Home Secretary Resigns 2

Qatada and his family have cost the British taxpayer an estimated £2.8m

Last November I wrote this when our illustrious Home Secretary, Theresa May, was under pressure to resign following a complete mess up within the Border Agency. She managed to survive that one. Whether or not she deserves to survive the Abu Qatada fiasco is another question.

Qatada is a Jordanian who came to the UK with his family is 1993 and was granted asylum in 1994. He was convicted, in his absence, in 1999 by Jordanian courts for terrorism offences and his extradition was requested. Since 2002 Qatada has been in and out of custody while British authorities have tried to secure his extradition to Jordan. Qatada has, unsurprisingly, fought this extradition tooth and nail. In February 2009 the Law Lords decided that he could be extradited to Jordan. Qatada's lawyers appealed this to the European Court of Human Rights.

On the 17th January 2012 the European Court decided that Qatada could not be extradited as it would breach his right to a fair trial. While the British Government sought assurances regarding this issue from Jordon, Qatada was released on bail. Having received these assurances, the Home Secretary decided to have Qatada arrested and deported on the Tuesday 17th April in the belief that this date was outside of the 3 month appeal limit on the European Courts decision.

There have been a number of cases from the European Court that have made it clear that the appeal period starts on the day after the decision of the Court. It has come to light that a number of legal experts contacted the Home Office to ensure they were aware that the appeal period ended on the 18th April. Somehow this information was overlooked and the arrest went ahead followed immediately by the inevitable appeal. This now means that, once again, Qatada cannot be deported and another lengthy and expensive appeals process will now commence.

It has been estimated that Qatada and his family have cost the British taxpayer £2.8 million, to date, in benefits and legal fees.

Theresa May has clearly been badly advised in this matter but she is the decision maker and ultimately responsible. There are always calls for incompetent public sector managers to be sacked. I think it is time Mrs May stepped up to the mark and threw herself on her sword.

Can You Hear Them Wailing?

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that five suspected terrorists, Babar Ahmad, Abu Hamza, Seyla Talha Ahsan, Adel Abdul Bary and Khaled Al Fawarz can be extradited from Britain to America. The decision on a sixth, Haroon Rashid Aswatt has been adjourned to a later date.

The Court found that there were no grounds to believe the suspects would be ill treated in America and dismissed their appeals.

The liberal lefties are howling from their rafters. When you get down to it though, the only thing they seem to be wailing about is that in America, if these suspects are convicted, they might actually face some consequences for their alleged behaviour.

I am still wailing about the fact many of these suspects have spent years in British prisons awaiting extradition. They have fought the extraditions tooth and nail while blood sucking lawyers have bled millions from the Legal Aid system and the taxpayer trying to keep them here.

Free Babar Ahmad! You Must be Joking!

I have previously written about Babar Ahmad and his lies being exposed. Ahmad has been in prison for seven years awaiting extradition to the United States on terrorism charges. Today he has been interviewed and has pleaded to be tried in this country rather than the USA.

He claims that he has seen no evidence against him but it is quite clear that he is very well aware of the case against him and he chooses words carefully to try and gain support. Ahmad is a graduate and the son of middle class Pakistani immigrants. He admits that during the Bosnia/Serbian conflict he joined a Bosnian unit fighting against the Serbians. He is not an armchair commentator.

It is alleged, and he did not deny in interview, that he ran a website called Azzam.com which supported Jihad and Chechen and Taliban fighters, although he claims he does not support terrorism. It is alleged that he had possession of a computer disc containing information regarding movements of the US 5th Fleet and the fact that the fleet was vulnerable to attack in the Straights of Hormuz. An American sailor has been convicted of selling this information to Babar and another.

Ahmad states in interview that if he was tried and had been convicted in this country he would be free by now. How true. This is the real issue. The only reason Ahmad is still in detention here is that he has been fighting tooth and nail, at taxpayers expense, his extradition to the United States. Ahmad could have gone to the US in 2004 and faced trial there. He knows that the Americans don't mess about with terrorists and if he were convicted he faces the rest of his life in gaol. He desperately wants to be tried in Britain as he knows that should he be convicted his sentence will be little more than he has already served.

The European Court of Human Rights will announce their long awaited verdict on his extradition next week. Personally, I hope he is packed off to the US for trial as soon as possible.

Police Privatisation

We are all now aware that West Midlands Police and Surrey Police have issued an EU wide invitation to companies to tender for policing services. If you look at the tender it covers everything from :

• Managing Performance
• Bringing Offenders to Justice
• Patrolling Neighbourhoods
• Dealing with incidents, major and minor
• Leading the Service
• Managing Public Engagements 
• Managing Resources
• Protecting the Public

It is quite clear that almost all policing services are up for grabs by the private sector. We are being told that not all of these areas of policing will be included in any contracts. The broad range of services is being advertised for tender so the expense of tendering does not have to be repeated should the need arise. Oh really!

One example would be that private companies would supply investigators working under a detective to attend and investigate crime. Some forces already work this model except that the team under the detective are permanent and employed by the police. Surrey already do this and they have one of the worst crime detection rates in the country. I can see where this is going. A poor detective will have a huge crime workload and each day an agency will provide different staff to turn up and carry out enquiries. No continuity. Little idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the investigators. The public will get a very poor service with a reduced chance of their crime being detected.

Another example would be patrolling neighbourhoods. Security staff would take over from PCSO's and some neighbourhood officers. These would be on minimum wage with no pension costs to the police. What kind of service would the public get from these staff? Where does the accountability lay? What happens when it all goes wrong?

The two architects of this scheme are Chris Sims Chief Constable of West Midlands and Mark Rowley former Chief Constable of Surrey and now Met Assistant Commissioner. This has been over a year in the planning and now the new Chief Constable of Surrey, Lynne Owens, has been handed the baby on behalf of Surrey. Chris and Mark are the sort of leaders Tom Winsor thinks we are lacking in the police. Chris is an Oxford graduate and Mark Cambridge. They have both shot through the ranks spreading their wisdom and ideas, never hanging around long enough to be held to account for the chaos they have left behind. They obviously have the vision and leadership that the police service needs.

Mark Rowley

Lynne Owens is a far more practical and pragmatic beast. She has no intention of following the agenda she has been left by Mark Rowley and is backing away from the project as fast as she can without openly criticising her predecessor.

Chris Sims

Chris Sims must have realised by now that he is on his own with this project. Good luck to West Midlands Police! Privatisation could however provide all sorts of management and consultancy opportunities for retiring ACPO officers, but I am sure Mr Sims will not fall into the trap of champagne dinners, health spas and free lunches from former ACPO colleagues Lord Condon at G4S and Lord Blair at Blue Light Global Solutions.

For years we have been cutting the fat out of the police service. There is nothing left. There is a permanent smell of ammonia as the muscle of the organisation is now being broken down. There is an assumption that privatisation will bring about savings and efficiencies with it's more effective management. In my experience, when you bring 'civilianisation' or privatisation into the police, the roles become more inefficient. By the time the company has taken it's profit cut from the budget there will simply be less to spend on the service and the public will suffer with lower levels of service and standards with less accountability.

Winsor 2. Pure Buggeration!

Tom Winsor the rail regulator. He wants to do to the police what Beeching did to the railways

A year ago now I wrote an article entitled Police Shafted following the publication of the Winsor report, Part 1. That was quite simply an attack on the pay and conditions of police officers. The outcome of which will be that police officers, who are already demoralised by a totally ineffective justice system, will become further demoralised. Part 2 has now been published. This report recommends further reductions in pay and further attacks on conditions but is largely an attack on the office of constable and on the police service as we know it.

Let's start with fitness testing and get that red herring out of the way. For years now the Government has been softening up the public and media. They have been feeding lies to the press regarding  pay and conditions, such as police getting half a days pay for answering the phone at home. This nonsense was swallowed up by shallow journalists such as those at The Mail. All this was done to ensure there was no public support for the police when the Government wielded the axe to castrate the police. Winsor himself has focused on the fitness testing issue to try and suggest that his report contained nothing but quite reasonable recommendations. As long as there are safeguards for injured officers I don't have any problem with fitness testing. Scoring 5.4 on the shuttle run is so easily achievable only the most obese and disgracefully unfit officer could fail it.

In Winsor 2 it is the recommended changes in the makeup and management of the service that are the real issues, such as direct entry at senior management level, compulsory severance, new pay review body, lower pay scales for constables and locally negotiated pay.

Winsor says that the police are paid 15% more than other public sector workers. Really? I would love to see the comparisons. There are some public sector workers, such as nurses, working shifts and dealing with the muck of life. Nurses should be paid more. But most public sector workers are 9-5 Monday to Friday and the worst thing they risk is a paper cut. We deal with violent, disgusting, abusive people. We scrape bodies off the roads . We deal with victims of horrendous crimes. We get called to deal with the difficulties that other public services cannot. We work shifts. We can be required to work at any time. We work 24/7. If we get only 15% more than the average office worker then, quite frankly, it is not enough.

Winsor suggests that there is no shortage of police recruits and so the starting salary can be dropped £4000  to £19000 without affecting the quality of recruits. This is less than the salary of a Police Community Support Officer. I think this gives you a clue as to the standard of recruit he envisages. He is right, there is no shortage of potential recruits but the quality of the average wannabe cop is pretty poor. A starting pay drop will only ensure that  there is no other choice than these wannabe monkeys who will do the job for peanuts. God help the public they will be unleashed upon. I have mentioned before that there is no shortage of capable people wanting to become MP's. They earn a basic £66,000 a year plus huge expenses, of course. Over £200,000 expenses in the case of Eric Joyce MP, the drunken head butting yob. There are now more ministers than ever. 108 paid ministers earning between £82,000 and £142,000. After all, it is difficult to pay school fees on a basic MP's salary. The point is, I have never heard it suggested that MP's should take a pay cut as there are no shortage of capable recruits.

Winsor also suggests, to reduce training costs, constables should only be recruited from existing PCSO's, Specials or those who obtain the policing certificate. At a stroke this will ensure that diversity targets remain completely unattainable.

Winsor suggests that the pay scale for constables is reduced from 10 years to 6 before the maximum pay band can be reached. What he tries to hide though is that progression along the pay scales will depend on skill sets gained and in most cases will take much more than six years. Most constables will never reach the top pay scale as they will never acquire the skill sets  required to get there. No officer of any rank up to Chief Superintendent will reach the top pay scale unless they have 'critical skills and expertise.'

The most controversial recommendations in Winsor 2 concern direct access to the ranks of Inspector and Superintendent from outside the police service. Winsor foresees that the vast majority of Chief Officers will  come from the direct entry Inspector level, in the future. So what he means is that the vast majority of constables joining the police in the future will progress no further than sergeant and will be the low paid grunts on the street. A few ranker's will be allowed to apply to be inspectors but the vast majority will be graduates groomed for the officer classes.

We already have many graduates in the police. Around one in three have degrees and some of those are on the High Potential Development Scheme. They can progress to Inspector in 5 years. Most of them struggle to cope with the knowledge and demands of the role within that time. To do it within two years will simply be setting these young officers up to fail . Some catastrophic errors will occur on the way. We will end up with an officer class completely devoid of reality on the ground.

Inspectors within two years is alarming but of even more concern is the proposed direct entry to the rank of Superintendent. I don't think Winsor understands that a Superintendent is not just a manager. They don't just have to learn management and combat tactics, such as an army major. They are the senior operational commanders who have responsibilities in a vast array of areas of policing including firearms, hostage taking, serious crime etc. I personally do not believe that anyone can successfully enter the ranks at this level and be effective. Again the risks to the public are huge.

Winsor is also recommending that pay is locally negotiated. 'Why should an officer in Durham be paid the same as in London?' He asks. He wants a new 'independent' pay review body set up. Another quango that will impose pay deals on the police ensuring the lowest possible pay, lowest quality recruits and low morale. He wants officers who are not fit for full duties to be given low paid police staff jobs or sacked. He wants Chief Officers to be able to make police officers redundant.

What we are going to be left with is a police force full of demoralised, G4S style, underpaid security guards, led by incompetent public schoolboys and girls who will be the lackeys of their political masters (Police Commissioners.) The position of police officers as servants of the Crown will be gone and Chief Officers will be able to sack officers at will every time they mess up balancing the books. The role of police officer will be no different to any other occupation. If this is where the Government want to take us then we should have the same industrial rights as anyone else. Winsor 1 was a good shafting. Winsor 2 will mean the police service is completely buggered.

The Federation may produce a lot of hot air criticising the report but the reality is that they can achieve very little when we cannot take industrial action. I don't want to sit around and watch this Government completely ruin the police. The time has come for action to stop this nonsense. When the call comes for action officers need to take it. As a start, every officer should write to their MP. With extended families we potentially have more than 1 million votes. Time to use them. Reluctantly, I urge you all to sign the petition for the law to be changed so that police officers can take industrial action. Sign here. http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/31250