On 01 August Emily Maitlis interviewed the President of the Association of Chief Police Officers Sir Hugh Orde. Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used. EMILY MAITLIS: Now the Prime Minister says he wants this to be a reforming government, and one of the first areas it's targeted is the police. They've been told they need to become more "available", more "accountable", more "responsive" to what the public want. And they have to do all this with less money. With me now is the President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Hugh Orde. Good morning, Sir Hugh. SIR HUGH ORDE: Good morning. EMILY MAITLIS: I want to start, first of all, with the story you saw in the news: Sarah's Law now being rolled out more widely. Do you think it will be widely taken up by parents? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well I think the reassurance is having the law available if you are worried. It is of course only part of a far wider way in which the police service keep young people safe. As we're watching this programme, many kids will be online; and the Child Online Protection Agency, many detectors across the country are working quietly behind the scenes, invisible to the public, but keeping our most vulnerable safe. So it's a welcome part of that armoury, but it's only part of it. EMILY MAITLIS: Do you think this law in itself will actually save children's lives then? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well the pilot has shown clearly, it has brought to attention people who should be registered, who shouldn't be out there certainly engaging with people under the age of 18. So as the Home Secretary is keen to roll this out quickly, we're working very closely with government to get it out there as quickly as we can across the country. EMILY MAITLIS: I mean even the NSPCC has raised some concerns this could lead to vigilantism. Is that your worry? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well there's always risks. People say people will go underground. Frankly people go underground anyway. With all the other parts of the police service working also in this area, I do think we've got a real hope of keeping people safer and keeping young people safer, which is very important. EMILY MAITLIS: Now I want to look more widely. It's been a big week for the police to take in all the talk of reforms from the Home Secretary and her suggestion that the public need to reconnect with the police, even volunteer to join the police on the beat. Does that sound like a good idea? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well we've already had volunteers for decades. Police specials have worked alongside police officers, now increasing to about 15,000 across the country. I welcome that sort of organised response. I have some concerns which we need to discuss with government about anybody just turning up and saying, "I want to walk alongside a beat officer". They're busy people, they're professional people. They know what they have to do, and they have to focus 100% on keeping their community safe as well as looking after other people. There's many ways we can do this - opening police stations, supporting through other voluntary mechanisms - but we need to be careful how we bring this forward. EMILY MAITLIS: You don't worry that part of this big society idea, if you like, is just a cover up for massive cuts? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well we recognise the cuts, and policing is only actually about 2, 2.5% of total public expenditure but we're absolutely up for taking our part of the pain. The focus of chief constables is very much to protect the frontline of policing, to do all the things police officers do without losing frontline officers, and we'll work very hard with government to achieve that. EMILY MAITLIS: We're seeing a cultural shift, aren't we certainly, from the Conservatives? And the police know what it's like when things go through these upheavals, but a recent report suggested that one in ten officers at any time is actually free to tackle crime. The rest are either deskbound or on leave. Is that true? Do you think the whole culture of policing now has to change? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well no, I think what that describes is the huge complexity of the world in which we live. As I said, there are many detectives working behind the scenes - the murder squads, the terrorist units, the organised crime units, to name but a few. Road traffic units. People delivering across the whole spectrum of what we have to do. Surveillance teams, keeping people safe, but very labour intensive and actually invisible to the public. Now we have to balance that with a real clear desire for frontline officers to be visible and out on the streets in their neighbourhoods. That's what chief constables have to do every day of their working lives, and that's why operational independence is a critical part of the policing model in this country - a model that other parts of the world flock to see, and we must not lose that. EMILY MAITLIS: So when you're talking or when we're talking about 'back office' if you like, you're talking about anti-terror measures. You must recognise now that this government wants more police out on the streets. You have to prioritise. What's going to go? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well we have to make very hard choices. Sir Denis O'Connor, Her Majesty's Inspector, has said if we cut below another 12% we have to completely reorganise the British policing model, and I don't think anyone wants to do that. But let's be very clear, you know chief constables are working day in and day out to cut out any fat in the system. We've been doing that for many years; we've been reforming for many years. So we have to recognise that some officers may well go, but people in offices solve very dangerous and serious crimes and bring very dangerous people to justice. EMILY MAITLIS: Do you think there's a worry that the anti-terror measures will have to go now? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well my good friend and colleague John Yates has already said we will have to face, he will have to take some of the cuts. But you know his determination is like mine - to keep people safe and to deal with the most serious end of the business, as well as dealing with the local - and that describes very well what chiefs do every day of the week. EMILY MAITLIS: Let's look at the ASBO now. Theresa May said it was time to move on. Will you mourn its passing? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well of course Anti Social Behaviour Orders were one of the many pieces of legislation that's come in in the last decade - a huge amount of legislation on policing. 2003 was when the Anti Social Behaviour came in. A very mixed bag, frankly. Most people stop behaving badly because of interaction with the police before you get to an ASBO level. So we'll work very closely with government on the reforms. EMILY MAITLIS: I mean half of them didn't work, right? They were broken. SIR HUGH ORDE: Indeed. EMILY MAITLIS: When did you first realise that they just weren't doing the job? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well some were, and there are some families out there who create huge misery within communities. The point is, I think, what government's trying to do is give the local officer the freedom to succeed and make judgements on behalf of their communities to see what works. And frankly an awful lot of anti social behaviour is dealt with by the neighbourhood cop; other parts of the public sector working closely and seeing the family, working with the family to stop them committing that sort of offence. We may not need Anti Social Behaviour Orders to do that. EMILY MAITLIS: So what would you put in their place then? What specifically would you put if you are freed up, would you say, by the end of the ASBO? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well that's what I would put in: the freedom of frontline officers to make decisions in the bespoke world in which they live. They may have to work with housing, they may have to work with health, they may have to work with education. It's quite interesting. If you look at the rest of Europe, for example, anti social behaviour is seen as a problem for education and families rather than the police and indeed local councillors. So again we have to work with the local councillors to bring these things to a successful long-term conclusion. EMILY MAITLIS: But when you say a "bespoke world", what … You want police to use their own judgement. What does that mean? Does it mean a clip round the ear, a night in the cells, or you know making somebody pick up litter? What do you want your officers to do? SIR HUGH ORDE: Well it certainly doesn't mean a clip round the ear. That would be stepping outside the law. It may well need to make an arrest. That officer has to make the judgement. I think what we … (clears throat) Excuse me, what we've done over the years is we've sort of constrained policing and put so much policy into place. And we are responsible for some of that policy - quite often on the back of reforms and legislation and recommendations from other agencies - but we need to free up that system and create a broad framework in how we operate and let the frontline officer and his or her inspector and sergeant just get on with the job at the local end of the business. EMILY MAITLIS: You think it's fair to say to your officers just use your judgement; we'll go with it? SIR HUGH ORDE: Officers use their judgement every day of the week. You know officers jump into swollen rivers to pull people out; officers decide whether to make an arrest or not every single day of the week. That's not different. What is different, I think, is the clear leadership from the top and my association in particular to say we will support you when sometimes issues don't go according to your plan, and sometimes frankly in the real world of policing things do go wrong. EMILY MAITLIS: The licensing laws are also under review. Give us a sense, if you can, of how much what we're now seeing in the city centres late at night at the weekends is in your opinion as a result of what was once termed café culture, the later licensing laws? SIR HUGH ORDE: A substantial amount. And certainly as I came up on the train this morning, there were still some revellers from the night before leaving London and indeed coming back into London. So I think it's a real issue. We welcome the reforms in the sense that we're going to be consulted very closely on them. I think 24 hour drinking frankly was probably a mistake. The culture in the United Kingdom is different to that in other parts of Europe where it is far less threatening and far more successful. So we need to take that legislation away. And indeed I would welcome the notion that if we have longer licensing hours people pay, the people making the money pay for some of the policing that has to be put in place to keep those people safe when they're out under the influence of alcohol. EMILY MAITLIS: Now a year ago when the first idea of elected commissioners was raised, you said that would be a "resigning issue". It will go ahead now, we heard from Theresa May. What is your fear there? SIR HUGH ORDE: What I said was we had to keep a British model of policing, and what was so precious to that was operational independence. We've achieved that. The Home Secretary has said it loud and clear. It's in chapter two of that report, unequivocal - operational independence of chiefs to make decisions is there. What we need to work on now is how the system works. We have a locally elected individual who is replacing seventeen to nineteen members of the police authority with a local mandate, who will hold the chief to account for everything that chief does. So we have to work very closely with them, so they understand the complexity of our world and don't just go down the local attractive agenda and realise that we have cops doing all sorts of things. EMILY MAITLIS: And you're going to see her later this week, I understand. You'll make clear there is no rowing back on that independence issue? SIR HUGH ORDE: I have made it absolutely 100% clear and will continue to do so. Frankly so has the Secretary of State. The Home Secretary has said in that report it's a fundamental principle of the British style of policing. EMILY MAITLIS: Sir Hugh Orde, thank you very much indeed. SIR HUGH ORDE: Thank you. INTERVIEW ENDS
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