There is a question about whether every police leader has truly understood the depth of the problems policing faces, the Policy Exchange's Head of Crime and Justice writes
Lord Blunkett is right: the overall quality of police leadership is failing to provide the policing the public deserves.
Earlier this year I gave evidence to the Police Leadership Commission and my message was exactly this.
The independent Commission, established last year and co-chaired by former Home Secretary David Blunkett and former Policing Minister Nick Herbert, was given the task of examining the current state of police leadership and assessing what changes are needed.
The conclusion they have reached is damning – explicitly stating that a “reset” towards “high performance, cutting crime and keeping people safe” is required.
That such a call even needs to be made is a sign of how badly awry things have gone in British policing. But it is a call which should be welcomed if we are to see crime-fighting and merit put ahead of the destructive focus on “identity politics” and the seemingly endless diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives that have taken root in policing over the last two decades.
Perhaps, given the depth of change identified as being required, this will be an opportunity for Lord Herbert – who as well as being Co-chair of the Leadership Commission is also Chair of the College of Policing – to turnaround that much maligned institution?
The Commission make several recommendations which Policy Exchange has called for in the past. They include: reform of police recruitment, training and promotion systems; the creation of a National Academy of Police Leadership; and the opening of police leadership roles to more outsiders who have the requisite skills and abilities.
Yet even despite the Commission’s report there is a question about whether every police leader has truly understood the depth of the problems policing faces. The Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Matt Jukes, has claimed, in The Guardian, that “Increasingly, public debate demands that policing chooses a side, and yet the role of police leadership is not to participate in the culture wars.” Mr Jukes is partially right – the police should not be participating in “culture wars”; but he misses the point. The problem is that all too often the police do appear to have chosen a side.
Witness the then Chief Constable of Kent Constabulary “taking the knee” following the murder of George Floyd in America. Or the adoption of a national policy that police officers should strive to achieve “equality of outcomes” as part of policing’s national “Race Action Plan” – an implicit rejection of any sense that the police should act “without fear or favour”. Or the Met’s failure to arrest men calling for a “jihad” during a protest on the streets of London – something the force only recognised as a failing many months later when questioned on the record by Policy Exchange.
We should not forget that this system was not entirely the creation of Chief Constables themselves – it was crafted under both Conservative and Labour Governments. However, at least one senior Labour figure has seen up-close what is possible when the right Chief Constables are selected. It was, after all, Andy Burnham MP as the then Mayor of Greater Manchester who appointed the man who is, by a margin, the best Chief Constable in the country: Sir Stephen Watson of Greater Manchester Police.
Watson has now turned around two failing police forces and he’s done it by the - to some - revolutionary step of arresting more criminals, taking a clear stance on impartiality and putting aside the distracting and tiresome “diversity” related-projects too often favoured by other Chief Constables.
Yet the policing “system” – dominated by the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council – has done little to ensure that police leaders with an unequivocal crime-fighting zeal rise through the system. Indeed, at times it seems remarkable that Sir Stephen managed to fight his way through the bureaucratic miasma to make it to the top without being hobbled along the way. If there is one thing that must change as a result of the Leadership Commission’s report this is it.
Meanwhile, as the Home Secretary and the new Prime Minister make a series of big policing appointments over the coming year (including the next: Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Commissioner of the Met and Commissioner of the new National Police Service) they would do well to remember that many of the current (and last) generation of Chief Constables are amongst the guilty men and women who have allowed the current state of policing to develop.
Ultimately, as the next steps are taken to putting policing on the right track, Ministers must ensure that the right people are appointed as Chief Constables and that elected politicians retain oversight of police policy-making.
As war is too important to be left to the Generals, so policing is too important to be left to poor Chief Constables.
David Spencer is the Head of Crime and Justice for Policy Exchange and a former Detective Chief Inspector with the Metropolitan Police
