Reports that the Home Office is considering employment restrictions on officers leaving the service comes at an inopportune moment, says Peter Neyroud - 22nd August 2013. It ought to surprise us that the Home Office does not seem to understand the collective impact of individual policy initiatives and “consultations”. However, I am learning not to be surprised and the latest new initiative is another to add to a long list, starting with the Winsor recommendations, which have been perceived as a concerted attack on frontline officers pay, pensions and professionalism. The latest idea – to impose restrictions on employment for former officers – comes at a particularly inopportune moment. The final decisions on compulsory redundancy are not yet made but most frontline officers will suspect that the deed is done. The cuts to the frontline are still very much in progress – they are far from complete. From the perspective of the 45 per cent of officers who responded to the University of Nottingham’s survey by indicating that they were stressed and burned out and wanted to leave the service, it may look as if the powers that be are intent on pushing them out and then curtailing their ability to earn a living. While I appreciate that the strength of feeling voiced in response to articles online should not be taken as a representative sample, I have rarely seen such strong views expressed as those in response to the article in the PoliceOracle. The question that needs to be addressed is “what is the harm being targeted?” It seems that concerns about corrupt relationships between former police officers turned private investigators and the force are at the heart of this latest initiative. If so, it is doubtful whether the proposed solution – employment restrictions – is anything more than a fig leaf of dubious legality to demonstrate that ministers are doing something. Anyone involved with professional standards and policing should know the potentially corrupting impact of former officers with compromised integrity. They don’t have to be working as private investigators to pose a threat. Increasingly, as the march of outsourcing progresses, they may be working for private companies providing policing. The solutions to this are not restricting employment, but regulating it properly and maintaining a strong, proactive professional standards approach. Former police officers and police staff working for police forces as contractors of a private company should be registered with the College of Policing and subject to Independent Police Complaints Commission oversight. If they are demonstrated to be incompetent or corrupt, they should be removed from the register and their ability to work in policing should be withdrawn. Similarly, private investigators should only be able to practice as such with a licence that can be withdrawn if they misbehave. There is, then, no need to restrict officers’ ability to work. After a career in which their business interests are strictly regulated and their political rights severely curtailed, police officers should be able to enjoy all the freedoms that their fellow citizens enjoy. Furthermore, they should also, like any other citizen, be able to use the skills that they have acquired as police officers in their post-policing careers. As one or two police officers have already pointed out, the proposals might carry more weight if restrictions on former politicians or civil servants were more convincingly enforced. As a footnote to this story, it is interesting that the Home Office still appear to have a stereotyped view that working in private security is the primary career path for retired police officers. These days police officers have many, very saleable skills and qualifications, both operationally and in management. Peter Neyroud is a policing academic, a former chief constable of Thames Valley Police and an ex-NPIA chief executive.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 08:19:31 +0000
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