While I take issue with some of Truss’s more reductive policy ideas, I do wish to acknowledge successful initiatives under the current government, such as the “ From harm to hope” 10-year drugs strategy, and Project Adder to reduce drug dependency and deaths. Another oft-forgotten factor has been the fall in non-officer police staff. We should, however, stop calling the investment an “uplift” of 20,000 officers in the way the government characterises it (and I believe the public see through this clever use of terminology).Īccording to government data, the 20,000 new and inexperienced officers will only leave us marginally above the number of officers in England and Wales on 31 March 2010, just before the Conservative-led coalition government came to power. However, with the government’s investment in 20,000 officers well under way, this will be more achievable in the years to come. This has been harder to achieve since the Conservatives’ programme of austerity, as police numbers were cut significantly. Other comments made by Truss are easier to sympathise with – including the assertion that every burglary victim should be personally visited. Despite the rhetoric on the need to cut crime, the government’s own Beating Crime Plan has acknowledged that overall crime has been falling for some time. Just as in health, important external factors are at play when considering crime, including social factors such as poverty, over which the police service has no control. Moreover, the government holding only chief constables to account for cutting specific crime types is analogous to holding only doctors to account for patients developing specific diseases patently an unwise thing to do. This fact may be politically inconvenient when making the case for the need to cut crime, but it provides important context. We must never allow ourselves to be complacent but in the year to March 2021, a 12% decrease in homicides was reported in England and Wales on the previous year and is the lowest number since 2016 – a relative success story, with more to be done.
While I acknowledge that police forces can always do more to cut crime, it is not within our gift to reduce the most serious crimes by a rounded and soundbite-friendly number of 20%. The judgment on whether a force is failing cannot be reduced to an apparent inability to cut crimes such as homicide by 20% (again, as suggested by Truss). There is also an inherent contradiction between Truss’s call for government intervention on the performance of any given police force and the localised role of police and crime commissioners (a Conservative creation, after all). Police performance is complex, and, despite Truss’s view that chief constables of “failing forces” should appear before the national policing board (a meeting that does not enjoy legal status) to account for poor outcomes, well-established methods to improve underperforming forces already exist through the police performance oversight group. But while these demands may make attractive headlines, they are meaningless without further explanation from the Tory leadership hopeful.
Recognising that candidates often campaign in poetry and govern in prose, one must always draw breath before conflating a few lines in a news article attributed to a candidate with meaningful policy.
I was pleased to hear both lead candidates addressing violence against women and girls, but, as the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for performance management, I was particularly interested in Liz Truss’s headline-grabbing “back to basics” crime strategy, which would involve ranking forces in league tables, a commitment to recruit 20,000 more police officers and cut murders and violent crime by 20%, and an in-person visit by an officer for every victim of domestic burglary. With the decision on the identity of our next prime minister now sealed, it feels like an appropriate time to assess comments made about policing during the campaign.
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