David Cameron's message to the Police Federation

In a speech to the Police Federation today, David Cameron sets out some of the key themes in his approach to restoring order to Britain's streets: social responsibility, 'tough-on-the-causes-of-hoodies', elected police chiefs and reform of police working practices.

Fighting crime isn't just the role of the police: "Crime, anti-social behaviour, disorder and incivility on our streets: these are the consequences of a breakdown in society – of a collapse in social responsibility.  In the home.  In schools.  In our culture and values.  And ultimately it is you, the police, who have the responsibility of picking up the pieces of our broken society.  But if we actually want to reduce crime - instead of just responding to it - we can’t go on just picking up the pieces.  We have to mend our broken society.  And that is not your responsibility.  We broke our society – all of us, as parents, as citizens, as members of society – we broke it, and we have a shared responsibility, with government, for fixing it.  If we sit back and expect the police to do all the work, we will forever be managing the social problem of crime, rather than solving it."

Hug-a-hoodie and all that: "A year ago I made a speech about young people and crime.  Yes, the one about hoodies.  It has been more misunderstood and more misrepresented than anything I’ve ever said.  In fact it was three words I never said.  So let me try again.  Aggressive hoodies who threaten the rest of us must be punished.  They need to know the difference between right and wrong, and it’s our job to tell them.  But what do we really want, a society where more and more kids are out of control, a rising tide of crime and punishment?  Or do we want those kids to behave properly in the first place? If we do, we’ve got to stop the problems before they start, and that means making sure every child grows up in a stable loving home.  That’s not soft – it’s serious.  Politicians who attack me for saying it, even though they privately agree with me, are not tough – they’re cynical, short-term and profoundly wrong."

Democratically-accountable policing: "Like any public service, the police must be accountable.  But I believe that this accountability should primarily be local. After all, police forces grew out of the localities.  In my judgement, police authorities are too weak and too invisible to exercise that local accountability so we plan to replace them with directly elected commissioners – commissioners, not police chiefs - who will answer to their communities."

Police reform: "Do you really want to work in an organisation where your reward bears little relation to your skills or how much you’ve put into the job?  Do you, with all your training and experience, really want to do clerical jobs because someone has objected to hiring a civilian to do them?  Do you really want to work in an organisation where you can’t move jobs before retirement because of the impact on your pension?  I suspect not.  The changes we have proposed to the way police workforces are managed are all intended to produce better trained, better motivated officers, better enabled to do the job.  It would be easy for us to ignore these issues, to choose a quiet life.  But I don’t believe that would do you, me or the public any good. I’ve had literally hundreds of communications from police officers, by letter, by email and in private conversation - and I get the same message again and again. Please, just let us get on with the job.  So when I talk about reform I emphatically don’t mean more performance measures or national targets  in fact I mean sweeping those things away.  So here’s the deal.  We will scrap unnecessary paperwork such as the stop form.  We will update and integrate inadequate police IT.  We will scrap central targets and interference.  We will reduce the number of top down central bodies attempting to direct policing.  We will radically simplify the performance measures.  We will restore officer discretion.  In return I want you to agree to the changes we need to make to build a police force where motivated, committed officers can succeed."

Download a PDF of David Cameron's Police Federation speech.

Comments

[Chappers]

Excellent stuff. This is why Cameron is our leader. This is just one way in which he can beat Brown. This is what separates Conservative and Labour.

This kind of speech hopefully comforts those who expressed irritation with 'Project Cameron' yesterday over the speech on improving education (that's what it was, it wasn't a speech on abolishing grammar schools) that we are moving in the right direction.

[MH]

The commisioners idea is simply barking. When was the last time you went on the doorstep and someone said let's please have more politicians and elections, please?

The police need to be freed of political correctness and red tape. Some good stuff here, but my faith in Cameron is so low that I doubt he's man enough to tackle either.

[Bill]

I agree there is not much to complain about in this speech. I guess he cannot be too radical dealing with the police.

He says about the "hoodie" thing "It has been more misunderstood and more misrepresented than anything I’ve ever said.": perhaps it will teach him a lesson; after all he's meant to be the exPR guy.

And it's a shame he copies Blair's non-use of sentences.

[Jaz]

The fact is...if the police chief "screws up". People can get rid of him. This is accountability.

On which note, David Cameron needs to go on Howards accountability claim... To sack those people in the cabinet who mess up.

[ChrisC]

"When was the last time you went on the doorstep and someone said let's please have more politicians and elections, please?"

Admittedly not very often.

But if it is clear that the post(s) up for election actually have meaningful power (as local councillors do not) then I suspect participation would increase.

Though what exactly would the powers of these commissioners be?

[Neil Reddin]

Good stuff. This is more like it.

In particular, elected commissioners should (in theory) help to make top brass answerable to their residents rather than the Home Office.

[R.Baker.]

Another instance of DC speaking a lot of nonsense.
He's talking quite a lot,but not really saying anything.
Whoever is advising him on all this stuff is the same person(s) that will bring on another defeat for us at the next GE.
We need a real sort out at HO.
Let's see now,shall we start with Willetts?

[Og]

Some good bits, some bad.

"We broke our society – all of us, as parents, as citizens, as members of society" - speak for yourself, mate.

The draconian wing of the party, which I inhabit, has spent decades protesting that a failure to punish (or to police) bad behaviour gets you a generational bounty of children who know no better. Discipline, accountability and an end to the "rights" nonsense are unpopular and initially expensive but will work. I am not frothing at the mouth whilst writing this, nor are my eyes swivelling.

[Andy Cooke]

The point is this:

Why does the Government have wheelbarrows-full of targets? It's an effort to maintain (or gain) accountability. You could hand over cash to some Tom, Dick or Harry who says he's spending it on crime-fighting - but you'd like to have some indication that it is going on crime-fighting. Thus the idea of targets to be reported on back to the Centre (those with the cash).

Unfortunately, setting targets doesn't cause the money to be spent sensibly - all it means is that the recipeints of the money drown in paperwork and have to spend their time meeting targets which can never be fine enough and responsive enough; rather they encourage pointless activity which is designed to hit targets and nothing else.

So - what's the answer? You need some kind of accountability. Central target-setting and reporting is stupid - it's been tested to destruction (and way, way beyond!) by Blair and Co.

Local democratic accountability. "Here's the cash. Don't tell us - tell them!" (pointing to the people who you are supposed to protect with it) "They're the ones we're giving you money to protect - they'll judge how you are doing and whether or not to continue hiring you - or fire you. Over to you, professionals ..."

[George Hinton]

Well at least he won't be heckled.
The rank and file regard senior officers as the enemy, as they are PC bound and red tape apparatchiks.
Cameron's comments may find a receptive home, many officers are only too aware of the alienation that is developing between the forces and society. Created by the direct result of NuLab imposing targets and interfering with policing, and the PC driven policing which has resulted in too much red tape and bureacracy.
It's a start, bur there's a long way to go yet.
Cameron would do well to realise that Grammar Schools and good schooling might well aid good behaviour. Teachers controlling classes of 20/25 rather than 30+, and better standards of education and aspiration are always assets.
Removing social security benefits from unwed mothers might also have an affect, and do something about the shocking single parent statistics and teen pregnancies that this country has vis a vis Europe.

[TomTom]

We have very expensive policing because it is being organised to control the law-abiding.

It is to tag, database, bludgeon, observe, shadow, and intimidate the law-abiding population so it does not obstruct the regimes that run the state.

We pay a policeman £22.000 and the Americans pay £16.000 and they get value for money.

Maybe we are too stringent on gun laws - letting criminals run loose with them but stamping on the law-abiding seems to be about preserving monopoly rather than protecting the public.

The Police "Service" is another Business Group soaking up taxpayer resources and sucking up to the politicians while kicking out at the public.

It started as Peel's Constabulary and is now a nationalised agency working to enforce the will of the ruling clique and to control the public distrusted by the political classes

[More love]

Elected Police chiefs are a great idea.

If they are accountable to real voters, they will ignore Cameron's call to replace truncheons with flowers, be more inclined to shoot bad people and concentrate on catching criminals rather than handing out speeding tickets.

They might even get out of the station long enough to get a tan!

[Andy Cooke]

"More love" at 16:19 - that's exactly it!
It doesn't matter who is in Downing Street if the police are accountable to their own community.

[ToMTom]

If they are accountable to real voters,

Hardly.

Since Thatcher nationalised the Business Rate the police are funded centrally...he who pays the piper and all that...

[Rachel Joyce]

Good stuff. Absolutely agree with local Commissioners. To answer TomTom's point, the only way to get police working on the real priorities and not attacking middle England is to have real accountability through local elected commissioners, not distorting priorities and the facts with centralised targets.

[ToMTom]

To answer TomTom's point,

but it doesn't answer my point because a) The Home Office funds the police directly b) the Interior Minister (or whatever he is now called) has legislation allowing him to remove Chief Constables...remember Blunkett and Humberside ?

[601]

Which police federation?

[Ash Faulkner]

How will these commissioners work? Who will they be elected from, anyone that stands? Or will the public have a choice between a number of police officers standing for the position?

It sounds like an interesting idea, but I'd like to see more about how it'd work before I can judge.

[Simon Newman]

"We broke our society – all of us, as parents, as citizens, as members of society"

It was actually quite a small group of people who quite deliberately 'broke our society' I think, not a case of lemming-like mass hysteria. I suppose the rest of us were guilty of apathy and ignorance until it was too late.

I remember mocking the Daily Mail headline on the eve of the 1997 general election, that a "Thousand Years of British History" was essentially going to be flushed down the toilet if Labour won. I thought it was silly, in fact they were far closer to the truth than I could possibly have imagined. I think most people have been like that over the past forty or fifty years, so maybe we did get what we deserve.

[Dave J]

"It sounds like an interesting idea, but I'd like to see more about how it'd work before I can judge."

Once again I find myself amazed at how people in the UK think anything they have not themselves done requires reinventing the wheel. You ARE aware, are you not, that every county sheriff in the US is elected? There's plenty of data to draw on: this is not exactly an untried idea.

[ToMTom]

that every county sheriff in the US is elected?

but a County in the USA is not a County in England....nor are Sheriffs universal in the US.

This is a very heavily urbanised society unlike the USA with a population the size of California in an areas the size of Louisiana, We don't even have City Police Forces but regionalised.

The mandate for a Police Commissioner would be greater than that of any MP....in our area he would probably have an electorate greater than 20 MPs

[James Maskell]

Whilst we cant get rid of all targets and in fact we shouldnt, we do have to ensure that ther police are actually doing their job. A limited number of targets are required.

As for elected police, I think its a bad idea. You end up getting PR policemen rather than the police just doing their job.

[TomTom]

You end up getting PR policemen

We have that already......maybe we should disband the police and arm the public with militias ?

[Dave J]

"...but a County in the USA is not a County in England....nor are Sheriffs universal in the US."

They virtually are. Every state but Alaska and Louisiana has elected county sheriffs in almost all of its counties: Alaska doesn't because it doesn't have counties and Louisiana doesn't because it has to be different and call its counties parishes. New York City, comprised of five counties (the city's five boroughs), does not; Miami-Dade County has an appointed police chief who answers to the elected county mayor. That's it, as far as I know.

"This is a very heavily urbanised society unlike the USA with a population the size of California in an areas the size of Louisiana,"

I live in South Florida: it's plenty urbanized. As a state prosecutor, I work practically every day with some of the 2800 sworn deputies of the Broward County Sheriff's Office. "Elected county sheriff" does not imply rural. Los Angeles County, the most populous in the country with over 10 million people, is patrolled by deputies who answer to an elected sheriff, not just in the unincorporated areas of the county, but also in the majority of the county's 88 incorporated municipalities, which contract with the county rather than running their own police departments.

"The mandate for a Police Commissioner would be greater than that of any MP....in our area he would probably have an electorate greater than 20 MPs"

So?