Margaret Thatcher’s priorities for the police were always clear. They were cosseted. Numbers, pay, overtime, the sky seemed to be the limit. Cynics would say that it was insurance for her contentious domestic policies, whether taking on the miners or introducing the poll tax.

David Cameron has been very different. It is almost as if he is determined to be confrontational, with swingeing cuts in budgets and numbers and a pay freeze. There have been critical speeches about police performance, culminating in the unseemly and very public spat about the initial reaction to the recent urban riots. Not to mention the blame game of the phone tapping scandal.

So there was perhaps an element of fence mending in home secretary Theresa May’s hastily arranged speech to police leaders on Tuesday. She went out of her way to praise the police for the handling of the riots. “We owe all police officers a debt of gratitude,” she said. “They risk their own safety day in, day out to protect ours. And I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to our police leaders, who made those changes that led to the restoration of order on our streets. They worked tirelessly in leading their officers through a difficult time, and they deserve much credit for that.” But there was no resiling from the proposed cuts. “ The police are going to have to take their share of the burden. People often say there will be twenty per cent police cuts.  And that’s true”, she said.

The home secretary then dealt with extra powers for the police to deal with any future disturbances. In a key section of her speech she said: “We have already said that we will give the police new powers, including new gang injunctions for young people and the right to remove face coverings, as well as considering new curfew powers.  For example, under existing laws, there is no power to impose a general curfew in a particular area, and while curfew conditions can be placed on some offenders as part of their ASBO, criminal sentence or bail conditions, there are only limited powers to impose them on somebody under the age of sixteen.  Those are the sorts of changes we need to consider. So we will make sure the police have the powers they need.”

Apart from practical implications – can you imagine local curfews in Olympics year? – this approach has met with some opposition. Mairi Clare Rodgers, Director of Media Relations at Liberty, said that more inclusion, fairness and equal treatment before the law, not less, is the only way to build personal and social responsibility. Politicians should listen when police chiefs tell them that new powers – on curfews, dispersals and face-coverings – are unnecessary. “We fail to see how leaning on magistrates to lock up youngsters and evicting entire families – innocent siblings and all – from their homes – is justified. Crude spite is flawed, both in theory and practice, and will lead to more problems than it solves. Shutting down entire phone and social media networks – punishing innocent users and those warning others of violence – is as useless as it is disproportionate”, she said.

Maria Fort, of Big Brother Watch, said that, while individual curfews are acceptable, blanket curfews are more controversial. “It springs images of war-time suppression and martial law on societies.  Even in crises of public order, there is no justification for denying the general public such basic liberties, particularly when the vast majority of the public are law-abiding individuals.”

The full text of the home secretary’s speech can be found at:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/speeches/urgent-need-reform

Photo courtesy of nikolaasB’s photostream

“Examples of poor or unnecessary use of section 44 [Terrorism Act 2000] abound. I have evidence of cases where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist…In one situation the basis of the stops being carried out was numerical only, which is almost certainly unlawful…A section 44 stop, without suspicion, is an invasion of the stopped person’s freedom of movement…It is totally wrong for any person to be stopped in order to produce a racial balance in the statistics”.

Not the words of a crusading civil libertarian but the sober judgement of Lord Carlile, the government’s official anti-terror law watchdog, in his annual report. Under section 44, police can stop and search anyone in a designated area without suspicion that an offence has occurred. Last year out of a total of 117,278 people stopped and searched, 73,967 were white, 15,218 were blacks and 20,768 were Asians. Lord Carlile said that he can understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice, but it is an invasion of the civil liberties of the person who has been stopped, simply to “balance” the statistics. According to the ‘Guardian’, he later went on to say that “if, for example, 50 blonde women are stopped who fall nowhere near any intelligence-led terrorism profile, it’s a gross invasion of the civil liberties of those 50 blonde women. The police are perfectly entitled to stop people who fall within a terrorism profile even if it creates a racial imbalance, as long as it is not racist”. He could here be accused of validating the concept that it’s OK to stop a non-white, but not OK to stop a blond woman, even though the vast majority of Asians and black people are as far from any known terrorism as he perceives blond women to be.

Nearly 90 per cent of the searches were carried out by the Metropolitan Police, whose officers use section 44 to carry out stop and search between 8,000 and 10,000 times a month. Lord Carlile admits a sense of frustration that the Metropolitan Police still do not limit their section 44 authorisations to specific boroughs, rather than to the entire force area. He can see no justification for the whole of the Greater London area being under permanent special search powers. None of the many thousands of searches has ever resulted in conviction of a terrorism offence, and he says that its utility has been questioned publicly and privately by senior Metropolitan Police staff with wide experience of terrorism policing.

Lord Carlile calls for greatly reduced use of section 44 powers and repeats what he calls his “mantra”, that terrorism related powers should be used only for terrorism-related purposes. Otherwise their credibility is severely damaged. “The use of section 44 has attracted particular criticism as having a negative effect on good community relations. Its purpose and deployment are poorly understood”.

The full text of Lord Carlile’s report can be found at:-
http://security.homeoffice.gov.uk/news-publications/publication-search/general/Lord-Carlile-report-2009/Lord-Carlile-report.pdf?view=Binary

The trouble with discussing the relationship between alcohol and driving is that the basic principles are so technical. Once you start talking about milligrams of alcohol per millilitres of blood most people are lost.

That is a shame, because the outcome of the debate is quite literally a matter of life and death, particularly as the government has decided against reducing the legal limit for alcohol in a driver’s blood. This is despite suggestions it could save 65 lives a year. The government had previously planned to cut the limit from 80 to 50 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. Cutting the limit to 50 milligrams – equivalent to about half a pint of beer – would put drivers at risk of prosecution after just one drink, and bring them in line with Europe. But Road Safety Minister Jim Fitzpatrick has now said that the consultation document on plans to reduce drink-driving, to be published this month, will not recommend the reduction. According to ‘The Times’, he said “we are not convinced that dropping to 50 is the right answer. Drivers who are between 50 and 80mg are not the ones we’re most worried about. It’s the ones above 100.” He said his focus would now be on better enforcing the existing limit. Police could be given new powers to stop and test drivers at random rather than needing to suspect an offence is being committed.

Road safety campaigners have accused the Government of backtracking. The proposed reduction had been supported by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. Andrew Howard, head of road safety at the AA, said that the motoring organisation used to oppose any lowering of the limit but had changed its position recently. The BMA’s Head of Science and Ethics, Dr Vivienne Nathanson, told BBC News that the BMA believed a reduction in the drink-drive limit would prevent deaths and reduce the number of lives ruined by drinking drivers. “There is clear evidence of the link between rising blood alcohol concentrations and dangerous driving behaviour,” and she added that a new impetus was needed to reduce the toll of injury and death.

Ben Webster, writing in ‘The Times’, suggests that “by leaving the alcohol limit unchanged, the Government will avoid the awkward question of whether to introduce a lower penalty for registering just over 50mg. At present, anyone caught drink-driving serves a minimum ban of 12 months. Most countries that have lower limits only fine drivers and give them penalty points for minor breaches.”

The Legal Services Commission has issued a press release to all Crime Contract holders regarding the recording of travel time in Police Station and Magistrates Court cases.

• From 1st July 2008, providers do not need to record travel time in police station cases unless those cases are classed as exceptional.
• From 1st July 2008, providers do not need to record travel time in magistrates court cases in the 16 main urban areas as this is already allowed for in the fee.

However…

1. Given that you don’t always know when a police station case is going exceptional and
2. You need to be watching all the costs of providing legal aid work very closely

we would advise iLaw users not to ditch the recording of this time just yet.

One of the most important things that iLaw can give you is a complete understanding of how much it costs your firm to provide legal aid work under contract. It helps you now with issues like forecasting cash flow / work in progress and forward planning and in the future when it comes to competitive tendering. All of this help needs good data from your team in the form of accurate time recording so hiding any costs will skew the quality of the information iLaw can give you. The most successful firms are those who are recording and monitoring the cost of everything as it enables them to make good business decisions in time. So use iLaw to its maximum and keep recording your time well.