Home Secretary Theresa May today swung her cost-cutting axe at the police force budget, telling a Manchester conference of top officers she had wages and overtime in her sights.
The Conservative minister told a Manchester audience of 300 delegates at the Association of Chief Police Officers: “The public finances are in the biggest mess any of us have seen in our lifetimes.
"That means the coalition government is going to have to take tough action. I have to cut spending in my own department. The spending review is only just beginning so we don't know the exact figures.
“But I must be clear. We are not talking about a spending freeze or a reduction of one or two per cent. The cuts will be big, tough and achieving those cuts will fall on the police service as it will in other areas of the public sector.”
She vowed to be 'ruthless' in finding cuts in the Home Office and added: “Police officers and staff along with the rest of the public sector are going to have to make sacrifices and accept restraint. It cannot be right for instance that for many people police overtime has become institutionalised. We may not win popularity contests for asking these questions but it's time for them to be asked.”
She demanded 'value for money', saying police spending on IT, kit and uniform should be done centrally to save cash rather than individually by all 43 forces in England and Wales.
Mrs May said police should consider 'outsourcing', or bringing in private companies to run human resources, finance departments and even cells in police stations.
But she said the public priority was for 'highly visible policing' and insisted bobbies on the beat should be increased despite the cut in spending.
The Home Secretary also took her axe to bureaucracy, repeating her promise to end the use of 'stop and account' forms and returning 80,000 charging decisions a year back to the police from the Crown Prosecution Service
She announced the axing 'with immediate effect' of Labour's policing pledge, a series of promises made by the police to the public, and one of the Home Office targets – the measure of public confidence in police forces.
The Home Secretary also repeated her promise to bring in directly-elected police mayors, saying: “It means directly elected individuals at force level, setting force budgets and approving local strategic plans and playing a role in wider questions of community safety, appointing and, if necessary, removing chief constables.”
She promised detailed proposals and legislation, and told any senior officers who thought the time-table was too ambitious: “Frankly, these issues are too important to be put on the back-burner. In an age of spending cuts and policing on a budget, our programme of police reform becomes more urgent, not less, so we will get on with the job.”
She told the senior cops what she expected. “Your job is nothing more than to cut crime and I will do everything I can to help you to do so.”
Her speech was met with respectful applause, with the chief constable of Derbyshire Police, Mick Creedon, praising it as 'bold, brave and necessary'.
Earlier, Coun Paul Murphy, the chairman of Greater Manchester Police Authority, opened the conference by saying the police faced 'extremely challenging times'.
And, in what may have been a swipe at critics of cost of staging the conference, he said the gathering was the 'perfect opportunity' to shape the future of policing.
The conference has come under scrutiny after it emerged delegates will be attending a lavish £98-a-head black tie dinner at the Lowry Hotel but
Greater Manchester's chief constable Peter Fahy insisted the event was not a 'jolly' for senior staff.
MEN reporter John Scheerhout sent live updates from the three-day conference at Manchester Central. Replay his reports here:
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ANOTHER CASE OF THE TORY'S SAYING "DO AS I SAY NOT WHAT I DO."
ONE MONTH AFTER SAYING WE WILL GET RID OF THE PAPERWORK AND PUT MORE POLICE ON THE STREETS, THEY CUT THE NUMBER INSTEAD, ITS A REPEAT OF THEIR BROKEN PROMISES SAGA, THE LAST ONE WAS WE WILL BUILD MORE SOCIAL HOUSING,BECAUSE LABOUR DID'NT, 2 WEEKS BEFORE CANCELING 150.000, AND THEN TELLING US IF YOU HAVE NO JOBS, LEAVE YOU HOMES AND LIVE IN A TENT, WHERE THERE IS JOBS, WHAT BLOODY JOBS, HAVE THEY FORGOT THERE IS A RESETION ON A THE MOMENT ?, OH I FORGOT THEY DO'NT KNOW THAT BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL MILLIONAIRES.AND HAE'NT GOT A CLUE WHAT BEING WITHOUT MEANS.LIKE I SAID THEY THINK WE SHOULD ONLY "DO AS THEY SAY, NOT AS THEY DO.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
fed up with it, its not their fault! the inherited such a mess! it was much worse than they even thought!
this country is broke, there is no money left. we couldnt carry on borrowing more and more money like labour wanted to do.
it had to stop and its better to do this now rather than later or we would have seen even deeper cuts than this.
fed up with it, sale
Stop shouting as you are givng me a headache with your socialist propoganda and claptrap.
Be afraid, be very afraid, they'll never get the office dwellers out of there air conditioned boxes, cuts will come from the front line and these are the first steps to private police forces/civilianised law enforcement.
Crime is only going to go up with less people to deal with it.
nothing ever changes: "these are the first steps to private police forces/civilianised law enforcement."
Let's hope so.
This is a win for all the criminals out there and they will be laughing at the Government once again as they continue to commit their criminal activities.
Tory lovers: Remember these words when the drug addict is entering your house. Tories tough on crime, as long as it doesn't affect the rich.
To: FED UP WITH IT SALE: you could be right about the "living in tents" just watched a docu on C4 where 358 people in Chicago are living in tents, they are still working but theyhad their houses reposessed and cos of the slash in public funding no homes are being built !! in all 2 million americans are homeless since the recession. Building social housing is essential whatever the cuts, no way do I want to walk in my area and see families living in tents !!!!
VALUE FOR MONEY..................the latest 'Buzz' word being banded about.
" But she said the public priority was for 'highly visible policing' and insisted bobbies on the beat should be increased despite the cut in spending. "
How ? Yes get rid of the office dwellers and PCSO's, thats all cops want to do is police without all the paperwork.
The policing pledge never worked,the only place it worked was in some idiots brain.
bout time it went,and back to common sense....mmmm now that wont happen will it,were too busy spending money on strawberrys!!!!
Shame she didn't say she would make cuts to ACPO and the NPIA.
Do we really need 300 or so ACPO Officers in the country on £100k+ a year?
Do they really need to eat strawberries and chocolate and drink champagne?
The Police Pledge was the only thing that kept GMP from basically not bothering with over 60% of all crime, now this freak has abolished it, shame she doesn't act as quick with terrorists and illegal immigrants
Given the Policing Pledge ended up embarrassing the last Government when it's advertising was shown in court to be so much fiction, and it was the refuge of the tickbox brigade, this is to be welcomed.
Hopefully the police can back to dealing with crime and not meeting silly targets that generally caused misery for law abiding citizen and did precious little to deal with the criminals.
[quote name=Black Flag]nothing ever changes: "these are the first steps to private police forces/civilianised law enforcement."
Let's hope so.[/quote]
Oh yeah, lets hope so as privatisation has worked so well with the railways, and prison service, get a grip its a disaster in the making.
Getting rid of the PCSO's would be a start.
So cutting the police budgets, too many in prisons so going to cut that, no targets so no figures, Tories are getting rid of crime by saying it doesn't exist. Didn't bandwagon Dave champion putting people in prison when he said that people are fed up of criminals being caught and then just being put on probation and back out on the streets. On yes cutting probation service as well. The Tory friends tha Bankers got us into this mess along with a lot of dishonest people borrowing money by overstating their earnings and finding out they could not pay it back, hence they default and the Banks are in trouble. Let the banks fold and then we get millions homeless as homes are reposessed to pay banks creditors and similar for jobs as millions are thrown on the dole again factory loans called in by Banks creditors. So if Brown had done nothing we really would be in a very bad way, Oh didn't Bandwagon Dave say he would do nothing, you get what you vote for, the tories who told us the figures were worse than expected but when the figures came out they were £12b less then we were told.
nothing ever changes: "Oh yeah, lets hope so as privatisation has worked so well with the railways, and prison service, get a grip its a disaster in the making."
And I suppose you're going to claim that British Rail was a success story with a fantastic reputation and the police we have currently are wonderful.
Or maybe you'd like to join me in the real world.
As a means of cutting costs, outsourcing rarely works.
The organisation letting the contract wants the best level of service possible and the organisation operating to the contract wants to deliver the lowest level of service it can get away with as to over deliver reduces profits.
The letting organisation should build targets and measures into the contract to ensure it is getting best value. Most often however the targets and measures are open to interpretation and the operating organisation will interpret them in the way that best favours them. Anything not explicitly covered in the contract will incur an extra charge.
In my experience, public sector organisations are not very good at drafting contracts, targets and measures with the result that they get poor service or end up paying more than they envisaged at the outset.
Theresa May needs to re-think outsourcing or train public sector managers in drafting and managing contracts if she really expects to cut costs this way.