Today the Coalition Government announced its plans for the future of policing.  Theresa May’s statement was repeated in the House of Lords by the Security Minister, Baroness Neville-Jones.  My intervention and the reply to it was as follows:

“Lord Harris of Haringey: I declare an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, which I understand is to be abolished under these proposals. Could I ask about this brave new world of the police and crime commissioners? In parenthesis, calling somebody a crime commissioner implies that they commission crime, which seems a slightly strange thing for the Government to want to do. Given that the commissioners will apply to the forces that provide neighbourhood policing, which is essentially visible to local communities and for which there are already substantial arrangements for local dialogue with local communities, why are other areas of policing not to have the benefit—if benefit it be—of having their own police and crime commissioners? Why, for instance, is there no police and crime commissioner for the British Transport Police or the Civil Nuclear Constabulary or the Ministry of Defence Police—or, for that matter, the City of London Police? The Civil Nuclear Constabulary and the Ministry of Defence police are extremely heavily armed and the work they do raises important issues of public accountability. The City of London has its own slightly different means of democratic control from anywhere else. Why is there not that clarity? Could the Minister also tell the House about the accountability arrangements for the new national agency, given, again, that this will have very important but not essentially visible responsibilities for policing? These are precisely the areas in which strong, robust and transparent accountability mechanisms are necessary.

Baroness Neville-Jones: The noble Lord raised the question of other functions not covered by the police and crime commissioners and he is quite right to do so. The proposals make a distinction between those issues where we believe that local accountability is of the essence, in the area of neighbourhood and constabulary activity. Where we think that the functions have a much more national character—and certainly the police commissioners themselves must contribute to efficient national policing by collaboration—such as in counterterrorism, or in the powers that are going to be grouped under the National Crime Agency, different arrangements are needed. We will certainly have to put in place, subject to further consultation, the nature of the accountability arrangements that will be required. There will certainly be accountability arrangements but they have not yet been spelled out. Our purpose today is to make it clear that lying at the core of this is the need for accountability of local and neighbourhood policing.

On the British Transport Police, there is indeed a series of other protective policing powers and activities which are not covered by today’s proposal. We are looking at the rationality of present structures in that area with a view to seeing whether we cannot make them more efficient. Again, we will have to deal, in that instance also, with the question of accountability.”

There is a real concern here about the accountability of the specialist forces and the proposed new National Crime Agency – often they operate outside the public gaze and, given the nature of what they do, it is rather depressing that the accountability and governance arrangements are clearly an afterthought.

Other exchanges demonstrated that the costs of electing the new Commissioners of Crime will have to come from existing policing budgets (which, of course, are scheduled to be cut by 25%) and the Minister was blissfully vague about whether the Commissioners would really have a free hand to set policing budgets or whether they will be subjected to a capping regime by the Home Office (or the Department of Communities and Local Government).

Meanwhile, on another planet, Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, Chair of the Metropolian Police Authority, reacted to the news of the abolition of the Authority he chairs by saying:

“This is brilliant news for crime fighting in London and indeed the UK. Over the last two years Boris has brought clarity and focus to our mission in the capital, and we have made progress.”

So the changes in governance will make up for the local police lost as a result of the planned 25% cut in police grant. But we really shouldn’t worry about this because as he goes on:

“Democratic control of policing has to be at the heart of our society. Without an electoral mandate for policing, there can be no real consent or legitimacy.”

And then in a bid to keep in with Mayor Boris Johnson he added:

” Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

Iain Dale (and other Conservative commentators) are exulting that “the war on the motorist” is to end.  He has been whipped into a state of frothing excitement by the story on the front page of today’s Sunday Times (hidden behind a pay wall, but Iain Dale helpfully reproduces most of the article – so he will presumably be in Rupert Murdoch’s bad books now) that suggests that speed cameras are to be abolished.

40% of the budgets of local road safety partnerships are to be cut and all over the country speed cameras are going to be switched off as a result.

While this is joyful news for the likes of Iain Dale – who has, he admits, nine points on his driving licence for driving too fast (so one more contravention would mean that he would be disqualified from driving) – it must be much less welcome news for the families of the more than 2000 individuals who are killed or seriously injured on the roads each year.

The Coalition Government is, of course, ignoring the evidence that this expenditure saves lives, such as the paper in the British Medical Journal which concluded:

“Existing research consistently shows that speed cameras are an effective intervention in reducing road traffic collisions and related casualties.”

It is also ignoring the local campaigns of its own Ministers, like the ubiquitous Lynne Featherstone MP who is campaigning for a 20mph zone throughout her constituency, who writes in her blog (quite sensibly for once, despite the italics):

“Last year there were six deaths in Haringey – as well as injuries. One little girl, for example, had both legs broken and will never be able to do sport or such like again – in her life.

From evidence elsewhere, 20mph saves lives, reduces seriousness of injuries and cuts pollution. 20mph as a pan borough speed limit has the downside of being a blanket policy – but the big upside of being simple, uniform policy. It’s a common complaint of motorists that rules are too complicated and are enforced wrongly.”

And then she adds:

“There would clearly be a need for enforcement to make sure that there was a penalty to not observing the limit.”

So how might this enforcement be managed efficiently?  Speed cameras, of course.  Which her Government now wants to stop using.

We went to see “As You Like It” at The Old Vic yesterday.  This is one half of the Bridge Project’s 2010 offering - again directed by Sam Mendes – with a brilliant Rosalind from Juliet Rylance and a production that fully explores the darker sides of the play (including a water-boarding scene at the beginning of the second half, vivid enough to send the Observer’s Henry Porter into full rant mode).  The production is excellent and well worth catching if you get the chance.

One particular aspect was rather disconcerting.  There seemed to be an uncanny resemblance between Oliver (the scheming money-fixated and treacherous older brother of Orlando), played by Edward Bennett, and Phillip Oppenheim, the former Conservative MP and blogger, in his younger days.   I’m sure I must have been mistaken ……….

Lynne Featherstone has become a Home Office Minister – much to her own surprise and to that of many of her constituents who did not realise that by voting for her they would be supporting a Cameron-led Government that is determined to cut public spending by 25-40%, dismantle the NHS, undermine local schools etc.

Becoming a Minister has also inevitably meant that her blogging style has become even more stilted than before – particularly following what a little bird tells me was a monumental dressing-down administered to her by her Home Office boss Theresa May, who did not like the tone of one of Lynne’s first post-appointment blogs.

So Featherlight -as she was affectionately known (for reasons I cannot fathom) when she was a member of Haringey Council – is now much more careful in what she writes.  So yesterday, there was only a slightly breathless account of the oral questions in which she had participated earlier that day in the House of Commons.

She told her excited audience:

“Today at the Dispatch Box – myself, Theresa May, Maria Miller and Andrew Stunell were all on the front bench together – in a change to how things have been done in the past. Instead of Questions to the Minister for Equalities being only for myself and Theresa – as part of mainstreaming – Maria Miller who has Ministerial responsibility for People with Disabilities (from the Department of Work and Pensions) and Andrew Stunell  (Minister for Communities and Local Government) who has responsibility for race – came together for joined up equalities questions.”

Joined up, eh?

Sounded plausible, until the first comment on the post put it in context:

“Adam says:

My respect for Theresa May has just increased massively.

I totally wouldn’t trust you to answer the questions on your own either.”

Squelch!

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
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So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

Steve O’Connell, a Conservative member of the London Assembly and a Croydon Council Cabinet member, has a bee in his bonnet about the cost of policing public demonstrations.  He has raised it at the London Assembly and now today at a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority he asked the Commissioner how costs could be reduced.

His thesis is that policing demonstrations costs a lot of money and that for most Londoners there are higher policing priorities.  Both points are true.  However, his conclusion goes rather further.

His proposal is – in essence – that in an era of financial austerity demonstration organisers should be told that their demonstration cannot go ahead if the police cannot afford to police it properly.

So the implication is that in the future demonstrations – particularly if they are likely to be controversial or that the participants are likely to be angry or rowdy (and who is going to judge that?) – are liable to be banned and if they go ahead those participating will be arrested (also not without its policing implications).

Steve O’Connell is a senior member of the Metropolitan Police Authority (he chairs the Finance Committee). He is also a senior member of the Conservative Party in London.

It is no accident that he has raised these points now.

The Coalition Government knows how problematic some of their policies are going to be, particularly as the massive cuts in public services start to take effect.

They also know how convenient it will be if dissent can be suppressed in the name of cost saving.

Steve O’Connell was clearly flying a kite on behalf of the Coalition.  He certainly hasn’t been slapped down by more senior members of his Party.

So what price their alleged commitment to civil liberties?

The Metropolitan Police Authority is in session and and Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, DCiC* and SDEI**, is NOT in the Chair.  (This was not a deliberate snub to the petitioner but a pre-planned holiday enabling him to devote August to cuttingreviewing the Metropolitan Police budget.)

So it was left to the MPA’s Vice Chair, Reshard Auladin, to welcome former Mayor, Ken Livingstone, into the Chamber at City Hall to present his petition to the Authority.  His petition was an initial shot across the bows of the Mayor’s budget process for the Metropolitan Police (hand on tiller: Kit Malthouse) and said:

‘We call on the Tory led Metropolitan Police Authority and the Tory Mayor Boris Johnson to reverse the decision to cut 455 police officers and guarantee the future of London’s dedicated 630 safer neighbourhood police teams.’

The discussion was predictable, but the body language of Conservative Assembly Members was more interesting.  They displayed all the signs of having been through a trade union negotiating skills course as taught during the 1970s.  This would have educated them in the value of distraction activity while an opponent (ie management) is talking.

In this case, as Ken Livingstone started his presentation (5 minutes as permitted by Standing Orders), Steve O’Connell‘s distress at having the former Mayor in the same room became apparent.  He pulled faces, chewed his glasses, tapped his pen frenetically on the desk, leant back in his chair studying the roof of City Hall eight floors above, and finally got up from his seat, so that he could walk to the edge of the Chamber with his back to the former Mayor and gaze at the river and the Tower of London.  Meanwhile, James Cleverly wandered in late, realised with a look of shock that he would be sitting adjacent to Ken Livingstone, and then spent a happy few minutes shuffling his papers without looking to his side.

And what was the substance of the Conservative response?  It seemed to rest on the fact that the police officers being lost from the budget were displaced by a policy decision taken during Ken Livingstone’s Mayoralty.  That decision related to police officers being released from administrative duties and replaced by specialist staff – a more sensible use of resources.  Ken’s point was that he would have reallocated those officers to front-line duties rather than seeing a net drop in police numbers.

This then degenerated into  “We’re all in this together/Mismanagement of the economy by the previous Government” rant from Steve O’Connell – despite the fact that the cut in numbers relates to a Mayoral budget agreed last year in advance of the current financial problems.

And James Cleverly, who had promised in his blog that he would “tear into Livingstone” at the meeting confined himself to suggesting that the Police Authority should stop receiving petitions as they might be used for political purposes (actually, as an old-style Stalinist, I rather agree with that point, but his intervention was hardly the “going for the jugular” moment we had been led to expect).

*DCiC = Dog Catcher in Chief

**SDEI = Shadow Directly Elected Individual

A liitle bird tells me that Sir Paul Stephenson, the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, is apparently impatient with – if not irritated by – some of the tone of recent meetings of the Metropolitan Police Authority.  He feels that the questions he is asked by some members of the Authority are hardly strategic or are nit-picking in tone and certainly fail to acknowledge the overall good performance of the Met.

I am told he is particularly infuriateddelighted by a number of the questions tabled for tomorrow’s meeting of the Authority.

His particular favourites include:

“Can the Commissioner provide details of the Diversity Training that individual members of the MPS Management Board have received in the past 3 years.” (tabled by Chris Boothman)

And this:

“According to press reports:  ‘Police are to take a more relaxed approach to children cycling on pavements after Boris Johnson secured support from the Met Commissioner.  Sir Paul Stephenson is backing the Mayor’s suggested change.’  Is it true that Sir Paul is backing this move?  If so:  What does Sir Paul feel might be the equality implications of this policy change?  Has an equality impact assessment been done on it?  If so, can we see a copy? If not, will one be done before the policy change comes into effect?” (tabled by Kirsten Hearn)

(It is, of course, true that people cycling on the pavement is hazardous for frail pedestrians or those with disabilities.  Although it is also true that young children would be in danger cycling on busy roads.)

But the question that has provoked the most (so far) private invective is this one relating to Sir Paul’s highly regarded Police Foundation lecture:

“In your speech to the Police Foundation you talked about the devastating impact that organised crime has on the economy, and the problems that you have in tackling this problem. I think it’s regrettable that we need to read about this in the press. Do you not think that this is an important issue which it would have been appropriate to discuss with members of the MPA at the Full Authority?” (tabled by Dee Doocey)

I am sure that, as usual, Sir Paul will behave impeccably at the meeting and that the mask of civility will not slip.  But privately, he will be looking forward to this month’s White Paper that is expected to confirm the coalition Government’s plans to abolish police authorities.

In Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, David Cameron repeatedly dodged Harriet Harman’s question on the maximum 14-day wait for patients with suspected cancer.

The question she asked was quite simple:

“This week the Government published their White Paper on the national health service. They say that they will get rid of targets. Can the Prime Minister tell us whether patients will keep their guaranteed right to see a cancer specialist within two weeks of seeing their GP?”

His answer was less than clear:

“As for the NHS, what we have decided is that we will keep targets only when they actually contribute to clinical outcomes. We all want to see a higher cancer survival rate. I am afraid that, after 13 years of Labour government, we have not the best cancer outcomes in Europe, and we want the best cancer outcomes. That means rapid treatment, yes, but it also means rapid follow-up, and it means people getting the radiotherapy, chemotherapy and drugs that they need. Those are all essential. The one thing that we on this side of the House will do is continue to put real-terms increases into the NHS, whereas I understand that it is now Labour policy to cut the NHS.”

Harriet Harman tried again:

“Quite apart from the anxiety of having to wait, results are best if treatment starts as soon as possible. That is why it is important to be diagnosed and to see a specialist quickly.

The Prime Minister has not answered the question. The whole House will have seen that. He has dodged the question, just as his Health Secretary did. This is what the Health Secretary said in the House when he, too, was dodging the question:

“I have not said that we are abandoning any of the cancer waiting-time targets at the moment”.

I ask the Prime Minister to give us a straight answer. Will cancer patients keep their guarantee to see a specialist within two weeks—yes or no?”

David Cameron fudged again:

“For some people, two weeks is too long. That is the whole point. If a target contributes to good clinical outcomes, it stays; if it does not, it goes.”

As Harriet Harman pointed out:

“…. the Prime Minister has still not answered. He is obviously ditching the guarantee for cancer patients, but he has not the guts to admit it to the House.”

However, a different response was given in the Lords, when Labour’s Lord Alf Dubs pressed the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Health, Earl Howe, on the same point.  This was the exchange:

“Lord Dubs: My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister can do better than the Prime Minister did in Prime Minister’s Questions earlier today, when he declined to give a guarantee that the 14-day period, within which cancer patients should receive hospital treatment, would be upheld. Can he confirm that the Government will stick to the 14-day period?

Earl Howe: My Lords, that target of a 14-day referral period has a definite clinical underpinning. There are certainly no plans to abolish it.”

That was as clear an answer as you could get.

However, the bad news for cancer patients (and also probably for the good Earl Howe’s job security), when the Lords’ answer was put to the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesperson later in the day, he stuck with the Prime Minister’s fudge and refused to give a clear answer.

Earlier this evening I heard Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, deliver the Police Foundation Annual Lecture (given each year in memory of Lord John Harris – no relation).

Sir Paul’s lecture, entitled “Fighting Organised Crime in an Era of Financial Austerity”, was insightful and thought-provoking.

And the thought it provoked in me was how does tackling serious crime fit into the Coalition Government’s agenda?

The answer, if you listen to Sir Paul (although he was much too polite to say it so explicitly), was that it doesn’t.

The lecture spelt out the impact that serious organised crime has directly and indirectly on communities and its financial and economic cost to the country.  And Sir Paul then pointed out that, despite the significant improvements in recent years:

“The specialist resources devoted by the police service to addressing the threat from organised crime remains uncoordinated.  ….  the  service has no organised crime strategy, no established national tasking process and no meaningful performance measures.”

He didn’t say – although he could have done – that the Coalition’s Programme for Government doesn’t mention serious organised crime in the chapter on “Crime and Policing” and the closest it gets to a mention anywhere in the document is in the chapter on “Immigration” which promises to:

“create a dedicated Border Police Force, as part of a refocused Serious Organised Crime Agency, to enhance national security, improve immigration controls and crack down on the trafficking of people, weapons and drugs. We will work with police forces to strengthen arrangements to deal with serious crime and other cross-boundary policing challenges, and extend collaboration between forces to deliver better value for money.”

Refocussing SOCA on immigration hardly solves the problem Sir Paul was describing.

He did, however, reveal that the Government is now drafting a paper on organised crime – so I suppose that must be progress.  However, before we get our expectations too high, he warns that this:

“must not be a collection of fine words and generic statements.”

…. perhaps he’s seen the draft.

And he concluded with a stark warning:

“I wonder how many Chief Constables across the country are going to be able and willing to balance the very proper desire and requirement for local community policing, with the challenge of maintaining at least existing capability to deal with the high end but often less obvious demands of serious organised crime.  And is the situation about to get even more complex?  Will the new accountability and governance model for police forces, incorporating directly elected local individuals, lead to the unintended consequence of further eroding existing limited organised crime capability?”

And, if the Coalition omits tackling serious organised crime from its programme for crime and policing, what will happen with directly elected police chiefs?

I hope we don’t have to wait for a Sicilian-style breakdown of civic authority before tackling organised crime reappears on the Coalition’s priority list.