There is a growing clamour for police reform, but Alan Johnson’s White Paper singularly fails to answer it. No matter how grandly the Home Secretary talks in his foreword of “our vision for policing”, this is little more than an attempt to identify fiscal savings in the cash-strapped years that lie ahead.

The Home Office gave the game away in its media strategy for the publication of the White Paper, which was leaked to The Times. It contained a draft press release that began: “A bold new programme to help police work smarter ...” Then someone had crossed out the word “bold”. Forget radical public service reform, this is all about cutting costs.

The most eye-catching idea is the introduction of a single police uniform for the 43 forces across England and Wales.

After 12 years, six home secretaries, billions of pounds and endless criminal justice Bills, the Government has finally realised that it is a waste of money to allow chief constables to buy uniforms from a range of different outfitters.

Of course it makes sense to achieve some economies of scale in the purchase of uniforms, body armour, patrol cars, radios, forensic science services, helicopters and many other things.

But increased collaboration between forces will not guarantee the savings that will be required and runs the risk of creating more ad hoc solutions, more inconsistencies and more problems.

Policing is already bedevilled by these problems. Before the G20 protests in London in April, the Metropolitan Police had to spend £80,000 training officers from other forces sent to assist so that police on the ground were all following the same rules.

One of the core problems with policing is its patchwork structure: too many forces, too many chiefs, too many admin departments.

There has not been a serious look at the way the Police Service is structured since the Royal Commission report of 1962, which led to widespread force mergers in 1966.

Crime and policing have changed rather a lot since then. Today’s biggest threats — international terrorism and organised crime — pay no heed to national borders, never mind the shire county boundaries along which British policing is arranged.

The White Paper ducks the big issue. There is no mention, not even a nod, towards the calls from within policing for a regional force structure capable of saving money and of improving the capability of the service to tackle the range of criminality, from antisocial behaviour to terrorism and organised crime. There is no political appetite for consigning shire forces to the history books. But most people who think about policing believe that a truly bold step is required to create a more effective and more efficient Police Service.

Another hurdle for whoever has the courage to enact fundamental reform is the hostility within policing to change — a culture that has defeated other modernisers.

As a Cabinet Office Strategy Unit review noted in 2006, little progress has been made in enacting reform because of “a lack of political will to drive this forward due to opposition from the police”.

Source: The Times Online, United Kingdom, December 3, 2009