The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police has thrown his weight behind government plans to create a US-style national crime-fighting agency, calling the overhaul of policing structures “bold” and “decades overdue”.
Sir Stephen Watson welcomed proposals from Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to streamline England and Wales’ 43 separate police forces into a more centralised model under a new National Police Service (NPS). The proposed agency would be tasked with tackling major and cross-border crimes, in a similar fashion to the FBI in the United States.
Describing the current model as outdated, Sir Stephen said: “The Home Secretary has properly taken the bull by the horns. These are bold announcements in respect of reform which to policing is literally decades in the coming.”
He added that the existing system, with 43 forces reporting to 43 different Police and Crime Commissioners, is “not efficient or effective”, especially in the face of increasingly mobile and digital forms of crime.
“There is something genuinely old fashioned about policing services that reflect a world that is no longer as it might have been 50 or 60 years ago,” he said.
Sir Stephen said he was “reasonably relaxed” about the prospect of the Home Secretary gaining powers to sack chief constables, suggesting the change would reflect democratic accountability.
“The Home Secretary is accountable for much of what happens in policing's name across the country,” he said. “If their determination is that they need to take powers in very, very rare circumstances to dispense with the services of chief constables, then that will be a decision of our democratically elected politicians.”
He emphasised that while neighbourhood policing remains essential, national threats such as cyber crime, organised gangs and terrorism now demand a more unified and modern response.
“I applaud the Home Secretary's courage in bringing forward what are bold proposals. When we talk in the language of once-in-a-lifetime, generational, transformational change in policing, that is precisely what this is. And that, for me, is very exciting, and certainly it is due.”
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