Integration of the three emergency services was suggested in a speech by the Home Secretary Theresa May, pictured. She told the think-tank Reform: “In the last four years, we have achieved something no modern government has achieved before. We have proved that, through reform, it is possible to do more with less. We will need to go on doing more with less for many years into the future. But, looking ahead to the next Parliament, the next great challenge will be the need to reform to reduce the huge demand for public services in the first place.”
She mentioned the integration of fire and police services and ambulance only in passing without going into any details. She began the speech by going over the Coalition programme of police reform, recalling that four years ago ‘the response from ACPO, the Police Federation and the Labour Party was to deny the need for change’. She spoke of having ‘systematically reformed the institutions of policing’ and claimed that such reforms as police and crime commissioners were already bearing fruit. While she called for more work against bureaucracy she added ‘we should come up with more transformative solutions’.
As for crime, that she claimed has fallen and is still falling, she said that the increase in recorded fraud ‘is likely to be caused by better recording’. She added that ‘we do not know enough about why crime overall is falling, why certain crime types are rising or why there might be different crime trends in different parts of the country. And if we can understand those things better, then we can come up with smarter crime prevention policies. That is why I have set up a team called the Crime and Policing Knowledge Hub inside the Home Office.’
As for what she called ‘the criminal opportunities provided by new technology’, in other words cyber-crime, she said: “The Home Office must develop an understanding of cyber crime in its entirety and develop a policy response.”
She said: “Police forces tell us that recent rises in theft from the person, for example, were in part driven by the theft of smart phones by organised criminal gangs. These gangs targeted specific venues, like concerts and festivals, to steal smart phones on a massive scale. The phones were then often sent overseas where they are reactivated and sold. There is of course an operational response to this kind of criminal activity, which should be left to the police, but the Home Office has also been working with industry to find new ways to stop the reactivation of phones overseas, thereby killing the criminals’ export market.”
She summed up: “We have proved that, through reform, it is possible to do more with less.”
For the speech in full visit the Reform website – http://reform.co.uk/resources/0000/1572/Home_Secretary_Reform_speech_-_03_09_2014.pdf.
