Policing Minister Damian Green has confirmed radical new plans to allow foreign police officers to be recruited to run forces in England and Wales and to allow direct-entry fast-track senior officers to start their careers without a stint on the beat.
The move is a key part of the Government’s reform of police pay and conditions, which includes a controversial proposal to enable officers to be made compulsorily redundant for the first time.
Until now, no foreign national has run a police force in England or Wales and all senior officers have started their career on the beat but, as Mr Green pointed out, it also used to be unthinkable for there to be a foreigner running the Bank of England.
Even so, as recently as 2011 the appointment, sanctioned by the Prime Minister, of former US police chief Bill Bratton to become head of the Metropolitan Police was vetoed by the Home Secretary, who said that the job should be filled by a British citizen with experience of English law.
However, Mr Green plans to get around this by stipulating that any foreign national chosen for a similar role would have to be from a country with “a similar legal framework and policing model” to our own. This means that the recruitment would be limited to America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The newly established College of Policing is to design the new direct-entry scheme, which will include a three-year fast track for new inspectors and direct entry at superintendent level to “bring in new skills and ideas from other professions”.
Mr Green said that outside applicants to the inspectors’ fast-track scheme should have a university degree, but that the qualification would not be part of the eligibility criteria for existing officers to provide an alternative route on to the scheme.