Today saw the release of a report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, "Policing in Austerity: One Year On". You can read the full report here. The broad aim of the report was to measure the impact of austerity on the quality of service being delivered across the country.
In my last blog entry, I talked about how politicians use (or abuse) language to hide a multitude of sins. I spoke of how you often have to read in the gaps between the words, to see what is contained in the white space. I gave some typical examples of doublespeak used by politicians of all parties.
One example last week was when Nick Herbert MP (Policing Minister) was giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee regarding the appointment of Tom Winsor to the post of Chief Inspector of Constabulary. Mr Herbert referred to the police service as a "monopoly public service". This is quite a strange expression. I don't recall hearing it before in any other context. What was even more perplexing is that Mr Winsor used exactly the same phrase later when questioned by the Committee. It's an unusual phrase, used twice in the same afternoon. At this point, I'm tempted to question Winsor's much trumpeted "independence", but I won't. I'll leave that to you.
Even having written that blog, a week or so ago, I was wholly unprepared for the degree of absolutely blatant and barefaced spin and rubbish to emanate from the Twitter accounts of Nick Herbert and also even the official Twitter feed of the Home Office. Mr Herbert posted a series of messages emphasising the positive side of the HMIC report. He even went so far as to say that Labour's claims of risks to public safety and quality of service had been "demolished". Here's a summary of the report which Mr Herbert tweeted.
In interviews today, (especially with Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News) Mr Herbert was very keen on endlessly regurgitating the 'finding' that the "front line is being protected". What he conveniently neglected to say was the second half of the sentence. You can see it for yourself above. It's a particularly odd and contradictory expression, and without asking the Chief of HMIC what exactly it means, it would be hard to be certain. However, reading in the spaces, as I mentioned earlier, I've come to this conclusion, which I'll give to you as an analogy. Imagine that your house was on fire, and you were frantically trying to fight the blaze with a hose pipe. You might be making progress against that fire, you might not be. In this situation, even if the fire was "under control", it would still be burning and consuming the contents and structure of your house. In these circumstances, I think it might be fair to say that you were protecting your house, but you were not preserving it.
Thw website dictionary.com has this definition of the term "preserve":
verb (used with object)
1. to keep alive or in existence; make lasting: to preserve our liberties as free citizens.
2. to keep safe from harm or injury; protect or spare.
3. to keep up; maintain: to preserve historical monuments.
5. to prepare (food or any perishable substance) so as to resist decomposition or fermentation.
Using the example I've given, and the definitions above, I think we can see what HMIC really meant. Others might disagree, but my best guess of what the phrase "the frontline is being protected although not preserved" is that the 43 police forces are fighting like mad to juggle their now meagre resources, in an attempt to maintain services. However, despite their best efforts, the fire is being - at best - kept at bay whilst consuming the service relentlessly.
Mr Herbert has set much store by trotting out the line about the proportion of frontline officers increasing. This may or may not be true, depending on your classification of the term "frontline". However, what it masks - deliberately in my opinion - is the overall reduction of officers. Mr Herbert crows loudly about the proportion of frontline officers increasing from 67% to 74%. However, when tackled about the fact that a larger proportion of a smaller number means that there are fewer officers, Mr Herbert complains that the quality of service isn't measured in numbers. If this is so, why go on about the proportions? This is just a cynical attempt to show the opposite of what is really happening.
"Service to the public has been largely maintained"
Again, Mr Herbert has been talking up the maintenance of the service to the public. Let me ask you - if the roof on your house "largely kept the water out" or if your car "largely operated reliably" - would you think this is acceptable? Probably not, and yet these are fairly trivial examples. Is it acceptable that the public service is only "largely" being maintained?
The sentence highlighted above had a "but" in the HMIC report, followed by
"There are some concerns around sustainability"
This sentence actually speaks for itself. Funnily enough, I didn't hear Mr Herbert mention this one. I wonder why?
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