If, since 1990, six people had died after constituency surgeries, and in that time, not one MP had been convicted of so much as a gentle tap, we would be horrified. If, since 1990, 400 people had died after a photoshoot or interview, and not one single solitary journalist had ended up behind bars, we would be horrified. If, since 1990, 1,000 people had died after a visit to their local bank branch, without one person in financial services being brought to book, we would take to the streets.
But that’s the statistical reality of what we’ve allowed to happen over the last 22 years. One thousand, four hundred and thirty-three people have died after police contact, most while in police custody. Not one police officer has been convicted in relation to those deaths. Whether or not PC Simon Harwood should have been cleared of killing Ian Tomlinson is almost incidental, because what matters most about the outcome is that it wasn’t the exception, it was the rule.
The police force was Labour’s final frontier: in government, it shook off the shackles of the ancien regime in education and health, but as far as public service reform was concerned, the police were like tsarist Russia: separate and protected from the tides of revolution elsewhere. The Labour revolution in public services that occurred from 1999 to 2007 came out of a realisation that the people who run services aren’t always best placed to understand how to improve them. That isn’t an attack on public sector workers; very few industries can reform from within. There’s a reason why journalists, like me, tend to have a very different perception of the Leveson inquiry than politicos. It’s not, necessarily, because one side is right or one side is wrong, but because you get a different perspective from outside than inside. That’s why city academies drastically improved results by bringing in new systems of governors and corporate sponsors. But that revolution stopped with the police. There was no equivalent to foundation hospitals and city academies.
In part, that was the result of fear. Battles over city academies led to the creation of path-breaking schools that raised standards and increased the standard of education in some of the worst-performing areas, but translating those reforms into law enforcement was traumatic and politically costly. The Conservatives, to their credit, have at least attempted to go beyond Labour’s final frontier, but police commissioners are an imperfect solution: the lesson from America is that these contests swiftly degrade into a race to the bottom between the hangers and the floggers. The attempt to put someone from outside the police at the top, however, is a move in the right direction: only the most myopic of observers would claim that the police forces wouldn’t benefit from a new view from outside. An incoming Labour government should abolish police commissioners, but it shouldn’t lose sight of the great insight of public sector reform: that vested interests have to be challenged, that the service user has to come first, and that, as a great man once said, Labour is best at its boldest.
How might a Labour-driven reform of policing be implemented? There has to be an elected component, a central figure who can be held to account for keeping people safe and the behaviour of the police. That’s why it’s a good thing that Boris Johnson chairs the Metropolitan Police Authority. Elected mayors – with strong and sweeping powers over their local forces – would be a good first start. The attempt to introduce them by referendum was a foolish mistake. Any local referendum is going to be dominated by vested interests, so, unsurprisingly enough, most cities voted against having an elected mayor. If Whitehall is going to impose an elected official from on high, it should be a set of mayors with broad powers, not a series of narrowly defined police commissioners. The unreformed state of the police force is simply not defensible or sustainable. It is New Labour’s unfinished business, and all that stands in our way is fear.
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Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb
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Come on Stephen. Be bold. Go beyond criticising the Tories.
Inappropriate behaviour by the police requires good management, transparency and active engagement with all stakeholders. Those stakeholders include the public and all its various segments (e.g. young people and people of colour).
A successful scheme some years ago was a Help-on-Arrest scheme where any arrested person was informed by the police that they could have present with them a volunteer from the local community. This Big Society initiative re-assured the arrested person that they were physically safe and thus assisted the police in obtaining a statement. For its time it was bold. It had cross-party support. But it was never extended.
Well said, Stephen. My view is that while individual officers are extremely brave, the police as an institution is well and truly in need of reform. One solution might be to create an ‘officer corps’ in order to improve management throughout the ranks, as I argue here in this Times letter: http://slingerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/my-letter-on-policing-published-in.html
@JohnSlinger
WTF are “people of colour” Martin Yuille? There was no Labour Revolution in public services 1999 – 2007, just some plain old privatisation, so that Big Business got some guaranteed profits from the extra investment – like through PFI. Where is the evidence that Academies have had any significant impact on standards or attainment? You live in a Blairite filtered bubble. What did Foundation Hospitals do to improve the NHS – nothing, it was all down to extra investment. Do people even know which of their local hospitals are Foundation? It is true that at least the Tories have broken the numbers game in the Police – Labour thought the only thing that was important was more Police on the Beat. Clearly that has been shown to be largely unrelated to crime rates. Police Commissioners are as stupid as elected Mayors. They negate democracy because there is no on-going control unless there is a disaster big enough to force them out. What was wrong with elected Police Committees, apart from the fact there were too many appointees and not a straight make up of elected politicians. They are just as likely to be accountable as Police Commissioners – especially as no-one will bother turning out to vote for them in November.
Stephen, if you think that New Labour was revolutionary then I doubt we’re going to see eye-to-eye on this issue, but nonetheless. You state that the referenda on elected mayors were foolish – is this because the public didn’t give you the answer you wanted? Furthermore do you understand that the politicising of police provision opens up the possibility of extremist candidates and policies which could place minorities at much worse risk of persecution than they already face? PC Harwood’s acquittal is a travesty, agreed, but the way this imbalance and injustice needs to be dealt with is by taking a very careful look at the IPCC and standards of recruitment and continued employment. You bring in elected mayors with these so-called broad sweeping powers over police provision and more, and you are seriously risking universal standards of policing as well as introducing more politicos who have no idea what the job entails into public services, which need to have much greater levels of communication with the public and be subjected to wider ranging powers of scrutiny from already existing regulatory authorities, not some bureaucrat who is not a serving police officer, has not sworn an oath, has not done the bloody job, and has a political agenda to push.
Agree with your premise that Labour’s reforming zeal did not generally extend to the police. Not sure how good a model Boris and London is though… The MPA was replaced by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime earlier this year. And I think Boris chaired the MPA for about 5 minutes before handing it over to Kit Malthouse.
Strong start to this piece but do you really think the solution to acceptable reform of the police is some kind of imposed mayoral order. Surely what the deaths point to is the lack of scrutiny and transparency and that means a complaints and investigation process we can have some faith in rather than the trappings of a new kind of imposed authority
Well surely it should be the role of the Mayor to be held accountable. We only should have referenda for constitutional changes not directly-elected Mayors. Liverpool didn’t even have a referendum.