Lord Paddick
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(3 days, 20 hours ago)
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Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
It worries me when the noble Lord says that people are ageing when they are 55—it strikes a cold blow to my heart—but the point he makes is extremely important. We need to ensure that we recruit police officers, and the Government are committed to recruiting an additional 13,000 neighbourhood police officers during this Parliament—3,000 this year. We have put in £1.2 billion of investment this year. As I just said to the noble Baroness on the Liberal Democrat Benches, we need to retain those we recruit, because 72% of the people who leave are leaving within three years and 48% are leaving within two years. That is not a good prospect. We need to retain those people and improve recruitment procedures to do that, but we also need to up the numbers, which the Government are trying to do. We need to ensure that we make effective use of resources, which is what the White Paper will be about. I look forward to the noble Lord’s help and support in achieving those objectives.
Lord Paddick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. While it is understandable that the political focus is on warranted officers, is there not a danger that this will result in them being employed in back-office roles that could be done cheaper and more effectively by non-warranted officers?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
Absolutely. A tremendous amount of the work done in the back-office can be done by police support staff and others, who play a very important role and are part of the police family response to crime. There has been a problem whereby police officers are doing many roles that could be done behind the scenes. On the point that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, also mentioned, the police White Paper will look at how we can maximise efficiency and the bang for our buck that we get from the investment we are putting in, as well as ensuring that we have frontline policing through neighbourhood policing, effective regional policing and improved back-office efficiencies in both procurement and staff delivery.