Much to the surprise of foreigners, Britain has never had a national police force, relying instead on 40-odd local forces since the 1960s, mostly covering one or two counties, but some bigger. Mark Rowley, who runs the Met, is unhappy.
Earlier this month, he called for all existing forces to be merged into about 12-15 regional megaforces to save money, avoid duplication and prevent a ‘postcode lottery’ of service. It’s not the first time we have seen this proposal. In the early years of this century, the government briefly proposed a cut to about 20; and 11 years ago the Police Superintendents’ Association called for much the same thing.
Unfortunately, for all its attractions when seen on a management spreadsheet, this scheme – redolent of the takeover-mad ‘economies of scale’ thinking of the 60s – remains a terrible idea.
For one thing, there would still be a large amount of duplication: each new force would still have its own (albeit bigger and more management-heavy) specialist departments. And quite apart from that, enormous territorial forces like the ones proposed here would create their own problems. A force covering, say, the entire north-east of England, or the west country, would be a bureaucratic behemoth. It might as well be styled ‘Police Service Area Two’ or something like it. Local accountability would all but disappear if, say, someone with a point to make about policing in Penzance had to deal with a hellish telephone menu leading eventually to some remote middle-management functionary at a soulless head office in Bristol or Bournemouth.
Nor is it entirely clear how this would avoid a postcode lottery of service levels. The idea that a mega-agency running policing from (say) the Humber to the Tweed would magically ensure that Hull got the same standard as Gateshead or Alnwick is for the birds. Local knowledge and decision-making counts. Liverpool and the Lake District are both in the north-west, yet there are big differences to policing them, and a good reason why the Merseyside and Cumbria forces are separate. This is borne out by bitter experience. Large numbers of police in Scotland remain distinctly unhappy that Scotland’s eight local forces were essentially bundled in with Strathclyde to form Police Scotland in 2013, with constables from Berwick to Oban told to get on with it under the new unified, but vastly more remote, management.
Yet, for all that, there is a problem. Rowley is right to see something odd in the existence of about 40 forces each with their own separate collection of specialist units, ranging from underwater search to economic crime, cybercrime, safeguarding, terrorism and so on. Something must be done. But the answer is not merger mania.
Instead of abolishing most of the local forces we have, why not leave them in place but reduce their functions to dealing with essentially local matters: local crimes, Saturday night disorder and other matters without national import? Anything which was not essentially local could then be transferred to a new national force, covering either the whole of England or ideally the UK.
Take things like terrorism, nationally organised crime groups, cybercrime, large-scale fraud, economic crime, or immigration; or road traffic for that matter. There is nothing very territorial about any of these issues, and no reason why their control should be subject to the managerial discretion and co-ordination of innumerable local chiefs (remember four years ago where Police Scotland insisted on giving in to an ill-disciplined Glasgow mob intent on releasing illegal immigrants before they could be deported, in the teeth of Home Office opposition? That still leaves a sour taste.)
Hitherto we have had an ingrained fear of a national police force, a phobia dating from Robert Peel and a nineteenth-century conviction that any such thing naturally led to continental-style tyranny. Even then this was somewhat doubtful; today it is preposterous. There is no danger of totalitarianism, nor yet with political accountability. The right person to bear ultimate responsibility for such things should be the elected Home Secretary; a national force under her control would have every feature of democratic legitimacy.
To do her credit, Yvette Cooper seems possibly receptive to something like this idea. In April this year, she seemed to welcome a proposal from chief constables for a national anti-terrorism force. This may not go far enough: but it is a step in the right direction, towards national control of national issues without the need to negotiate the sensibilities of 40-odd unelected chief constables in their own fiefdoms.
Such a solution would take away such difficulties while leaving intact the idea of local police under the control of a chief constable from the area and an elected police and crime commissioner with some kind of local connection. Indeed the authority of the latter, being more focused on matters of local import such as control of burglaries and local yobbery, could well be increased. This would be policing by consent in the best sense. What’s not to like?
