Carping, overpaid police chiefs and a deeply disturbing dereliction of duty. . .

When the Coalition announced cuts to the police budget in 2010, there was an immediate hue and cry from that great vested interest otherwise known as her Majesty’s Constabulary.

Many senior policemen forecast soaring crime rates, even anarchy. For example, Assistant Commissioner John Yates of the Metropolitan Police suggested that allegedly draconian cuts would increase the chances of an Al Qaeda attack.

The president of the Police Superintendents’ Association feared there would be widespread riots as a result of public sector cuts, and law-abiding citizens would no longer be able to depend on the thin blue line to protect them.

As for the Police Federation, the trade union for rank-and-file officers, its gloom and despondency knew no bounds. I was lobbied by its then chairman, who took me out for a very lavish lunch and told me that fewer police would mean more offences.

In the event, of course, crime has fallen consistently in most categories for every one of the past five years. Whether this is due to greater police efficiency, or whether it is part of a mysterious trend observable in most Western countries, or whether some combination of the two factors is responsible, is much debated.

What is certainly clear is that, despite the apocalyptic warnings, the incidence of most crimes has come down significantly. This being the case, you might think that police chiefs would now be more cautious before reaching again for their crystal balls, and muttering dark prophecies. not a bit of it.

Courtesy of BBC2’s newsnight on Tuesday, two senior police officers forecast great tribulations for the public if a new round of cuts to the police budget is announced next month. We were informed the cuts will be in the range of 25 to 40 per cent, which is almost certainly an exaggeration.

Craig Mackey, Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, suggested that large companies might have to pay the police for investigating cyber-crime. As for the rest of us, he thought that a certain amount of ‘DIY policing’ would be helpful, which does not seem very practicable.

SArA THORNTON, the £252,000-a-year chairwoman of the national Police Chiefs’ Council (a sort of trade union for chief constables), said that as a result of cuts, bobbies on the beat would be few and far between — not that I can remember when I last saw one.

This is the same Sara Thornton who warned us in July not to expect police to turn up at our door if we have been burgled. She claims the police simply do not have the manpower.

In short, the nature of the scaremongering has changed since 2010. Instead of summoning up the spectre of an increased number of terrorist attacks and rampaging civic unrest, a fear is being deliberately instilled that, as a consequence of continuing cuts to their budget, the police will not be around to help us when we need them.

Isn’t such alarmist talk pretty despicable? The lesson I would draw from what has happened since 2010 is that there is room for further efficiencies in the police and these should not result in officers ignoring burglaries. Believe it or not, as a part of some daft new scheme, Leicestershire police have refused to turn up at attempted burglaries unless the victims live in evennumbered houses.

The truth is that police chiefs, aided and abetted by the growing anti-austerity brigade (particularly at the BBC) have grossly exaggerated the scope of the cuts already applied to the police budget since 2010.

At that time, the Coalition announced cuts to it of 20 per cent over five years in england and Wales, which turned out to be 14 per cent once increased council tax funding was taken into account.

What police and their cheerleaders never tell us is that in the previous decade there had been an unprecedented bonanza in spending on the police, which rose by about a quarter in real terms. The number of officers went up in those years by 15 per cent, civilian staff by almost 75 per cent.

needless to say, this huge splurge of spending by new Labour led to only a small improvement in the detection rate. however, there was certainly a lot more time-wasting form-filling, while the costs of investigating major offences rose sharply.

notwithstanding all the bellyaching of police chiefs, expenditure on the police stands more or less where it was a decade ago. And yet during that time, particularly over the past five years, there has been a sharp fall in the amount of crime.

no doubt, as they have been forced to cut back some of their bureaucracy, police forces have grown somewhat more efficient. But I can think of more examples off the top of my head of money-saving measures which would not affect the service the police give the public.

A recent Freedom of Information request revealed that police forces throughout the UK spend more than £36 million a year on publicity and Pr, with the Metropolitan Police alone accounting for some £10 million. If that amount were halved, think of how many extra front-line police officers could be hired.

There are countless examples of police ‘overkill’ when excessive resources are devoted to cracking a nut.

TWo weeks ago, the Met said that it was scaling back its police guard around the ecuadorean embassy in London where fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been holed up for three years at a cost to the Met of £12.6 million. Why didn’t it act sooner?

In cases of arrests of highprofile but unthreatening suspects, or swoops on their houses, police invariably arrive in droves. When Cliff richard’s Berkshire house was searched in August 2014 — the blameless singer was absent — eight plainclothed policemen sped up in five unmarked cars.

no lack of resources there, then, and no lack when it came to investigating journalists for phone- hacking and paying public officials for stories, the latter of which, in the view of some juries, was all too often in the public interest. All the timeconsuming inquiries of dozens of police officers, and the outlay of £33.5 million, resulted in very few convictions.

Then there are untold savings that could be made by amalgamating some of the 43 police forces in england and Wales, and getting rid of a lot of duplication and unnecessary tiers of bureaucracy.

That would take time, so may I make an immediate, practical suggestion — to abolish Sara Thornton’s national Police Chiefs’ Council (formerly Acpo), which is little more than a talking shop? her annual emoluments of £252,000 could fund a few bobbies on the beat, and the organisation’s £4 million a year budget many more.

I don’t doubt most police officers do a marvellous job, and we obviously depend on them, but some of their bosses are hidebound, stubborn, not especially bright, and ultra-conservative.

People want bobbies on the beat and they expect burglaries and similar crimes to be investigated — minor to some police chiefs, perhaps, but major, traumatic events in their lives. It will be a dereliction of duty if officers retreat further from investigating these matters.

The police could do more for less, if their bosses were made to think afresh. none of us should be taken in when they are invited to clamber aboard the latest BBC anti-austerity bandwagon.