Question marks over Home Secretary’s Conference pledge

POLICE officers will still have to wait for “hours on end” with mental health patients despite the Home Secretary’s new proposals, Essex Police Federation’s chairman has said.

Mark Smith (pictured) said that Theresa May’s plans to have more health-based places of safety across England and Wales would not necessarily reduce police time spent on helping people with mental health issues. He was speaking after her speech to the Federation annual conference in Bournemouth.

“Yes it might mean more health-based places of safety but officers are still going to have to stay with those people because there are not the social services to come out,” said Mr Smith. “A member of public might be drunk or violent so it means two or three officers waiting with them for hours on end because there is no one to take over from us.”

Mr Smith said he did not believe the Home Secretary grasped all of the issues police faced when dealing with mental health.

“She has grasped that there are not enough places of safety and that a police cell should not be a place of safety. But once we get them to these new places of safety – which are going to cost lots of money – there are not the trained people to come and take them off our hands,” he said.

The Essex Federation chairman said he did not believe Mrs May said very much in her speech at all.

“The Home Secretary comes every year and, whatever you ask, she never really says anything and she refuses to change anything,” he said. “She could quite easily have said compulsory severance is off the table and she would have won the room over but she didn’t. She said nothing on pensions when questioned. She didn’t offer any change.”

Mrs May announced that, subject to consultation with the Sentencing Council, the government will change the law so that the starting point for anybody who kills a police officer should be a life sentence without parole.

However, Mr Smith said he did not believe that the new law would ever come in.

While the Home Secretary received applause when she took the stage and following her speech, Mr Smith said it was not a “happy atmosphere” in the room.

“We realised that we needed backbenchers on our side because if anything goes through Parliament we need their support,” he said. “Officers are certainly not happy but we’re resigned to fact that whatever we say to this government they’re not going to change because they think they know best.”