‘Shabana Mahmood is carrying Labour’s hopes, being daring is her solely possibility’
Shabana Mahmood has unveiled what has been branded the biggest shakeup in British policing in 200 years – with a UK FBI, a rollout of AI and the creation of new ‘mega-forces’ among the changes
Shabana Mahmood is carrying Labour’s hopes on her shoulders(Image: BBC/AFP via Getty Images)
If Labour have any hope of staying in power, Shabana Mahmood must be on her A game.
The Home Secretary is carrying a huge weight of expectation, with Keir Starmer pinning a lot of hope on her. Perhaps it’s best, then, that she’s not one to hang around.
Since taking office in September, Ms Mahmood has already outlined controversial changes to the UK’s asylum and migration policies. Now it’s the turn of policing as she takes on a system she believes belongs in the last century.
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With polls looking tricky and the Home Office responsible for a lot of the things that get voters riled, this is no time for tiptoeing around or tinkering around the edges. She took to her feet in the Commons this afternoon to outline what had been pre-billed the biggest shake-up of British policing in two centuries.
So ambitious are these changes, a Home Office source said, that insiders are even drawing comparisons to Sir Robert Peel’s creation of the Met Police back in 1829. The Home Secretary thinks it is absurd, we’re told, that there are 43 police forces in England and Wales – all with their own ways of working and big variations in performance.
As a result of the reforms, there will be a ‘British FBI’, a huge rollout of AI, compulsory response times and fewer police forces, Ms Mahmood announced. She told the Commons: “Taken together, these are, without question, major reforms.
“A transformation in the structures of our forces, the standards within them and the means by which they are held to account by the public, these are the most significant changes to how policing works in this country in around 200 years.
“The world has changed immeasurably since then, but policing has not.” Too many qualified officers are stuck in back office roles, the Government insists. That’s usually a tune that plays well with the public.
If Labour gets this right, it can be gamechanging. We know that millions are expected by the scourge of anti-social behaviour, which ministers blame on the Tory decimation of neighbourhood policing.
Seeing an officer on the beat and acting with urgency over crimes like drug dealing, phone snatching and shoplifting can make a huge difference to the quality of peoples’ lives.
It’s been an open secret that having so many forces is not an efficient way of doing things. But the public expects to see action, and Ms Mahmood has started along the path.
As expected the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) – which previously said there should be around 12 mega-forces to replace the current 43 – has welcomed the changes. Chairman Gavin Stephens said: “The consolidation of the money and the decision making is really important.
“You’ve got rapidly changing new technologies which show huge promise, then you can’t get them rolled out because there are too many decision makers in the system. If we want to put in the hands of every neighbourhood cop, every local team, the best available technology, we’ve got to do that once for everybody and then get it rolled out.”
