Our support for our brave police officers is unwavering

Last updated on August 21st, 2023 at 12:52 pm

Last updated on August 21st, 2023 at 12:52 pm

How many of us can say that Our support for our brave police officers is unwavering?  Apparently our Home Office can

Seldom before have I read such uncompromising and total bollocks

The economy has been significantly impacted by the pandemic but we're committed to supporting the police by:

✅ Recruiting 20,000 police officers
✅ Increasing taxpayer investment by over £600m
✅ Doubling sentences for those who assault officers

— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) July 22, 2021

I can’t be arsed to go over the whole nauseating series of tweets, but I will take exception to the very first bullet point.

• Recruiting 20,000 police officers

This is known as the Police Uplift Programme, I have written about it before, the most recent version here.

The Police Uplift Programme is Boris’s Vanity Project to get 20,000 extra Police Officers recruited before March 2023.  The latest Home Office update is due out at the end of this month I believe but by the end of March 2021 (one third through the length of the Programme) they had recruited 8,771 out of their 20,000 target.

“Each police force has a baseline figure, and an allocation of additional officers to recruit by March 2021 . Police forces are required to backfill any leavers throughout the duration of the campaign, as well the additional officers allocated to them through the uplift funding before the recruitment goals can be met.”

Nearly 9,000 out of 20,000 in a third of the time planned, not bad right?  WRONG.

The 8,771 officers recruited under the Police Uplift Programme account for almost all of Police Recruitment over that period.  A very small number have been recruited additionally.

I am grateful to Dr Emma Williams for this little gem that I found hidden away in an OU publication.

It would seem that the expectation was that, over the life of the Police Uplift Programme, a total of 50,000 officers would be recruited.  At the third way point that means, if we are on track, a total of 16,667 officers SHOULD have been recruited.

The Home Office have always been brilliant on Numerical Targets, they love to set them, so here’s my assessment of your performance against your own target.  Failing dismally.

Dear Priti Patel please don’t give me your platitudes about how you value the Police and just how much you are doing to improve their lot when your very first claim on your list just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Various unofficial estimates assess that Police pay has been cut by anything between 14% and 20% in real terms since the 2010 General Election.  Conservatives’ support for our brave Police Officers is unwaveringly absent and demonstrably so.