Gone are the days when the Metropolitan Police was led by men such as Sir Edward Bradford, whose qualifications were based on his service as a distinguished military officer – which included being half-eaten by a tiger while on colonial service in India.

Modern-day Met commissioners more often resemble politicians in uniform than military men with exotic scars. Much has also changed in the nature of crime and in Scotland Yard’s responsibilities. The Victorian force founded by Robert Peel in 1829 faced few of today’s challenges of serious crime and terrorism.
In 2011, the Met must not only police the capital, it must also shoulder responsibility for all counter-terrorist operations across the UK, as well as security for visiting VIPs, personnel for major state occasions and royal protection.
Unfortunately, Scotland Yard has found it increasingly difficult to meet these diverse demands – and the phone-hacking scandal has brought the organization to a crisis point. In the Lords this week, Lord Blair, a former commissioner, asked if the resignation of two commissioners in three years meant that there was “something gravely wrong with the political oversight” of that body. It had not occurred to him that something might have been wrong with his own judgment and performance. But the crisis in confidence goes beyond personalities, to fundamental issues of policy. Not only has its leadership been lacking, but the Met’s very constitution is in question. Like the Home Office in 2006, the case for reform is stronger than ever.
The first structural problem is size. The Met is a monster – it has more than 52,000 staff, and absorbs a quarter of the policing budget for England and Wales. In personnel numbers, it is larger than the next five forces combined. In Cost of the Cops, a forthcoming Policy Exchange report, the Met scores poorly on efficiency, with one of the lowest rates of civilianization – meaning that too many officers work away from the front line, while being paid more than civilians in the same roles.
The Met may simply have grown too large to be led effectively, which goes to the second problem of governance. The commissioner is the most senior police officer in the country and is appointed jointly by London’s Mayor and the Home Secretary. The policing responsibilities are national as well as local. This divided accountability creates institutional tension between the mission to keep crime down in London, and a security remit stretching across the country.
Counter-terrorism is an immense and complex task, but the problem is not capability but accountability. The ambitious reform agenda of Theresa May and Nick Herbert will bring democratic oversight of local policing, with elected civilian commissioners, a stronger role for the Mayor, and a much clearer national focus. They have decided, rightly, that the threat of serious crime demands a dedicated body – a National Crime Agency (NCA) – with the operational heft to ensure 43 police forces to work together.
The NCA – led by a senior chief constable – will be accountable to the Home Secretary alone and, for the first time, will give a clear national lead for serious crime. With Boris Johnson gaining more policing responsibility from next year and a dedicated national agency set up by 2013 to lead on serious crime, the obvious evolution is to let the NCA assume the Met’s other non-territorial functions including counter-terrorism, allowing the Yard to focus on local policing.
Each time this is floated, institutional resistance looms large. In a speech to Policy Exchange in May, the outgoing commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, argued that counter-terrorism operations were too important to be unsettled for reasons of “mere structural convenience”. But his argument works better turned on its head. The Met holding on to responsibilities it has thanks to historic accident is a far superior example of “structural convenience”.
In 13 months’ time, the biggest policing challenge in the world will be over. But however well the Olympic operation goes, it does not resolve the structural problems. After 2012, a convincing case can be made that giving away those duties will improve the Met’s service to Londoners and enhance the UK’s counter-terrorism capability.
One element has not changed much since Commissioner Bradford’s days. British policing remains a very exclusive profession. Senior British officers can run forces in Australia. Canadian chiefs (schooled in Britain) can run Caribbean forces. But the suggestion that a foreign police chief might run a British force is incomprehensible to the Association of Chief Police Officers. This colonial outlook creates a closed service that locks out talent.
Whatever changes are made, the Commissioner of the Yard will remain one of the most distinguished roles. We owe it to Londoners and to all Met officers to ensure that the Yard also has the best leadership. Let’s find the strongest candidate who can deliver for London – whatever their accent – and let the Mayor alone be judged on that.
Elements of British policing remain the best in the world. Yet, as with the railways, just because it was invented does not mean that other countries have nothing to teach us now. The Met cannot perform well unless it is properly accountable, with a clear focus, and it cannot become the best at fighting crime unless it is led by a world class crime-fighter. The British monopoly on best policing practice ended some time ago. We should consider calling time on the Yard’s monopoly of UK policing, too.
(Source: Daily Telegraph