Oral evidence: Crime Statistics – HC 760Wednesday 8 January 2014
Oral evidence, 8 January 2014.
Witnesses
Tom Winsor, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, and Olivia Pinkney, Assistant Inspector of Constabulary, HMIC, gave evidence.
Chair
Welcome to our next set of witnesses. May I ask you to identify yourselves for the record?
Tom Winsor
I am Tom Winsor, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary.
Olivia Pinkney
Good morning. I am Olivia Pinkney, Assistant Inspector of Constabulary with HMIC.
Chair
We are going to be very short of time, so with shorter answers and shorter questions, colleagues, we will get through the brief. If you need to make any supplementary evidence in writing because of the brevity of this session, I apologise for that, but please do send in further written evidence.
Kelvin Hopkins
I have a question for Tom Winsor. There seems to be a difference of view between you and Sir Bernard about the accuracy of recorded crime in London. How accurate is police‑recorded crime in the Met, in your view?
Tom Winsor
We do not know yet, and that is why we are doing a 43-force inspection. It is already under way; we will produce an interim report in April this year and a final report in October.
Kelvin Hopkins
You are obviously concerned, and there is some sort of evidence that things are not right, or otherwise you would not be doing an inquiry, presumably.
Tom Winsor
We have not been prompted to do this investigation only by any perceived failings in the Metropolitan Police. We are concerned about crime data integrity all over of England and Wales. It must be said that honesty and integrity in policing are essential core values and characteristics, and accurate reporting of crime data is essential to enable police commanders to deploy their resources where they are most needed, where they will be most efficiently and effectively used and, of course, to support victims of crime and ensure they are properly treated.
Kelvin Hopkins
How will you carry out this inspection? It is a difficult job to do, I imagine, but have you got some specifics you could give us?
Tom Winsor
The inspection is going to cover 43 forces, as I have said. It is already under way, and we are going to be asking the questions and determining how confident the public can be in the effectiveness of police crime recording. We are going to be looking at the effectiveness of the leadership and the supervision of crime recording; how effectively victims are placed at the centre of crime recording decisions; and whether the crime outcomes suit the needs of the victims as well as the public. We need to ensure that the no‑crime decisions that are made correctly adhere to the national crime recording standard.
Kelvin Hopkins
At a recent evidence session, we heard from the Kent commissioner, contrasting a report done by HMIC that had been done for police forces in general with some statistics for Kent, and then she specifically requested a more rigorous report into Kent again, but with rather different statistics. Is that contrast exercising you? Hopefully you are going to pursue your research with the kind of rigour that was done for the second Kent report.
Tom Winsor
The inspection certainly will be rigorous. It follows from the commission we received from the police and crime commissioner for Kent in 2013—sorry, earlier than that—where we concluded more needed to be done in Kent. The necessity to do this was prompted by what we did find in Kent, so we are going to look at all 43 forces in a depth and with a thoroughness that has hitherto not been the case.
Kelvin Hopkins
One final question: there is concern, and I think we are all concerned, about recategorising crimes to adjust to statistics. Will you be looking carefully to make sure that crimes are not being recategorised in your report—particularly, I think, crimes of sexual violence that are put down as assault or whatever? That kind of recategorisation has, apparently, tended to deter people from reporting crimes of rape, which is a serious concern.
Tom Winsor
It is extremely important that people are not deterred from reporting crime, and that the decisions that are made on the recording of crime are sound. It is important that there is a material difference between the legitimate exercise of professional judgment as to what crime has been committed, and dishonesty. Things can go wrong for a variety of reasons: it can be mistake; it can be a misunderstanding of the rules; it could be an error of the process; it could be dishonesty; and it could be laziness. Depending on the extent to which we find these things, I have no evidence or present expectation that what we are going to conclude is institutional corruption.
Chair
I do not think we have used that term today. Can I just ask: do you think our questioning of Sir Bernard resolved the apparent disagreement between him and you about the quality of recorded crime figures in the Metropolitan Police?
Tom Winsor
Almost, yes.
Chair
Would you like to add anything?
Tom Winsor
Sorry, are you talking about the discrepancy between what he said at the Home Affairs Committee and my subsequent letter?
Chair
Yes.
Tom Winsor
I wrote to Sir Bernard after his evidence because there was a discrepancy. I received his reply on 23 December in which he very frankly acknowledges that he was reliant upon the executive summary of the HMIC report, which did say “broadly competent and reliable”, but that the body of the report did say “cause for concern” and said why. He has emphasised that at no time did he intend to mislead or misrepresent the findings of the review. I have no belief that he did intend to do anything of the kind. I think that the discrepancy has been properly cleared up, and I very much welcome the approach that he has taken.
Chair
The Audit Commission used to monitor annually the implementation of NCRS, but stopped doing so in 2006-07. What is your reaction to that?
Tom Winsor
We are happy to be doing it now?
Chair
So there is now an annual external audit of every constabulary’s recorded crime figures.
Tom Winsor
Pretty close, yes. The present inspection—prompted, as I have said, by what we found in Kent—is a 43‑force inspection, concluding in October. The Committee may have noticed that on 19 December, the Home Secretary published a written ministerial statement in relation to an increase in HMIC’s budget of £9.4 million. That will enable us to do an annual inspection of core policing in every force, every year, in perpetuity, whereas before we had very largely done thematic inspections into particular aspects of policing and crime data recording—homicide, rape or whatever it may be. Now—in addition to all of that, which is going to be undiminished—there is going to be an annual, boots‑on‑the‑ground core policing inspection, and I have every expectation, although we are still doing the planning on this, that the integrity of crime recording will be part of that.
Chair
Thank you. That is extremely helpful.
David Heyes
We have heard that the trend is very much away from target setting—in some areas, abandoned altogether, and very drastically curtailed elsewhere. Is that likely to lead, in your view, to an improvement in the quality of recording of crime?
Tom Winsor
There are good targets and there are bad targets. There are some targets that create perverse incentives, and there are other targets that are perfectly legitimate. It is extremely important that targets have their proper place and do not themselves distort policing behaviour. Targets are a management tool, which in some cases can be quite legitimate and quite helpful. However, there is a very material concern that the existence of targets and the perception of police officers that their performance and, perhaps, their advancement will be dependent upon meeting arbitrary targets has led to the wrong policing decisions. Measurements of performance are absolutely essential, and the measurements are part of the input data in the making of policing decisions, but what the police always need to concentrate on is threat, harm and risk, not necessarily just getting figures down. For example, probationers in some forces are given a target of three arrests per week. That could be three burglars, or it could be three violent criminals, but it is much easier to get three cannabis detections if you go onto the student campus and just lift three students. That is clearly the wrong approach. What we need to do is concentrate on threat, harm and risk, but performance does need to be measured—there is no doubt about that. If you are not measuring performance, you do not know how well you are doing.
Olivia Pinkney
I would share that. The issue of bad and good targets has been well set out. I have been a police officer for over 20 years now, and my experience throughout that time is that the targets themselves are not the problem; the problem is if they are misunderstood, poorly led, and have perverse incentives alongside them. My personal worry is that, if targets are removed altogether, one is not able to explain to the public what crime really is going on; one is not able to make good decisions, if one is a Chief Constable or a Police and Crime Commissioner, around where the resourcing should be. Similarly, other agency budgets are moved and resources are placed on the basis of where crime is taking place, so I think it is not necessarily a binary choice. That would be my view.
David Heyes
Is that not going to make your inspectorate duties more difficult, the absence of targets?
Olivia Pinkney
No, not at all, because we are looking at not only what happens—as has been discussed this morning—once a crime is reported and within a force, and the decision that is made about it at that point, but how those crimes come into the force in the first place. There are a number of routes by which crimes come in. The targets, whether they are there or not, are not the issue. As Tom has explained, one of the key issues we are looking at this year in the inspection is what it feels like to a particular officer, what they are told and how they are led, and what the policies say compared with what the reality is. We are going to work very hard to understand that in each of the forces.
Chair
You talk about the leadership around this, which is so important. In an earlier evidence session, we were told that the failure to comply with Home Office accounting rules was often because officers—and I quote Mr Farrar—genuinely thought they were helping the public to deliver a service. In the minds of many officers, they think a falling crime rate is the service that they are delivering to the public. How concerned are you that police officers have been trained to deliver the wrong outcomes; that, actually, the outcome they should be delivering is a service to the victims of crime and to protect the public, not delivering falling crime statistics? There is a distinction between the two, is there not?
Tom Winsor
The primary purpose of the police is to prevent crime, so if crime is truly falling, that is their No. 1 priority. That is a good thing, but the real issue is whether it is truly falling, or if the statistics are being manipulated in order to make it appear to be falling.
Chair
I accept that, but I am asking something slightly different. If targets become very important in an organisation, they tend to override other considerations in what officers actually do. What feelings do you have about why officers behave in the way that they do, and what does that say about the leadership and the training of those officers?
Tom Winsor
The quality of leadership in policing, as in so many other organisations, is absolutely critical. The behaviour of the man and woman, and men and women, at the very top of a police force affects the whole culture, the whole approach, and the integrity and the honesty of their operations. If they believe their leaders are misbehaving in some way, that will affect the whole performance and culture of the organisation.
Chair
What factors do you think most influence the behaviour of front‑line officers that leads them to misrecord crime?
Tom Winsor
If they believe that their senior managers do not care about the honesty and accuracy of the crime recording; in other words, that they are interested only in the figures, not in the truth.
Chair
To what extent do you think there is a residual cultural problem in the police on that count?
Tom Winsor
I cannot answer that until we have done the inspection.
Chair
But that is something you will be looking for.
Tom Winsor
Yes. There will be fiddling of the figures. I have no doubt that we are going to find there is a degree of fiddling of the figures. The real question is how severe is that, how extensive is it and in relation to what kinds of crime is it taking place. I do not anticipate that we are going to find, as I said, institutional corruption. I would be extraordinarily surprised if we do.
Chair
How much do you think it is just about attitudes and behaviours?
Tom Winsor
A lot of it is about poor training, poor leadership, poor supervision and misunderstanding, but some of it will be about dishonesty. People in all sorts of organisations will fiddle the figures. Once they have worked out how the performance system according to which they are measured works, they will operate that system so as to make their own individual performance or their team performance look as good as possible. That is just human nature. Therefore the quality of supervision has to ensure that does not take place. It happens in health; it happens in education. For example, I was speaking to a very senior civil servant who was talking about his time at school. When the Ofsted inspectors came in, the pupils were told that when the inspector was in the classroom and their teacher asked a question, if they were certain they knew the right answer, they put up their right hand, and if they did not know, they put up their left hand. That is fiddling the figures. It happens.
Chair
How much are you, therefore, envisaging that your recommendations will be about leadership, training, culture and attitudes, rather than about systems and rules, which so much of our discussion of this tends to be about?
Tom Winsor
I cannot anticipate just what the relative proportions are going to be, but I would be extremely surprised if we did not have a great deal to say about the quality of supervision, governance and leadership.
Olivia Pinkney
Would it help if I gave a couple of examples? For instance, there is the nine‑year‑old child who is accused of stealing something. There is confusion by officers, because that is a crime and should be recorded as such, but the child is below the age of criminal responsibility and therefore cannot be pursued through the criminal justice process. They are different tests, and officers are confused by that, so one of the things we will look at as we go around the forces is what they understand and what training they have had. I know that there is confusion around that. Similarly, there is confusion that can result in over‑recording, and an example would be that a house burglary takes place, the car keys are taken from the hook by the front door, where we all keep them, and the car is stolen. That is a crime of burglary, and the theft of the car is not a separate crime, because it is all wrapped up into one. But sometimes an officer will not know that, and would in good faith put two crimes into the system, so there are lots of complexities around this. The basic principles are simple—I believe them to be simple—but there are complexities, and we will be looking very carefully at what front‑line officers know and understand, what they are told and how they are trained; and, if they do not know, where they go to find the answer, and how easy is it for them to find the answer.
Chair
What should be the overriding principle that governs the behaviour of a front‑line officer?
Olivia Pinkney
The overriding principle is around service to the victim, and the accounting rules are very clear that that comes first.
Chair
And how confident are you that that is at the front of most front‑line officers’ behaviour today?
Olivia Pinkney
How confident am I that the victim comes first and the service comes first? For the vast majority of officers, I am very confident. There will be some where it does not, and there will be forces where these messages have been mixed, and we will look at that and report on it.
Kelvin Hopkins
Just following the Chairman’s question, and also acknowledging Tom Winsor’s point about crime reduction, a measure of success in some cases might mean a police force saying, “Yes, we have prosecuted more rape cases than anyone else, so we are getting our rapists.” In a sense, having more crime prosecuted would actually be a measure of success for the police, not reducing the apparent level of crime.
Tom Winsor
Certainly. What the public are interested in is the truth. I think the Commissioner mentioned, and this is certainly the research that I have seen, that it is estimated that 85% of rapes are never reported to the police. Similarly, there are other kinds of crimes, particularly involving children, that never come to the attention of the police. Now it is extremely important that, as far as possible, they do come to the attention of the police, that they are recorded as such, and that therefore the victims can be given a service and of course the perpetrators, if they can be found, can be brought to justice. It is extremely important that what happens in crime recording is honest. If that means that there are more recorded offences in a particular category because that category of offences has historically been under‑recorded, yes, that is a good thing.
Lindsay Roy
In your external inspection, how much focus is there on the quality of the internal audit of the force?
Tom Winsor
We will certainly, in every one of the 43 forces, be assessing the quality of internal audit, and we will be having a great deal to do with the force crime registrar to ensure the consistency of approach and the proper adherence to the rules for recording crime.
Lindsay Roy
Do you believe that the crime registrar is in the proper status within the commission?
Tom Winsor
Yes, I think so, but we will take a look at that. The force crime registrar does have to be detached and independent, to report directly to a member of the chief officer team, and to have a sound and un‑interfered with approach to the recording rules.
Lindsay Roy
What lessons have you learned from external inspections, and what are you planning to introduce as a result?
Tom Winsor
We have not finished the inspection yet, so I am reluctant to say what our emerging thinking is, because we have an interim report in April.
Mr Turner
Could I just ask a couple of questions? What does a mother do when one of her weapons is to get the police in when she is at the end of her tether but, on the other hand, allowing things to come to the police’s ears now seems to make it too formal?
Tom Winsor
Too formal? What do you mean?
Mr Turner
Well, recording will be done wherever there is a responsibility to respond. The mother might be afraid that the report will turn into a formal report.
Tom Winsor
I see. So she is at the end of the tether with her child.
Mr Turner
Yes.
Tom Winsor
Sorry, I thought you meant with her spouse. It may very well just be that it is a cry for help from the mother because the child is out of control and she fears that, if not brought back into some kind of discipline that she is unable to impose, the child will go on to become a criminal. Of course she will be anxious that that child should not be criminalised, so she will be asking the police, probably, for advice, and maybe just to give the child a good, hard, firm talking to. It seems to me that the police have a discretion, and the police are almost unique in investing in their lowest‑ranking personnel the greatest amount of power, which is the power to arrest people, of course. Police constables, unlike members of the military, have a huge discretion as to how to act in particular circumstances. The qualities of a police officer, including bravery, personal commitment and dedication to the public service, also include the exercise of intelligence, judgment, self‑control—all these factors. Therefore a mother should not, it seems to me, hesitate—if she believes that it is necessary for the child to be given words of advice from a figure in authority, assuming she believes that the child will respect that authority—to call the police. This does not mean to say that the child is going to get a criminal record.
Olivia Pinkney
Just to add to that, absolutely, there is a difference between a police officer being called, very much listening to what that mother wants, and then having discretion and a number of options about what to do, which one hopes they would discuss with the mother. The other aspect that is important is that the new outcomes framework seems to be in place, so what happens with crime once it has been recorded? There will be a much greater breadth of explanation for the public, and there will be an option there whereby there is a suspect—if one is going to use that rather pejorative term for that child—but actually prosecution is not supported and not in the right interests, and if that is what the victim, in this case the mother, wants. That outcomes framework will help to explain much more clearly than is currently the case for those kinds of situations.
Mr Turner
Good. HMIC will inspect crime data integrity this year. What systems should be in place for overseeing crime data integrity in the longer term?
Tom Winsor
Sound leadership and governance, and a proper adherence to the national crime recording standards and the Home Office accounting rules. It is extremely important that people are well‑trained and they do understand what those rules are, but they should not allow their judgments—this is one of the potential difficulties—as to what crime should be recorded to be determined by their perception as to what the Crown Prosecution Service will charge or any other misunderstanding. If a crime has been committed, it should be recorded as that crime, whether or not the officer in question believes that it will lead to a prosecution for that offence. It may lead to a prosecution for a lower offence. It is extremely important that they do not mix up their perception as to the course of the investigation with what the crime is.
Olivia Pinkney
I would add a couple more to that, in terms of the success factors. One is a performance framework that is hand in glove with the integrity of the information. The best leaders who do this will celebrate, as an example, a reduction in robbery, but they will be checking that that is accurate and that, actually, recording of theft from the person has not gone up at the same rate as robbery has come down. One ought to have hand in glove between the performance framework and making sure that one is also looking at the data. You should, in a force, be able to see how those both matter and are seen very much and very overtly to matter. The other aspect is around the systems that a force has in place. Some of those are IT‑enabled and, as we have heard previously, there is a whole plethora of IT around the country in terms of policing, but there are forces where their IT really helps them with this. They are really confident, and are able to be confident, around what the public tell them, however it comes in—be it in person, on the phone, on the internet or whatever else—and they are able to follow that and track that through. Whether it ends up as a crime, whether it ends up as no‑crimed—which is not necessarily a bad thing—or whether it ends up as a crime‑related incident, which may or may not be a bad thing, they are able to show and demonstrate that throughout. There is another aspect where a member of the public is able online to track the progress of their crime. Some forces have that and, again, that is a real plus point in terms of that transparency.
Mr Turner
To what extent is HMIC sufficiently independent properly to carry out this role?
Tom Winsor
We are completely independent. HM Inspectors of Constabulary are Crown appointments. We are not civil servants, we are not Ministers; we are Crown appointments. While our inspection programme has to be approved by the Home Secretary, and we can be commissioned to do work by the Home Secretary that we must do, and we can be commissioned to do work by police and crime commissioners that we may do—depending on resources—none of those elected authorities has any power to interfere in the judgments that we make and the contents of our reports.
Chair
You do have ex-police officers and police officers who might become chief police officers serving on HMIC. Is that correct?
Tom Winsor
Two of the five Inspectors of Constabulary are former Chief Constables. For the first time since 1856, a majority of the Inspectors of Constabulary—because I am one of them—are people who have never served in the police service. Yes, a high proportion of our staff are seconded police officers—about 35—and the other 65% are Home Office civil servants, but they are the people who assist us in making the judgments. The judgments are made by HM Inspectors of Constabulary, and we have no allegiance, other than to the public interest and to the law.
Chair
But how comfortable are you that Sir Bernard Hogan‑Howe should finish up quoting a report that he effectively authored in defence of his own performance?
Tom Winsor
I was a little surprised that the report came out seven months after he became Commissioner of the Met. I do not know what process took place in those seven months to alter the report and why there was a delay if it was ready and he had finished it before he left HMIC, so I just do not know how that worked. I think the Commissioner is entitled to quote HMIC’s report; he in no way concealed the fact that he was the HMI responsible.
Chair
No, he was completely open about it, but it does look slightly introverted or incestuous.
Tom Winsor
It is not unprecedented for one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary to leave HMIC and go back into the police, but in most cases, it has not happened. There have been some cases. Tim Hollis became Chief Constable of Humberside after serving in HMIC, and Sir Bernard was a HMI until he went to the Met, but it is unusual.
Chair
How comfortable are you with that limited degree of separation?
Tom Winsor
I think that it is not as limited as your question might imply. It is a complete degree of separation. Nobody knows what they are going to do when they leave HMIC, least of all me.
Chair
Of the £9.4 million that is going to be devoted to these regular annual external audits, can you confirm that it is all for crime data inspections?
Tom Winsor
No. By no means is it all for crime data, and we would not need all that money just to do crime data.
Chair
How much will be devoted to crime data integrity?
Tom Winsor
I cannot tell you now, because we are still working out the relative balance. The £9.4 million is to enable us to do what you might call boots‑on‑the‑ground, core policing inspections as to efficiency and effectiveness across the piece in each force. Crime data integrity, I anticipate, will be a material part of it, but it certainly will not be all of it.
Chair
What systems did you inherit for supervising the integrity of crime data?
Tom Winsor
None, I think.
Chair
So you do need to create some new systems.
Tom Winsor
Oh, yes. We are working extremely hard on all of that right now. We got the Home Office’s green light just before Christmas, and we are already hard at work on working out the detail of how that additional work is going to be done.
Chair
To what extent will devoting part of this resource to supervising crime data integrity be the first priority for this money?
Tom Winsor
It will be a high priority.
Chair
A high priority.
Tom Winsor
Yes, because unless we know the truth of what is happening, police force by police force, and unless we have confidence in the honesty and integrity of what the performance is, we are severely handicapped.
Chair
To what extent are you still going to be relying on police forces to ensure the integrity of their own data and auditing their own systems of inspection, rather than making a direct inspection?
Tom Winsor
We are going to be inspecting how they record crime. We are not going to be accepting their data. We are going to be looking at their data, and then checking it.
Chair
To what extent will that involve actually pulling on the string, going to the victim of that particular crime, and checking that they believe that the crime that was committed against them was recorded correctly?
Tom Winsor
A lot of that, yes.
Chair
So it will be actually physically verifying the individual bits of data.
Tom Winsor
We will be listening to the call, talking to the victim and looking at the investigation.
Olivia Pinkney
Absolutely. If I can perhaps help the Committee with an earlier part of your question, this year’s crime data inspection is costing just over £1 million, to give you an order of magnitude. That is how much we are spending doing this one. Absolutely we are, as we did with Kent, intending to contact victims and ask them for their route through, and we will be checking what they explained to the officer, how that was reported and what happened after that. We will also be doing some unannounced visits to police stations and asking staff there and looking, so we are not at all simply relying on an audit that a force does for itself. A good force will be doing its own audits; it should not be waiting simply for HMIC to turn up. They should be doing this as routine, and we will be interested in the depth, breadth and frequency of that audit. But, certainly, we do not rely purely upon that. We very much do our own audits with our own auditors and do our own checks, and that is what we report upon.
Paul Flynn
Will you be making an assessment of the value of whistleblowers, their work and the protection that is available to them?
Tom Winsor
No. That is not part of the inspection.
Paul Flynn
Is it part of anyone’s role to do that?
Tom Winsor
It is not part of our inspection. That is not to say that it will not be part of a future inspection, but it is just not part of the programme at the moment.
Chair
How concerned are you about the treatment of whistleblowers in the police generally?
Tom Winsor
I have no present reason to believe that whistleblowers in the police are not treated appropriately.
Chair
I have to confess that I am a little bit surprised about that.
Tom Winsor
Well, I am aware of PC Patrick being subject to misconduct proceedings. Is that the source of your surprise?
Chair
Would you be prepared to meet people like PC Patrick and hear their views?
Tom Winsor
PC Patrick wrote to me just before Christmas with a considerable amount of material—much of it seen by this Committee, but I think there was some additional material—making allegations of criminal behaviour and asking HMIC to investigate.
Chair
How have you responded to that?
Tom Winsor
We do not investigate crimes. We are not a police force, but in so far as he is making allegations of systemic failures in police recording practices—he is certainly making that allegation—the evidence that he has presented to this Committee and to us will, of course, be given due weight and taken seriously?
Chair
By whom?
Tom Winsor
Us.
Chair
So you are going to investigate his allegations.
Tom Winsor
We are not going to conduct a criminal investigation.
Chair
No, I understand that.
Tom Winsor
But, most certainly, we are going to look at what he has said and the other witnesses to this Committee, and, indeed, this Committee’s report is going to come out before our report. That is going to be a material input as well.
Chair
We are grateful for that. Generally, do you agree, then, that whistleblowers who feel that they have been blocked by their command chain should be able to come to HMIC?
Tom Winsor
There is no limitation of which I am aware on their ability to do so.
Chair
Should they be allowed to go to IPCC as well?
Tom Winsor
I would like to think about that question and write to you.
Chair
If you could drop us a line, I would be interested in your view on that.
Kelvin Hopkins
I have a very brief question about IT systems. I actually met our local Chief Constable yesterday, and our crime commissioner. We met the Home Office Minister for policing, and they are trying to develop an IT system where, from the tablet in the hand of the bobby on the beat making an arrest, right through to the court system—if all the systems match up—everything that is recorded at the point of arrest can be seen by the courts. At the moment, there are different IT systems for every different institution and they do not match up. It is very difficult, and what our local police force is trying to do is to get that consistency right through to the courts.
Tom Winsor
The state of police IT is breathtakingly primitive in too many respects, and it is a material part of our current inspection on the way in which police time is used.
Chair
I have one final question. You will recall me pointing out to Sir Bernard that I have been casually talking to police officers on the streets about police recorded crime, and there is a very wide degree of cynicism amongst police officers. There is now a social media poll—I appreciate this is a self‑selecting sample—where 90% of police officers who have responded say that they do not believe the police recorded crime figures. Do you recognise that there is at least a degree of concern about the faith of officers themselves in the information that they are providing to their superiors?
Tom Winsor
I am certain there is a degree of concern. I would be astonished if, were every police officer asked, that 90% mark were attained. You say they are self‑selecting, and my experience of social media and the police is that those who participate in it are not necessarily a representative sample.
Chair
But you do recognise that one of the problems in police forces, particularly the Metropolitan Police, is a deep, deep cynicism about their own command chain.
Tom Winsor
I have met many police officers who have a deep cynicism about their command chain, and not just in the Met, but the vast majority of police officers do not spend their time complaining about their bosses. They spend their time preventing crime, looking after the safety of the public and catching criminals, which was why they joined. I think that those who participate in social media and blogs and so on are people who have time on their hands.
Chair
What recommendations should you be making to police forces to deal with the cynicism of officers about the command chain?
Tom Winsor
I think that a great deal depends on communication—for the men and women at the front line to have a very clear understanding of the simplicity of the direction of the police force and what really matters. That, I think, is absolutely key, and in so many respects, there is a long chain of command from the front‑line officer to the chief officer team, and somewhere along the line, the message is getting distorted or even lost.
Chair
How important is it for the leadership to listen to their people?
Tom Winsor
Extremely important, and that is why I believe that chief officers who get out regularly and talk to the front‑line cops and the police staff, who are doing an extremely valuable job, are doing the right thing. It is extremely important they remain in touch.
Chair
How much of your crime data inspections will be looking at how much the leadership listen to their front‑line officers on the subject of crime data integrity?
Tom Winsor
It will form part of that, and it is extremely important, as I said in response to an earlier question, that the leadership have a very clear communication of the need for honesty and integrity in the recording of crime, which is but one element in the assessment of the quality of the performance of the police force.
David Heyes
If your efforts succeed and there is much greater integrity in the stats, we will see an increase in the levels of recorded crime. That is going to be, politically, extremely unpopular. We are not innocent parties in this, as politicians. It is very much the result of politicians of all parties over the years who have contributed to bringing about this culture. How are you going to deal with the fact that your success in your endeavours is going to make you extremely politically unpopular, potentially, for example, with the Home Office?
Tom Winsor
It is not inevitable that improvements in the integrity of the recording of crime will lead to an increase in crime. As AIC Pinkney said, it may be that we will find cases where more than one crime is recorded when in fact only one crime has been committed, but it is conceptually possible that it will show a rise for some crime categories. For example, on sexual offences, particularly sexual offences against children, or many of the other under‑recorded or under‑reported crimes, it would be a good thing. If the police know these crimes are taking place, they can tackle them and deal with it. There is a lot of crime that is just not reported. Examples include paedophilia, child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, cyber‑crime, identity theft, counterfeiting, undetected drugs, gun trafficking, money laundering and internal corporate fraud. A lot of these things are not recorded, and also the national crime recording standards do not include some things that everybody would regard as a crime, for example motoring offences. The example given to me by the Chief Constable of Derbyshire, Mr Creedon, is the uninsured drunk driver in an un‑roadworthy car speeding in a built‑up area and speaking on his mobile phone. That is not recorded as a crime, according to the national crime recording standards, but shoplifting a piece of chewing gum from a multinational supermarket counts as a crime. The data only tells you a certain amount, not the whole picture. You mentioned, if we do conclude that there is more crime than has presently been recorded, that this would lead to a political dissatisfaction. As I mentioned in response to an earlier question, we do not operate according to political criteria. There are no political criteria in the Police Act 1996. We will not operate according to any political criteria; they would be irrelevant considerations in any of our reports, and we would be correctly successfully judicially reviewed if we allowed political considerations to enter into them.
Chair
Thank you. That was a Rolls‑Royce answer at the end. Thank you very much. We are very grateful to you; I am sorry it was slightly curtailed evidence, but we covered a lot of ground in the previous sessions. If there is anything that you want to add that we have not had time for, please do drop us a line. Thank you very much indeed. Oral evidence: Crime Statistics, HC 760 45