Addressing the UNISON police and justice conference yesterday, shadow police minister Sarah Jones underlined the importance of police workforce planning in order to build a modern police force that has “the best mix of skills and talents to fight the changing nature of crime”.
Ms Jones said: “When Labour was in government, the future of the police workforce, and how we plan for it, was a priority. Since the Tories came in, over a decade ago, the workforce planning all but disappeared under the austerity measures”.
“A Labour government will re-establish workforce planning in the Home Office. We will look at the workforce in its entirety – police officers, police staff – and work to establish how the service needs to change over time to more effectively tackle crime.
“Modern policing is about every role, and how we can better support you all, and improve the way you work together – to tackle the challenges of crime and policing now and in the future.”
Crime
Taking aim at the Conservative government, Ms Jones said: “We know that the Tories essentially gave up on fighting crime years ago. We have ministers trying to stoke culture wars to deflect from their failures to tackle crime and improve the police service.
“Burglary, car theft and rape have effectively been decriminalised.
“The services that prevent crime have been cut. The public expects that when they are a victim of crime, something will be done. Yet our country has a criminal justice system on its knees with court delays at epidemic levels.”
PCSOs
Ms Jones highlighted the 50% cut in the number of police community support officers (PCSOs) since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, asking: “How can the decimation of one of the most effective roles in the country have happened without anyone seeing it coming or trying to mitigate the impact?”
Noting this year’s celebration of 20 years of PCSOs, she said that PCSOs have been transformational to British society – “not just in reducing crime and antisocial behaviour, but in developing the model of policing by consent”.
Ms Jones outlined Labour’s fully-costed policies that will drive the necessary changes in policing and justice, which include a £360m programme to put 13,000 additional police and PCSOs into communities. This is the equivalent of 15-20 extra police staff for every constituency.
Mental health
Observing that over 13,000 police officers were absent due to stress, depression, anxiety or post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the past financial year, compared to 8,450 before, Ms Jones told delegates that only a few of the 43 forces offer a good occupational health standard.
Last week, figures revealed that a total of 371,988 Metropolitan Police working days were lost due to mental health over a four-year period. Days off taken by police officers for issues such as stress, anxiety, depression or PTSD increased by more than 10,000 in the same period – a 15% jump.
Ms Jones, who is also Labour MP for Croydon Central, said: “We cannot afford for mental health and wellbeing support for police to be as patchy as it is now, especially when it’s increasingly the police who are picking up the pieces when other services fail, supporting the vulnerable, the mentally ill, the sick.
“More than half of forces have not done a full assessment on the state of their occupational health support.”
Labour priorities for policing
Ms Jones also told delegates: “Labour will take strong action to tackle violence against women and girls, providing new specialist domestic abuse support for 999 emergencies.
“We will put specialist rape units in every police force. We will fast track rape and sexual violence cases through the courts.
“We will support young people at risk of getting pulled into crime, with mental health professionals, safer schools officers and mentors to support young people at risk.
“All the evidence shows that tackling trauma from childhood can break the cycle and prevent a child from becoming a criminal or stop a criminal from reoffending.”
Ms Jones ended her speech thanking UNISON members for their work in policing and justice, and promising to work with UNISON on a police and justice service “that makes us all proud”.