Government claims police cuts not linked to accident rise

The Government has hit back at claims that a drop in traffic police is letting drivers off the hook and putting road safety at risk.

MPs have been warned that a lack of resource is threatening the police’s ability to catch motorists breaking the law.

But ministers told the influential transport select committee it is a world leader in road safety and it was down to chief constables to decide how they deploy officers.

Road safety minister Andrew Jones said: “Enforcement is a key part of road safety, but so are education and engineering, and I don’t think there’s a direct correlation between the number of police officers and the amount of incidents they deal with.”

The Government’s defence of its road safety record comes in the wake of the country’s top traffic cop warning MPs that the thin blue line was being stretched to breaking point.

Appearing before the same committee, Supt Paul Keasey, chair of the national roads policing intelligence forum, previously told MPs: “We’re probably at that tipping point, where the volume of resources will become an issue. If you haven’t got the officers to do the work then the reality is it won’t be done.”

He also said that, with fewer officers on the road, motorists would recognise the opportunity to break the law without the risk of being caught.

However, Jones rejected this view. “I don’t think the evidence supports that,” he said, highlighting technology such as speed cameras and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems.

Government figures suggest that there has been a 63% fall in reported traffic offences over the past decade.

But is that, as the Government argues, the product of effective enforcement and better education or, as some suggest, the result of fewer traffic police? 

It was revealed last year that the number of police dedicated to enforcing traffic offences in England and Wales had fallen by 23% in the past five years – equivalent to 1,279 fewer officers.

But home office minister Mike Penning, who was appearing before the committee alongside Jones, said the downturn in traffic police had been going on for some time.

He said: “Traffic officers have been declining since the inception of what was the Highways Agency, now Highways England, with a lot of the traditional, non-policing roles now being done by highways officers.”

Penning highlighted how technology had “dramatically changed” the way roads were being policed, and reminded MPs the Government had protected the policing budget for the life of this Parliament, in the autumn statement.

Department for Transport road casualty statistics show that 1,775 people died on the roads in 2014 – a 4% increase on the year before. A further 22,807 were seriously injured (a 5% annual increase).

Casualties of all severities rose to 194,477 in Great Britain in 2014, an increase of 6% from 2013, interrupting what was a steady downward trend since 1997.

However, Jones argued that the UK has the second safest roads in the world behind Sweden, and the number of road deaths has fallen by 45% between 2005 and 2014.

“I don’t think there was a simple factor for the increase,” he said. “It was not statistically significant.

“We know the weather had an impact; 2014 saw increases in in other European countries – Sweden, Germany and France – countries that have very comparable levels of enforcement to ourselves.”

In fact, Jones said trying to link the number of traffic police to the increase in road casualty statistics was “wrong”.

“We have a fantastically good road safety record and we now have to build upon that in a number of different ways.”

The Government aims to continue with its three-pronged approach of enforcement, education and engineering, while targeting what it described as “hard to reach” groups.

Jones added that the Government’s main motivation was that “behind every statistic is a lost life, a shattered family  or both”.