Question: Was it enough of a crime cracking Queen's Speech for you ?

Fred Broughton: There have been enormous changes in the police service and criminal justice arena over the last six years. We experienced the process of change with the Conservative government, with Michael Howard and David Maclean as the two principal ministers in the Home Office and with Tony Blair and Jack Straw in opposition. It was a very competitive time. There were proposals, almost on a daily basis, about how to be tougher on crime, on criminals and how to strengthen the criminal justice system itself. So we have been through a process of change in the wider sense of the police service, particularly in the way we operate against criminals, particular crimes and the way the matters progress the Crown Prosecution Service.

So we have had six long years of a pretty intense period of change. The Queen's Speech dealt with one important operational idea which was the issuing of fixed penalty tickets for anti-social, disorderly and criminal behaviour on the streets. The debate is focussed on whether this will improve the way we operate, reduce paperwork, fast track cases through the criminal justice system and enable police officers to get back on the streets. At this stage, we are uncertain whether this will happen. The whole idea requires further examination to ensure it works in practice.

Question: Why aren't you certain ?

Fred Broughton: Fixed penalties initially appear a good idea if policing is speeded up. If we arrest somebody for disorderly conduct when they are drunk or under the influence of drugs and take them to a police station, where they are issued with a fixed penalty ticket, they might admit their behaviour immediately. This, possibly, is a fast-track system of getting people through the criminal justice system. But, the following day, they may dispute their behaviour and allege the police acted wrongly. They may try and plead not guilty or propose to plead not guilty, leaving the officer involved reliant on notes and statements from witnesses. So the fixed penalty ticket may be an addition to the set of papers that have already been issued. That is the issue for us. It will be a good system if it reduces bureaucracy but we need to test the practicalities of what has been suggested to ensure it lessens rather than increases the burden.

Question: Another issue that arose from the Queen's Speech - teen curfews - have you got the numbers to enforce these curfews ?

Fred Broughton: No we have not. We have insufficient people patrolling and don't have the people with time to devote to this particular problem.At the moment, the current law applies to the under tens. Whilst there are some out-of-control nine-year olds, and we do encounter nine-year-olds who are burgling at night, causing major problems in their community, intimidating people, committing damage and being generally unruly, the larger, problematic group is the under 16s. And the intention now is to increase the threshold to under 16s, which is the age the Police Federation suggested originally. But a larger group will require more police resources. Curfews are also highly bureaucratic and forces have been telling me that they can't break through the bureaucracy to implement them in the first place.

Question: So as well as this extension to sixteen year olds, you are looking for a more streamlined system to these curfews?

Fred Broughton: Right. The first thing to say about curfews is that they are a sensible and effective idea. There are those opposed to them in a libertarian sense. But if you have a young person, out of control, the curfew aims to impose the responsibility on the family to manage them, with the support of social services. There is a sanction if people are acting unreasonably and won't accept the support that is being offered. So they are not draconian.

But if the extension of curfews is going to be effective in any way, there has to be a streamlining and some resolution about how one goes about imposing the curfews and the procedures involved. What I am hearing is of frustration with too much bureaucracy to actually get anything achieved.

Question: How would you differentiate between 16, 17 and 18 year olds if you had to implement a curfew order. Would something like an ID card system be a help?

Fred Broughton: Firstly, curfews are aimed at the under-16s, so we are talking about trying to identify 15-year-olds and below. The debate about ID cards has been ongoing for about eight years. Clearly, identification of people is very important for policing and ID cards are an extremely effective means of establishing someone's identity. We believe there should be a voluntary system of ID, and that life should be made easier for those possessing ID. I think the new driving licence, showing someone's photograph and stating their address, will become much more effective once everyone has one. They will help officers identify who people really are.

Question: But it is going to be a lot more difficult for you to enforce without an ID system isn't it?

Fred Broughton: Yes. Fixed penalty notices, etc, are not going to work when we are given a bogus name and address. People who are under the influence of drink and drugs sometimes don't start to speak sensibly until hours after they have been arrested. So issuing them may not be the ideal until we have a good system of identification in place.

Question: Moving on now, the Met Chief, Sir John Stevens, claims the police is in crisis. But the Government has promised £151 million for attracting new recruits. Isn't that enough ?

Fred Broughton: The recent increase in police budgets (5.1% across the board) is dependent upon forces making 2% efficiency savings again, so there are some difficulties with budgets generally. The Government has also set aside targeted money, £150 million or so, for additional recruitment of 9,000 officers over three years. This is conditional on chiefs of individual forces hitting performance targets for their increase. I think everyone has now recognised that we have approximately 3,000 fewer officers than in 1997 when Labour came into power. We have approximately 4,000 fewer than in 1993 when the Conservatives were in power. It was in 1993 that we started to see a decline. This has affected us enormously in many ways. Police officers now have a huge increase in workload and in responsibilities with new laws. There are major difficulties with public expectations of policing and police visibility, never mind responding to 999 emergency calls.

What the Government is now doing is late in the day. We have had three years of this administration and have only just seen real money being set aside to try and stem the tide of a haemorrhaging service.

The problem we face now, is one of quality of the people applying to join. We have had many people applying but we do not want to reduce academic standards or physical requirements. We are determined to maintain or improve policing standards. We want to avoid some of the mistakes made in recent years. To achieve this, the service needs highly trained and professional officers and we are determined our standards should be upheld. The buoyant economy is not helping police recruitment. A highly competitive labour market, particularly in London and the south, means the police salary is not hugely attractive. Conditions of work are not particularly attractive either; having to work weekends and shifts, sometimes in adversarial circumstances. Policing is not just about the nicer things we do - it is about convicting criminals and dealing with some very difficult people. The policing workplace is difficult and sometimes the people we would like to attract, are not opting for this. There has to be a concerted effort to raise the status of policing, generally.

The other recruitment issue is lack of space available in the current training regime to cater for this sudden additional influx, generated through the first-ever national advertising campaign. We are unable to process officers through the system quickly enough, so it is going to take at least two or three years before we start to see numbers rise. We lose about 5,000 officers a year through natural wastage, retirement, injury and ill health, so we have to recruit 10,000 to 12,000 a year to begin to achieve 9,000 extra officers. It is the easiest thing in the world to reduce the police service, which has been happening these last six or seven year. It is much tougher to increase numbers.

Question: Does the Government need to act now, in terms of getting the mechanisms in place to process these extra people. Is more money needed, or more investment?

Fred Broughton: The Government needs to act on our suggestion to increase the number of places available in training schools and to invest more in the training regime. We urgently need more trainers and accommodation for residential courses. The extra money for additional recruits is only available to chiefs if they can accommodate recruits in training establishments. Every chief in the country is having some difficulty with this.

Question: Following the recent trial of his former manager David Jones, Rupert Lowe, Chairman of Southampton Football Club, said: "I think the police have been undermined by a politically correct society." What do you make of that assessment?

Fred Broughton: Policing in the last six years or so has been one of the most difficult and painful things I have experienced. The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence has had a huge impact on the police service, in the way it deals with racist murders and incidents and how it treats members of the public and police colleagues alike. Running alongside this have been issues of sexism, sexual orientation and disability. We in the Police Federation have taken a clear line that the service should be anti-racist, anti-sexist and fair to all. We have taken many practical steps to underpin our commitment, with training and other measures to address personal attitudes and stereotyping. We have all been on a huge learning curve and I am not going to say that political correctness is a nonsense. Some of it is, some of it is not. There has to be a reasonable approach to it. For example, if a 50-year-old policeman in a street in Manchester happens to call a middle aged woman 'love' then we all understand it would be over the top if this resulted in a discipline enquiry. However, there may be other circumstances where the word is very inappropriate. We all have to make judgements. And the balance here is 'reasonableness'.

Question: You have called for a Royal Commission on policing. What do you think this will achieve?

Fred Broughton: First of all, transparency. There's a huge suspicion and a powerful sense of unease in the police service about what is currently being discussed about future changes to our service, which is revered the world over. Are standards going to be lowered? Is the patrol of our streets going to be given up to a different body of people - neighbourhood wardens? Are salaries and conditions of service going to be reduced, resulting in reduced standards? Are we going to start policing in a different way? Is the professional policing body going to withdraw to headquarters and bureaucracy and leave the streets to a lower standard of policing?

We use the word 'omnicompetent' to describe the patrolling officer who could one day become a Chief Constable. S/he joins as a high standard recruit and can progress the ranks to become a Superintendent in around 10 years and a Chief Constable in 15 years. The people who patrol our streets are high calibre professionals with the potential to become chief officers. But there is a real sense of concern that this is changing and that a lower standard of policing is being proposed. Bit by bit, the role of the patrol officer is being reduced. It has been going on for ten years or more.

We are now calling for an independent Royal Commission to take a long, hard look at policing in its entirety. Internally, there are those with one view, politicians in the Home Office have another, Parliament has another and then there is the community itself that wants more police visibility. Anyway, the debate about policing has been on-going for so long, and become so politicised, that we thought is should be discussed in the open, in front of a Royal Commission. Hopefully those appointed to a Royal Commission would come from all different walks of life including ex-professionals within the police service, ex-politicians from the House of Lords or the Commons and perhaps community representatives. We want the debate brought into the open so everyone can express their opinions. Topics that might be discussed could be how much is policing going to cost if people are to get the level of service they want, what sort of quality and type of policing do people want? Whatever the outcome, there is a need for the transparency and independence of a Royal Commission, which might take 18 months to two years to report. We know it would prompt change but we have endured political tinkering almost every year. We might not agree with all the findings of a Royal Commission but at least they would reflect the arguments and do so transparently. At the moment, discussions are being conducted behind closed doors.

Question: So why do you think the political parties haven't really accepted this Royal Commission idea?

Fred Broughton: It is interesting that governments of the day, whichever persuasion, do not like Royal Commissions. They have their own opinions and priorities that have to be achieved within their timetables. The current Government's priority is trying to win the next election. Most political parties are looking at the short term - at the next three to five years - but not beyond. They look at what is most advantageous for their election possibilities in that period. The Conservative opposition hasn't supported the Royal Commission but has made good noises about it. The Lib Dems supported it and then withdrew. But now they are talking about a review of some kind. So I think they are supporting us, but not entirely.

Question: If things keep changing as the years go by what is really at stake if the parties fail to buy into this idea of a full investigation into the future role and purpose of policing ?

Fred Broughton: There will continue to be short term solutions to long term problems. The last enquiry into policing was the Sheehy enquiry of 1993, set up by the then Home Secretary, Ken Clarke. Those selected to conduct the review were people with no knowledge of policing and who were very close to Ken Clarke and the Government. They came up with a set of proposals in a format resembling a management consultancy view of a business. They failed to take into account many issues and made such horrendous mistakes that, within a short time, people realised the report wasn't sound. The police service was so furious with the proposals that it held the biggest meeting of police officers the world has ever seen. We had 12,000 cops attending a meeting at Wembley. The biggest meeting of police officers before that was in Canada, when they gathered just under 3,000 or 4,000. To be fair to the Conservative government, the report suddenly galvanised 12,000 police officers into action to protest about what was being proposed to affect their lives, their jobs and their police service.

What is at stake now is the momentum of continuing law and order and the confidence of the police service which, like any organisation, works better when it's confident and motivated. If it consistently feels unsure of its role and less confident than it should be, then it will not be as effective as it could be.

Question: Has the police service lost its confidence at the moment?

Fred Broughton: I think morale is the worst I have ever seen it. I have been to packed meetings over the last three months in Liverpool, Hampshire and Oxford, where ordinary police officers having been asking what is happening to policing and why are they encountering the problems they are. The fact is that we, as a service, do not feel well rewarded for the job we are doing. There is a constantly-increasing workload, there are rising housing costs in the south, problems for young officers trying to get married and find affordable accommodation, and they can't do that in the south. In Liverpool, a huge gathering of police officers expressed their anger about the way they were being treated in their force. They were angry about allegations being made against them and about the way they were policing football matches and there was almost a siege mentality about the way they felt the media had been dealing with them. They raised questions about their vulnerability, working alone, with no support or immediate back up.

There are a whole range of problems, which are multiplying, which need to be addressed by a Royal Commission including the way individuals are being treated, rewarded and the way they consider themselves to be less effective than they used to be.