Outgoing police union chief says the Government is bringing the force to its knees

13 April 2012

You don't spend 37 years rising through the ranks of the police service - particularly as a woman who joined up when the force was at its most sexist - without a certain amount of steel at your core.

Yet Jan Berry has always prided herself on her gentle (she would even say womanly) approach to the job. She is, she insists, by nature kind, conciliatory, a builder of bridges and imbued with a robust sense of fair play.

How curious, then, that the swansong of her career  -  her final speech as chairman of the Police Federation, addressed to the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith  -  should have been regarded as downright savage, particularly by those who know her best.

'It was my son's reaction that really shocked me,' says Mrs Berry, in her first interview since that headline-grabbing conference speech. 'I don't think he liked it one bit. Afterwards, he asked me: "Mum, why did you bully the Home Secretary?"

Let the police do their job: Jan Berry (right) and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (left)

Let the police do their job: Jan Berry (right) and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (left)

'That one shocked me. I knew I'd been hard on her, yes, but bullying? That's just not me. I'd really hate to think it was that.'

And yet her son had a point. How else to describe the manner in which this grey-haired matronly type tore into Miss Smith, who dared to become the first Home Secretary in history to turn down the recommendations of the independent pay review body?

First, she condemned Miss Smith's handling of the issue as a 'monumental mistake', saying: 'I do not say this lightly when I say you betrayed the police service.'

Then she got personal. The Home Secretary looked increasingly uncomfortable as Mrs Berry took a swipe at her admission of having taken cannabis as a student, asking  -  her voice oozing contempt  -  whether she had 'lit up to calm her nerves' before appearing at the Police Federation conference.

'Your recent crimes have been more for the Serious Fraud Office than the drug squad,' she quipped.

But the piece de resistance was a swipe that, surely, only one woman could make to another. Pointing out that Education Secretary Ed Balls had stuck to an independent pay recommendation for Britain's teachers, Mrs Berry asked: 'Home Secretary, what is it that Mr Balls has, but you do not?'

A more political animal might have enjoyed the subsequent media reaction to her speech, which made much of the Home Secretary's obvious discomfort. But the truth is that Mrs Berry was rather saddened.

'I'm actually quite disappointed I had to go out in that way,' she says. 'The reason I got the job in the first place was because I am by nature a bringer together of people. I've always tried to be part of the solution, not the problem. But I was put in a position where I didn't have any alternative.

'This Government has betrayed the police service  -  and not just on the pay issue. We are in a terrible position, with relations between the Government and the police at their worst ever, and that isn't something that makes me feel proud.'

Mrs Berry believes the problem lies much deeper than being simply a question of money: 'I don't hold Jacqui Smith completely responsible. 'I think she wasn't given room to manoeuvre by the Treasury, and she was very, very badly briefed by the Civil Service. I also question whether there was a much higher-level decision to take on the police.'

'The crucial point came just after Gordon Brown took over. He had handled the Glasgow airport terror attack and the foot-and-mouth crisis very well. There was an element of confidence and perhaps a feeling of "Now it's time to take on the police".'

An easy target, she suggests, given the force's lack of industrial relations muscle  -  they are not allowed to strike.

'I think they wanted to pay police under 2 per cent, whatever happened. Well, if that was the case, they should have offered us 1.9 per cent at the outset rather than making us all jump through hoops. We would have been angry, yes, but it would have been a fairer way to do it.'

But there was searing personal anger in Mrs Berry's speech, too. It marked not only the end of her stint at the helm of the Police Federation, but her goodbye to the career which has defined her life. Last Saturday she handed back her warrant card and stepped down as an officer, but she confesses that she retires with a great feeling of unfinished business.

'The reason I moved from frontline policing into the Police Federation was because I wanted to make a difference on a national level. I thought my experience as a senior police officer, spanning more than 35 years, would be invaluable, and even influence the future of policing in this country.'

And has it? She gives a deep sigh and admits that for much of the past six years she has felt more akin to a puppet on the end of Westminster strings. 'I have really tried to work with the civil service and different government ministers  -  not just about pay and conditions, but about policing in general. But it is as if they don't want to involve you until they have made up their minds. You are there to legitimise the process.

'In the pay review, it just felt like the word "negotiation" was superfluous. There was no negotiation. They want to dictate the whole time. They don't want to work in partnership.

'It's the same when you try to address huge issues about the future of policing. There are certain elements that feel they know best.'

Protest: Over 20,000 police officers marched through London in January over pay

Protest: Over 20,000 police officers marched through London in January over pay

She is scathing about how the police service is crippled by paperwork and spurious targets, leading to officers' ability to do their jobs being eroded.

Mrs Berry believes many problems  -  knife crime, anti- social behaviour, youth offending  -  can be tackled only by individual officers using their initiative and experience.

'We are policing to meet targets rather than really understanding what it is the public needs,' she says.

'We have a generation of police officers who don't know any other way. Common sense is being eroded.'

Her most serious concern is that the status of the police officer is being reduced to little more than a glorified box-ticker.

'One of the basic tenets of the job is that operational policing is undertaken by police officers who swear an oath of allegiance. They are "officers" rather than "employees".

'That means, as a police officer, I have personal responsibility and am accountable only to the law for my decision. So, in theory, my Chief Constable cannot, for instance, order me to go and arrest someone  -  I have to go and make up my own mind about it. But in practice, the target culture is making this increasingly impossible. There are people within the civil service who seem to want to break the "office of constable" so that they can better dictate what it is that officers do.'

Jan Berry was always destined to be a police officer: the family joke goes that her path was set when she was found directing the traffic near her home at the tender age of four.

She joined Kent Constabulary in 1971 and reached the rank of sergeant within four years. Only in the past few years has she been able to admit that she was probably promoted too fast, and out of political expediency.

'The Sex Discrimination Act had just come in and I've no doubt that I was promoted much earlier than a man would have been. I probably wasn't ready,' she says.

She reckons she wasn't the only woman helped up through the system, although she isn't entirely sure of the motivations of those doing the promoting.

'I have a suspicion that some women were put up to fail, so it could be "proved" they didn't have the right skills and someone could say: "Women! Not up to the job." '

Such sexism seems breathtaking. 'I was called Sargie-Baby,' she says. 'It was awful, but I just took it. When I was pregnant with my son, my boss told me I'd just set my career back five years. When baby number two came along, he said my career was over  -  and part of me believed that. Nobody had come back to the job after two children.'

Equally galling are the endless targets that are the bane of every chief constable's life and which have stifled common-sense policing.

'I'm not someone who views the past through rose-tinted glasses,' she says. 'There was no golden age of policing. Dixon Of Dock Green never existed. But the nature of how we do the job has changed irrevocably. I see it every day. Young officers go to deal with an incident involving three or four youths  -  the sort of incident that could, and I would say should, be dealt with by some strong words of advice, discussions with parents and lessons learned by everyone.

'But in this climate, they are encouraged by the system to deal with it by reporting it as a crime and prosecuting the offenders.

'It all spirals into a caution, a court appearance. . . as a police officer you formalise these things because you can then demonstrate you are doing your job.

'The things that can't be quantified  -  reassuring a member of the public, quelling a situation before trouble arises  -  things I would say are at the heart of good policing, can't be measured, so aren't seen as important.

As a result, she fears that many officers know no other form of policing. 'They will not have done the sort of policing I did, where I learned to develop my instincts,' she says. 'All they know is "sanctioned detentions", "offenders brought to justice" and "targets". Their ability to use common sense and their discretion has been removed.'

She is of the old school, believing a visible presence on the street is paramount. She has long lobbied for community support officers to be trained to the standard of qualified police officers.

'I can foresee a situation when police officers are brought in only for confrontation issues. However, there are all manner of problems with that  -  not least that it stops officers learning from the bottom up.

'Part of their experience bank will always be missing, and the police service becomes this kind of paramilitary-type force. I know the Home Secretary says this isn't what she wants  -  and it certainly isn't what the public wants  -  but that is what is going to happen. The softer side of policing is disappearing, and I don't think that can be a good thing.

'We've gone from having a police service where most officers do most things, to having a force full of specialists: child abuse units, firearms units, domestic violence, fraud, rape units.

'This is all fine in theory, but it has created a huge bureaucracy  -  and posed difficult questions. What happens when people fall through the gaps? And what of the ordinary copper with no specialism? Is he or she devalued in all this?'

Mrs Berry talks of job satisfaction and how little of it is around for the average officer, contrasting it with her own 'terribly rewarding' career.

'I always tell the story of helping a little old lady in Sevenoaks who had been burgled. I responded to the call, tracked down who was responsible (we knew all the local crooks in those days, so had a good idea where to begin) and got her back her possessions. It sounds so simple, but I've never forgotten her gratitude. That, in a nutshell, was why I did the job.

'Police officers today don't have that. They do one part of the job, then it gets passed on to a different department. They never see the end result, and they end up demoralised, feeling like a tiny cog in a great unwieldy wheel.'

Of course, being able to reflect on a job well done is a basic human need. She is candid about her frustration in leaving the force and the Police Federation at such a difficult time.

'I am so proud of so much of what I achieved, but the past few months have rather soured things. I found myself in a situation that I never imagined being in  -  having to ask my colleagues if they wanted me to negotiate for the right for them to strike.

'When I joined the police force, the idea of strike action would have been unthinkable. Even now, it horrifies me. Police officers aren't able to strike, and we have accepted that because of the assumption that when it comes to pay and conditions we will be treated fairly by government. And, by and large, we have been, by successive governments. Until now.

'It's deeply worrying. It isn't about money, but the principle. The message this government is sending to the police is: "You are not worth any more."'

It will be up to the courts to decide if the Home Secretary acted unlawfully in refusing to implement the recommended pay award, but it is no longer Jan Berry's concern.

What does retirement hold for her? Is she, perhaps, considering a career in politics?

She shudders. 'I can't think of anything worse.'

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