British Transport Police Federation

ANNUAL CONFERENCE
BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE FEDERATION
SPEECH BY CHAIRMAN: MR ALEX ROBERTSON
0830 HRS ON WEDNESDAY 7TH MARCH 2007 AT THE

PARK INN HOTEL, YORK

Minister, guests and delegates, welcome to conference - a particular welcome to you Minister in joining us last night for our annual bravery awards. As near neighbours in Scotland I know that we will have no difficulty in understanding each other in every sense. That awards ceremony is a timely reminder of what we ask of our police service and of our willingness to live up to that expectation.

Once again we are meeting here in York largely because its geographical position suits a nationally distributed police service such as ourselves. However, in mentioning York I want to note the recent comments of one of your Parliamentary colleagues - not a party colleague I hasten to add - who sought to suggest that the number of assaults on the public in York Rail Station and the vicinity were drastically on the increase.

Sadly I can confirm that the percentage of assaults of this type in York have gone up fivefold. In absolute terms the increase is from 4 to 20 over five years. Not such a horrific increase after all although each crime is to be abhorred. But the increase is really very little when you appreciate that the number of passengers has grown enormously yet the number of British Transport Police Officers available to protect the public has seen only a very modest increase of around 11 per cent. Far from holding up our hands in horror we should be applauding the excellent efforts of the BTP in keeping on top of crime, not just here in York but throughout our major railway cities.

The Police Service today as a whole operates in a very uncertain environment. Last year the British Transport Police Federation viewed with the same disappointment and bewilderment that swept over all the UK police federations, the Government's betrayal of almost 30 years of tried and tested pay settlement arrangements.

Even the Home Office's underhand approach to the annual agreement on pay sent the alarm bells ringing around the Federations. Our representatives at Police Negotiating Board encountered the most appalling stalling tactics as it was quite apparent that the Home Office team at PNB were being directed not to come to the agreement stipulated by Edmund-Davies and modified by the Sheehy Report.

The Home Office was spoiling for a fight. In our view, perhaps one of the first indications, that 'it was not fit for purpose' even before John Reid came to that conclusion.

The Government fatuously says that we need pay settlement arrangements which are consistent and appropriate for a modern public service. They obviously do not consider that Edmund-Davies' excellent Report to have stood the test of time. The substance of the Edmund-Davies Report was largely reproduced in the Wright Report into the British Transport Police with similar beneficial recommendations.

This is not the first time that the Government has moved to disturb our successful pay negotiating machinery.

Both the main political parties have their hands dirty here. In 1992 Sir Patrick Sheehy was tasked by the Conservatives with rewriting the agreement. His proposals published the following year would have seen officers on five year contracts, only renewable at the Chief Officer's discretion; officers would lose all their allowances, in many cases disadvantaged by an annual Ł5,000. We would have had to work for 40 years for our pensions and there would have been 8,000 fewer of us to deliver the standard of police service the public is entitled to expect.

The Government eventually ditched the Sheehy Report because of the strong united front that the Police Federations of the UK, including this one, showed the then Home Secretary Michael Howard. Despite our success in defending our members' terms and conditions it is now evident that the Home Office's ambition of slashing the costs of policing is coming to the surface again.

Our anger towards the Government is not limited to the realisation of their intent. There has also been a lack of consultation by Government with any Federation on the terms of reference of the new review of Police Officer Pay Determination and of Police Negotiating machinery.

Not only were we not asked for our views on the terms of reference for Sir Clive Booth but we were particularly dismayed to see that while the first part of the review would be to consider the options for replacing the current arrangements for determining changes to police officer pay for this year, the second part is 'to review the effectiveness of the negotiating machinery for the police. The review would also include the Police Negotiating Board and the Police Staff Council and make recommendations for how police pay and other conditions of service should be determined. The option of a pay review body for police pay would be considered including the impact of any proposal for determining police officer pay, on the negotiating machinery for police officers'.

As a Federation, our heart sank when we read this, Minister. The first part of the Booth Report has just been published. I suspect the second part is already written, perhaps not as yet typed out on any computer keyboard - but with terms like that there will only be one conclusion - police officers will not be better off as a result. In fact police officers will lose all the gains that Edmund-Davies has brought for the past 27 years. Officers and the police service will be the poorer - and so will the public.

The police service probably more than any other public service has embraced change unhesitatingly over the years. We have coped with annual increase and revisions of the criminal law, breathtaking advances in technological developments, increased and inescapable scrutiny of performance and huge demands for a better and swifter service from the public.

For this British Transport Police now has to police a travelling public which makes over one billion passenger train journeys a year, 20,000 such train journeys a day and 20% more journeys than ten years ago. In short, we police the fastest growing railway network in Europe.

I would ask Minister that your Ministerial colleagues reflect fully on the nature and strength of debate which they will encounter if unacceptable recommendations emanate from the review. A key paragraph in the original Edmund-Davies Report is worth recalling … the Committee was "satisfied that the absence of the right to strike is a serious deprivation for any worker. It is essential that the police should not suffer in pay because they are deprived of the right to strike, and that it should be put beyond doubt that they are being paid fairly." His Committee went on to say that the withdrawal of labour would be incompatible with the responsibilities of the police service and contrary to the interests of the nation. The Sheehy Report on this particular point came to the same conclusion and I quote "in considering how police pay levels should be determined and on what basis pay should be uprated, the inquiry took account of the fact that police officers are often called upon to put their lives in danger and, moreover, they do not take industrial action. The inquiry recognised - as do the Government - that the type of dedication deserves a consistent and clearly defined way of setting police pay."

Minister, those were the agreeable and considered sentiments of a Conservative Government nearly 30 years ago and 15 years ago. The irony is not lost on my members that it is now a Labour Government which is most likely to damage the interests of the police service without achieving any public benefit.

My Federation may not be in the frontline of negotiating police pay but we know only too well that any national police pay arrangements will be carried across to the BTP officers. If we lose our fair and tested arrangements which include this compensatory element then it will not go well with the Federated ranks. I am able to tell you that many federated officers believe that the imposition of unfair pay agreement machinery will end that obligation not to ever take industrial action. It must not be allowed to come to that sorry state. Sadly, on the basis of what has been released so far, the recommendations will erode the quality of pay rises for the police service as a whole and in the form envisaged may well cause division between the ranks … whether by design or by accident I hesitate to pronounce on.

Minister, this is your first visit to our conference but I am hopeful, indeed conscious that because of the value which we put on these exchanges that my words are finely tempered. You may not therefore be aware that in recent times the very existence of the BTP has been challenged. As a Force we have been examined for 'fitness of purpose' no fewer than four times in the last five years.

Sensibly, each time, Ministers, Departments and Parliamentary committees have emerged from such reviews strengthened in their conclusion that a separate, dedicated, specialist railway police service is essential for the efficient and safe running of our railway infrastructure and for the protection of the travelling public from criminal and terrorist outrage.

No less a Ministerial authority than Alasdair Darling, when Secretary of State for Transport, confirmed their view when he spoke to me, as chairman, and in the presence of the Federation Secretary, Roger Randall, that he was committed to the continuance of a separate British Transport Police.

We are therefore concerned, on the basis of current intelligence, that in the run-up to the Olympic Games in 2012 London will become increasingly a prized target for attack by Islamic extremists. Perhaps this threat is what is also prompting certain voices in the Metropolitan Police Service to demand that the BTP or at least its Underground Division and main line stations should be transferred to their force.

Of course there is room for improvement in how we operate as a force and in how we co-operate with other police forces particularly with the Metropolitan Police Service. But these are all logistical issues which if addressed through a professional willingness are capable of solution. Recommendations on this point were contained in your own Department's Report and are being acted upon.

Minister, my members would welcome an end to the periodic uncertainty which has been allowed to cloud not only their professional lives but their family life. There has been simply too much careless talk, unsubstantiated by research in the upper ranks of the Met and in the London Mayor's office. Words of assurance on our future from you today would be very welcome indeed. The key issue, Minister, is very straightforward. The BTP has developed an incredible expertise in handling railway incidents. Any merger of the Force into any other Force, including the Met, will see that expertise diluted and eventually lost.

Without the presence of the BTP, at worst inexperienced officers, untrained in railway work are at severe risk of being killed and injured when involved in incidents. At best, delays to the running of trains after an incident could take several hours rather than the 90 minutes maximum that we currently work to.

Examples of our expert contribution to investigating railway accidents are all too frequent. Earlier this year two graffiti artists were tragically killed when they were found at their work in Barking station. Yet without loss of ability to establish thoroughly the full circumstances of the tragedy, the BTP had trains running again within hours. And only last month we had a rail crash in Grayrigg in Cumbria when one woman was killed and nearly one hundred injured. Neither the Met nor any other force could meet the public's reasonable expectation to see normal service restored as soon as possible. Minister, we have too much expertise as a specialist railway police service to be thrown away in any kind of ego-driven aspirational merger.

Providing a police service to the public, as my last point illustrates, requires an increasingly sophisticated response if the public need is to be comprehensively met. Skilled policing does not come cheap. We are only too aware that 80 per cent out of the annual police budget is absorbed by police pay. Only last month, the Government was able to tell us that spending on the police has increased from Ł6.2 billion in 1997 to Ł11 billion for this year 2007. The Government's unease at the size of that wages bill may be understandable but that does not mean that it is justified.

The popular answer among those who pay their wages bill is to look for ways of replacing police officers with a cheaper option. I use the word cheaper - because cost-effectiveness rarely seems to be a consideration. As long as the replacement figure looks vaguely like an authoritative representative of the law then the Government believes that the public need is not only being fooled but met.

The major one is the use of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). Now my members understand fully that the jury is still out on the value of PCSOs. This is perfectly understandable; some forces like to suggest that they are a useful introduction to policing for civilians possibly aspiring to a police career; others of us have noted that they tend to hunt in packs of at least two and often three and four. Their tendency to go for safety in numbers seems to me to undermine any argument for cost effectiveness. Perhaps that is why the numbers to be recruited have been changed from 28,000 down to 16,000. Once PCSOs have had to be paid out of the police budget suddenly a much more critical look has been taken at their role.

A second alternative to deploying full-time regular officers has been the introduction of private security personnel on trains. Strangely enough, this Federation believes that there is some limited merit in this proposal. A security guard who can phone ahead for police assistance may well be a very cost-effective answer. An officer travelling on a train where there is no likelihood of criminal intent or incident is not being deployed where he or she might be needed.

What we are seeing though is another tier developing in the policing personnel response. Both PCSOs and private security personnel may have their role in supplementing the overall policing task but their funding must never come out of the police budget. To take money out of the police budget which would otherwise fund fully attested regular constables is to short-change the public in the degree of protection they are entitled to and deserve.

The roles of these other organisations must be separately funded from the main police budget. Even so, they must be accountable to local police in how they conduct themselves and how they are deployed if they are to make a useful and co-ordinated impact on public safety. Private security guards are obviously cheaper than PCSOs. If the Government reduces the funding for PCSOs then it is hardly surprising if the Train Operating Companies decide that private security firms may be the answer to their security needs. This is only going to lead to not second tier policing - we already have that with the PCSOs - but third-tier policing. The quality of public safety on our trains is going to suffer unless common sense is allowed to prevail. We must have minimum standards of public protection on our railways below which we cannot be allowed to fall.

We have seen a nine per cent increase in this year's budget. On the face of it this is a sizeable increase but it is necessary if we are to address the major challenges facing the BTP. For instance in Glasgow the BTP will now police the City's Underground - one of the oldest undergrounds in the world. It has 16 stations and is known, infamously, as the 'Clockwork Orange'. Resources will have to be adequate if it is not to be allowed to live up to this violent nickname.

The Government has also made provision for the extra funding to cope with the so-called 'dirty bomb' threat. But as yet we have no details as to how many officers will be trained or whether the funding will come out of the existing BTP budget. The national funding response to the terrorist threat must include extra provisions for the BTP. Given that our transport infrastructure is particularly threatened then - of all officers - it is the BTP which should be the training priority. We should remember that as railway and underground stations are being cleared it is the BTP who will be on the scene and the first to evaluate the threat at first hand. That training needs not only to deal with protection at the incident but provide training and support for post-traumatic stress among officers as they confront the bloody aftermath of some really horrific incidents.

Minister, I want to express some concern about how complaints against the police are investigated. This Federation is a supporter of complaints against the police being investigated independently. We understand only too well the need for a professional impartiality to be combined with transparency as the method most likely to inspire public confidence.

But somehow or other that worthy objective is not what we are getting in practice. Yes there is public confidence in how the police are investigated but there is no police confidence. It is as if police confidence in how they are investigated is of little consequence in the overall delivery of the complaints service.

My comments could be applied to any of the police complaints bodies, in Northern Ireland where the Police Federation for Northern Ireland have expressed strong dissatisfaction and in England and Wales where the Federation went as far as to issue last November a joint statement by the UK federations expressing their unhappiness about how the Independent Police Complaints Commission seeks to fulfil its statutory role.

I find it interesting that only in Scotland where police complaints are handled by a judicial figure, the Procurator Fiscal to be precise, is there confidence among the police that complaints will be dealt with sensibly.

By contrast, the IPCC has become an interventionist body which is actively encouraging complainants to come forward. Their record in successful complaints is poor and the time taken to resolve or complete an investigation extraordinarily long, years rather than months, when it should take only weeks. We now have officers leaving on the grounds of stress and ill-health because of the anxiety caused not by complicated or weighty charges but because of a complaint of assault against them.

The double responsibility of the IPCC to also win the confidence of the police service is being forgotten about - such is their desire to enjoy the limelight of acting aggressively on behalf of the public. The introduction of more judicially trained and minded Commissioners might do much to refocus the IPCC and to generate in the police, confidence that the complaints system will work for them as well as the public.

Last year, as a final point I drew your predecessor's attention to what I took to be an oversight in the new Police Pensions Regulations. There was no provision to facilitate the transfer of pension of officers moving between our force and another where such officers could retire at 55 or under.

Transfers between forces of mid-career officers are a good thing. These officers bring new perspectives and best practice to their new forces and if anything, such moves should be encouraged rather than obstructed in the way that the new pension arrangements would surely do.

I was therefore greatly dismayed that despite the case being made Treasury has refused to budge on this pensions difficulty. To compound our disappointment I am aware that there might be some latitude permitted on this obstruction to movement of officers between other forces and the Police Service of Northern Ireland. It seems unreasonable not to include the BTP in such arrangements.

Perhaps, like me Minister you share the frustration at how your Department, which is charged with enhancing the police service to the public, is at the mercy of the back-room bean counters. If there is anyway of revisiting this problem I hope it will be done.

Can I also flag up a difficulty over our entitlement to safeguarded travel. This entitlement is a condition of service that came about as a consequence of rail privatisation. The Train Operating Companies have now decided that the entitlement will be the subject of a direct funding charge to the BTP Authority. I fully understand their natural desire to cut costs but it should be borne in mind that in return for safeguarded travel officers will immediately put themselves on duty should any incident occur. As professional police officers we, of course, have no choice but to do so. But equally it is a fair trade-off which also benefits the Train Operating Companies. There should be no such levy.

The entitlement to safeguarded travel is a condition of employment and should not be used as a mechanism for the Train Operating Companies to recover some of their budgetary costs of BTP. Any influence you can exercise in this matter, Minister, would be welcomed.