Contribution
My Lords, I totally support Amendment 436 on the collection of enforcement data; the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, have explained well why I do. But I am rising to speak to Amendment 437 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, calling for a review of police paperwork. I will just explain why. I have put my name on a number of amendments that require more data collection, which might sound contradictory. But we need more granular and accurate data, while ensuring that data is streamlined and necessary, rather than collected just for the sake of it. In that sense, there is no contradiction.
The review of paperwork is necessary to identify and cut out all the endless and needless form-filling that police officers are forced to do. Whenever you talk to rank and file police officers, one of the most voluble frustrations that they voice is the ever-growing regime of paperwork and bureaucracy. They complain that they did not sign up to become pen-pushers and this is hardly what they envisaged when they joined the force.
More seriously, we have just heard a very moving debate on the mental health challenges faced by some police officers. I do not want to be glib, but when you talk to police officers, they will often say that they are tearing their hair out and completely demoralised because of the amount of bureaucracy that they face—so it is worth bearing that in mind.
The impressive multiplication of the number of forms the police have to fill out could be interpreted as indicative of the scientification or the professionalisation of police work, as the bureaucratic regime’s apologists would have us believe. I think the duplication of information, which is often banal, indicates a stifling bureaucratisation of policing and a trend that is reiterated by officers as impeding their ability to respond to crime or engage in proactive crime solving.
I want to use an example from some years ago. I was a victim of a very nasty, unpleasant mugging. I reported it to the police, as one does, and they were hyperactive in their response. I got a very nice letter reassuring me that they were there for me as a victim. got a form to fill in, asking whether I had had the right kind of support as a victim. I even had a follow-up phone call to find out why I had not filled out my form and to make sure I was okay. The problem was that at no point did anyone visit me in the sense of attempting to apprehend the person who had committed the mugging. That never came up. It was all about my feelings about being a victim of crime, rather than solving the crime. Imagine how much paperwork went into that. I was bemused, but infuriated as well.
We would like this review to ask how paperwork has proliferated. Certain people argue that the process-driven approach to policing is created by risk aversion—the police covering their own backs, potentially. It might be that it is an obsession with communication. There is certainly a lot of press releasing done, tweets put out and so on. The main thing is that we have to get to the bottom of what is creating it. I think—there will be a discussion on this on a later group—that a lot of the work generated does not have anything to do with core policing. When I talk to police officers I know, they say they are engaged in a wide range of activity related to equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives, which are also bureaucratic in terms of the kind of things that they have to do. We heard about non-crime hate incidents on a previous group. How many hours are spent investigating those? There is also a great deal of paperwork being generated by that, and hopefully we have seen the back of them.
Perhaps this amendment is kicking at an open door. I am hoping for a positive response from the Minister because the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has made similar points. It seems that cutting red tape is a part of what the Home Office is trying to do, so I am delighted about that.
I have a couple of reservations. I am slightly worried that the solution for cutting red tape that has been put forward is a greater use of AI. I am all for sensible use of technology, but I note that West Midlands Police recently took a shortcut and cut back on a lot of hours of paperwork that would have been wasted in a proper investigation in relation to the Maccabi Tel Aviv football game with Aston Villa. The problem with that shortcut and paper-saving exercise was that as a consequence it came up with a non-existent football match to justify the banning of the Israeli fans, as we know. Recent research by businesses has shown that for every 10 hours apparently saved by the use of AI, four hours are used checking errors and fact-checking AI output. They have had to bring in extra staff to do that particular type of work.
Finally, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville- Rolfe, on her reservations about the licensing of police officers. I am afraid that fills me with horror. Credentialism is notorious for being more bureaucratisation. If you want any evidence, just look at the university sector and what is happening on that in certain sectors.