What Dal Babu’s article on policing (The Stephen Port scandal is another betrayal of public trust. The UK deserves better policing, 10 December) demonstrates is how the prevalent cult of “managerialism” blights so much of public life. This is a cult that overvalues “good management” and devalues the task of doing.
Managerialism insists everything must be managed in the correct way, as taught by business schools and promoted by politicians as the answer to everything. Neither politicians, auditors nor commentators were aware of the approaching failure of Carillion, the outsourcing giant, because it was “managed” correctly. What Babu describes is the very negative consequence of the adherence to this cult in the police service.
What managerialism most values is a stream of good data, demonstrating that an organisation is well managed and performing according to expectations. This is why so many of the scandals in the public sector, such as the indifferent policing of the Stephen Port murders, catch police managers and politicians by surprise. They are managing the wrong things: data not people. Another case that demonstrates this curse all too well was Dominic Raab’s refusal to act on requests for action on Afghanistan because they were either presented on the wrong spreadsheet or formatted incorrectly.
Derrick Joad
Leeds
• Dal Babu refers to UK policing being hit with scandals, but the incidents he cites mostly reflect the incompetence of the Metropolitan police. If this happened elsewhere in England or Wales, the police and crime commissioner, or the metro mayor, would be looking to dismiss the chief constable of that force. Perhaps the job of commissioner of the Metropolitan police is too big for one person.
Most countries have several layers of policing, but here the Met commissioner is both the chief constable of a very large city and the head of national police services, such as counter-terrorism and diplomatic and royal protection. Perhaps it’s time to have a separate national commissioner answerable to parliament for national functions including nuclear and transport policing, and a chief constable for London answerable to the London Assembly and mayor.
Simon Marlow-Ridley
Hinckley, Leicestershire
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