Baroness Doocey
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(3 days, 13 hours ago)
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Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The noble Lord tempts me to examine issues that are potentially being addressed as part of our discussions on the police reform White Paper, which will be produced shortly. The White Paper is looking at governance and efficiency and how best we can promote resources, so that the ambition of the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, can be met during this Parliament. I cannot comment on those issues directly, but the noble Lord needs to reflect on the fact that in the police reform White Paper we will discuss a range of measures, of which governance and responsibilities will be one.
Baroness Doocey (LD)
The record number of recruits who joined the police under the Uplift programme, together with huge number of resignations, is putting real strain on experienced police, who are having to manage not just their own workload but the recruits. In the meantime, HMIC has reported that child sexual abuse cases are being dealt with by inexperienced officers, which is causing real problems and definitely contributing to 40% of cases not being managed properly and 40% of crimes still being unsolved. What are the Government going to do to persuade those really experienced officers to stay in the police force while it manages dealing with public safety under a less experienced police force?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
It is really important that we try to retain police officers in post. Of the people who left in the past 12 months, approximately one-third were those who had reached retirement age and were going anyway. The largest group—48% of those who left the force—were people who had been there under two years. So, contrary to public perception, we are finding that people are retiring—people do retire—but the difficulty is retaining those recruited into the police force.
The noble Baroness makes an extremely important point about needing to ensure that we use that experience seriously to bear down on crime. What I want is to retain individuals who are recruited—it is a costly exercise, recruiting people who then leave after two years—but we also want to manage expectations. Again, trailing the police reform White Paper, those issues are part of the Government’s potential future plans once the White Paper is produced.