I know a lot of police officers, most of whom are paper work processing in admin roles, it is possible to make cuts and increase the bobbies on the beat, stop the paperwork and put the police back on the streets doing the jobs they were trained to do!

Let's see what is proposed today

Recent problems in the British Public Sector have much to do with previous governments' mindless obsession with targets. It is explained in this piece in the The Independent newspaper on 5 April, 2004, entitled "Mr Blair may find that he has finally lost what he really cares about":

"In 1997, a substantial majority of civil servants welcomed the Blair Government with enthusiasm. They had spent the previous few years chaffing in frustration, because the Tory parliamentary party was paralysing John Major. Good civil servants also welcomed the Blairite's emphasis on delivery. Forget Sir Humphrey; the best officials want to get things done. But then they discovered what their new masters meant by "delivery". It was the paper-boy approach to government; the only delivery that mattered was the next day's headlines.

“Good civil servants also believe they have a duty to maintain the traditions and values of the British civil service, which, at its best, has always stood for a rigorous and disinterested approach to the problems of government; for administrative principles untainted by party politics. That did not suit the Blairites. They wanted to politicise everything, and one of their favourite instruments was targeting.

“It is not necessarily a bad idea to set targets, which can focus people's minds on what they ought to be trying to achieve. In this case, however, the targets took over. Once they had been set they had to be met, even if this meant sacrificing more desirable objectives, including the truth. Doctors bribed to claim that their patients have given up smoking; top exam grades which no longer mean much; orders to avoid arresting illegal immigrants - that is how Tony's targeting works. It does as much to help the British people as the pigs' targets did for the other animals' welfare in Animal Farm.

“Targetitis has become the Blairite equivalent of legionnaires' disease. It poisons offices. Its first symptom is an uncontrollable suppuration of paperwork, with doctors, teachers and policemen all sicklied o'er by the pale cast of form-filling. As the data in the forms must tell the great leader what he wants the voters to hear, much of it is about as reliable as the material which told Stalin how well his five-year plans were working.

“The second symptom occurs in the most acute form of the disease, targetitis ministerialis. When this strikes, the sufferer rapidly loses all contact with truth. There follows a decline into cynicism and moral lassitude, accompanied by the progressive collapse of the intellectual faculties. The invalids wander the corridors of Whitehall, babbling the same dual refrain: "What does number 10 say?" and "If this gets out, I've had it".”

We need greater candor throughout the Public Sector: the National Health Service, Education, other blighted departments, and not least the Police. Sometimes, however, the mask slips…

“Over breakfast last week a senior police officer reeled off impressive crime figures for his patch. All crime was down by 20 per cent, the number of violent offences had fallen by 10 per cent and vehicle crimes had been halved.

“Then he paused, dropped the political mask that so many chiefs have to wear, and admitted that none of these numbers gave him any reassurance. "The problem is that the crimes that really worry people, and me – the teenagers running around with knives and guns – seem to be getting worse"

“This is the story of policing in the past few years: a maddening obsession with measuring performance.”

See “This numbers racket never added up”, The Times, October 24, 2008.

Police coyness fools no one. Commentators were quick to point out:

“Anyone familiar with "The Wire" TV series will know this as "duking the stats". We all know violent crime has increased massively in the past 10 years. Police are under so much pressure to make arrests, reduce serious crime, that the stats are bound to be massaged.”
Mike Gow, Nottingham, UK

“I served from 1971 to 1988 with Lancs and GMP until I retired owing to injury on duty. Stats have always been recorded in a manner that presents a Force in a favourable and positive light. It is done so to enhance the reputation of Chief Constables and to please Government. The truth is immaterial.”
Ian Gossop, Padgate, England

Such targets do more than mislead the public, they destroy trust. As Jan Berry, head of the Police Federation, said in an interview with the BBC in December 2007:

“Government targets are causing a breakdown in public trust. Police were being set too many performance targets, and not being allowed to use their discretion.

“We do things these days which we can count, rather than things that can't be counted.

“There are loads of minor offences which previously could, and should have been, dealt with with some words of advice, like playground disputes between pupils, that are now appearing in the crime statistics. There has been a sense of persecuting middle England in order to make the statistics look good.

“Home Office targets were distorting police priorities and encouraged them to arrest people for minor offences, such as speeding, rather than concentrating on serious crime.”

Fran Banks, a commentator from Essex, sums up the public misgivings:

“Quite simply the government are using the police to nick the public for any offence that raises money for them.”

A senior retired British Police Officer put it to me this way:

“I've lived through a period in the Police Force where detection rates have dropped from 90 per cent to 30 per cent. Actually, even 30 per cent is misleading. If we are lucky enough to catch a criminal, which is only about five per cent of the time, they will usually ask for other offences to be taken into consideration. That's where the the 30 per cent comes from.

“The problem is targets. Most of the time nobody monitors what the police do. For example, if they have been set a target to catch 50 speed offenders a day, they will do that in the first two hours then do nothing the rest of the day, yet still feel they've done a good day's work.

“Before all these targets, we would look carefully at cars that were driving suspiciously. That's where a lot of our arrests came from. Not now. All the police care about is meeting their targets.

“If you go along to your local Police Station to report a suspected fraud, they will now direct you to an accountant who can help you gather the evidence. There is no Fraud Squad anymore, because there are no targets for it.”

So it was not surprising to find Libby Purves, a level-headed columnist, arguing in The Times in August 2008 that “we must train people to break rules”:

“Something is wrong. We read too many stories about this craven, inhuman, poltroonish cowering behind rules and routines, and about individuals who get into trouble for momentarily breaching them in the name of humanity or sense.

“Employees should be allowed to be people too; and a good bureaucrat should feel safe to judge which value scored highest at the critical moment. We all see examples of this gentle accommodation every day. But we also know that those who break small rules for human values run a real risk, because of that corporate anxiety and depression. It is brought on by soulless micromanagement from the top and a culture that assumes the citizen is a moron.”

Dean from London agrees:

“I was a Police Officer for 10 years. We constantly had to make split second decisions based on little or no information or facts. We used initiative, instinct, common sense, tact and diplomacy. It saved me from a beating many times. Couldn't happen now with target driven culture Britain."

In a world of target-driven control, even thinking is unsafe!

Thus it was encouraging to hear David Cameron saying at a Civil Service Live conference in London in July 2010:

“You need to know, instinctively, what will get a green light or a red light from me. If you want to make our public services more transparent, open them up to make them more diverse, to give people more power and control, you can be confident it will get the green light. But if you want to set targets, set new controls, impose new rules, don't bother because you're likely to get the red light.”

‘Bureaucratic accountability', introduced by Labour through targets and top-down management, had to be replaced with 'democratic accountability', he added.

"From now on governments will have to fix the budget to fit the figures, instead of fixing the figures to fit the budget." declared George Osborne, the chancellor, after the creation of the Office for Budget Responsibility in June 2010.

We shall soon enough see if this amounts to anything other than just more government spin.

But it is nice to see Fahy on the warpath again!