Britain’s police want more money. Chief constables have warned in the Times that the Government’s pledge to cut crime won’t be achieved without extra cash in next month’s spending review. They list new challenges faced by the police, such as the potential for civil unrest as seen during last summer’s riots, and argue that forces are suffering from the “scar tissue of years of austerity cuts”.

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has highlighted the operational demands made by the Government’s commitment to reduce violence against women by half. While Britain’s police forces by no means have an easy task, their performance has been tarred by a litany of extraordinary failures in recent years, from wasteful spending to scandals revealing the extent of misogyny in some forces.

In December 2023, for example, it was reported that more than 1,100 police officers across England and Wales were under investigation for sexual or domestic abuse. After this news broke, the Liberal Democrats focused on the statistic that out of a total of 657 Met officers who were under investigation for sexual abuse, domestic abuse, or a combination of both, 129 were still carrying out their duties as normal. In February this year the High Court ruled that the Met did not have the power to sack officers who had failed the vetting process. Rowley said most of those cases related to men who had “sexually bad attitudes” towards women and girls. And yet the High Court’s ruling means that these officers have been put on special leave and are being paid in full at the taxpayer’s expense.

Instead of dealing with such urgent flaws, we now have what appear to be politicised police forces, wasting thousands of hours on investigating petty disputes under the heading “non-crime hate incidents”. According to the Telegraph, the country’s 43 forces have recorded more than 133,000 NCHIs since they were introduced in 2014, an average of 13,000 a year. They are estimated to have used up 666,000 hours of police time, which could have been employed investigating serious crimes such as rape and domestic violence.

This is not the only politicised behaviour in which Britain’s police forces have been engaging. In January 2023, the Taxpayers’ Alliance accused police chiefs of “wasting money on woke nonsense” after it was revealed that 27 forces spent £66,000 on LGBT merchandise between 2019 and 2022. While that sum is a drop in the ocean, it reflects worrying signs of institutional capture that threaten police forces’ credibility in the eyes of the public. Making matters worse, the number of DEI roles in the police has ballooned in recent years, with £15 million spent on them between 2021-24.

So, who is responsible for this? There is silence from the Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), who cost English and Welsh taxpayers £100 million between 2019 and 2023. Chief constables must also shoulder some of the blame. For years, resources have been tight and forces have been facing rising demands. So why was money squandered through incompetence and increasing politicisation?

Wasted time and resources have real-world consequences. Last summer police chiefs warned that violence against women and girls was such a stark social problem that it amounted to a “national emergency”. In January this year, a report from the Government’s spending watchdog concluded that the Home Office had “not led an effective whole-system response” to the “serious and growing problem” of violent misogyny. The National Audit Office’s (NAO) analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that the percentage of women aged 16-59 in England and Wales who have suffered a sexual assault was estimated to be 4.3% in 2023-24, up from 3.4% in 2009-10. What’s more, over the last decade there have been increases in police-recorded sexual offences with 205,465 recorded in the year to December 2024, up 8% on the previous year from 190,300.

Britain’s police have failed in their duty to protect women, while wasting a huge amount of taxpayer cash on vanity projects. Even crime commissioners have acknowledged the effective “de-criminalisation of rape” in this country. If chief constables want more money, they should apologise for these failures and stop taking sides in political disputes that have nothing to do with keeping the public safe.

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Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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