Privatisation is one of the few ideological issues that starkly divides the candidates in the police commissioner elections
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Companies might get short shrift from John Prescott, who has loudly declared 'total opposition to the privatisation of frontline services'. Photograph: Fabio De Paola
Whichever 41 wannabes emerge from Thursday's weird contests for Britain's first elected police commissioners, they can expect three early phone calls after the results on Friday, I heard a wise and senior ex-copper predict the other day. The first will be from the local chief constable pledging full co-operation and the second will come from local political bosses to remind most winners who helped them get elected.
But it's the third call which interests me because, apart from a Guardian article by Yvette Cooper MP on Saturday – here – it relates to something that has got little or no national attention even though it's a hot issue in the NHS, education, transport and other public services: privatisation.
Some 37 million people are being asked to vote? Turnout is estimated to be 20% on a good day – sunshine, not rain. Do people know enough or care enough?
According to my top cop, Friday's third call to the new and probably inexperienced police and crime commissioners (PCCs) will come from one or another private sector provider, keen to help the PCC manage his or her shrinking budget (down 20% over five years) by persuading them to outsource services.
Not just back-office or white-collar services either. Frontline investigation and even detective work is in the frame for firms such as G4S, Capita and Steria. On one sophisticated assessment, there is £5bn a year worth of contracts at stake – around 40% of the £14bn down to £11bn police budget for England and Wales by 2015.
Up to 30,000 uniformed and civilian jobs are likely to be lost – many of the gains made when Tony Blair and successive New Labour home secretaries used booming tax revenues before the bank crash to create police community support officers (PCSOs) and other visible signs of police presence on the street – often with a disregard for the cost/benefit outcomes, Tory critics protest.
The modernisation of police practices and organisation (especially on IT) is long overdue, say thinktanks such as Policy Exchange. Online reporting of a crime is only possible in 15 forces. The current home secretary, Theresa May, has appointed an outsider, ex-rail regulator Tom Winsor as chief inspector of constabulary to shake up the system.
So with polls opening in a few hours (except in Scotland, Northern Ireland or London) the future of privatisation has become the sharpest ideological divide between rival candidates who are otherwise united in their commitment to make the police more accountable and more responsive to their community's crime-fighting priorities and concerns.
Most Tory PCC candidates accept the government's analysis that outsourcing some services – custody management is one already widespread – will deliver a cheaper and better service. Ministers are pressing their outsourcing agenda hard and the elections have been designed to increase Tory candidates' chances in most police authorities: countrywide elections and no free publicity for independent candidates who need it most.
But Tory support is not prominent in most Conservative PCC manifestos because perceived privatisation of police work is as unpopular with many voters as its "politicisation" through the supposedly American-style direct elections (actually Americans elect the police chief himself in some areas) the coalition is imposing.
In contrast, some Labour candidates, including the former deputy PM, Lord John Prescott, are loudly declaring "total opposition to the privatisation of frontline services". Independent candidates – a quarter of the 192 contestants – are found on both sides of the argument.
Here's the backstory.
Three major outsourcing contracts for mostly back-office functions are already being implemented – in Avon and Somerset (with Southwest One, an IBM subsidiary); in Lincolnshire (G4S); and Cleveland (Steria) – alongside 500 collaborative partnerships in which the 41 English and Welsh forces are currently engaged. Most such partnerships are with other police forces or with local authorities, including emergency services. All have experienced contractual problems as they struggle to balance coalition-mandated cuts with the protection of vital services.
But an even bigger pilot scheme – whose original specifications envisaged private contractors doing frontline detective and patrol work as well as handling emergency responses – has stalled. It did so when Surrey police pulled back after the Olympic security fiasco involving G4S, one of the scheme's contractors.
Surrey's partners, the West Midlands force – second biggest after the Met, whose elected PCC is the mayor, Boris Johnson – has suspended a decision on the project, worth up to one-third of its £600m budget, until its new PCC is elected.
Uncertainty about the success of the elections and the experience or quality of the winners has caused frustration to chief constables and private contractors who complain – as they usually do – that it is holding back progress. In fact, their own spotty record is also slowing down what ministers want to see.
Critics of the PCC model – which has not been piloted or put out to a referendum – include former police chiefs such as ex-Metropolitan commissioner Lord Ian Blair. His call for voters to boycott the elections fuelled concerns that professional law and order judgments may soon be compromised by what Wolverhampton councillor and PCC candidate Labour's Bob Jones calls "private sector managers, accountable to shareholders and motivated by profit".
Jones is no luddite and is highly experienced as a former chairman of his regional police authority and chair of the authorities' national association. He is also favourite to win the PCC post in the West Midlands, which includes Birmingham.
Such are the mounting pressures that Professor Tim Brain, chief constable of Gloucestershire from 2001-10, has been number-crunching existing civilian police staff and their functions. Brain (you may have heard him interviewed on radio or TV) says the scope is huge.
"I estimate it's about £5bn of potential revenue a year" which could be outsourced one way or another, he told me. Based on his own outsourcing experience in Gloucester, Brain's advice to PCCs and chief constables is "make sure you own the process" rather than letting contractors try to design it for you.
At around £54,000 a year with overtime and pension payments, the overall cost of a police officer is £20,000 a year more than a civilian or PCSO. So May is also anxious to get more uniformed officers out from behind desks and visible to voters on their beat.
More localised policing is a voter priority. In all the apathy, suspicion and confusion of these elections this is one thing which has emerged clearly in newspaper, radio and TV reports from the campaign trail.
Most independents and minor parties – notably law and order minded Ukip – as well as leading Labour candidates, including Prescott on Humberside, and former solicitor general Vera Baird, who is now poised to win in Northumbria, also favour community priorities. But many have set their face against the more radical options being mooted for privatisation, those beyond the classic back-office functions such as IT and human resources.
"You are not getting Northumbria police if I am PCC," Baird told a G4S representative at Labour's Manchester conference. Prescott's manifesto states: "The police are there to serve the public. Introducing private companies to our frontline services clouds that simple aim and questions who the police are there to serve. I will fight tooth and nail to ensure our frontline policing services are not outsourced to private security firms."
Since Labour paved the way for all sorts of outsourcing while in office the words "frontline services" may be a get-out phrase that would allow a hard-pressed PCC to sanction private contracts for some services, such as custody. It is an old joke in Hull that G4S lost a prisoner on the way to court on its first day with such a contract.
Labour has been emboldened by G4S's spectacular Olympic failure which led to the army – core public sector – being drafted in. But nationally Ed Miliband's Labour leadership is taking a cautious view, aware that, as with the NHS and education reforms, the coalition is building on Labour's own 2006 legislation. In an election designed to devolve power, local candidates write their own manifestos.
The party's police spokesman, former Home Office minister David Hanson MP, says: "We need to have a full review of the private sector's involvement in policing because the government has not set any boundaries on this in terms of the scope of time limits on contracts, profitability, openness and transparency. We are pressing the government and many local candidates are ruling it out altogether until we have a proper review."
May is in a hurry because the Tories believe Blair and Gordon threw billions at the police but failed to get their money's worth in terms of better performance – though recorded crime has been falling, a fact for which both governments claim credit.
At great speed, May has replaced the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) with a National Crime Agency, abolished the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) with the outsourced College of Policing, a "Gov-Co" or private firm partly owned by the government, and appointed Winsor.
Critics accuse ministers of a lack of transparency that prevents contracts and fees being scrutinised and render contractors' private employees unaccountable for their actions via the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). The PCC elections are another product of hasty action.
Staged in late autumn with minimal funding or publicity they ensured that only political parties would have the manpower resources to run substantial campaigns, often for councillor candidates or ex-MPs – the accidental "politicisation" that many voters resent and many Westminster politicians did not want.
Labour and the Lib Dems opposed the concept, but accept that they should not leave a vacuum by boycotting the election. Independents, including retired police officers of all ranks, believe their chances have been deliberately undermined. But low turnout may create some upsets.
Whether any independents break through the system is a key question when votes are counted on Friday. So is the prospect of a former police officer turned PCC being in overall charge of police and crime policy in a large police force and – in theory – free of traditional Whitehall constraints.
