dominated
the coalition (Conservative-Liberal
Democrats) government’s approach to
policing following its formation in May
2010.
However, these policies also carried a
high degree of risk. Elected ‘police and
crime commissioners’ would replace
police authorities from November 2012,
but this risked increased political influence.
Another attempt at changing police pay
and conditions of service (the Winsor
eport) provoked Police Federation
opposition, while the government’s
economic policies, part dogma, part
pragmatic reaction to a severe recession,
initiated cuts in numbers which would
wipe out the growth under Labour.
In short, by 2012 the police service
was entering a period of extended
constitutional and organisational
experimentation, the outcome of which
was far from certain.
POLICING UK | 11