Transcript of this meeting [PDF]

point. One of the strands of the TP Development programme is a centralisation of ourcrime recording functions for all the reasons that you have articulated. It will come withrevenue savings and data accuracy benefits.I would not agree with your analysis of the sanction detection position. You will recall,when the Commissioner gave his update at the very beginning of the meeting, he spokeabout total notifiable offences, so that is every single offence that is recorded in London.Aside from monitoring the individual category we do count the whole and, within thewhole, there is some proactive work that is undertaken by police officers. On a daily andweekly basis I personally, with my area commanders, monitor that and look for exactlywhat you are describing, which is shifts and changes between crime categories and with aview to meeting the targets.Of course it is always going to be a risk in a target regime that we hit the target and missthe point, which is why the MPS recommended a lower number of targets in the lastfinancial year that we thought would have been more meaningful. We will beencouraging the MPA to take a similar position in this forthcoming year.In terms of sanction detections, we do not have a total notifiable offence sanctiondetection target, so what you have just described in terms of cannabis warnings forstudents would not be a target, even if your hypothesis of the situation was correct.Your final point was about bureaucracy. We completely agree with you. We arecommitted to reducing bureaucracy across the organisation, which is why we have thereview being undertaken by Mr Rodhouse, which we will report back on, on how wemight reduce it in the future.Sir Paul Stephenson (Commissioner, MPS): Could I add one thing, Tony [Arbour]?That is please do not take Lynne’s [Owens] answer to be an invite to set a target forsanction detection for (inaudible)! The other thing is the notion of sanction detections ispretty meaningless to the man and woman on the Clapham omnibus and we need to getaway from over layered, confusing and nonsensical definitions of crimes and targets toget to something that the public understand, you understand and police officers canunderstand, and record it more simply.Tony Arbour (AM): I welcome Lynne’s [Owens] robust defence, but I think what Ihave pointed to are very considerable flaws. Since much of what we do is dependent onhaving accurate data, can I suggest that we - and I think this is a suggestion to you,Chairman - take a leaf out of Eric Pickles’ [Secretary of State for the Department forCommunities and Local Government] book who says that, if we think that there areunnecessary regulations, then, in effect, they should be discarded? If the figure that Ihave given about the number of pieces of paper which are required to record an assault isactually required, maybe you could recommend to the Home Secretary that this issomething which could well be thinned out.www.merrillcorp.com39