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Policing in London

The hon. Gentleman is wrong. Even patrol officers are spending more time on paperwork than they are on patrol. Neighbourhood policing teams consist in half part of police community support officers, who are not having to do all this reporting. One of the paradoxes of the way in which modern policing has been constructed is that we have created a new class, or category, of police officer who has fewer powers than a sworn police officer but is out on the streets while sworn officers are in police stations tied up in all the bureaucracy. If we are to have a debate about how we structure policing in future, we might like to reflect on that. We need to have a close look at the extent to which sworn officers are doing things in police stations that could be done by civilian officers. A large number of police forces, including the Met, continue to have tasks run by police officers when they do not need to be. In my local force, Sussex, custody suites—an important part of police operations in which a great deal of bureaucracy is involved—are contracted out to a private supplier, and only the custody sergeant in the custody suite is a sworn officer. That has been a great success. There is no opposition to it in Sussex, and it is helping to deliver a better service and value for money. However, in many custody suites in the Met, as I saw for myself, those services are still run by sworn officers. Is it necessary to have sworn officers doing many of the tasks that they do? Another example is that of bail. A significant number of criminal suspects are on the run after skipping bail—more than 4,000 in London, including more than 500 serious and violent offenders. Could we employ the private sector, for instance, to pursue people who skip bail? Important work force modernisation projects are going on throughout the country to assess the potential for driving up productivity of hiring civilian staff to do clerical work and, beyond that, case-building work that sworn officers do not need to do. The Treasury says that implementing such work force reform could lead to a 20 per cent. increase in productivity. It would not only lead to better value for money but release sworn officers on to the beat. That will become increasingly important, particularly against the background of tighter financial settlements for the police.