The claim
“According to Home Office statistics, if all forces achieve the current best average for visibility and availability that would increase the number of officers available by 8,000.”
David Cameron, Prime Minister’s Questions, 30 March, 2011
The background
The Government’s been under fire over police cuts all week and the publication on Wednesday of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary’s (HMIC) report on frontline policing has provided David Cameron’s critics with more ammunition.
FactCheck pointed out last month that the Government had no precise definition of what constitutes “frontline” policing – despite repeatedly saying they wanted to protect it from the effects of the 20 per cent cut police forces are facing over four years.
That appears to have been addressed by HMIC now, although the other work the inspectorate has done has been seized on by both sides in the political debate over police cuts.
The analysis
The chief inspector of constabulary, Sir Denis O’Connor, concluded that about two-thirds of police officers and community support officers (PCSOs) work on the front line, and a third of them work in “middle-office” or “back-office” roles.
Police Minister Nick Herbert said that means there is room for big efficiency savings.
He added: “The report also reveals that some forces have twice the visibility and availability of policing as others, again showing that the issue is how resources are used.”
Visibility and availability are what the Prime Minister referred to later in the Commons when challenged on how police chiefs can be expected to implement the cuts without slashing the front line.
The figure of 8,000 extra police pulled out by the Prime Minister was certainly an eyebrow-raiser.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said: “I don’t think people will even understand what the answer was supposed to mean, frankly.”
Helpfully, the Home Office cleared up what the Prime Minister was talking about later.
According to research carried out by HMIC (not the Home Office, but let’s not split hairs), an average of 12 per cent of police officers and PCSOs are visible and available at any one time across England and Wales.
The inspectorate got those figures by taking a sample of police availability at three times of the week: Monday morning, Wednesday evening and just after midnight on Friday.
The define “visible and available” staff as uniformed police officers and PCSOs who are ready for duty at those times.
Naturally, in some forces the average is higher than others. Merseyside could boast that 17 per cent of its officers and PCSOs were visible and available, while in Devon and Cornwall it was almost half that, at 9 per cent.
Mr Cameron’s point is that if Merseyside Police can do it, everyone else can too.
So, he says, if you raise the national average from 12 per cent to 17 per cent you increase the total number of officers who are visible and available to the public from 18,795 to 26,627, or just under 8,000.
Of course it’s very unlikely that this kind of improvement could happen quickly in practice.
Devon and Cornwall, a small force of 3,858 police officers and PCSOs, would have to suddenly get more than 300 extra officers on duty to compete with Merseyside’s figures.
And police forces up and down the country would have to shift officers out of middle office roles – including CID detectives – put them in uniforms and get them out on the streets to improve their figures on visibility. That may or may not be a good idea, depending on local crime priorities.
The verdict
In all fairness to Mr Cameron, he’s using these figures to make a point about potential room for improvement in efficiency.
And we have to acknowledge that the HMIC is with him in spirit on this point.
They concluded that forces with the highest levels of officers and PCSOs visible and available tend to share the same good working practices.
The report concludes: “Forces and authorities should look at how they allocate officers and PCSOs in their force. There may be good reasons for variations (for instance, because of different operating environments): but the questions do need to be asked.”
And it goes further: “There is real scope for some forces to improve the efficiency with which they make officers available to the public at times when demand is highest.”
None of this lets the Government off the hook as far as the broader pictures is concerned.
As FactCheck reported on Tuesday, there are fears that because, unlike civilian staff, police officers can’t be made redundant, the cuts may mean they may be increasingly forced into doing more middle and back office work, which would make it almost impossible to increased the uniform presence on the streets.
But on one narrow corner of this argument, Mr Cameron got it right today.
