HL Deb 06 March 1968 vol 289 cc1349-63

2.51 p.m.

LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR rose to call attention to the decision of Her Majesty's Government as a measure of economy, to slow down the rate of increase in the strength of the police, a step which can only give encouragement to crime and the criminal; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper I am inviting your Lordships this afternoon to consider a single point, the decision of Her Majesty's Government to limit the increase in police strength over the 15th months from January, 1968, to March, 1969, to a maximum of 1,200, despite the fact that recruitment to the police has been running in recent years at a considerably higher level than that. It is a single point but it has far-reaching consequences, as my Motion states. This decision has been taken in order to save money. It appears to me and to many of my noble friends a most ill-judged economy; and if the Government were to abandon some of their other ill-judged policies they would save much more than could be saved by this restrictive step.

To the best of my knowledge and belief there is virtual unanimity nowadays that the most powerful deterrent of all to crime is the likelihood of detection. It has been a commonplace for years, here, in another place and in the world outside Parliament, that the detection rate could be substantially raised if only we had more police. In numbers, the police in England and Wales at the end of 1966 were something like 18,000 below their authorised strength; in other words, numbers on average were only five-sixths of what they ought to be. I am confining my remarks this afternoon to England and Wales because I have no competence to speak about Scotland; but I have little doubt that much that I say could be truthfully repeated in relation to Scotland. The fact that police numbers on average throughout England and Wales are five-sixths of what they ought to be conceals wide variations. Some county forces are up to strength, but in some of the cities—and it is in the cities where most crime takes place—police strength is no more than three-quarters of what it ought to be. In other words, in those cities three policemen are having to do four men's work; and that is what gives the criminal his opportunity.

I grant that the establishment figures from which one has to calculate deficiencies are not conclusive. Some may need reduction; others, I suspect, may need increasing. The Police Research and Planning Branch at the Home Office, which I initiated, started in my time on a project to try to establish a uniform mode of assessment for the establishments of all police forces. In the last three years or so a number of force establishments have been revised, though I grant that none of those figures can be taken as final and conclusive in all circumstances. It has been forecast, for example, that the uniform adoption of unit beat policing throughout the whole country—at the moment it is employed only in a limited number of places—might be equivalent to adding 5,000 to police strength. If that, figure is correct—and this, too, is entirely hypothetical—that would reduce the deficiency of 18,000 to one of 13,000. It may well be smaller than 13,000 now, for I was starting with the figure at the end of 1966.

The detailed figures for the end of 1967 are, so far as I know, not yet published, but the Joint Under-Secretary of State stated in another place that police strength in 1967 grew by 4,100. However, in that same speech, made only five weeks ago, he confirmed that the Metropolitan Police were still 23 per cent. under strength; the police are 23 per cent. under strength throughout Greater London. In 1966—I do not know yet the 1967 figures—more than three out of every four crimes in the Metropolitan Police district were not cleared up, and most people would agree that that was substantially through shortage of manpower. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will be in a position to give us the latest figures, and I shall certainly yield to any numerical corrections. But I doubt whether it is far wrong to say that the deficiency in police strength to-day throughout England and Wales is something like 15,000, and ever if one allows for an eventual saving of 5,000 when unit beat policing has been spread across the whole country, that will still mean that in England and Wales we are short of 10,000 policemen—and the policeman is the strongest protection the law-abiding citizen has against crime and the criminal.

The short truth is that our defences against crime and the criminal are inadequate. And this is the moment which the Government choose to announce that over the 15 months from January, 1968, to March, 1969, as an economy measure, they will not allow police strength to rise by more than 1,200, and that if more recruits come who would raise police numbers above that figure, then, on the orders of the Home Secretary, they will be turned away.

My Lords, if the brake had not been applied by this economy measure there is, in my judgment, little doubt that that period of 15 months would have produced a much bigger bite into this long-continuing deficiency. I will explain why. The average increase in police strength from 1961 to 1966 was 2,000 a year. This improvement in strength started, your Lordships will remember, in 1961 with the marked improvement in police pay which was authorised by my noble friend Lord Butler of Saffron Walden; and the improvement has continued since. The net gain in strength, during 1966, according to the published reports, was 2,500. In 1967, as I have said, it has been stated by the Joint Under-Secretary to have been 4,124. There was also in that year a nearly equal improvement in civilian manpower in police service. In other words, things were going well. Had the 1967 trend been able to continue, the gain in police manpower over the next 15 months would have been 5,000. The Government say, "No, it must not be 5,000; it must be no more than 1,200."

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, will the noble Lord permit me to interrupt him? He said that there was a nearly equivalent increase in civilian strength to that mentioned by my honourable friend in another place. I take it that the noble Lord was speaking proportionately and not numerically.

LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR

My Lords, I was seeking to say that the net increase in civilian manpower in police service was of the same order of magnitude as the increase in policemen them- selves; about 4,000 policemen and about 4,000 civilians.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I will give the exact figures later, but the increase was not as high as 4,000 civilians in a single year.

LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR

My Lords, in that case I have misread what the Joint Under-Secretary of State said in another place on January 29. I am sorry; it was not as high as I thought it had been.

My Lords, without any doubt, the present Government's policies have up to now had a substantial effect for good on police recruiting, and this surely should be said on the credit side against the much harm that they have done. Home Office experience over many years has shown that recruitment to the police tends to go ahead faster in periods of general unemployment and industrial insecurity. The present Government's policies have created insecurity, and have created a long period of higher than normal unemployment. These are just the conditions when men turn their minds to the Police Service as a career, because it is one of the careers which in such circumstances offer absolute certainty of continuing employment.

I have little doubt that there is a connection between the substantial rise in police strength in the last year or two and the fact that indictable crime in 1967 showed the smallest rise for years; and, indeed, the detection rate showed a small improvement. It was the smallest rise in crime; nevertheless we must face the fact that crime did go on rising. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will confirm that crime is now something like five times as prevalent as it was thirty years ago, and there are more than three times as many in prison now as there were then. These facts, I submit, are a disgrace upon the nation and upon us all. They are stark facts which cannot be explained away.

Crime would undoubtedly be more effectively countered if the police were fully up to strength. The tragedy is that at just this favourable time for making good the deficiency, the Government have thought it proper to put the brake on recruiting. I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, regrets the decision, though he will loyally defend the policy even if it is indefensible. What seems to me inexcusable is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, until lately, was himself Home Secretary and must be taken as knowing the close relationship between crime and police strength should have forced on his successor as Home Secretary this encouragement to the criminals.

It is not the forces that are nearly up to strength which will suffer, though I understand that if a force is less than 10 per cent. below strength it is not to be allowed in these 15 months to make good any of its deficiency. The worst damage will be done in those areas where the deficiency is greatest. An increase of only 1 per cent. of the authorised strength is, I understand, to be allowed over the 15 months in forces where the deficiency is between 10 per cent. and 20 per cent. In forces where the deficiency is over 20 per cent.—and until recently I know that there were some forces with deficiencies of over 30 per cent.—an increase of only 2 per cent. in strength is to be permitted. So, for example, the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, with his force 23 per cent. below strength, is being told that he must not recruit all the men he could, if that would result in his force ending up in March of next year less than 21 per cent. below strength.

In that connection I would beg leave to quote again, as I did during our debate on November 29, what seems to me a very pertinent paragraph from the last available Annual Report of the Commissioner, because it illustrates so aptly the improvement that could take place in policing and in crime prevention and detection if only there were enough men. The Commissioner said: Last year I reported on the setting up of a highly mobile striking force, the Special Patrol Group which started in April, 1965. All its members are volunteers and their activities have, strongly confirmed my hopes for its success. The Group has been responsible for 530 arrests for crime and the recovery of £21,220 worth of stolen property as well as making 197 arrests for other offences. … Its flexibility, mobility and facility of communication makes it an effective formation for dealing with police problems in contemporary circumstances. When the manpower situation permits I would propose to extend the scheme considerably. And the Commissioner who thus reported on one of the most promising developments in policing in the Metropolitan area is told that by March of next year he must not try to bring his force beyond 79 per cent. of the strength it should have.

My Lords, what are he and chief constables to do? In other cities, such as Birmingham and Liverpool, the police forces are grievously below strength. Current economic conditions in them are favourable to police recruiting, yet they are to be made to turn away recruits. The obvious step for them to take would be to carry further the process of "civilianisation". I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Conesford is present, because he will not like that word, and may indeed not understand it. That being so, I will explain to him that this means introducing civilians into police posts to take the place of policemen who would otherwise be required for those particular jobs. It is one of the most helpful developments over a long period of years that the substitution of civilians for policemen has in many forces been carried so far.

As I say, the obvious step for a chief constable to take in the circumstances would be to see whether there were any more posts at present occupied by policemen which could be taken ever by civilians. But this Governmert have stopped every loophole. They have said, and I quote the circular issued on January 18 last, that: In general, during 1968–69 there should be no increase of civilian employees over the number now in post. In a later circular, No. 42 of 1968, dated February 6, the Home Office has offered to give consideration to special cases of civilian employment, but even that second circular has reaffirmed the policy statement I have just read out.

Up to now it has been the general policy of successive Home Secretaries to encourage the recruitment of police cadets. Police cadets are young men over the age of 16 and below 19 who train themselves for police work with the expectation of being attested as full constables on or after their nineteenth birthday. This again has been an admirable development. Now it seems to me that those forces which have been most successful in attracting police cadets are liable to find themselves the hardest hit on recruitment. The Home Secretary has issued instructions, quite rightly, that every police cadet reaching the age of attestation should be attested and enrolled into the police, but where this process of attesting police cadets will bring the force up to or beyond the strength permitted by the economy order, then the Government say that there must be no recruiting whatever of candidates other than cadets. Surely this must mean that in some forces which are much below strength, though they are strong in cadets, the ban on fresh recruiting will be absolute. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will be able to confirm this.

Finally, I want to draw attention to the newly amalgamated forces, and to forces like the new Tees-side force which has come into existence to police the new County Borough of Tees-side. I really initiated the present procedure of amalgamation by the Police Act of 1964, and I wholeheartedly approve of the way my successors have been implementing the amalgamation policy which that Act has made possible. But when a number of unequal forces are amalgamated into one, at first there will almost inevitably be some unbalance in the new force. One or more of the old smaller forces, just to take one example, may not have gone so far as others in making use of civilians, and there may be more opportunity, therefore, of substituting civilians for policemen in that part of the new force. Amalgamation of a number of forces into one puts a quite exceptional strain at the outset upon everybody, and upon the new chief constable most of all. If there is an unbalance, if there are weaknesses, they should be rectified as swiftly as possible, or the new force will not attain its proper efficiency. Here, if anywhere, flexibility of recruitment of both constables and civilians is an absolute necessity, and it is a flexibility which the Government's policy seems to take away.

I know that the Government cannot undo the harm which is being done by their decision to put the brake hard on, when what the crime situation demands is a rapid growth of police strength. But at any rate the Government can mitigate the harm, if they will give an assurance to Parliament that the special cases of new amalgamations and new forces will be treated considerately, and that the policy will not be so applied as to wreck the efforts of the chief constables of these new forces to make them efficient.

I have made clear my view that the Home Secretary should never have allowed the Chancellor to force upon him this limitation of police recruitment which can only encourage the criminal. In a debate as recently as November 29 on a Motion by the noble Lord, Lord Rowley, who I am glad is proposing to speak this afternoon, every noble Lord who spoke took a grim view of the growth of organised crime. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, described it as one of the most serious issues affecting us as a civilised community. Referring to the police, he closed his speech by saying: My right honourable friend the Home Secretary is firmly determined to provide them with all the tools and all the organisation they require for success in their supremely important job."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, col. 146, 29/11/67.] What value attaches to that assurance, now that the new Home Secretary, under pressure from the former Home Secretary now at the Treasury, is holding back the police from recruiting all the men they require? I beg to move for Papers.

3.16 p.m.

LORD SHAWCROSS

My Lords, I fully appreciate, if I may say so, the great difficulties of the Government in this matter of public expenditure. Very great cuts have to be made—indeed, I am one of those who think that the cuts so far made are to some extent illusory, and certainly inadequate. No doubt when there has to be a massive retrenchment of this kind in Government expenditure there will always be those like myself who will say: "Let the cut be there, or let the cut be there but do not let it come in the particular activity which is the subject of my own special interest". We all have our pets, which we should like to protect from the cold blast of public financial retrenchment, if and when it takes place.

In those circumstances, all that those of us who, like myself, are not attached to any political Party can do is to argue that it is for the Government to settle their priorities in matters of this kind and to suggest with all humility, as I want to do, that it is possible that the advisers of Her Majesty's Government have not in this case given sufficient consideration,

have not taken enough time, have not engaged in adequate consultation, before deciding where these cuts should come and that they ought to take whatever opportunity there may be for reconsidering the position.

To take this question of over-hasty—I will not say panic—decision, in the latter part of December the Home Secretary, commenting on the position of the police forces, which were admittedly under-established, said that there was then "an encouraging trend of increased recruitment". He cannot have had much time since making that statement about the encouraging trend of increased recruitment to study the effect of decisions announced within less than a month, which would virtually stop all additional recruitment from outside the forces. Take the question of consultation. Some few years ago there was established an organisation called the Police Advisory Council, which was eminently qualified to assist the Government with information and with opinions upon this very problem of the size of the various police forces. Were they consulted before these cuts were made? Or is this—I hope not—another example of that form of government by contempt of which there have been too many examples in recent months? I say that I hope not, and I do hope not, because both the present Home Secretary and his predecessor—and I gladly pay tribute to this—have enjoyed and merited a very high reputation for their interest in the police and for their realistic view about the administration of our criminal law.

What is the real importance of this question of the reduction in the size of the police force? I agree—and I think we must all agree—with the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, in saying that it is its effect on the prevention of crime and the protection of the rights of the law-abiding citizen. As a life-long member of the Howard League, and now the Chairman of the Law Reform Society called "Justice", I am convinced, and I think nowadays everybody is convinced, that the main deterrent to crime is not heavy sentences, but the probability—no one can ever say the certainty—of detection. I do not for a moment say that heavy sentences are not sometimes necessary, if only to deter such persons as the train robbers from too much enjoyment of their own ill-gotten gains. But heavy sentences are, in a sense, an admission of the failure of our arrangements. The more serious criminals are not deterred by the risk of heavy sentences; they make their plans on the basis that they are not going to be arrested or sentenced at all: and of course, in the past more often than not they have been right.

All over the country—I am not saying in every particular force, but in general all over the country—police establishments are too low. It is absolutely futile for the Home Secretary to say, as he said the other day in another place, that he does not accept that the deficiency of about 18,000 between the actual and the authorised establishments of the police in this country is correct, and that he is going to have a scientific examination made of the whole problem. This is, if I may say so with the greatest respect, really "all my eye and Betty Martin".

This matter has been very fully examined, and by Her Majesty's present advisers. Only last year the Reports of the Working Parties into Police Manpower, Equipment and Efficiency were published by the Government. The main Committee was presided over by the honourable and learned gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary to the Home Department. Who better able to make a scientific examination of what was required in the establishment of the police forces of this country? If I may read it, this is what in one paragraph they state—and this after prolonged examination by experts, looking at the matter from the point of view of using all the latest methods, scientific aids, methods of policing and the rest: It is well-known that the police service of England and Wales has for years suffered a chronic shortage of manpower. The Royal Commission on the Police, in their interim report recommended that realistic establishments should be settled for all forces in which the existing authorised establishment was believed to fall short of the number of police required. It was hoped in this way to establish the extent of the true deficiency. It was in 1960 that the Interim Report of the Royal Commission on the Police in regard to this matter of strength was published. The Report goes on: As a result of reviews undertaken since that time, and in particular since police authorities whose establishments had not been brought up to date were invited, early in 1965, to review the situation, and to submit proposals to the Home Office, establishments have been increased from a total of 77,490 in 1961, to 98,060 in 1966. During the same period there has been a net increase in the total strength of the police in England and Wales from 71,598 to 82,115. On 1st May, 1966, there accordingly existed a paper deficiency of strength amounting to 15,945; and the review of establishments had not yet been wholly completed. In particular, the need for mobile policemen on the roads has not yet been fully assessed: this is being considered by a Working Party on the Policing of Motorways and Trunk Roads. Then they said, after going into the question of civilian recruitment, a matter of great importance in relieving the police for what are really police duties: The problem of the adequacy of manpower touches almost every aspect of police administration, and upon its sucessful solution depends in large measure the morale and contentment of the police. I want to emphasise this, because it is a matter of the greatest importance that this force, which is serving the country so well, should be encouraged in its morale and contentment. The Report goes on: On this, in turn, depends the quality of service which the police are able to give to the public—a matter on which Britain has an eviable reputation. We wish, therefore, to emphasise at the beginning of our Report that our recommendations in favour of a stronger civilian support structure, and for the further use of the special constabulary, are in no way designed to obscure the central problem of building up the strength of the regular police. It is perfectly true, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, pointed out, that new methods may effect significant economies in the use of police manpower: civilians—whose recruitment, incidentally, is now to be wholly stopped, as I understand the present proposals- may replace the police in the conduct of many merely administrative duties; motor cars, telecommunications, the unit beat system, computers—all these things may help. But nobody has hitherto imagined that the savings in manpower which would be achieved by new police methods of this kind would be used to cut down actual police establishments. It had always hitherto been thought by those connected with the administration of the police that these savings should be used in order to reduce overtime working—one of the great disincentives to police recruitment, too much week-end Working—and to cut down, too, the grossly excessive case-loads on the Criminal Investigation Department.

The position, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, indicated, is nowhere worse than it is in London. The Metropolitan Police have a splendid record of service and considerable achievement, for which I am sure everybody in this House and in the country at large is grateful. We ask too much sometimes of this comparatively small body of men. The police force in Paris alone—and I do not think one would call that the centre of a Police State—is equal to the whole establishment in England and Wales. In 1921 the police force in the Metropolitan Area was slightly larger than it is to-day. Since 1921 the population and the problems which have to be dealt with by the police have, of course, immensely increased. In 1921 there were 17,000 indictable offences in the Metropolitan Police Area. In 1965—that is the last year for which I have the official statistics, and it is more since—the number had increased from 17,000 to 282,000. Yet we have fewer police to deal with those offences. It is not surprising that in the result only 22 per cent. of the known offences in the Metropolitan Area are cleared up. The criminal knows that his chance of getting away with these crimes is something at the rate of 4 to 1 in his favour.

It is true that the position in the Metropolitan Area was a little better last year than it was the year before, and there is no doubt that the reason for this improvement has been that the Metropolitan Police Force is a little larger than it was the year before. It is a splendid thing that the rate in the increase in crime is slowing up, and I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will tell us all about it and derive some encouragement from it. But it is a little too early yet to identify any long-term trend. There have been differences of this kind in other periods since the war, and we should be foolish to say that the battle was yet anything like won; and I am sure the noble Lord will not suggest it.

We must remember that crimes of violence, like robbery, in the repression of which police strength is patricularly important, are still showing a very alarming rate of increase. But if there is a trend, it is undoubtedly due, as indeed the Home Secretary asserted only a short time ago, to the fact that over the last few years there has been a significant increase in police strengths. But, my Lords, all that is now stopped, and recruitment into the police from the general public, and in particular (and I should like to emphasise this because this is a most important aspect of recruitment into the force) recruitment from the higher levels of education, recruitment of graduates or of people with "A" level qualifications, will, so far as one can see, be brought completely to a standstill.

I wonder whether I might be allowed to read to your Lordships part of a letter I have received from a chief constable, one quite unknown to me, in a district far away from my own, who is responsible for a pretty sizable force. He says: At a time like this, when it appears that the police are at last being able to stem the mounting crime wave, the Government decision to restrict police recruiting to a contemptuously low level would be laughable if it were not so serious. This force (in common with many others) already has more than enough cadets, who will reach the age of 19 before April, 1969, to fill all the vacancies, which I am allowed to fill, during the period of restriction. The result is that I shall either have to turn away all other applicants, or else ask some of my cadets to postpone their entry into the regular force for several months after their 19th birthday. I have no doubt that the recently announced run-down in the Armed Services would have resulted in many more applications to join the Police Service; but chief constables, everywhere, will be forced to ask many excellent men to wait for about 15 months before their applications can be considered. It seems unlikely that these men will be content to take a temporary job, even if they could find one, and they will therefore be lost to the Police Service for ever. Within the last few months many chief constables have been asked by Home Office to purchase extra motor cars and pocket wireless sets in order to increase the unit beat police schemes. My Lords, may I pause there for a moment to point out, that, while we all hope for a great deal from the unit beat system, one aspect of it which is necessary to its success is that members of the unit beat force should be in close contact with their area, in personal contact with their area; and that means that the area has to be limited, and that there must be a sufficient number of members for each unit for each area. The chief constable goes on: This force has bought all the cars and pocket wireless sets; but we do rot have enough men, at the moment, fully to implement our schemes, and we shall not be able to recruit them …. This means that some of this expensive new equipment will remain idle. Another chief constable, also from a distant place, has written to me to say this—and it indicates, if I may quote it, a different aspect: The act of freezing recruitment at its present level means not only that I will be unable to recruit the additional men required, in my view, to make the amalgamation"— this is a case of one of the amalgamated forces; and we all rejoice in the steps which the Home Secretary has taken to produce these amalgamations— thoroughly effective, but also that I must carry the short-fall on the existing inadequate establishment. The position is complicated by the fact that, in order to make do with the existing unexamined establishment, I relied on the recruitment of additional civilian staff of various grades to carry out functions at present peformed by police officers: but the civilian establishment, too, has been frozen and therefore I am required to continue to use a large number of police officers to perform non-police duties. Then he goes on to make the same point about the necessity for recruiting cadets, and continues: … Our ability to recruit police officers from the general public is severely hampered, and we are unable, effectively, to get the benefit of the additional attractions of such a modern police force in the eyes of school leavers and others. Broadly speaking, therefore, my view is that what is going to be affected in our case, and I must suppose in the Police Service generally, is the trimming off of those vital extensions of police efficiency which will make the difference between a rising and a declining crime rate.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, am I to understand that the noble Lord said he was quoting from a letter from a serving chief officer of police?

LORD SHAWCROSS

It has been estimated—and this is, I think, a moderate estimate, based on those offences which have been reported to the police, and not on others—that £40 million is stolen each year; in the Metropolitan Area the Chief Commissioner, in his Report, gave the figure for the last year as £21 million, only a small portion of which is recovered. I think that in the Metropolitan Area the value was £3 million more than in the year before. To save (I think the figure is) £6 million, we are going to call a halt to the main measures—the build-up of police manpower—calculated to discourage, and eventually to reduce, this enormous economic loss to the country, to say nothing of the other untold miseries which follow from the commission of successful crime. It is very difficult to understand how this makes economic sense. On social and moral grounds, it seems to me to be quite indefensible.