Immigration is the reason our police seem more incompetent than ever

Telegraph

28-05-2025

There are all sorts of downsides to an ageing society, but one of the upsides is supposed to be that it is a safer, quieter, more orderly society. But modern Britain doesn't really feel that way, does it?
Yes, many forms of crime are down – although there is surely some ambiguity there. If you live in the jurisdiction of one of the many police forces which solves zero burglaries a year, how long before you no longer bother reporting such things? What about lower-level crime, such as shoplifting?
So what happened? Mark Rowley, the Met Police Commissioner, has part of the answer: 'We're carrying the scar tissue of austerity cuts, and the effects of that. Forces are much smaller when you compare the population they're policing than they were a decade or 15 years ago.'
Credit where credit is due: it's too rare for figures of authority to acknowledge when a problem is rooted (as so many are) in the Conservative party's last period in office. Rowley is quite correct that we'll be feeling the impact of short-sighted policing cuts under the Coalition for a long time. Too often, such comments are seized on by the Left as somehow conceding that any form of austerity was a bad idea. It wasn't, at least if you don't think that public spending can just increase forever.
But George Osborne's strategy – avoid making any decisions and salami-slice every budget – was a disaster for the justice system. Not only did he cut thousands of police officers, but the Treasury also paid off thousands of our most experienced prison officers to retire early, with entirely predictable consequences.
Rowley is, however, only acknowledging half the problem. The police-to-population ratio depends on two numbers, and officer strength is just one. The other reason that per-capita police numbers are so much lower than they were twenty years ago is the Conservatives' continual failure to get a grip on mass immigration.
Actually, that sentence flatters the Tories a bit, because it implies they tried to grip it. Yet their record tells a different story. David Cameron fought two elections talking tough about bringing net immigration down to the 'tens of thousands', but in office was happy to let his home secretaries talk tough whilst the departments of Business, Education, and the Treasury continually bid up the numbers.
As for Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, well, surely nothing need be said that googling the term 'Boriswave' doesn't cover.
The impact of this is two-fold. A lower ratio of police to residents obviously has an impact on law enforcement (compounded by the courts backlog and prisons crisis). But a more atomised society with a high proportion of new arrivals – an 'island of strangers', as Sir Keir Starmer put it – also simply needs more police, as 'hard' policing has to compensate for the dilution of social norms which play a larger role in a more homogenous, higher-trust society.
Sadly, it doesn't look as if the Government has learned any lessons. Rachel Reeves is reportedly locked in battle with colleagues over more police cuts, even as chiefs warn that it will make it impossible to hit Labour's vaunted crime targets.
Just how hollowed out do forces need to get before ministers will accept the need to cut entitlement spending? I really don't want to find out the hard way.