Organised crime can only be beaten by organised police - The Daily Telegraph, 27 February 2009

Ours is the most expensive police force in the world but it is failing to do its job properly. Structural inefficiencies mean that it is failing to get to grips with criminal networks peddling drugs, guns and people. While the latest intelligence report stated that an inflow of firearms from overseas is hitting the streets of major British cities, the current Policing and Crime Bill tries to curb the demand rather than stem the supply of this trade.

This is a wrongheaded approach; the human and financial cost will be much greater if gangs are allowed to gain further traction before they are apprehended. In Reform's report, A New Force, we suggest that the Home Secretary's primary focus should be on establishing a national lead force that can disrupt and stop criminal networks before misery results on the streets of our towns and cities.

Criminals are the main beneficiaries of England and Wales's poorly organised forces. For now, there is little incentive for the 43 police forces to arrest a kingpin of a people-trafficking gang since they are relentlessly targeted on burglary numbers, and local people want to see bobbies on the beat. And even if the forces wanted to tackle the gangs, the information is lacking. The 43 forces still have IT systems which don't "speak to each other", five years after the critical report into the Soham murders recommended that agencies share information. Meanwhile, the experience of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, set up to tackle this sort of crime, has shown that setting up a national agency unconnected with on-the-ground policing will not solve the problem. It tends to focus on "James Bond" style international activities, rather than the grunt work of investigation and surveillance.

Even the police recognise the failings of the existing model. In response to Reform's report, Sir Norman Bettison, the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, acknowledges the need for national and regional co‑ordination. And while politicians are intent on further legislation and target setting, the police are showing nascent signs of collaboration. They have created workable structures to allocate resources between forces (Police Support Units) and to co-ordinate the response to the terrorist threat.

The counter-terrorism effort is a "hub and spoke" model. A Metropolitan Police officer - under the direction of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee - co-ordinates seven hubs around England and Wales, for the purposes of surveillance and investigation. The officers in these hubs are from local forces; they know the patch and have contact with fellow police. The funding is provided by the Home Office as a national matter. This model is reported to work well, both by local forces and the Met.

The only problem for the public is that this is funnelled through the unaccountable Acpo. The muscle of these senior police officers cannot be underestimated. Once they have scaled the heights of the "police pyramid" to the rank of chief constable, they are protected by the organisation structure, where accountability falls to committees rather than individuals.

The Government needs to sort out the structure of policing if there is to be efficient and effective combating of serious crime. Waiting for the problem to go away is not an adequate response. It must start by giving the Metropolitan Police a mandate to lead on serious and organised crime. This should be based on the counter-terrorism hub model of central co-ordination and local action.

Progress will require a delicate balancing act of subjecting senior police officers to greater scrutiny and accountability, while relying on their skills to co-ordinate and run successful policing operations. The political effort will be worth it. The disruption of a network or the removal of a kingpin will have a cascade of benefits for people in communities across the country.

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