Police Training: Entry Routes

Debate between George Howarth and Kieran Mullan

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

I will call Dr Kieran Mullan to move the motion, and I will call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered police training entry routes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss an area of policing that is important to all our constituents: the question of how we recruit people into the police.

Why is how we recruit people into the police so important? It is because our model of policing—policing by consent—has at its core the idea that our police forces are not separate from us; they are us, drawn from our communities and all parts of our society. I am proud to have grown up as a policeman’s son, and the fulfilment I know that job gave my dad was based on serving the public. It is a job that requires resilience, courage and a strong belief that injustice should be stood up to. It is not enough just to think that criminality is wrong; police officers need to feel a calling to stand against people who undertake it. When other people look the other way, police officers have to be willing to run headlong into conflict and confrontation. I was honoured to follow my dad’s footsteps and volunteer as a special constable, and that experience, along with speaking to people across the policing family, helps to inform my views.

Policing has no doubt changed. We ask our police forces to think more about prevention, to engage with young people and to try to get them onside, rather than just to keep them in line. Although others and I would argue that good beat police officers have always built good relations with their communities—it was not necessarily called stakeholder engagement before, but it happened none the less—this is a much more distinct formal part of the role.

There is no doubt that the crime we have been fighting is changing. Often the person stealing now is not stealing from a shop, mugging people or burgling homes, although these things still go on, and they are not from the local community. They are stealing from behind a computer, often in another country. However, we should not overstate the change and forget the fundamental need for the police to be active in communities and neighbourhoods, and to be among people. They need to be on the high street at 1 pm and 1 am, on housing estates, outside pubs and outside football matches, and vital to doing that effectively is ensuring that police officers reflect their local communities.

However we change the structure of policing going forward, there will always be times when the police need to turn up in numbers and with force, with people happy to step out of the office and on to the frontline. That is why I and more than 100 Back-Bench colleagues were concerned about plans to end the recruitment of men and women to our police forces unless they had or wanted to get a degree. I thank the Cheshire police and crime commissioner, John Dwyer, and other police and crime commissioners who are similarly concerned about this issue. I am absolutely delighted that the Home Secretary responded to those concerns positively and stopped that happening, but that is just the first step in what needs to be a concerted effort to ensure that policing always remains open to as wide a range of people as possible, while looking to ensure that policing and its people move forward with changing demands as patterns of criminality change.

Cheshire Chief Constable Mark Roberts, Northampton-shire Chief Constable Nick Adderley and Stephen Mold, the police, fire and crime commissioner for Northampton-shire, were among those who feared the demise of the traditional non-degree entry route, and they expressed their views clearly in a piece they wrote for The Times earlier this month. They accepted that

“recent events have reinforced that change is necessary and that a more robust approach to recruitment, development, vetting…is needed.”

However, they argued in the article that

“it is crucial that the non-degree route remains”,

adding that

“the public want to see the most effective, trained and competent police service possible”.

I agree: we need the best possible people from all walks of life and different backgrounds. Everyone should feel that they have an opportunity to join the police and succeed. As I said, police forces need to reflect the populations they service.

The reality is stark: tens of millions of people do not have degrees. A blanket decision that the entire future police population should have them would create a force potentially divorced from the experiences and lives of the people they seek to police. A degree-only police force would, by definition, not reflect the population. Those who advocated that introducing degrees would attract a different sort of recruit were right, but there are two sides to the coin. No matter the actual content of a degree and whether it is more or less academic than people expect it to be, calling for one will inevitably put off people as well as attract them.

At a time when we are prioritising concerns around representation, identity and the trust between police and communities, it is crucial that we remain receptive to individuals from diverse backgrounds and walks of life joining our police forces. Speaking to those involved in police recruitment across different parts of the country, I have heard how the degree route has certainly attracted new and different interest, but there has been a lack of interest from existing groups, too. The impact may be different in each area—there is no one size fits all—and that is why a mandated national approach would have been wrong.

In my time, I met many special constables who had years of experience on the beat as effective police officers. It would be misguided to insist that they need a full degree to transition to being regular officers. Similarly, there will be people from other walks of life who could more readily be transitioned into the job than through the degree-only routes: former members of our armed services stand out, and police community support officers are another example.

It is essential that training and education remain integral components of the profession. In fact, I join others in urging the college to consider awarding professional educational credits for various type of training that officers undertake throughout their careers, which include, but are not limited to, law exams, public order training, firearms training, supervisory roles, child protection, cyber specialisms and other unique skills. By providing educational credits that lead to a level 6 qualification—that is, a degree—over time, we can motivate and incentivise new recruits to strive for recognition and reach their full potential, if that is how they want their career to progress, and they can do it in a manner and at a pace of their choosing. That can be important for some people—for example, those who have childcare responsibilities and want to flex the way in which they progress their qualifications.

It is misguided to attribute the recent differences in training experience and diversity statistics solely to the use of newer models of entry. It is likely that there are a wide variety of factors at play, because all sorts of elements of police recruitment focus and approach have changed at the same time. There is no reason to think that similar improvements could not have been achieved through the traditional entry route. I understand that forces that made the transition to degree-only have seen recruitment success in the short term, but I would caution against concluding that it works as well in the long run. Are we confident about the long-term retention of those recruits? I have heard from existing officers that some of those recruits are perhaps keen to get a degree in policing as a stepping-stone, or that the job in the long run turns out not to be what they expected. The need for many officers to be focused on the frontline means that policing will always be a relatively flat organisation, without room for high-flying promotions for everyone. Are we confident that all our new recruits understand that?

I must add that I have taken into account the concerns that alternative entry routes can lead to police officers being away from the frontline for extended periods. By upholding traditional entry routes, chief constables can adapt a more balanced approach to recruitment, which can allow them to mitigate that short-term impact at the same time as increasing police numbers.

There are some concerns about creating a two-tier system, but I do not think that that view holds water. In my experience, police officers are comfortable with the job being one that presents different opportunities for different people. Many officers never take their sergeants exam or think about being a detective, and they are just as valued as those who take the exams and seek to progress their careers in different ways. That is the nature of policing—it always requires many people who are happy to step up and deliver on the frontline. That is why I and others were so concerned, and why I welcome the steps that have been taken.

I encourage chief constables who may have felt that the change was inevitable, and that they did not have a choice, to take the opportunity to make their views known. I encourage the college to revisit the issue, with a fresh perspective and in listening mode. Flexibility is often a positive thing. I hope that we can use this opportunity to continue to help policing move forward in a way that allows our police forces to be drawn from and within the communities that they seek to serve. I look forward to seeing how the proposals develop, and I know that my Back-Bench colleagues will follow developments closely.

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Before I call Darren Henry, I remind him that the Minister needs to be left with enough time to respond to the debate.