UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 364-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

POLICING IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Tuesday 26 February 2008

SIR RONNIE FLANAGAN GBE QPM

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 55

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 26 February 2008

Members present

Keith Vaz, in the Chair

Ms Karen Buck

Mr James Clappison

Mrs Ann Cryer

David T C Davies

Mrs Janet Dean

Patrick Mercer

Gwyn Prosser

Bob Russell

Martin Salter

Mr David Winnick

________________

Witness: Sir Ronnie Flanagan GBE QPM, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Can I begin the first formal evidence session of the policing inquiry of the Select Committee into policing in the 21st Century and welcome our first formal witness, Sir Ronnie Flanagan. Thank you for coming, Sir Ronnie.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Thank you very much indeed, Chairman.

Q2 Chairman: Yesterday in Newark the Select Committee launched the inquiry at a seminar which was attended by a number of Chief Constables, serving officers and other stakeholders. At exactly the same time the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary - I am sure not as a rival to our launch - went to visit Clapham to look at neighbourhood policing. So your presence as our first witness is most welcome. Could I start by asking you whether you feel that the responsibilities as far as frontline policing have changed in recent years?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Chairman, I feel they have changed quite significantly. In the course of my recent review I spent some time on what we describe as the frontline. I went to the West Midlands area dressed as a Constable to make sure that the officers knew that I was not there to inspect them. What I really wanted to do was to determine the administrative and bureaucratic burden that falls upon officers today compared to when I fulfilled that function more than 30 years ago. While I am Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary and probably could have been expected to realise fully what has changed, I was nonetheless quite staggered at the bureaucratic burden. Officers showed me a sheaf of documentation that they take out on regular patrol, it was some inches thick, in order to deal with things that might commonly occur, not to deal with things that occur only once every five years. So I think the responsibilities on frontline officers today are quite different. In more general terms, policing is quite different and we have responsibilities that we did not discharge some years ago, things like the requirement upon the police to work with other partners to manage offenders in society after they have been discharged from a prison sentence, the whole area of victim support and family liaison, which we did not discharge some years ago, which are all absolutely crucial responsibilities, but the fact that they are so crucial means that we must free up officers from other routine tasks and relieve them of the bureaucratic administrative burden.

Q3 Chairman: Who is responsible for this huge increase in bureaucracy? Presumably Parliament is.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: In my internal report I drew the analogy between bureaucracy and cholesterol. I said there is such a thing as good cholesterol and therefore there is such a thing as absolutely necessary bureaucracy and the need to keep proper audit trails. What I am talking about attacking is the unnecessary bureaucracy.

Q4 Chairman: We will be coming on to bureaucracy a little later.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: You asked what is responsible for this. I think society has become risk averse and certainly in policing we have become risk averse. Some of these burdens have been imposed upon us and the police service has taken it further than was ever intended. We can perhaps come to specific examples of that.

Q5 Chairman: Do you think Parliament has passed too many laws on this subject?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think there is a risk of that. When laws are passed and codes of practice are developed as a result of legislation there is also a risk that the police service and other bodies take it further than was ever intended. So I think sometimes it is imposed and sometimes it is self-imposed.

Q6 Chairman: What about public expectations? You obviously conducted a number of surveys during your report. Have they changed? Is there a difference between what the public expects and what the police regard as priorities?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: What came through in some of the surveys we conducted as to what is important to people was that really what is important to them is outside their front doors in their immediate neighbourhoods. For example, we asked if they wanted the opportunity to participate in formal structures to hold policing to account, but there was not the appetite that I thought there might be. What they are interested in is their encounter with the police, that it is a good, effective, professional and courteous encounter and when the police are needed in their view the police are available. Those are the sort of very simple things that came through in the surveys that we conducted. In terms of describing that as public expectations, public expectations are high and very localized. Those were the results of the surveys and research that we conducted.

Q7 Chairman: Your predecessor's report was called "Closing the Gap" and it drew attention to the delivery of protective services such as counter-terrorism. Do you think that the gap has been closed since that report was published?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think the gap is closing. Perhaps I could give you some background to that, Chairman. A previous Home Secretary asked us in the Inspectorate whether the current structure of policing being delivered through 43 different forces for England and Wales is as fit for purpose as it should be in the 21st Century. We were determined in the Inspectorate not to rush immediately to a map and redraw the boundaries or redraw the wiring diagrams of the policing organisation. We were determined to sit down particularly with the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and define what the risks are in the 21st Century, what must the public be protected against and we came up with this definition of protective services. Then we assessed how the 43 individual forces were currently equipped to protect the public against those risks and we came to the conclusion in that report that in order to narrow the gap a smaller number of what we described as more strategically sized forces would probably be more effective for a whole variety of reasons which I do not think it is worth spending your time going into today. That debate is not on the agenda now. What we are doing in the Inspectorate is determining how forces are collaborating and measuring that to be able to report back to ministers as to whether that is effectively narrowing the gap. So the gap is closing. I would not describe it as closed.

Q8 Chairman: I wonder whether you followed Home Office Questions yesterday when, although both sides of the House supported the recommendations of your review, there was some controversy over whether your report recommended a reduction in the number of police officers. We take the point that there is obviously bureaucracy and we will come on to that a little later and that can be dealt with. Does your report actually suggest that there should be a reduction in the number of police officers?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Certainly what I was saying was that the increase in police numbers over the past number of years has been a very welcome increase. We had introduced a thing called the Crime Fighting Fund which had associated with it a whole series of rules whereby numbers must not be reduced and I refer specifically to numbers of police officers. I think that was constraining upon Chief Constables. Those rules have been relaxed. I do not think they afforded enough flexibility. In order not to reduce police officer numbers they had the perverse effect of some forces putting officers in positions carrying out functions that some years earlier had been civilianized just in order to demonstrate that police officer numbers had not been reduced. What I am saying in the report is that in the reality of life, based on my contacts with the various political parties, that ongoing increase in police numbers cannot be sustained. What is much more important is to make the very best use of all the skills and to find the best mix of skills in the wider policing family, be those skills discharged by police officers or supporting members of police staff. I am certainly not advocating any reduction in the number of police officers. What I am saying is I cannot see the increase that we have enjoyed over recent years being sustained.

Q9 Chairman: So no more increases, it is not necessary because of your proposals on civilianisation, but no reduction?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I do not see, other than possibly a small reduction --- The truth is that with that increased flexibility there has already been a small reduction and I am certainly not advocating any significant reduction in police officer numbers. In terms of the improvements in reducing the unnecessary bureaucracy to which I have referred, I have no doubt that through that process we can bring forward the equivalent of some 3,000 officers to be employed on frontline duties.

Q10 Mrs Dean: Do you think the Home Secretary was right to abandon forced mergers in 2006?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: My view is clear, that if we were starting today I do not think we would end up with a pattern of 43. We did not say in our report that the current structure of 43 forces is unfit for purpose. What we said is that a smaller number of more strategically sized forces would probably be more fit for purpose. This was quite a massive project. If you take the Northern Ireland experience, Chris Patten produced his template for the future on 9 September 1999, in fact that was when he launched his report and that process is on-going today and that is in respect of a police service that delivers policing services to a population of some 1.6 million. It is quite a massive programme of change and I think it requires the most detailed process of change management if it is to come about. It is not on the agenda currently. We will be keeping a very close eye in the Inspectorate on whether collaboration is actually effectively closing the gap. If we come to the conclusion in recommending to ministers that it is not working then it is my view that the whole question of mergers could be back on the agenda at some stage in the future.

Q11 Mrs Dean: Do you agree with the Policy Exchange that the process of instilling a culture of co-operation and collaboration between forces is moving at an unacceptably slow pace?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I do not want to single out specific areas. In saying that, if you look at East Midlands, for example, there is a tremendous degree of collaboration and co-operation going on between the five individual police authorities and the five individual forces and in many other areas that collaboration is very welcome, very vibrant and being very enthusiastically engaged, but I do not think we can ever be complacent. Certainly so far as the Inspectorate is concerned, I am determined that we will not be complacent in continuing to drive the need for collaboration.

Q12 Mrs Dean: Can you give us one or two examples of how that co-operation is working in practice?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: If you take the whole question of the ability to deal with serious crime, in West Midlands, for example, the original idea --- The Inspectorate did not come up with a redrawing of the territorial boundaries. The idea was that chairs of authorities and chiefs would offer their intended solutions. If you look in the West Midlands area where the intention was to bring together Staffordshire, West Midlands, West Mercia and Warwickshire, three forces were keen on that and one force was much, much less keen on that. Notwithstanding that, the fact that they are now collaborating in addressing serious crime and in structures to address the threat from terrorism I think is very welcome and that is replicated across the country in terms of forces coming together both administratively and operationally. In my review, while we can point to good operational collaboration, I think there are savings and efficiencies to be brought about by administrative collaboration in the whole area of procurement, be it of air support, information technology, fleet, issues like that. There is a lot of good, positive work going on but there is a lot more to be done.

Q13 Martin Salter: In the delivery of any public service there are optimum sizes to maximum efficiency and effectiveness whether it is in local government, the health service or whatever. You have been responsible for the police service in Northern Ireland with a population of 1.6 million. We have tiny police forces within that 43, Warwickshire, Bedfordshire and the rest. In your experience what is an optimum size for a police force?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I am reluctant to go back to this mergers debate because it is not on the agenda now. In that debate we came up with a size something of the order of 6,000 officers which we said we considered to be a strategically sized force and one that could consume most of its own smoke. There was always still going to be the need for very close collaboration even with forces of that size.

Q14 Martin Salter: How many forces are less than 6,000 out of the 43 at the moment?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Quite a number of them are fewer than that in number. I would need to go through the almanac to give you an exact answer and I can do that very easily rather than just guess, but certainly quite a number are fewer than that. If you take where we are today, the Borough of Westminster is comprised of some 3,000 officers. The borough of Westminster, which is within the Metropolitan Police Service, is bigger than many Shire forces.

Q15 Bob Russell: Chairman, could I encourage Sir Ronnie Flanagan not to revisit the merger agenda even though ---

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Absolutely. I am answering questions.

Q16 Bob Russell: --- Mr Salter wishes you to. The merger proposals would have put Essex with Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, two counties with whom they have no community of interest whatsoever, not with Kent, yet collaboration between Essex and Kent is probably the best now it has ever been because they had to respond to the merger. Perhaps I could encourage you to encourage police authorities to collaborate and to forget all about mergers.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Which is exactly what we are doing, Chairman. I had a meeting with the chairman of Essex recently. I am in very close touch with what they are doing in collaboration with Kent and it is very effective and very encouraging.

Q17 Gwyn Prosser: In the run up to every spending review MPs get lobbied strongly by their Chief Constables. You have made some recommendations to make the future formula more objective and fairer in the longer run. Do you have any views or ideas as to how we can make it fairer in the short run?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Obviously the CSR has been set. The good thing about that is we now know what monies we have available over the next three years. So we quite deliberately talked about "in future CSRs" in the review. To be frank, it is going to be very difficult in the shorter term than that to address the funding formula in ways where the monies go to the areas that have to deal with the greatest risk, the greatest threat and the greatest level of potential harm. So in the short-term, quite frankly, I have no magic wand to wave. Forces know where they stand. Mr Russell referred to Essex and I had this conversation with the chairman of Essex Police Authority and he was making the point that while everybody wants more, at least they know what they have and they can get on with it for the time being. Nonetheless, I do think it is an issue that must be addressed in future spending reviews.

Q18 Gwyn Prosser: What is your view of the Policy Exchange's recommendations to remove the cap on council tax increases?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I am not constantly revisiting the merger debate. In the one merger that was voluntary, in other words Lancashire and Cumbria, one of the things that stopped it was this question of precept equalisation. What we are saying in the review is that if voluntary mergers should arise, which is a possibility in some areas, then it is my strong view that the Government should find imaginative ways of equalising the precept, not to prevent such mergers where people want it to happen and, therefore, there should not be capping in such instances.

Q19 Gwyn Prosser: You mentioned in an earlier answer the need to address special issues and special pressures. One of the topical pressures being mentioned by police forces recently is a pressure when there are large numbers of immigrants coming into an area either to settle or as transients, as they do when they come through my area of Dover and Kent. How big an issue is that in your opinion?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: It depends on the area, but in some areas it is a big issue in terms of the monies that have to be spent by forces on translation and you have seen figures in the media recently in relation to that. Quite substantial monies have to be found. From my point of view diversity is to be welcomed and the richness that diversity brings is to be welcomed, but it does bring with it challenges. In some areas it brings financial challenges.

Q20 Gwyn Prosser: Could the new formula take into account these matters?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think in the future it would have to take into account such matters. Currently it does not really do that. There is always the possibility for forces to make special bids. I am not saying there are unlimited resources. I am not saying that special bids will always be successful. There is the opportunity when special circumstances befall an individual force for it to make a case for additional funding to meet those exceptional circumstances.

Q21 Ms Buck: Population churn, even more so than diversity, has an impact on policing. Another thing that has a major impact on policing resources is the huge variation in the number of people with severe mental health problems. There are some primary care trust areas, for example, that have 12 times the number of people hospitalised for psychiatric illness and so forth than others. Why do you think that the police service has been less than robust in developing working with other agencies to work out that information and using that to help determine the allocation of resources?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: It is a huge issue. You will recall that as an alternative to the creation of a single inspectorate, which was intended to bring in to one inspectorate the current inspectorates that deal with policing, prisons, probation, the court administration and the Crown Prosecution Service, what has happened is that the five Chief Inspectors in those individual inspectorates have presented a business plan to the three relevant ministers, the Lord Chancellor, the Attorney General and the Home Secretary, for joint inspection over the next three years. I chair the working group of those five Chief Inspectors and the whole question of mental health is something that we are determined to address in our joint inspection work albeit in relation to custody. The legislation gave the Inspectors the ability to delegate responsibilities to each other. For example, in terms of custody facilities within the policing service, I can delegate inspection of that to the Chief Inspector of Prisons. That is an area we are looking at very closely and it is very closely related to the whole question of mental health. Police cells are places of safety and a lot of police time is taken up in dealing with people with severe mental health problems who have not necessarily committed any crime.

Q22 Ms Buck: Why does it take so long to work up an argument around these things? None of this is new.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: It has not been ignored. I am not suggesting that because in inspection terms we are working much closer than we have ever worked before. That is not to say that the whole issue has been ignored in the past, it certainly has not been ignored in the past, but it is a big issue and it is a big challenge in terms of police resources, as you quite rightly point out.

Q23 Mr Clappison: I would like to follow up what you were saying in response to Mr Prosser about the pressure which is created by migration. You said that this was something which police forces would need more funding to cope with in future and that there were special bids they could make at the moment. What is your judgment as to how well the system is responding to the pressures which are being placed on police forces to cope with migration?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think the police service at large and individual forces are responding quite magnificently to the challenge that they face, as in my experience they always do. Quite properly, the Inspectorate concentrates on where there are areas for improvement, but that must not be seen in any way as taking a negative view of British policing.

Q24 Mr Clappison: How well is the system responding to their need for more funding to cope with these pressures?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: When I gave my earlier answer it was not necessarily a question of more funding, it was a question of future funding formulae taking into account different challenges in different areas. In the Sixties when police authorities were created some inherited quite healthy estates, some inherited quite healthy bank balances and others inherited debt and deteriorating estates. The funding formula in future spending reviews has to take that into account and has to redress the balance to put in funding in ways that are proportionate to risk, risk challenge, threat and harm. In terms of migration, those are undoubtedly challenges that are not evenly distributed right across the country and therefore I think future funding formulae should take such things into account.

Q25 Mr Clappison: In your report you give some good examples of how technology is increasing efficiency and you draw on particular forces for examples and one imagines that some of those examples, if not many of them, could be extended to other forces. What do you see as being the barriers to spreading good practice in the adoption of technology?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think the potential barriers are that with 43 different Chief Constables all very determined to bring in the very best service that they can to the people to whom they deliver policing services they come up with differing solutions and sometimes these technical solutions cannot properly talk to each other and therefore that represents a potential barrier. We spent several billions on introducing Airwave and I do not think we have fully realised all the benefits that Airwave can bring about. I refer specifically in the report to opportunities for reducing bureaucracy by making better use of technology. One of the things we created in the review was a panel of practitioners, officers from the frontline and we would put emerging recommendations to this panel of practitioners and get their real view of whether, however "whizzy" an idea might sound, it will actually work operationally or not. It was interesting that a couple of those officers had recently transferred from one force to another and they found the suite of documentation that they used was very different because different Chief Constables think that they must take into account different needs and different challenges in their areas. So one of the things I am saying as a prelude to making better use of technology is let us standardise the documentation. Surely it cannot be that different. In the past attempts have been made to do that. The risk is that in order to take everybody's view into account as to what is important you end up with a much increased form of documentation. I think we need to offset that risk, but I think we need to bring about greater standardisation. In that process I think it is important as well that we get back to a position where officers feel trusted and have the confidence to exercise their individual discretion and their individual professional judgment. You asked what had brought it about and I referred to society becoming very risk averse. With the police service becoming risk averse I think a situation has evolved whereby officers do not exercise their own individual discretion and professional judgment in the way that they should. If they get it seriously wrong they must realise they will be held to account, but I think it is important that they feel confident and that they are trusted to exercise their individual judgment in individual circumstances and not just have to cover their back on every occasion.

Q26 Martin Salter: I want to talk a little bit about workforce modernisation. There has been some criticism of your proposals to increase the proportion of non-warranted personnel and increased civilianisation particularly from the Chair of the Police Federation, Jan Berry, who has said there is a danger that warranted police officers would only then be dealing with confrontational situations, like a paramilitary force, which is a somewhat confrontational sound-byte from the Police Federation as it happens. Other parties have generally taken on board your proposals. How do you respond to the criticism that these proposals might weaken the resilience of a police force in emergency situations and, in particular, your proposal to transfer for a temporary period of time the power of arrest to non-warranted police personnel in order to cover emergency situations?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: That is not a specific recommendation in our review. The first point I would like to make is that nothing in my report and nothing I would want to be associated with would ever dilute in any way the critical importance of the role of the office of Constable. I am deeply indebted to Jan Berry and indeed the Federation who have been involved in the review throughout. In the press launch of the review I used an analogy where I thought "What sort of headline might this attract?" and I am going to use it again, Chairman. When I was a student I worked in building sites as a plumber's mate. I was not a plumber, I did not threaten the professional status of the plumber, but I relieved the plumber of all the routinised tasks so that the plumber could then divert his professional skill - and I say his because there were not any women on those particular building sites that I worked on - and expertise to areas where it really mattered. That is what I am talking about in terms of support being provided by what some people called non-sworn colleagues to do those routine tasks so as to relieve Constables to be able to divert all their energy, their expertise and to give the benefit of their experience where it really matters. I am certainly not threatening the office of Constable at all; quite the opposite. I am trying to free up Constables so that they can give the public the benefit of their professionalism where it really counts and where they can really make a difference.

Q27 Martin Salter: It is the idea of having transferable powers of arrest, search and seizure. It was a Policy Exchange paper that put that forward. Have you a view on that?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I would want to approach that with great care. In terms of actually exercising a power of arrest, restraining a citizen's liberty --- We referred, and it was misreported, to the fact that much of a police officer's discharge of duty does not actually entail exercising the powers that are vested in the office of Constable. That does not mean that you do not need to have those powers available when they are required to be discharged. Therefore, when it comes to restraining the liberty of the citizen, I would approach that with great care.

Q28 Martin Salter: Would you not agree there was some contradiction in the Police Federation's criticism about increased civilianisation in that, on the one hand, police officers complain about excessive bureaucracy and wanting to do the frontline policing for which they are trained and, on the other hand, your proposals and other moves towards increased civilianisation are aimed at freeing up the police officers to be able to do precisely that?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think the criticism is brought about in a well-meaning way. I think what it does is point up the need for care that we do not deskill police officers. If we can provide them with support, with colleagues who are not police officers but who can, for example, record statements of evidence so that we do not thereby deskill police officers in those areas, I think the balance can be achieved and is being achieved. In terms of what we call workforce modernisation, there is a lot of really good work going on in a number of forces. I am thinking of the Metropolitan Police Service and Surrey where a lot of this is going on without in any way bringing about the spectre of the fears as expressed by some members of the Police Federation.

Q29 Martin Salter: Moving on to police pay, finally, the submission we received from the Home Office, although this Committee unanimously backed the Federation in its pay claim, does make the point that very, very few police officers are voluntarily leaving the Service, there is not a big issue of recruitment at the moment, but there is a question on the appropriateness of tenure-related increments. At the moment, obviously, police officers can put their salaries up for a period of time, and I think this was ten years, purely by dint of staying in the job. There have been arguments floated that perhaps those additional payments should be related to officers who take the trouble to acquire additional skills and adopt the specific professionalism required by their individual services. Do you think there is some merit in going down that route and rewarding officers who train to become specialists in various fields?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: There already is a mechanism for special priority payments, so that is in being as it is, and of course there is the whole question of performance-related pay. I am giving very much a personal view. It is not the role of the inspectorate to be involved in pay negotiations or to express views in relation to pay. I think, provided there is the machinery and the transparency through that machinery for fairness and a fair reward package provided for policing, that is what is important in the whole area of pay, but really it is not for the inspectorate to be involved in pay negotiations.

Chairman: Thank you, Mr Salter. David Winnick.

Q30 Mr Winnick: If you talked to the average person, they would say: if only the police could get on with the job and not spend so much time on paperwork, it would help in so many ways. What would your response be to that view held by so many people and probably a good number of Members of Parliament for that matter?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: As I indicated in earlier responses, I spent some time with officers in the front-line in West-Mids and was actually surprised at the degree of administrative burden that falls upon them. I see it as my responsibility to ease them from that burden, but I do stress, in areas like domestic violence, for example, it is crucially important not only to deal with in an individual incident of violence but to ensure that all the partner agencies are fully informed so that people are not at future risk. There are areas where it is crucially important that we keep proper audit trails, keep proper documentation and that we engage in the necessary bureaucracy. I think there is tremendous scope for relieving officers of the unnecessary bureaucracy that has come about, and I have indicated that in a quantifiable way. In my view we could at least make available the equivalent of 3,000 additional police officers through relieving them of that unnecessary bureaucracy.

Q31 Mr Winnick: I happen to agree with you - and I will come to that in a moment - that a good deal of the paperwork is essential, despite the general view which I have just expressed. If you had to put a percentage on it, and it may be rather difficult---. Let me put it this way. How long would the average police officer spend on paperwork? It is possible to put any sort of figure on it?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: It depends, on a given shift, whether an arrest is made and an officer has to accompany the person arrested to a custody suite and then engage in all the documentation that that entails. There are ways of handing that over others, who need not be police officers, who can engage in that necessary documentation, et cetera. Certainly in the shifts that I went out with, and that was late duty and night duty, the officers were absolutely determined to be out, so they took all the documentation with them so that they did not have to return to the station; so there are ways of dealing with this. One is to question whether the processes are necessary, or whether they are necessary in all instances, and that goes to the question of discretion. If you have a suite of documentation that is used in a given incidence - "stop and account", I think, is a good example (and we can perhaps discuss that in detail) - then I think there should be some discretion afforded to officers. If an encounter is good and positive and not in any way controversial or not in any way likely to bring about complaint, I think we can make better use of technology in terms of recording such encounters.

Q32 Mr Winnick: You have made a number of recommendations to reduce bureaucracy in your report.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Indeed, but to put a percentage on it is difficult. You see all sorts of figures banded about in the press but it various very much from shift to shift.

Q33 Mr Winnick: Can I bandy about some figures: 20%, 25%, 30% spent on paperwork?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: It could be as much as that in some instances.

Q34 Mr Winnick: Not higher, Sir Ronnie? Not higher than, say, 30%?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I do not think so.

Q35 Mr Winnick: It is possible it could reach 25% to 30% of the time spent by a police officer on paperwork?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Up to that sort of proportion could be feasible.

Q36 Mr Winnick: Bearing in mind (and I will come to it in a moment) what you said about the necessity of paperwork in certain cases - of that there does not seem to be any doubt - how optimistic are you that unnecessary paperwork can be reduced as a result of what you said earlier: technology and civilians being involved in the Police Force?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I am very optimistic. Jan Berry was mentioned earlier. Jan and I and the President of the Superintendents Association, with Shami Chakrabarti, took part in a panel at the Superintendents Annual Conference last autumn, and Jan raised the question that we have had many attempts at reducing bureaucracy in the past. One of my predecessors, Sir David O'Dowd, led a bureaucracy taskforce.

Q37 Chairman: We will be coming on to that later.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I will shorten my answer, Chairman, just to say I am very optimistic that we can make a real difference. I think the time is right, I think the appetite is there in government, in the Home Office, certainly in the Police Service, to address this very seriously.

Q38 Mr Winnick: But will not a conscientious police officer, knowing that the defence counsel will do his or her utmost, as part of the responsibility of a defence counsel, to undermine the prosecution case, take the utmost care to have the necessary paperwork - what you said earlier on - and, therefore, reducing paperwork is far from a simple matter, is it not?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: It is certainly not a simple matter. I certainly would expect officers to take the utmost care and to engage in what we are describing as necessary bureaucracy, but there is a wealth of scope in terms of cutting out unnecessary bureaucracy; and you will see in the review report, that very closely goes on with, for example, the Crown Prosecution Service and there are examples in London where many hours of officers' time have been saved in terms of case preparation without any risk to the success of the case subsequently as it goes through the court processes.

Q39 David Davies: I do my bit as a Special Constable and I have done quite a lot of stop searches. I think the recommendations that you made were absolutely superb, and I hope the Home Secretary can implement them as soon as possible, but one thing I am not clear of is how her suggestion, not yours, to extend police powers of stop and search in designated areas is different from the existing section 60?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think the power does already exist. I am not sure. In my experience there is no demand arising from either ACPO or the Federation of Superintendents Association for additional powers. I think what is referred to is the whole question of designated areas and the exercise of those powers.

Q40 David Davies: What you are suggesting in your report was very new: digital recording using head cameras as evidence instead of written statements. This is all new stuff and very welcome it would be, but this announcement about designated areas: we have already got that power under section 60. It is the football match stop and search which already exists and can be put in place by an inspector; so was this announcement an announcement of something new?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I am not quite sure. I certainly did not detect any appetite in my work for a need to extend police officers' powers in the area of stop and search. Some have said that it is not a useful tool. I certainly disagree with that; I think it is a very useful tool that police must have in their armoury, so to speak, the ability to stop and search, but it must be done with great care and it must be done in ways that it is possible to subsequently interrogate the database to make sure that we are being proportionate and we are not adversely affecting relationships with minority communities, for example.

Q41 David Davies: One of the problems which I have come across, which is not addressed by the Home Secretary as yet, is as more and more crimes are being dealt with, as you know, by process at the moment, the so-called minor crimes, the ticket offences, some shop-lifting, et cetera, et cetera, when somebody is being dealt with by process you get their name and address, you have established that they have broken the law and they are cautioned, caution plus two, but they are not searched because they are not arrested. On many personal occasions I have had people in front of me with serious recent criminal convictions for drug dealing and violence - knives, guns, et cetera - warning signals coming over, and yet I am unable to search them. Do you not think this is something that should be addressed? Where someone has clearly broken the law and has been stopped for committing an offence, if they have a recent conviction for a violent offence or possession of an offensive weapon, then a quick frisk should be permitted even if they are not being arrested?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think if you have a reasonable suspicion that a person has something unlawfully in their presence, that is where I think the standard should fall.

Q42 David Davies: What I am told, though, Sir Ronnie, and what I have been trained to do is, if I have a reasonable suspicion, yes, obviously that can be done under section 1 of PACE, but if I do not have the suspicion or I cannot stack up the suspicion that they have got something on them at that particular moment, I personally feel that if somebody in front of me has broken the law and they have got a recent conviction for either drugs or offensive weapons, that ought to be enough to enable a police constable to carry out a quick search.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: No. I think, as in all these things, a balance has to be achieved. Even if people have committed crimes, I do not think it necessarily asserts that a police officer should, therefore, have the ability to search them every time they encounter them in a public place. I think the balance is right, that the police officer must have a reasonable suspicion that they have some articles unlawfully in their possession.

David Davies: That is an excellent reply. With the utmost respect to your years of service, I think we might have to slightly beg to differ on that last point.

Q43 Ms Buck: On the same point, Sir Ronnie, I think none of us, seriously, are questioning the importance of stop and search and stop encounters are tools in the police armoury, but it is also true that there are issues about accountability. You say, quite rightly, that the process has become bureaucratic, none of us are defending bureaucracy, rather than focusing on what I believe is important in one-to-one interactions between the police and members of the public: courtesy, respect and accountability. But is it not the case, as the Stephen Lawrence inquiry revealed, that that could not always be guaranteed, that there were serious issues, both about disproportionality and about a problem in confidence and the relationships on precisely those issues around courtesy and respect? That was what, in a sense, drove some of those additional checks and balances to be put into the stop and account process, and I just wonder, whilst agreeing entirely with what you say as an objective, why we have to have proxies to ensure that happens and accountability mechanisms are those proxies. How can you be sure that, by reducing that form of accountability, we do not end up in danger of replicating some of that breakdown in relationships, not just with ethnic minority communities, but with young people generally?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: To make sure that we would not lose the thrust of what Sir William McPherson was recommending, I had long conversations with Sir William about what his intention was, and he described the need to have recording that protected both the police officer and the member of the public being stopped. We already had the procedures for stop and search, so his recommendation extended the procedures for stop and search to what we now call "stop and account". In other words, if we stop someone in a public place and ask them to account for their presence, where they have been, where they are going, virtually if you ask them anything, that requires the completion of the same documentation that existed for stop and search. In my experience watching these processes, it took some seven minutes per person to complete but, more importantly for me, or as importantly for me, the person at the receiving end could not understand what was going on, became suspicious that their details were being recorded for some intelligence purposes and, however much the police officer took great pains to explain that this was for their protection and they were being given a copy of that, it actually adversely affected the quality of the one-to-one encounter. That is why it was important for me in conducting this review to have an advisory group which included, for example, Doreen Lawrence. Doreen would have great reservations that there are things that we must not lose. We must make sure that ethnicity is still recorded so that we can go back and check whether the Police Service is operating in a proportional way. What I am suggesting is not abandoning this but making sure that, through the use of airwaves, for example, this can be digitally recorded in ways that there is a database which can be later interrogated, that the member of the public knows the identity of the police officer with whom they have been engaged in the encounter and that the police officer is protected as well. What we are doing in for a (and again I mentioned the forces earlier) in West-Mids, Staffordshire, Leicestershire and Surrey, we are piloting this now. We need, as I understand it at this stage from legal advice, to change the PACE Code of Practice because, as a result of Sir William's recommendations, we changed the codes of practice to make this a requirement, so we need to do this, and it may be something that the Committee will pay close attention to. I am convinced that this will work in ways that maintain the protections that you point out are so important.

Q44 Ms Buck: It is reassuring to have that on record.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think within three months we should be able to establish that and, thereby, very quickly roll it out nationwide thereafter.

Q45 Ms Buck: Moving on to a broader issue about targets - national targets, national objectives, stop and search being a kind of example of that - and how you see them as being sometimes inconsistent with local priorities and about building trust and confidence (and you have used those words again this morning and you use them in your report), how do you think we can ensure that that trust and confidence that we all agree is integral to modern policing does not just stay as apple pie and motherhood, that it is not just a concept but it is something that we can focus on achieving? What are the mechanisms by which you deliver that concept in practice?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: If you look at what West Midlands police do very regularly in testing the trust and confidence of the population whom they serve, I think it is a very good example of making sure the Police Service knows exactly what the public think of how they are delivering the service. I think it is imminently possible to conduct such surveys and determine what level of confidence and trust the public have, and for me I think that is important rather than the quantitative measures. Someone mentioned policy exchange earlier in conjunction with the Superintendents Association. They did a bit of research whereby a high proportion of BCU commanders felt that externally imposed numerical targets actually detracted from their ability to deliver what their local people wanted.

Q46 Ms Buck: Could you give us a couple of specific examples of that?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: In the interim report we made a recommendation which was immediately accepted. The whole question of emphasis on offences brought to justice tended to bring about, I think, a practice within policing where even a minor squabble in the playground, for example, ended up being investigated with one youngster alleging that another youngster had assaulted him or her, and then there was a counter-allegation. That was all fully reported and brought about the risk of criminalising two youngsters for a very unimportant fracas between them, but suddenly the police had two offenders brought to justice, and I think the unintended outcome of such targets has to be addressed, and there was an immediate acceptance of that. Therefore, in the drawing up of the new PSA targets there will be much greater emphasis on the qualitative targets, the level of trust and confidence that the public have. I think that is important.

Q47 Ms Buck: Is there ever a danger that the localisation of accountability diffuses accountability: that you have so many neighbourhood, ward, local levels at which that accountability is delivered that you lose that essential ability to hold the Police Service to account across the board?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think there is a danger of adding another level of bureaucracy, and I think that is a danger we must avoid. For example, we looked at the Northern Ireland situation and Patten's recommendation of a whole network of district policing partnerships which nestle up to the ultimate policing ward, and while that works very effectively and has a very local involvement, when we went to Northern Ireland they are currently looking at crime and disorder reduction partnerships and how they may benefit from what we have in place over here, so it is certainly not the case that one size fits all. I think in the whole area of accountability there are two areas that require attention. For me one is at the level above an individual force, so that, for example, if we are talking, as we earlier did, about collaboration, what mechanisms are there actually to hold people to account? Certainly we in the inspectorate will be inspecting as to how effectively collaboration is working, but what mechanism is there to make police authorities and police forces collaborate? At the moment there is none. The Home Secretary has powers to mandate that collaboration, but I think there should be a mechanism of accountability that looks regionally and then, at the other end of the scale, I think much more has to be done to give people a feel that they can have a say in setting the policing priorities for their area, for their neighbourhoods and then have the ability through neighbourhood policing panels for---

Chairman: We are coming on to that now. I am sorry to cut you short, it is just that we have another evidence session on identity cards coming up. I would ask you if you would keep your answers to our next few questions as brief as possible. Ann Cryer has a question exactly on neighbourhood policing.

Q48 Mrs Cryer: When you were in the process of doing your report, how were local authorities and other partners involved in the review, how have their views been taken into account with what you have done and what barriers remain to effective partnership working and neighbourhood management?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: There was great involvement, so it was not just a question, in government terms, of looking at the Home Office. It was a question of looking at what is now Hazel Blears' department, for example, in terms of looking at the LGA as well and taking their views, and they very kindly provided me with their view as to neighbourhood management going beyond neighbourhood policing. I certainly have always been very strongly of the view that policing is much too important and too impactive on all our lives to be left to the police alone. In the interim report we suggested even a trial for pooling budgets, because some of these other departments and agencies have funding that, I think, could be pooled. Certain colleagues at a high level of policing through ACPO would have reservations about that, even the question of moneys that are provided specifically for policing. Is there any legal barrier to those moneys being pooled with the moneys of others? I certainly, in the advice that I have been given, do not think there is any legal barrier to that. There was a very high degree of involvement of other public sector agencies, bodies and departments, and I think that is crucial.

Q49 Mrs Cryer: So you brought all the local partners into it when you were compiling your review?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Indeed.

Q50 Mrs Cryer: You got their views?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Indeed; absolutely.

Q51 Chairman: The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have high hopes for neighbourhood policing.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I think it is crucial, Chairman. To use the jargon, it should be a golden thread that runs through every aspect of policing. It is not something to be separated, that in some way is totally detached from our counter-terrorist thrust, for example. It should be a golden thread that runs from the local right through to the national and, indeed, the international. I think it is crucial and a lot of good work has been done. I pay tribute to my colleague, Matt Baggott, who has led in that for so long and who was very crucial to me in the conduct of this review as well.

Chairman: He comes from Leicestershire, so must be very good! Bob Russell has the final question.

Q52 Bob Russell: Sir Ronnie, there are now 16,000 police community support officers, and the Home Secretary states that, by April, there will be a team in every neighbourhood in England and Wales, more than 3,600 in total. What, in your opinion, is the key role and purpose of PCSOs and where should the limits of their responsibilities lie?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: I have conducted many focus groups in London and elsewhere in very rural areas and where it works best, in my experience, is where they are integrated into neighbourhood teams so that you have constables or PCSOs working very much together, providing a visible presence, known to the people in the area that they police - they know the people in the areas that they are policing. They are not substituting police officers; I think it is very important that they work in partnership with police officers.

Q53 Bob Russell: Can I follow up that last point? You will be aware that this Committee, a year or two back, conducted an inquiry and we were concerned at being told that substantial numbers of PCSOs were being deployed inside police stations rather than on front-line duties. Bearing that in mind, what progress has been made by the Home Office, in terms of your interim recommendations, to consider opportunities for broadening the role of PCSOs?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: At this stage, not a lot of progress, but certainly there is an assessment underway in terms of evaluating the whole project, and I think it is important that that evaluation takes place. For me, my personal experience being out and conducting focus groups is that they have made and are making a very positive contribution.

Q54 Bob Russell: I endorse that. Our Committee has said in its last report that we were concerned that they were intended to provide a more visible public policing presence. Are you satisfied that that will continue to happen and they will not be drawn back into police stations to cover the bureaucracy that you referred to earlier you wished to take away from full-time qualified police officers?

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: No, I am confident that that can be achieved.

Bob Russell: Thank you.

Q55 Chairman: Sir Ronnie, thank you very much for giving evidence today. Can I also repeat the praise that has been heaped upon your shoulders by all parties in producing this very thorough report? We will certainly be using it as our core script as we proceed with our very detailed inquiry.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan: Chairman, members, thank you very much indeed.