UK

A plan to enrich the private sector – while increasing the reach of the authoritarian state

HubMP2012

FEBRUARY 7, 2026

Nadine Finch is alarmed by the Government’s latest proposals for policing.

On 26th January 2026, the Home Secretary published a White Paper entitled From Local to National: a new model for policing.

The proposals in this White Paper use financial restraints as an excuse to both further privatise services connected to policing and create a National Police Service. This service will be devoid of mechanisms to ensure any form of democratic accountability that is not closely tied to the executive. It will also be isolated from the neighbourhoods it claims to assist and protect.

It is claimed that the proposals will save the Government £350m and that this sum will be invested in neighbourhood policing. Ironically, this is very reminiscent of the Brexit Bus, which promised this same sum for basic NHS services, if only the public voted to leave the European Union. In reality, the proposals in the White Paper will lead to yet more windfalls for the private sector, at the expense of public services and the people who live in local neighbourhoods.

For example, the procurement of services will be centralised and become part of the National Police Service. Experience indicates that this will lead to largescale privatisation and ever-growing profiteering by international companies. You need to look no further than the profits syphoned off from the NHS for Palantir and others, at the expense of local patients.

 It will also deprive local businesses of contracts for ancillary services, such as cleaning, catering and administrative services. This is yet another example, of the Government failing to deliver its pledge to ensure that its spending benefits all regions.

More significantly, centralisation of police services tends to compound the well-documented phenomenon of a ‘canteen culture’ within which new and local officers are expected to simply adopt the practices and opinions of more experienced and dominant officers, without question. As does the transfer of a number of ancillary services to a centralised National Police Service. This is particularly the case when these services were provided by local civilians and businesses. Their involvement at least provides a partial link to the local area for those charged with community policing.

Policing by consent largely depends on there being an organic and reciprocal relationship between communities and with a duty to protect them. During the 1984-5 Miner’s Strike, officers were drafted into mining areas from all over the country. Academic and Greater London Council research indicated that the police forces, who were most likely to treat striking miners and their communities with unjustified violence and disrespect, were those with little or no experience of such communities. A national police service will lead to officers being isolated from the communities they need to understand, and be part of, in order to respond effectively to their needs and diversity.

The reduction in the number of regional police forces will have the same effect, leading to  more senior or specialist officers will be assigned to headquarters miles from the communities where they have family and contacts. This contradicts a commitment to authentic neighbourhood policing.

More significantly, the success of genuine neighbourhood policing depends on building the trust and accountability necessary to be said to be policing by consent. The proposals to transfer regional crime units, forensic services and policies relating to national roads means that community concerns about these services are unlikely to be properly understood or responded to.

 The centralisation of forensic services also gives rise to particular risks. Fans of C.S.I and Silent Witness and numerous other fictional TV dramas are lulled into complacency about the apparent infallibility of modern scientific methodologies. However, throughout recent decades, advances in technology and expertise have shown that previous tests related, for example, to fingerprints, DNA or toxic substances were not as good as was believed. Some people will remember the infamous Greiss and Thin Layer Chromatography tests, which led to the imprisonment of the Birmingham Six and Maguire Seven, but were later shown to be so faulty that they mistook handling playing cards for preparing explosives.

One of the almost insurmountable hurdles facing the defence in these cases was a centralised Government Forensic Service. As Chris Mullin, later an MP, said in his book Error of Judgment The truth about the Birmingham Bombings, “because most scientists are in the employ of the Government, it has always been difficult to find scientists of sufficient stature and practical experience to stand up to Crown experts.”  

The Birmingham Six were finally released in 1991, after 16 years in prison, but more recently cases have been overturned due to advances in DNA testing. In this context of the ongoing fallibility of seemingly foolproof scientific tests, the risks of once again centralising forensic services, which are presently shared on a regional basis and between public and private facilities, is very clear.  

Another area of risk and concern is that part of the new plan for policing is for a National Framework for Live Facial Recognition. The Home Office’s procurement agency, Blue Light Commercial, has already awarded a contract to an international firm, Digital Barriers, and its Israel based sub-contractor, Corsight. It is to provide from ten to fifty live facial recognition vans to be used on streets. The technology has already been used to monitor civilians entering and leaving Gaza.

Widespread and indiscriminate surveillance of the public without any reasonable belief that they have committed any crime, offends against the presumption of innocence. It is also no basis upon which to build the model of policing by consent necessary in a healthy democracy, as opposed to an authoritarian regime.

The Greater London Council, and its successor body, the London Strategic Policy Unit, noted that in areas outside London there was at least an element of public accountability in relation to county, combined and metropolitan police forces. This was achieved by creating committees comprising elected councillors and representatives of local magistrates.

However, this political control of policing was not ideal and was often too remote. The two-tier model proposed by the GLC was based on local borough committees of elected councillors and co-opted members from appropriate communities and groups. This would have a monitoring role. Then there would be London wide committee to develop strategy and policy. The Greater London Authority Act 1999 partially brought this model into force but without the lower borough level.

The present White Paper ignores the proven benefits of policing by consent, that is partly achievable by introducing an element of local accountability into the provision of police services. The operations conducted by regional crime units, and the manner in which terrorism and human trafficking is now policed, are areas of both concern and contention. To centralise them into a national police force devoid of any process for local or public accountability turns the clock back at least forty-five years. This is of particular concern when the Government is facing widespread dissent in response to the authoritarian nature of its policing of lawful protest and increasing right wing and violent populism.

The Home Secretary awarding herself the powers to force Chief Constables into retirement or resignation is not public or democratic accountability. It is control of a public service by the executive. It also carries a very obvious risk of over-reach at a ministerial level. AI may have played a part in the recent resignation of the Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police, but it was in the context of the Government acting in accordance with an established foreign policy, despite the evidence of risk to the public by fans whose previous behaviour on two continents had raised reasonable concerns about breaches of public order.

Nadine Finch is an Honorary Senior Policy Fellow at the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol.

Image: Greater Manchester Police officers  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greater_Manchester_Police_officers_in_Piccadilly_Gardens_%28Manchester,_England%29_2.jpg. Source: Clear up day uefa 15 May 2008 manchester. Author: Terry from uk, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.