My perception of what the state is and should be is, I admit, somewhat different to that of some right wing thinkers. I am unashamed of that. But where we do have rare common ground is in believing that it is the duty of the state to protect its citizens and, come to that, their property. In that context a report from the Guardian this morning is worrying. They say:
Under-pressure police forces are taking days to respond to 999 calls that should be dealt with in an hour, the policing watchdog has said, as they come under “significant stress” from slashed budgets and increased demand.
Almost a quarter of forces in England and Wales are struggling to deal with emergency calls in a timely way, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) has said in a report on police effectiveness.
And they add:
In some cases, crimes that require a “prompt” response — that is, police attending within an hour of the call — are not dealt with for days. In Cambridgeshire, for example, the average “prompt” response time was 15 hours. This could include cases of serious assault, including sexual violence, inspectors said.
In case of doubt as to fault they note:
The inspectorate put the delays down to a lack of police officers available to attend the emergencies, ruling out a problem with the call handlers.
In other words, a twenty per cent cut in real terms funding for the police since 2010 has not produced efficiencies or increased productivity. It has instead simply gutted their capacity to do the job society expects of them.
No one should be surprised by this. The vast majority of the work in question requires the presence of a person who has been trained to undertake both the task in hand and to deal with the stresses that it has created for the victim of the reported crime. There is remarkably little you can do to cut the time required to achieve this result barring getting to the victim on a timely basis to a) collect evidence when it is most readily recalled and b) to minimise the victim's stress. Since neither of these can now happen productivity is bound to fall as a result.
But worse, one of the core functions of the state is simply ceasing to operate.
And that happened entirely on Theresa May's watch.
When a prime minister cannot serve the interests given highest priority by her own ideology her time really is up.
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And as Home Secretary prior to that.
Wheel out the robocops.
“Austerity is now gutting the very core of the state”
Curiously inappropriate use of the present tense here, Richard.
I guess it means somebody who ‘counts’ has begun to notice some entrails on the street.
There have been numerous instances of police failings (linked to cuts) having terrible consequences. There was the case of a car crashing off the M9 in Scotland (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/12/lamara-bell-dies-of-injuries-sustained-in-m9-car-crash-in-scotland) which was reported to the police – the call was not recorded properly and they didn’t respond for 3 days. When they did they found 1 person dead and another who later died of their injuries. This person would almost certainly have survived if there had been a prompt response. It is of course possible to claim that instances like this are the result of individual errors rather than systemic problems – but I think the evidence is piling up to say that this is not so.
This comes from a mindset of the state is bad/is wasting money so cuts can be made with no consequences.
“…It is of course possible to claim that instances like this are the result of individual errors rather than systemic problems ….”
And the more the system is under strain the more individual errors become the norm rather than the exception (which we are supposed to think is currently the case)
Additional strain is piled on because the individuals who care enough to try and do the job properly are often the first to leave the service (any service, not just the police) because they can’t hack it any longer.
I have no doubt that a study of the sickness absence statistics would be a good place to start in investigating and identifying the level of strain in any (particularly a large) organisation.
Hi Andy,
Agree with all of that. Even competent/dedicated people are far more likely to make mistakes when put under unreasonable pressure.
That incident was reported on a 101 call. i.e. not an emergency. If it had been 999 the response would undoubtedly have been different. Shows the danger of asking the public to decide what is urgent or not.
@Neil
1. The call was not to 999, it was a 101 call, information to the police, not a known emergency.
2. The error was a result of the reformation of different forces into the single, unitary Police Scotland. A policy which the Scottish Tories had supported btw. Not that they will admit that now.
3. It was a tragedy and human error was involved but ScotGov has not gutted the police in the way May has in England And Wales. Have there been teething troubles, yes. But things are, finally, settling down with some head honcho changes.
4. Why bring it up? Why in a discussion about 999 response times as well. I might doubt your motives for that.
and the cuts to legal aid has left many people without representation and some without justice.
Yet, the Tories have a slight voting edge over Labour (effectively level pegging allowing for margin of error) http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/category/voting-intention. With austerity now negatively affecting everyone’s life in varying degrees, you’d logically assume Labour to be at least 10 points ahead. So what’s going on? Do people put more faith in the BBC’s view of the country than grass-roots reality? Maybe they see the status quo as more reassuring than a switch to Labour’s agenda? Or maybe it’s simply too early to draw any meaningful conclusions. “A week is a long time in politics” and “Events, dear boy, events”. Yet, after 8 years of appallingly bad Tory governance, you’d have to believe that more voters would be switching to something different, if not better. Any ideas?
Hi John,
I’m holding on to the fact that Survation (that were closest of the pollsters to the actual result at the last election) still had Labour 7 points ahead in their last poll.
Of course all the tub-thumping nationalism at the moment is keeping the news agenda off brexit, austerity etc. and is therefore helpful to the government. One of the reasons why it is being played for all it is worth.
On the subject of tub-thumping, how could our “chief diplomat” have thought it was a good idea to put Putin, Russia, and Hitler into any kind of comparison? I appreciate that he wasn’t actually saying that Putin was like Hitler, but that is the way it will be (and has been) portrayed. This subject is particularly toxic for the Russian people and having the UK officially associated with this kind of loose talk risks poisoning relations on a deep and long-term basis. Foreign policy seems to be increasingly treated like a playground argument.
Of course one thing we can agree with Paul Johnson about is that we can’t forever have European standards of public services on US rates of tax. Someone actually needs to tell the supporters of austerity, or at least the passive ones, that our new normal is to have violent crime at crisis point, a legal system close to breaking point, rutted roads, a care system that is not fit for purpose, long waiting lists for healthcare, prisons which by not being fit for human habitation are brutalising offenders and any number of other inadequacies that are now hitting the news daily. That is the country they largely voted for and that is the one that they are going to have to live with from now on and no amount of standard Government froth about it being aware of these problems which is why it has allocated X or Y million or billion pounds to solve them will change that.
But worse, we could have all ths3 things and enjoy a higher standard of living if only we would spend
Demand induces supply
Are more detailed statistics available somewhere? I’d be interested to see the distribution of response times that leads to an average “prompt” response for a whole month of 15 hours, if the target is within an hour. What is the median, for example? Are they reaching most callers within an hour or two, but with a thick tail of responses of several days?
If someone calls 999 and the emergency services cannot get there within an hour, shouldn’t the caller be told so? Then it is not a “prompt” response at all.
“Austerity is now gutting the very core of the state”
It’s not doing a lot for poverty either. The JRF Report in December ’17 stated:
“The prospects for solving UK poverty are worrying. The continuing rise in employment is no longer leading to lower poverty. Changes to benefits and tax credits for working-age families are reducing the incomes of many of those on low incomes. High housing costs continue to reduce the incomes available for those in poverty to meet other needs. Inflation is rising and is higher for those on lower incomes than for better-off groups. This squeeze on living standards is also storing up problems for the future; a fifth of people on low incomes have ‘problem debt’; most are not building up a pension; the decreasing proportion of the working-age population buying their own home means that in the future more older people are likely to rent and have higher housing costs in retirement.”
I was in the UK in February. A chap I was working with noticed that some motorbbikes had turned up near the garages where he parks his car. He noted that there were no plates and concluded that the bikes had been stolen and put out of the way for collection by the thieves – presumably with a van. He tried to phone the police (he even had photos of the bikes) – to no avail. I watched with amazement. One wonders what the end-point will be? Private security services? walled communites? a feral landscape from a law & order point of view? Happy days if you are a criminal.
I also notice that the Guardian profiled a book on the collapse of the justice system (due to under funding). The book was written by a barrister – the review was most interesting & seems to focus on the criminal side of things. It looks as though both the blue side of the justice system (the police) and the courts side are both failing. Perhaps the Conservatives need to rename themselves as the Vandal party. Doubtless things will get worst before Uk sheeple wake up.
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