Police: Performance Indicator Management

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for bringing forward this important debate this afternoon. Before I begin, I remind your Lordships of my former interests in policing matters. I have been involved in policing for over 30 years and a member of my police authority for 20 years, chairing it for eight of those. I was a deputy chair of the Association of Police Authorities, a member of the Police Negotiating Board and the Service Authority for the National Crime Squad and I sit on the Independent Police Commission. Of course, I speak here in a personal capacity only.

The Home Office ostensibly set only one policing target when the current Government came into power: to cut crime. The previous Government did much the same: to improve confidence in policing. Yet under both these seemingly simple and unbureaucratic targets lay a plethora of indicators, with more targets, measures, priorities and the like. Police authorities were bewildered by their complexity but had to comply with them through their policing plans for their local communities.

Then, about a year ago, the Home Office handed all responsibility for analysing crime statistics to the office of the National Statistician, the ONS. The idea was to make the collection and analysis of data more transparent and at a stroke reduce public scepticism about crime statistics. We must not kid ourselves that the Home Office does not continue to collect large amounts of performance and crime data. It needs to, to inform the collation of performance statistics nationally. Some of these data are used to support the crime mapping tool on www.police.uk that enables local people to check crime in their area. That is a very good thing. The data inform the national performance monitoring functions of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary—HMIC. There is also the Crime Survey for England and Wales—formerly the British Crime Survey—which is carried out independently.

Historically—certainly during my years working in the policing environment—there have always been problems with the way in which crimes are recorded in different forces. The former Audit Commission and more recently HMIC noted significant variations in practice and an unacceptable level of mistakes, as we have heard. Commenting on the analysis of variation in crime trends published by the ONS in January this year, the Association of Chief Police Officers—ACPO—recognised possible reasons why the variations existed. It cited,

“potential over-zealous recording practices in the early years of the national standard in crime recording being introduced as well as the move to neighbourhood policing teams resulting in more low-level crimes being dealt with informally and outside the formal crime recording system”.

Be that as it may, the general public need to be assured that crime figures accurately reflect what they see happening on the ground. It would appear that there is a great deal more work to be done to convince people that the police are performing at a consistently high professional level. In some parts of the country, that clearly is not happening. We know from the many recent press reports that concerns are being widely expressed about significant underreporting of crimes such as rape and violence against women, about 101 calls not being answered in a timely and professional fashion and about complaints about police corruption not resulting in any prosecutions, et cetera.

The flurry of media reports of bad policing up and down the country—more in the past two years than I can ever remember during the whole of my time on a police authority—truly grieves me. It is shocking to read of the bad behaviour of some police officers, possible corrupt practices and abuse of the very special powers of a constable. These people have no place in today’s police service and should be rooted out quickly so that the vast majority of utterly professional and dedicated police officers—who, incidentally, deplore this behaviour but seem powerless to stop it—can do the job that they are asked to.

Which forces are using these methods and what will the Government do to get to the heart of these allegations? Will the Government conduct an assessment of the policing and crime plans due to be published imminently to see whether there are any patterns, commonalities or significant areas of difference emerging, especially in those forces where problems may have arisen? Can the Minister say what has been done to encourage other government departments to promote the duty to co-operate with the police and crime commissioners among partner organisations? My feeling is that they will need to be able to develop a coherent range of cross-sector services, matched to the needs of their local communities. It should also help working with other agencies to try to answer some of the concerns that have been expressed here this afternoon.

If it is a matter of culture change—how often have I heard that expression over my years in policing?—the College of Policing must begin to address this as a matter of critical importance. Will the Minister ensure that, where actions need to be taken in regard to forces within which rogue officers are found, they are undertaken as a matter of urgency, and will he seek the help of HMIC to consider undertaking thematic inspections of those forces where these problems appear to be arising?