Shabana Mahmood's speech at the APCC/NPCC Summit

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood's speech at the APCC/NPCC Summit.

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Thank you, Emily, for that introduction. 

And thank you, all, for having me today.  

It is a pleasure to be with you all.  More than that, it is an honour.  

I have always had the deepest respect for the service of those in this room.  

But you don't fully understand it, until you become Home Secretary.  

Just a few weeks after being appointed, I attended my first National Police Memorial Day, in Coventry. I will never forget the sight of those four candles lit to honour the sacrifice of those who fell in the line of duty. One for each nation in the United Kingdom.  

This year, they honoured: Michael Swindells, of the West Midlands; John Robinson Olphert, of the Royal Ulster Constabulary; Terry Davies, of Gwent Police; and Stuart Simpson of Strathclyde.

Each candle was lit by a surviving child, and one by a beautiful one-year-old grandchild too, born on the twentieth anniversary of the death of the grandfather she never knew. Two were serving officers.  

I am sure that was no surprise to you all, as yours is a calling that is often passed down through families, even within those that have made the ultimate sacrifice.   

In the weeks that followed, I have seen policing at its finest.  

First, in the response to the terrorist attack at Heaton Park Synagogue.  

I will not forget the extraordinary bravery of the officers that day. 

They ran towards a terrorist they had every reason to believe was about to detonate a bomb, and, in doing so, they put their lives at risk to save others.  

I was also humbled to see the warmth of the community response directed towards Sir Stephen Watson personally and to the entirety of Greater Manchester Police. It spoke of a force that is not just for Manchester, but of Manchester.  

I saw such bravery once again, all too soon afterwards at the horrifying Huntingdon train attack. Again, the police sprinted towards danger, reacting swiftly and surely, saving lives through their bravery.  

This was alongside, it must be said, the incredible bravery of those on the train itself including the crew member, who I am pleased to say has now left hospital to continue his recovery.  

I would like to pay tribute to the work of Lucy D'Orsi and all of her team at the British Transport Police, as well as the response of Cambridgeshire Police whose armed unit brought the attack to an end. It was policing at its finest.  

While of course these were the moments that dominated the media coverage. 

Further from the public eye, we know that good policing is working across the country.  

Just look at how knife crime is falling, down 5 percent in the first 12 months of this year, with knife homicides down by nearly a fifth and close to 60,000 knives taken off our streets by forces across the country.  

West Midlands have brought knife-enabled robbery down by a quarter, London's homicide rate is the lowest it has been in decades, perhaps in history. Theft and burglary are down by more than a fifth in Greater Manchester. And robbery is down a third in Cumbria. 

These are just a few examples of what is happening across the nation. 

On behalf of the Government, and of the whole country, I thank you for it.  

I would like to offer my personal thanks to all the forces and PCCs who delivered the Summer Initiative. 

That targeted crime and anti-social behaviour in around 650 town centres and high streets.  This saw more visible police patrols, more undercover operations, more fines, more protective orders and more arrests. 

Communities continue to feel the benefit. 

To take just one example, I know violent crime has been cut in half in Weymouth town centre thanks to dedicated patrols that began during the Summer Initiative. 

Following on that success, I would like to thank you all for getting to work on a Winter of Action, which will target retail crime, the night-time economy, and persistent antisocial behaviour. 

This will see forces once more make high-visibility patrols, up their use of fines and anti-social behaviour powers and work in partnership with councils, schools, healthcare and businesses. 

This kind of policing is vital. It is effective, visible, and targeted at the crimes that tear at the fabric of a local community. While some dismiss these as low-level crimes, we in this room know that there is no such thing as low-level offending: street crime, shoplifting, phone theft, drug offences.  

These are the crimes that the public see most often, and they are rising, some at a considerable rate. 

These are the kind of crimes I know well myself.  

I grew up in a high-crime neighbourhood, in Birmingham. I would wager I am the first Home Secretary to have grown up above the family corner shop, where I used to work behind the counter.  

There, I got pretty damn good at mental maths, because every time we bought a proper till, it would get nicked.  

And while the till was nicked, the burglar wasn't, and neither did the shoplifters who plagued our shop until my dad placed a cricket bat below the counter and occasionally brandished it when the moment arose. I'd better not say whether he used it or not.  

So look, I know the harm these crimes do, and I know the harm that is done to trust in us – both police and politicians – if we fail to tackle this offending.  

And we must be honest, trust in police is falling. 

In 2019, it was 80 percent.  Today, it is 71 percent.  

Now, these approval ratings are ones that politicians can only dream of, but the fall is a serious point and one we must address.  

Because when trust falls, the sacred bond between the police and public frays.  

As the old Peelian maxim has it: “the public are the police, and the police are the public.” 

We police, in this country, by consent, and that consent demands that we rebuild trust.  

That starts by bringing policing closer to the public. I would like to pay tribute to you all, and to the previous Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, for introducing the Neighbourhood Guarantee that now sees a named contactable officer in each neighbourhood.  

And, as you know, this Government is committed to 3,000 more neighbourhood officers by March of this coming year.  Doing this is vital.  

I have no doubt that visible policing works: it deters, it reassures and It rebuilds the link between the public and their police.  

Clearly, far too much police time is being spent behind a desk today.  

In part, this is because police forces across the country are duplicating work: the same types of software are being procured many times over, instead of once, nationally. Thousands of man-hours are wasted trawling through CCTV, inputting data or redacting documents. And opportunities are missed to catch perpetrators, because intelligence systems don't communicate. 

Through our efficiency programme, we are already beginning to see improvement. 

A national energy strategy will help forces save money, better use of AI is improving productivity and admin processes are being automated, freeing up officer time for investigations. 

But we must do more.  

The structure of our police forces is, if we are honest, irrational.  

We have loaded critical functions – like the National Police Air Service and vetting – onto local forces, drawing attention away from neighbourhood policing.  

We have 43 forces tackling criminal gangs who crosses borders, and the disparities in performance in forces across the country have grown far too wide. 

Giving truth to the old saw that policing in this country is a postcode lottery.  

In parts of policing, we are starting to embrace the potential of new technology: Lancashire and Avon and Somerset have championed the use of automation software, the Metropolitan Police have made over 1,000 arrests using live facial recognition technology, including  catching rapists and robbers, and the Tackling Organised Exploitation and Abuse programme has already saved millions using AI for transcription and translation. 

But, across the board, we are still far too dependent on the same technology that has been used for decades.  

And the adoption of technology is piecemeal. Some forces have, and some haven't. 

Some duplicate others, costing the taxpayer money and, on other occasions, some are procuring technology delivered to markedly different standards.  

In her speech last year, my predecessor announced that we will publish a white paper on policing reform, including the creation of a new National Centre of Policing. 

In the coming weeks, we will publish that white paper, setting out how the National Centre will operate, alongside wider reforms to policing.  

The detail will follow but, to give you a sense of direction, I was a reformer at the Ministry of Justice. I will be a reformer at the Home Office too.

And I will be driven, above all else, by performance, and I will provide the right level of scrutiny and accountability without ever stepping into operational independence which ensures all of you can police expertly without fear or favour.

Doing this requires that we have the right democratic accountability over police forces.  

As you will have seen already, I have made a difficult decision in that regard in the last few weeks. 

One that I know won't be popular with everyone in this room.  

So let me start with a word to those who serve as Police and Crime Commissioners today, and those who have done so in the past.  

Public service is a calling. I pay tribute to all of you who put yourselves on the line, submitted yourself to the fierce and sometimes unkind gaze of public scrutiny and served your community.  

My decision to abolish the position of Police and Crime Commissioner was that, and that alone: a judgement on the position, and not the people who occupied it.  

I look forward to working with you for the rest of your terms. I'm sure many of you will continue to serve the public, in other ways, when that term is up, and I thank you for it.  

I believe the position of a Police and Crime Commissioner, unfortunately, has not worked. 

Without necessary investment in creating a public profile, too many voters were unaware of the existence of the position, or its occupant.  

This broke an important democratic link between the public and their police.  

The creation of the role saw new structures added that created too much additional bureaucracy, where so much exists already.   

And the position created barriers to forces collaborating across borders at precisely the moment that it was vital that they did. 

In their place, local accountability for policing will move to mayoralties, a is already the case in London, Manchester, and West, South and North Yorkshire.  

And, where a Mayoralty does not yet exist, we will create local Policing and Crime Boards, which brings together local authority leaders. 

We will restore some powers back in-house under the Home Secretary, as they were in years gone by.

It is vital that police forces are held to account democratically.  

It is also essential that we ensure there is consistency in the application of the law across forces.  

In a recent roundtable with Chief Constables from across the country, in the wake of the antisemitic terror attack in Manchester, we discussed the issue of protest powers.  

I had just made the decision to afford the police greater powers to impose conditions on protests.  

But I was concerned that there were wider questions that needed to be considered about whether the law is sufficient and being consistently applied. 

Last week, I announced that the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, will lead a review into protest powers.  

We need an approach to policing protest that protects this essential freedom while ensuring those who march through the streets of our cities cannot incite racial hatred, whoever they may be.

There must always be a right to free assembly in this country, but we must enforce our laws when protest turns to criminality.  

I have also asked Lord Macdonald to consider the crossover between these powers and how we are policing the online world.  

Clearly, there have been egregious examples of disproportionate arrests. Where necessary, we will legislate to clarify what is inside and outside the law. But we must also be honest, some of these recent arrests raise questions about police decision-making.

So let me state my position on the issue clearly:  The public rightly expect that we police our streets. There is most certainly criminality online. Some things cannot be legally tweeted, just as they cannot be legally said. But we should not be policing perfectly legal language in any individual's tweets.  

Lord Macdonald's work will soon begin – and I am expecting him to report back in the spring with his findings.  

Consistency in policing is essential to restoring public trust.  

This extends to consistently upholding the very highest standards.  

The recent revelations uncovered by the BBC's Panorama programme about the custody team at Charing Cross Police Station were a reminder of the work that still remains to be done.  

I am pleased to see that action has been swift at Charing Cross specifically, with six officers already dismissed via accelerated misconduct hearings. 

And I know that Sir Mark Rowley has been relentless in raising standards and pursuing wrongdoing, removing over 1,400 officers and staff. 

That work is essential and cannot stop.  

The powers of the police depend on the continued approval of the public. That is eroded by scenes such as those we witnessed at Charing Cross. 

Let it be a reminder that the work of raising police standards never ends.  

We are at a moment of challenge and opportunity for policing in this country. 

We have exceptional police officers working across the country. Those who do their uniform and their local communities proud and who confront danger that the rest of us could scarcely imagine.  

We are seeing progress that is too rarely heralded, like the extraordinary fall in knife crime. 

But we also know there are crimes that are persistent, deeply damaging to communities and eroding trust in the police. 

My goal, as Home Secretary, is to ensure you are able to rebuild that trust. That uniformed police are cutting crime, not consumed by admin. 

That technology makes policing more effective and more efficient.

That national policing is world class without distracting local forces from neighbourhood policing.

And that we have political accountability and oversight that does not constrain how you protect the communities that you serve. 

Ultimately, our goal is simple and it is shared:  we must ensure the 200-year-old principle that has underpinned our policing that it is both of the public and for the public.

That this is protected and renewed.  

And, in so doing, I have no doubt we can restore trust in policing for years to come.  

Thank you very much.