You are here: Home » News »

London now below “doomsday scenario” number of police officers

January 9, 2013 11:55 am

Tags:

Share this Article

The following exchange took place at the Home Affairs Select Committee in September 2012:

Mark Reckless: What is the lowest numbers of officers you expect there to be in 2015?

Stephen Greenhalgh: The worst case, the doomsday scenario is at or around 31,000.

According to the latest figures (for November, just two months after Greenhalgh’s appearance at the Commons) the number of police officers in London is 30,939.

In May 2010 there were 33,147 (a difference of 2,208).

Boris Johnson pledged an extra 2,000 police officers at the last Mayoral election – another broken promise.

Related posts:

  1. Home office figures confirm Boris has cut police
  2. London MPs open letter over Boris police cuts
  3. Ken calls on Boris to rethink police cuts
  4. Livingstone attacks Johnson ‘hypocrisy’ over police cuts
  5. The Black Police Officers’ Association have called on the black and Asian community not to apply to the Met. How did we get here?
  • Winston_from_the_Ministry

    Hmmm, not quite as simple as you make out here Mark. As factcheck showed: http://fullfact.org/factchecks/have_police_officers_risen_fallen_Boris_Johnson-10036

    • jaime taurosangastre candelas

      As you say. Overall numbers are also not necessarily a particularly useful statistic, because it does not reveal what the police are actually doing. 90 policemen doing things that are 100% in accordance with agreed priorities are of greater utility than 100 policemen doing things only 60% in support of agreed priorities. The same arguments can be made for doctors, nurses, teachers, etc.

      It is surprising how many clinically trained staff in the NHS are employed doing any number of strange things that do not involve actually dealing with patients, but merely require some (normally fairly low) level of medical expertise. Operating the disease classification and recording databases, for example. The main skill in this is knowing medical taxonomy (ie how to classify, sub-classify, sub-sub classify, etc medical conditions. It is in effect the skills need from a Librarian).

      The dirty secret is that while currently only doctors are taught medical taxonomy as part of their training, you could teach it as a discrete topic to non-medically qualified people, in less than 6 months*****. And it would be a lot cheaper to do so than to spend £350-500,000 on training someone to be a doctor to then do a technician’s job. But, there would be “less” doctors employed in the NHS as a result, and political horror at this apparent lessening of capability.

      Alternatively, full time employed on medical research that is in many cases well behind the research done in proper researching institutions and academia (the NHS has not pioneered much new in medicine for many years). If you speak with one of these colleagues who does this work, often you will find that it is a little “sinecure” that they have found and choose to work in, for whatever their personal reasons, and very few people will challenge it or ask the question “the country spent a lot of money training you, so what output do we get back?”

      (And no one should open the “can of worms” that is the number of part time GPs employed, all trained at 100% of the cost of training, but a significant number opting to work at 3/5ths of capacity and draw the still very large 3/5ths of a full time GPs salary. It is of course their choice, but it is hugely wasteful of the costs of training)

      ***** Biology and chemistry A levels would suffice.

Latest

  • Comment Planning the revolution – Labour and the Spending Review

    Planning the revolution – Labour and the Spending Review

    By David Robinson

    In four weeks time the Chancellor will announce the results of the 2015 spending Review. There won’t be many winners but some will have lost more than others. Political commentators and discussion forums will pass judgement and public sector managers will, yet again, pick through the debris, making do and mending from what ever they can salvage. Before we get overtaken by the detail we should reflect on the bigger picture. What ever the chancellor says on June 26th it [...]

    Read more →
  • Comment A call for action at the G8

    A call for action at the G8

    By Ivan Lewis

    In less than a month’s time, the UK hosts the G8 Summit. With hunger, tax, trade and transparency all on the agenda, the UK has a unique opportunity to show global leadership on these issues. The scale of hunger is devastating. There is enough food in the world for everyone, yet 1 billion people still go hungry. 2.3 million children every year die from malnutrition – to put that in perspective, that is around 16,000 children every day. Or one [...]

    Read more →
  • News TUC suggests Football World Cup vote should be re-run – Media roundup: May 24th, 2013

    TUC suggests Football World Cup vote should be re-run – Media roundup: May 24th, 2013

    Subscribers to our morning email get the best of LabourList – including the Media and blog round up – every weekday morning. If you were a subscriber you would have already received this in your inbox. You can sign up here. TUC suggests Football World Cup vote should be re-run “The TUC along with its international equivalent – the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) – is calling on UEFA to address the appalling treatment of workers and players in Qatar and [...]

    Read more →
  • Featured A Northern Tory that Labour should be afraid of

    A Northern Tory that Labour should be afraid of

    By Mark Ferguson

    The Labour Party spends a great deal of time beating itself up over its performance in Southern England. We know it simply isn’t good enough, but we can’t seem to put our finger on why exactly that’s the case. Is it demographics? No. Culture? Perhaps. Lack of basic party organisation in some areas? It’s certainly a factor. But whilst we’re flagellating ourselves over our inability to perform south of the Watford gap (outside of London), we should remember that the [...]

    Read more →
  • Comment Featured Why we love Woolwich

    Why we love Woolwich

    By Jon Wilson

    Woolwich is an amazing place. It’s where the Labour party was founded as a mass membership organization. The Woolwich Provident was one of Britain’s first building societies. The Royal Arsenal Coop one of our first cooperative societies. Woolwich had the second Polytechnic in the country, created with the aim of providing education for working adults. Woolwich is my nearest big town centre, where I shop and go to meet friends. In the last few days, for many people, its name [...]

    Read more →