The claim
“He’s wrong. ACPO aren’t talking about frontline officers, so he’s simply wrong about that.”
David Cameron MP, Prime Minister’s Questions, March 9, 2011
“Now we hear that companies who have been burgled are going to be sent fingerprint kits in the post.”
Ed Miliband MP, Prime Minister’s Questions, March 9, 2011
Cathy Newman checks it out
When does a Bobby become a bureaucrat? Police forces up and down the country say they’re losing staff because of cost cuts.
But according to the Prime Minister, we can all rest easy in our beds because the posts being axed are back office bean counters, rather than bobbies on the beat.
Questioned by the Labour leader Ed Miliband today, he insisted that frontline officers are protected from the drive to reduce the police budget by 20 per cent over four years.
But does he need to be taken down to the station and brought to book? FactCheck investigates.
The background
The PM battled repeated fire from Ed Miliband over police budget cuts in today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. “We want to see police on the streets fighting crime, not stuck at their desks fighting paper,” Mr Cameron insisted.
He went even further, adding: “The fact is, all of the leadership of the police is engaged in the exercise of keeping costs under control to make sure that we get more officers on the beat.” To FactCheck this sounded very much as if he wants to add frontline jobs.
All this comes hot on the heels of ACPO’s warning that 28,000 police jobs are set to go – 12,000 officers and 16,000 staff – as a result of the government cutting police budgets by 20 per cent over four years.
After flagging ACPO’s figures, Mr Miliband rattled off job losses in the West Midlands, Bedfordshire’s scaling back of gun licence checks – and even mentioned one police force that was sending burgled companies fingerprint kits in the post.
“I know he believes in the Big Society but solving your own crimes is a bit ridiculous,” chided Mr Miliband.
The analysis
FactCheck couldn’t resist checking out Mr Miliband’s final claim, and got a rather tight-lipped response from the supposed culprits: Lincolnshire Police.
A spokeswoman told FactCheck it was a case of some “misquoting” by News of the World, and there are “no plans” to give burgled companies DIY fingerprinting kits.
Lincolnshire’s Chief Constable Richard Crompton had told the NOTW: “We are interested in doing some work with volunteers, training them to assist at very, very low-grade forensic scene”.
Today, Lincolnshire police told us that the kits are given to trained police volunteers, not to the victims of crime.
However, a bit more digging from FactCheck found that actually burgled companies have been given fingerprint kits for decades.
Basically, if a company is burgled the police will give it a kit in order to take its employees’ fingerprints so that they might be elimated from suspicion.
The kits are used to eliminate, rather than recover fingerprints from a crime scene, FactCheck was told.
So not quite the image of vulnerable victims awaiting help by post that Mr Miliband conjured up. Plus as a “given” practice that’s been going on for a number of years, it is by no means the result of the current cuts.
But back to Mr Cameron’s claim that the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) figures didn’t include “frontline” police officers.
FactCheck proved ACPO right yesterday and, worse still, discovered this 28,000 could just be the tip of the iceberg.
Our friends at ACPO reiterated today that they define the 12,000 officers as those with the “powers of arrest” – but this can cover everything from Bobbies on the beat to serious crime squad detectives.
The 16,000 “civilian” police staff include PCSO’s (Police Community Support Officers) and other staff from back room penpushers to forensics investigators.
“Just because a police officer isn’t wearing a high visibility vest and walking the streets, doesn’t mean he is not on the frontline,” an ACPO spokesman told FactCheck. “For example an officer could be a detective working undercover in a child paedophile case.”
Answering Ed Balls’ query on the confusion back in November, Policing Minister Nick Herbert said in the House of Commons: “There is no formally-agreed definition of frontline, middle office and back office services, although these are terms in relatively common use across the police service.”
Mr Herbert added: “Although no fixed definition exists, frontline officers and staff are generally those directly involved in the public crime-fighting face of the force. This includes neighbourhood policing, response policing and criminal investigation.”
This sentiment was echoed by the Home Office today, which told FactCheck there was no specific answer but that the term was “widely understood” by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.
Yet, given the ongoing debate over police cuts, as the Home Affairs Committee said a fortnight ago: “The current confusion about what constitutes the front line in the police service is unhelpful”.
It went on to add: “Although data collection is not yet complete and there is uncertainty about the precise figures, it is expected that there will be significantly fewer police officers, police community support officers and police staff as a result of the savings being required of police forces over the next four years.”
This conclusion, coupled with ACPO’s warning, leaves FactCheck mystified as to how Mr Cameron can continue to claim that the frontline won’t be hit.
Cathy Newman’s verdict
Ed Miliband should have known better than to quote the News of the World without checking his facts first.
But David Cameron committed a far more serious offence by declaring that none of the 12,000 officers ACPO warned would lose their jobs are “frontline” staff.
His own police minister defined frontline jobs as those involved in “public crime-fighting”.
ACPO says the 12,000 officers are those with “powers of arrest”. In other words, every one of those jobs could quite legitimately be described as “frontline”. FactCheck gives David Cameron a formal caution for failing to stick to the facts.
