The Home Affairs Committee said it was ‘puzzling’ that crime was falling before extra money was given to forces.
David Winnick MP, acting Chairman of the Committee, said:
“We know the police have had a major increase in funding over the last decade but it is much more difficult to tell what they have done with it.”
MPs said the Government has been meeting targets for the number of offenders brought to justice by handing out warnings for petty offences.
They warned that this approach “is not a good indicator of success in relation to the types of crime which the public fear most”, and added that revised targets should focus on convictions.
Some police resources have been diverted to concentrate on major new tasks, but the Committee said this cannot fully explain the failure to improve conviction rates.
Winnick said, “Overall it doesn’t seem to have been directly responsible for the reduction in crime or any increase in convictions. We can’t judge properly whether these resources have been put to good use and therefore how great an impact a tighter funding settlement will have.”
A recent Audit Commission assessment found that none of the UK’s 43 forces were demonstrating ‘strong performance’ when using resources.
The Committee said that the lack of an overall framework for police productivity makes it difficult to predict any future shortfall in police spending. Later this year the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) will determine police funding until 2011.
Winnick added, “It does seem that the police are still spending too much time on paperwork and there is some evidence that Police Community Support Officers are being cloistered away in offices, when they should be out on the streets providing visible reassurance policing”.
In the last three years, around 20% of officers’ time was spent filling in forms- half of which was not incident related.
