The TaxPayers' Alliance - Campaign

Sir Hugh Orde, a Jedi Knight in the service of the Sith

It's day two of Sir Hugh Orde's tenure as head of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), and already he's been causing quite a stir. Whilst he seems to have some good ideas, he has absolutely the wrong approach to getting them implemented.

To give a bit of background, ACPO is an odd creature - part professional association, part government policing institution, part lobby group and part private company selling advice, testimonials and...ah...data from the police national computer.

Sir Hugh is a long-standing member, having been by all accounts an effective Chief Constable of Northern Ireland. He seems to have become ACPO President as a sort of consolation prize for not getting to be Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

As I mentioned, his first few days have already caused a stir. On Monday, he took to the airwaves on the Today Programme. It was gratifying to hear the question about the police pension scheme framed in terms of the TaxPayers' Alliance's view that reform is urgently required. It was even more gratifying, though, to hear Sir Hugh agree that it is high time for pension reform.

This is good news for taxpayers and, ultimately, for police officers. As Sir Hugh explained, police pensions have for far too long been based on a dangerous system of IOUs, not on any actual fund. In Northern Ireland, he said, there are 7,000 serving officers whose pension contributions do not store up money for their own retirement but rather are used to pay out pensions to 12,000 retired officers. That is hugely unsustainable - meaning that unless we get reform, then taxpayers are almost certainly going to have to bail out overstretched pension schemes and/or ultimately some retired police officers may find there simply isn't the money there to pay them what they are owed.

Sir Hugh's response to the next controversy to strike him was also an interesting one. Fresh from making a speech about how strapped for cash most police forces are, he had the rug pulled under his feet by news of a variety of lavish benefits and bonuses being enjoyed by his fellow Chief Constables. Remarkably, rather than try to defend their inflated deals, he actually intimated that it was something that he disapproved of. Finally, a senior public official holds the same views on remuneration as the public.

The problem lies in his preferred solution:

'If there is no self regulation, in my judgment the only way to prevent it is through new legislation.'

Oh dear. It seems Sir Hugh has a taste for central, top-down control to improve the running of public services. It is bad enough when anyone starts shouting "the government must do something", but when one of the most senior policemen in Britain does it that's even more dispiriting.

This enthusiasm for centralisation could also be seen in Sir Hugh's comments on the future of police authorities this week. Having expressed his enthusiasm for "accountability", he then went on to give a kicking to the idea of electing police authorities or police commissioners to oversee the different forces.

Giving the people a say over policing would, he said

"drive a coach and horses through the current model of accountability"

Ah yes, the model of accountability which sees a gaggle of JPs (unelected, and picked for their ability to be respectable and adjudicate minor crimes) and councillors (voted in to a totally different office for their views on bins, libraries and potholes) appointed to a Police Authority. The model of accountability which has delivered policing that has left the public feeling ignored and unconsidered, suspected rather than served.

He even welcomed the Government's withdrawal of their excellent proposals for electing Police Authorities, saying:

"it seems to me that communities have a right to have their police service held to account in a sophisticated and apolitical way"

Ouch. By pitting the idea of sophistication against that of democratic election, he backed the select and out of touch minority who currently run the police against the majority of "unsophisticated" people who just happen to fund the police, and who have to live at the sharp end of the crime problem.

By apolitical, he actually means unaccountable. Again, Sir Hugh casts aside the idea of giving the people a say over this crucial public service despite the clear public interest. It is ironic that the policing establishment which has become so obsessed with "stakeholders" still seems intent on ignoring the public at large - the only stakeholder group who should really matter.

It is ironic that election of police authorities or commissioners, along with genuinely localised funding of the police, is actually the best way to deliver solutions to the three problems Sir Hugh has so far expressed a desire to see fixed.

Police pensions? The public would gladly vote for a sustainable reform of the scheme. Senior officers getting obscene bonuses in the middle of a recession? Voters would soon put a stop to that. Overstretched budgets? Given the power to slash red tape, cancel pointless central government imposed projects and refocus resources on frontline policing, the people would jump at the chance.

Sadly, while Sir Hugh has thus far displayed a good instinct about what needs to be done, he is still hoping beyond hope that central government will descend, deus ex machina, to implement it with thunderbolts of Whitehall directives and Westminster legislation.

What he cannot see is that the "sophisticated and apolitical" approach that seems so clean and tidy has failed to deliver any of the things he wants - in fact it created most of these problems in the first place. It might feel a bit dirty getting involved with the hoi polloi, but if he was to open the door to the unsophisticated and political masses he might well find that they would start putting things right. After all, for real people policing is not about academic considerations it is about safety, security and even life and death - they urgently need it to be done properly.

So give it up, Sir Hugh - even if they agreed with you, which they do not, the top-down Sith Lords will never get it right, trying to micromanage every little detail from the Imperial Throne Room. Join the Jedi rebellion and trust the people to do the right thing. They might just surprise you.

Big tax, Big Government, Big Brother

David Goodhart, Editor of Prospect magazine, has an interesting if mistaken article just out in their April edition on the subject of civil liberties, individual freedom and the database state. I'm not a habitual Prospect reader, but this one came to my attention as he makes an analogy between personal data and taxes - an interesting comparison, though one that in my view he draws the wrong conclusion from.

Goodhart's essential thesis is that people who are utterly opposed to the way the state has increasingly gathered information about individuals, from the NHS database, the DNA database and CCTV to proposed ID cards, are overegging the pudding with alarmist warnings about a slide towards a police state. Instead, we should be happy to share a reasonable amount of data because we owe it to the State, otherwise they wouldn't be able to provide decent public services.

It is here that the comparison with taxes comes in:

It might be useful if we started to see our data as similar to tax, something we willingly surrender to the authorities in return for various benefits, but over which there is also a political negotiation about how much to surrender. The liberty lobby, in this analogy, becomes the Thatcherite Taxpayers’ Alliance of the database state—wanting individuals to hoard their data and leaving the state powerless to serve citizens as it could.

Goodhart is effectively arguing for what you might call "progressive invasion of privacy", to continue the analogy with the rhetoric of those who support high taxes. This is based on the idea that it's somehow simply short-sighted and selfish to think that what you choose to do in your private life, or even what your DNA code or retina look like, belong to you and you alone, and the state has no right to force you to surrender them.

I suppose that if you hold the view that the State should have an unlimited right to dip into people's pockets and take their money on the basis that it's all for your own good, he's right. If you believe that the State can always take better care of your money then you can, then there's nothing wrong with the idea of the state invading your privacy and restricting your freedom, because Big Brother knows best. It's no coincidence that this high taxing government are also introducing so many new powers of snooping, gagging and internment.

Where he is mistaken is in what this correlation between high taxes and Big Brother actually proves. Instead of appealing to fellow leftists to abandon their pro-freedom views by making them feel dirty with the suggestion they are to the civil liberties debate what the TPA is to the tax debate, I suspect he is actually pushing people the other way.

The vast majority of the public do not "willingly surrender" their money to the state in the form of taxes. In fact, the overwhelming majority are in favour of lower taxes, and the state leaving them as much of their own money as possible, particularly because they know the Government will waste and squander large amounts of it. The reason there has been a growing swing away from support for ID cards, DNA databases and internment without trial is that people are swiftly realising that their freedom is an asset like their money - if you give it to the Government, they will squander it through a mixture of stupidity and wickedness and you will be left with nothing.

A big bill for the old bill

In a bid to boost trust in the police, Jacqui Smith has unveiled a new scheme whereby victims of “minor” crime can send a text message instead of calling 999. The police will reply with a non emergency number and details of your local police and community support officers.

On the face of it the scheme may well have good intentions, but there are catches. Typically of this government, the scheme is an expensive one. The cost of advertising alone for the new scheme will hit a staggering £3.5m.

This is a huge sum and one that will undoubtedly trouble tax payers. Surely if the government is concerned about confidence in the police spending £3.5m advertising another gimmick will not help. The money could have been better used in recruiting more front line officers to go on the beat and have a visible presence on our streets.

There is the second catch – is this really a good alternative to actual frontline policing on the streets? Considering that the average starting wage for a police officer is £20,000 it is evident that £3.5m could make a significant contribution.  Not only would spending this money on front line policing increase trust through extra police visibility but will also deter the kind of criminal behaviour that ruins communities.

However the most damning aspect of the advertising costs is the highly questionable timing. It is bad enough to spend £3.5m advertising a gimmick in a period of economic growth but during a recession the implications are more severe. Currently we are enduring record levels of government borrowing and the threat of future service cut backs and tax rises. Considering the situation taxpayers should not expect £3.5m to be spent advertising gimmicks. The public are tightening their belts and the government should follow by setting a good example and not squandering £3.5m in these difficult times.  

Qatada case shows the law is a disgrace

The news today that Abu Qatada, "Bin Laden's right hand man in Europe", and several of his fellow extremists are not only still in Britain but are being paid compensation for the inconvenience of their detention, have caused understandable disgust.

Let us be clear. Qatada hates Britain and everything it stands for. Free speech, equality for women, the right to determine one's own sexuality and religion, rock'n'roll, democracy - you name it, he has made very clear that he despises it. He has been linked in a series of judgements to extremists, and in their recent judgement to deport him back to Jordan the Law Lords made clear that if he was at liberty to do so, he would cause harm to our nation.

So why, then, is he still here, having cost taxpayers £1.5 million is benefits, legal fees and prison costs since his arrival, and cashing in compensation cheques from the taxpayer despite rulings by the Law Lords that he should be slung out of the country?

The answer is that our legal system has been hamstrung. The introduction of the bungling, unclear and absurd Human Rights Act meant that Qatada's lawyers have effectively been able to keep him in this country for years by arguing that the British people's sovereign right to expel people who hate them and wish to see Britain destroyed comes second to the right of preachers of hatred to be protected from their own countrymen.

This Human Rights Act fiasco meant that we had lost the legal right to decide which foreign individuals can and cannot remain in our country. The Government which placed this bind on our laws was then faced with the question of what to do with Qatada and his ilk, who clearly remained a threat. Any right minded person would have recognised that the Human Rights Act was deeply flawed and repealed it, allowing us to get on with the job of getting rid of him. This Government, though, decided it was preferable to alter the fundamental principles of the law and intern Qatada without trial.

That was what has led to this compensation claim, backed by the European Court of Human Rights, which has power over British law. Of course, if Qatada really objected to his internment he could have simply upped sticks and left the country - he was free to do that at any time - but why bother when you've got a free meal ticket, a public platform for your hateful views and yet more opportunities to milk the British taxpayer that you hate so much for all they are worth?

His deportation order by the Law Lords will now be appealed, inevitably at our expense, to the European Court, meaning he will certainly remain here, living off the British taxpayer, for several more years at least. If he wins in the ECHR - and in that Cloud Cuckoo Land almost all things are possible - he could be here for the foreseeable future, using our money to pour poison into the ear of the nation.

This is a shocking case about a shocking man. Qatada is a hateful, evil piece of work, but without the ridiculous behaviour of our politicians in crippling our laws and handing power over to the European Court of Human Rights, he would have been out on his ear years ago.

Jacqui Smith has been cheering on rulings in favour of his deportation, and criticising Human Rights verdicts that support Qatada, but it is base hypocrisy. The Government could repeal the Human Rights Act, ditch the European Convention that underlies it and tell the Court to take a running jump, which would genuinely solve the problem and make our laws meaningful again, but for reasons of misguided ideology and euro-enthusiasm, they won't. Until some politician has the guts to do so, they are as much to blame for this farce as Qatada is.

Policemen cease to be photo-friendly

I suppose that by now it should no longer be surprising to see yet another ridiculous criminal offence introduced, but this one did give me a bit of a shock. From today it is arguably illegal to take a photograph of a police officer.

Yet again, whilst our laws fail to properly clamp down on those openly preaching death and destruction to innocent, freedom-loving British people, the Government has chosen instead to infringe the freedoms of the law-abiding majority. There have for some time been problems in other countries with the police seeking to hid their identities and to prevent members of the public from photographing them, but recently similar practices have spread here.

As the article linked to above mentions, a number of press photographers have been ordered not to take pictures of officers, have had equipment seized or have even been detained under the terrorism act for the shocking offence of taking pictures of a wedding. In 2005, Austin Mitchell MP had his photos deleted after he dared to take pictures of his own party's - Labour - conference in Brighton!

This is not just an issue of heavy handed "counter-terrorism" legislation, it's about the accountability of a key public service: the police. Members of the public should have the right to observe just about any public servant going about their business of spending our money, and to hold them to account if they are doing wrong. That applies when one is talking about publishing the bonuses of council chief executives, or bailed out bank officials, and it should also apply to the right to take photographs of police officers.

In many ways, given that the police have the unusual status of being allowed to use force on members of the public in particular circumstances, it is even more essential that they are open to full scrutiny in the way that they exert those powers. Furthermore, their time, kit and training is all paid for by us taxpayers, so if they are abusing any of it we should have the right to gather evidence and pull them up. I'm going to take a photo of the next policeman I see, and I'll let you know what - if anything - happens.

There should be no compensation for terrorists

There are bad ideas and then there are utterly disgraceful ideas. This weekend it was reported that the Government's advisory group on the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland has come up with one of the latter. The families of victims killed in the Troubles, they said, should be compensated. Unfortunately, they are including terrorists on the list of "victims".

I don't think any of us could have any problem with the concept of compensation being paid to those whose innocent family members were killed by terrorists. However, the idea that the families of the militants who did that killing should be compensated is disgusting. Not a penny of taxpayers' money should go to reimburse the deaths of people who set out to murder, maim and destroy.

It's an insult to equate the lives of innocent victims to the lives of violent thugs, and what's more, it sends out an appalling message to today's would-be terrorists. Worried that by getting involved in terrorism your family might suffer? Have no fear, they could get a cash lump sum. Having a moment's doubt about your choosing to harm innocent civilians? It's okay, the Government thinks you are as much a victim as they are.

The people that commit acts of terrorism are not victims, they are murdering scum. There is no way any law-abiding taxpayer should be paying out compensation for the death of someone who would have had no qualms about killing them in cold blood.

Don't back down on police accountability, Jacqui

It's extremely disappointing that the Home Secretary has apparently abandoned proposals to make the police properly accountable to the public by electing Police Authorities. Unfortunately, the reason she has got the jitters about the plans is exactly why directly elected authorities would be a good idea.

The reasons she has given for backing down are threefold:

i) Elections would "politicise" policing and possibly allow "populists" to be elected.

ii) The Tories can't be trusted to run policing as she would want.

iii) Senior police officers and existing authority members don't like the idea.

Each of those arguments is not only invalid but actually contain the strength of the proposals. Let's look at them one by one.

i) Elections would "politicise" policing and possibly allow "populists" to be elected.

First off, this argument is heavily soaked with selective and biased words. Of course elections would allow populists in, if a populist is by definition the person whose ideas the public most support. That is the point of democracy, and "populist" is simply an insult designed to suggest that an idea with popular democratic support is inferior to a highbrow, Westminster-village idea that is unpopular because the public are somehow too stupid to appreciate its genius.

Second, policing and the fight against crime are too important not to "politicise" (for which read "place under democratic control"). Many would argue that protecting the public from violence, theft and harm from others is the first and most fundamental duty of the state to its citizens. It is the public who pay for the police, the CPS, the courts and the prisons, and it is they who are at the sharp end if policing fails and crimes are committed. Why should they not be allowed to control the police? Who knows whether the system works or not better than them?

Even Jacqui Smith's own Government have run on a platform of "tough on crime and the causes of crime", and make great play of their policies on policing and criminal justice. Even this policy of allowing elections to police authority was being touted as an example of how great the Government were (back when they thought it was a good idea), and thus as a political benefit of the Government. Policing policy can never be anything other than a political and politicised issue, and it is already too divorced from the people.

ii) The Tories can't be trusted to run policing as she would want.

This is the nub of the actual problem Jacqui has developed with the idea.It seems that she has no problems with elected representatives of the people controlling policing as long as that elected representative is her.

She and other Government members today have been pointing to the fact that Boris Johnson as Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority had the power to effectively force out Sir Ian Blair as Met Police Commissioner. What is the problem with that? Johnson had made clear all along during his election campaign that he would be taking up the Chairmanship of the MPA, and there was never any illusion that he approved of Blair's methods or right-on attitude. In a choice between the two, Johnson was the one with a million-vote mandate.

The reason that handing power back to the people is such a good idea is precisely that everything would not be uniformly mismanaged from an overcentralised headquarters in the Home Office. The Home Secretary would not be able to constantly micromanage police officers she has never met, in areas of the country she has never visited, fighting crimes she has never experienced. Unfortunately, Ms Smith has made this decision on the basis of the problem that currently bedevils the British State - politicians cannot resist grabbing all power possible to themselves, irrespective of whether they are the best at exercising it, and simply cannot bear to give it up even when centralisation clearly fails.

Essentially, she doesn't want anyone running the police who doesn't do what she wants, even if the people disagree with her.

iii) Senior police officers and police authorities don't like the idea.

Of course they don't - given the choice, wouldn't we all want to be an unaccountable law unto ourselves?

Police officers must remember that they are not a private enterprise, subject only to external regulation, they are one of the most crucial arms of a democratically controlled state. Nor are they the Home Secretary's personal force, they are the employees of the whole nation and as such they should be answerable to the population they serve. Unfortunately, whilst most frontline officers share most of the basic views of the public - catch criminals, punish them firmly, don't excuse serious crimes with simple warnings, stuff the Human Rights Act and stop pursuing politically correct thought crimes - their senior officers are increasingly well versed in the nanny state managerialism espoused by the Home Secretary. For some (as it was for Sir Ian Blair), the management-speak of meetings with the Home Secretary is far more comfortable than the sharp and simple demands of a public that wants criminals caught and locked up.

The opposition of existing members of police authorities is particularly unsuprising. At the moment they are a mixture of appointed quangocrats and appointed councillors, who are predictably keen to avoid actually having to run to hold their seats and having to justify their views and activities to the public. Who knows, without googling, who is on their local police authority? Other than Boris Johnson, prominent because of his public election, I can't name any of the others on my local board. Can you?

In proposing elected police authorities, the Government were on the right track. Not only had they recognised the accountability deficit that exists in policing, they were beginning to acknowledge that the current arrangement of centralised government, placing huge responsibilities at the fingertips of one individual politician in Whitehall with little personal experience of the issues, simply does not work. Unfortunately, they seem to have lost the courage to push it through to its logical conclusion. We must recognise that it is a difficult thing for politicians to let go, stop trying to juggle everything at once and trust the people, but if we are ever to have an effective, cost-efficient public sector, do it they must.

If it can happen to Damian Green, what hope for the rest of us?

The Speaker's statement today about the raiding of Damian Green MP's office by police contained some truly shocking revelations. Uppermost is the fact that apparently the Met anti-terrorism officers involved did not even have a warrant to search the office, and that they failed to fulfil their legal obligation to make that clear to Parliamentary officials.

This makes the scandal even more outrageous than it was before. The heavy implication of Speaker Martin's comments is that the police effectively duped Commons officials into giving their consent to the raid by not mentioning the fact that it was optional.

The officials involved - including the Speaker himself - are far from blameless here. They should never have just rolled over and played dead when approached about such a controversial constitutional issue. However, the fact that the police acted in this way is disgraceful and extremely worrying.

If an Opposition frontbencher can be subjected to this kind of treatment, and if the confidentiality of his constituents can be violated so severely, what hope is there for the rest of us?

As I mentioned, this is a constitutionally crucial issue that affects the heart of the democratic system, but it is also vitally important to the process of accountability. If you have had a problem with your local police force (perhaps they have raided your office and searched your emails without a warrant, to give a surely fantastical example) and your complaint has been dismissed, ignored or buried somewhere, who can you now go to to obtain justice and redress?

Before last week, you could feel sure that by writing to or emailing your Member of Parliament you would find a listening ear who would take it up without further interference from the police. Now, though, that is clearly not the case. Anyone in Damian Green's constituency who has complained about the police to him must now be feeling deeply insecure and undermined.

The same goes for other leakers. It is clearly in the interests of good democracy that if something is being covered up that ought to be known to the public, honourable public servants might leak it. Indeed, there is a defence of public interest acknowledged explicitly in the law on leaks (tellingly, the "offence" Green and his source have been arrested under does not happen to allow such a defence).

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of this particular case, other leaks that might have been undeniably in the public interest will undoubtedly have been deterred by the heavy handed approach taken in the Green case. In that light, the approach that has been taken here looks a lot more like intimidation using the criminal justice system, designed to put off other potential leakers to the benefit of the Government and the detriment of democracy.

We should all be very worried by what has gone on here, particularly after Michael Martin's latest confessions. The fact that the public, the media and MPs are so incensed is a good sign that the issue is being treated with the seriousness it deserves. It is sad to note, though, that despite the bin snoopers, the boom of CCTV, the growth of the DNA database, the development of ID cards, the abuse of anti-terror laws by councils, council spy cameras hidden on public streets, the erosion of trial by jury and a hundred other violations of freedom in this country, it has taken an attack on their own personal offices and rights to get the majority of MPs up in arms. Now they are on-side, though, let us hope they take all our freedoms far more seriously.

What's the best way to solve "management claptrap"?

In the 21st century police, the best way to deal with having too much management claptrap is to boldly sweep it away and replace it with even more management claptrap, dressed up as accountability.

Roger Baker, the Chief Constable of Essex Police, this week won plaudits from some quarters for his straight talking. He said that the police had lost their focus on the citizen and

"In some areas...we have probably introduced too much management claptrap."

He's right, of course - the police have become totally swamped in directives, Whitehall initiatives, paperwork, PC policing and hoops through which to jump - but unfortunately he made these comments at a press conference convened to launch the very latest form of police management claptrap, the 'Police Pledge'.

What can be more claptrappish than a document in which the police recite "pledges" about response times and behaviour which all seem remarkably obvious (see here for a Home Office sample), rather than going out and doing the job? As we said at the time, people don't want the police occupied in press conferences and pledge drafting meetings, they want them out and about catching criminals, investigating crimes and protecting the public.

Unfortunately, because the police aren't very accountable to the public - even the police authorities who oversee them are arms length from the people - we are left with charade accountability like this pledge. I don't blame the police themselves, because they are under orders direct from the Home Office. The frustrations this brings about for ordinary officers are evident in the record numbers of early retirements among the police.

It's long overdue to set the police, and the public, free from the meddling and mismanagement of the Home Office, cut out the middle man and get some genuine democratic accountability going. Then we'd see the end of claptrap.

Why shouldn't policing be political?

With Sir Ian Blair's resignation there have been a flurry of accusations - most notably from the Home Secretary - that he was pushed for "political reasons" by the Mayor, and criticisms of policing being a political issue. No doubt this is meant to sound like a condemnation, but is there actually anything wrong with having the involvement of democratically elected representatives in this most crucial of public services?

Last year we had the absurd scene of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police telling the London Assembly that he didn't care what they and the people they represented thought of him, saying: ''If you think you have the power to get rid of me, go on, do it." They passed a vote of no confidence in him - a damning thing to happen - but true to his statement of defiance he stayed stubbornly in his post, a public servant sitting in denial of the public's will.

Voters are the people who foot the bill for the police and are at the sharp end of crime if the police fail, so it is shocking that they have so little control over what policies the police pursue. For Londoners to have any control over who is the Commissioner or what he gets up to, they currently have to go through their limited representation on the Metropolitan Police Authority. Boris has beefed that up by chairing the MPA himself but it's still an unnecessary degree of separation between the police and the people.

When Jacqui Smith makes the criticism that Boris is trying to politicise policing, she is in fact suggesting that this is a public service, paid for by and defending the people, that the people themselves should have no say over. When she says "political", read "democratic".

Of course, policing is not only a massive political issue for the people affected by it and funding it, it is to a certain extent politically managed already. The Whitehall machine pours regulations, initiatives and rules onto police officers around the country and the Home Secretary has the power to appoint Chief Police Officers. For all her moaning about having the Mayor of London involving himself in how the City he runs is policed, she seems to have no compunction about involving the Home Secretary in the same issue, despite her representing not a single London voter (she represents Redditch in Parliament).

In reality, the problem with policing at the moment is that it isn't democratic enough. It's run - to the great frustration of many police officers - off a spreadsheet in Whitehall, based on abstract calculations made by people with no knowledge of the localities or people whose lives they are dealing with.

People unquestionably should have the right to vote for who runs their local police, what their priorities are and how the police should function to achieve their aim of reducing crime. The resistance of people like Jacqui Smith and the members of the Association of Chief Police Officers to this idea has, I suspect, rather more to do with the fact that the public won't vote for their politically correct, form-filling policing model which has failed us so badly. The problem, Jacqui, is not that policing is being politicised, but that it isn't politicised enough.