New UK Police Bill Slammed by Ex-Commissioner As “Expensive, Bureaucratic Distraction”

New UK police bill slammed by ex-Commissioner as “expensive, bureaucratic distraction”

any idiot from any religion or background can do anything and rewrite ALL the rules causing untold damage and expense for no measurable benefit to anyone- ask Ed Miliband and “Rachel from Accounts”.

PETER HALLIGAN

The UK’s Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has unveiled a sweeping overhaul of policing in England and Wales, described as the most significant reform in over 200 years.

Has she ever successfully introduced such sweeping reforms before? Well of course not – this fits with Labour’s mantra of ‘ ay idiot can do any job, no matter how complex, how expensive or how potentially damaging or how likely to succeed.

Here’s the key proposals in the bill which has not been discussed in depth with any past or current senior police officers:

“Key elements of the reform include:

· Mandatory 999 response targets: Police must reach serious crime scenes within 15 minutes in urban areas and 20 minutes in rural areas.

· Reduction in police forces: The number of forces will be cut from 43 to around 12, forming larger, more efficient “mega-forces”.

· Cutting red tape: The government will scrap the Officer Maintenance Grant, freeing up 12,600 officers currently in back-office roles to return to frontline duties.

· Scrapping non-crime hate incidents: The current system of recording lawful social media activity will be replaced with a more “common-sense” approach, ending the practice of policing legal speech.

· Enhanced accountability: The Home Secretary will gain powers to sack underperforming chief constables and deploy specialist teams to struggling forces.

· Increased funding: A total of £18.4 billion will be invested to restore neighbourhood policing, combat shoplifting, and improve response times.

straight to th ‘magic money tree’ for yet another £18 billion. WAS this in the last budget as a ‘black hole?”‘

The reforms also include a £7 million boost for intelligence units targeting retail crime, expanded use of live facial recognition, and a new “licence to practice” for police officers, similar to professions like doctors and lawyers.

While the government claims the reforms are not about cost-cutting but about effectiveness, critics, including the Shadow Home Secretary and Liberal Democrat leaders, have questioned the credibility of Labour’s promises given a recent drop in frontline officer numbers.

There are no measures for retaining police officers whose numbers are down 1,300 since Labour took office – per Brave AI:

“Chris Philp MP, the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, stated on 23 July 2025 that 1,316 police officers had been cut since Labour took office in July 2024, citing police workforce figures for 31 March 2025. This figure represents a decline from the record high of 149,768 police officers (headcount) on 31 March 2024 to 148,452 on 31 March 2025.

“Further analysis from Conservative sources, including Andrew Snowden MP and Matt Vickers MP, supports this figure, attributing the drop to Labour’s funding decisions, including a reported £350 million funding black hole, which has led to a 17% drop in police recruitment and over 1,300 officer cuts nationwide. Independent verification is pending the official release of the full 2025 workforce statistics. “

Apparently 100 police officers have chosen suicide since Labour took office.

Here is the view of Festus Akinbusoye, former Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner, from Brave AI:

“Festus Akinbusoye, former Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner, has criticized the government’s proposed licence to practise for police officers, calling it an “expensive, bureaucratic distraction” that provides no tangible benefits.

“ He argued the scheme is unnecessary, especially given that officers already hold warrant cards, and questioned why frontline officers were not consulted on the proposal.

Akinbusoye emphasized that the plan distracts from more pressing issues like recruitment, retention, and deep-rooted cultural problems within policing. The proposal, which aims to standardize performance and supervision across forces, has also drawn criticism from the Police Federation of England and Wales, which stressed that professional policing requires adequate pay, training, and support—not additional bureaucratic requirements. “

A national police force (UK FBI?) removes direct contact from local enforcement actions and has been tried and has failed many times before – most recently in Scotland.

There is no doubt that efficiencies such as procurement for cars, tech and uniforms make good, common sense, but why policing at a national level, rather than aggregated local levels has o clear benefit ad begs the question, ‘ why does this Home Secretary think she knows better than 200 years of evolved policing? She is 45 years old and has this experience “She was the Secretary of State for Justice from 2024 until 2025. A member of the Labour Party, she has served in the Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer as Shadow Secretary of State for Justice from September 2023 until July 2024. She previously served as Campaign Co-ordinator from 2021 to 2023, and briefly as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2015.

9 months in the shadow cabinet and18 months in the cabinet – hardly deep. She ha no track record of success in any senior government role – a complete reorganisation of the police force seems a huge risk. From her wiki page “As a Muslim, I have an unshakable belief in the sanctity and value of human life.” In a 2024 interview with Gabriel Pogrund of The Sunday Times, Mahmood was described as a “devout Muslim”. She said, “My faith is the centrepoint of my life and it drives me to public service, it drives me in the way that I live my life and I see my life.”^[5]

Yes really. Does she support the 30 to 85 sharia councils operating in the UK, across England and Wales. How about FGM, child marriage, first cousin marriage, arranged marriage etc? This muslim dogma would appear to be In direct conflict with her role as Home Secretary responsible for upholding British law.

Onwards!

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This article (New UK police bill slammed by ex-Commissioner as “expensive, bureaucratic distraction”) was created and published by Peter Halligan and is republished here under “Fair Use”

Mega police forces won’t make Britain safer

HARRY PHIBBS

It is easy to be cynical. When Tony Blair was Prime Minister, he once sent a memo to his team demanding ‘eye-catching initiatives’ and adding: ‘I should be personally associated with as much of this as possible.’ The Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is on manoeuvres. The speculation that Keir Starmer will be replaced as Prime Minister this year has gone from a whisper to a clamour. She is seen as a contender for his job. But then so is the Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Part of Streeting’s credentials is to show his proven record of energetic reforming zeal. Mahmood is playing catch-up.

This was seen in headlines about the ‘biggest set of changes since the police was founded two centuries ago.’ Will she really offer a legacy rivalling Robert Peel? I rather doubt it. Which is not to say that reform is not needed.

Greater focus on policing at a national level makes obvious sense. Crime used to be much more of a neighbourhood phenomenon. I remember a policeman explaining to me that traditional burglars were lazy when it came to travel. They liked to stick to their local district – often a neighbouring street or block of council flats. Coping with internet fraud and online scams carried on an industrial scale from abroad requires a very different policing response, which has often proved lacking.

So it is easy to imagine that when the Home Secretary asked her officials for an ‘eye-catching initiative’ they would have responded: ‘Set up a British FBI.’ We have been here before. As Robert Colvile, of this parish, wrote in the Sunday Times:

1. We’ve had versions of the same announcement in 1995, 2004, 2011 and 2016. And I may have missed a few.

Why are the civil servants so keen to push the idea? Writing on Unherd, Dominic Adler, a former detective in the Metropolitan Police, offers a clue:

Ever since the Serious Organised Crime Agency was established by New Labour in 2006 – yes, proudly announced as ‘the British FBI’ – the Home Office has agitated for increasingly centralised policing bodies. These would be compliant to the whims of civil servants, as opposed to 43 pesky chief constables. SOCA was troubled, a civilian non-police organisation slanted towards intelligence-gathering on organised criminals. Mocked as ‘MI7’, it endured fractious relations with police forces, its senior officers often high-handed former civil servants.

.

When it was replaced by the National Crime Agency in 2013, little changed. I once worked on an operation where the officer in charge was a civil servant with a background in food standards. Occasionally hostile to police partners, coppers jokingly referred to the NCA acronym as ‘No Cops Allowed’.

So it was a power grab. The bright idea of the Home Office civil servants was to transfer power and money from the police to…Home Office civil servants. I don’t remember a ‘Yes Minister’ episode on the theme, but it would have made for suitable material. That is no reason why police should be banished from involvement in a national police force.

Not that the police can be expected to do an effective job on their own. Every other day I am a ‘victim’ of an attempted crime in that there is an email, text message or phone call that is an attempt to trick me into some scam or another. Most are pretty obvious, but some are sophisticated. Hardly much point in telling the local police.

Never mind the Home Office, the Foreign Office needs to step up. British embassies and High Commissions are already involved in initiating some joint operations. If they wish to persuade us that Overseas Aid is value for money, then perhaps using it to fight crime might help?

Among the other proposals that have been reported, one deserves an unequivocal welcome. Mahmood tells the Daily Telegraph:

‘I don’t want them to be policing perfectly legal tweets. I want to make sure that they’re focused on the day job. I want them to get out of the business of essentially policing social media. That’s not where they need to be.’

The Free Speech Union has done an impressive job of showing how policing has been politicised in this area. Various incidents have caused consternation not just here but in the United States. But the irony is that the police themselves have not welcomed being dragged into this territory.

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This article (Mega police forces won’t make Britain safer) was created and published by CapX and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Harry Phibbs

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