Checks and balances will be needed under the home secretary’s new vision of policing, with its ‘British FBI’
The police, said the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, in the House of Commons on Monday, is “the last great unreformed public service”. Her white paper aims to redraw the policing map of England (though policing is devolved, the other nations will feel the effects). If she succeeds, the current patchwork will be replaced by a multi-tier system. The 43 existing police forces, most serving a single county, will be abolished and replaced with a smaller number of bigger organisations.
Above all this will sit a new National Police Service – likened to a British FBI – that will take over responsibility for counter-terrorism from London’s Metropolitan police, and for serious and organised crime from the National Crime Agency set up under David Cameron. It will also take over major fraud investigations, as well as functions of the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing. Training, standards and leadership will henceforth be under one umbrella. The leader of this organisation will be the country’s most senior officer.
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