As everyone knows, we are entering an age of austerity. We need to get our public finances back into order. There are, of course, all sorts of difficult decisions that will be needed.
But we are also going to need some lateral imagination if we are to pull off the remarkable trick of saving money and, at the same time, improving public services.
Some of this imagination will need to take the form of finding new ways of doing things. But it is also important not to forget the possibility that we could make more use of old ways of doing things.
Up and down the country (including right here in Bridport), we have for years been served by a remarkable collection of people who do things for very little money on a part-time basis alongside whatever else they do. Lay magistrates fit into this category. So do the Territorial Army and the other reservists who are performing such an invaluable role in Afghanistan. Then there are the retained fire-fighters – without whom our Dorset Fire Service would collapse. The brave souls who man our lifeboats on behalf of the RNLI are a classic case. And there are many others besides.
For reasons which entirely defeat me, these part-time heroes seem to have become unfashionable in recent years. There has been a systematic attempt to replace lay magistrates with full-time district judges. The Territorial Army have too often been regarded as second-class soldiers – as we have seen recently with the bizarre decisions to save 1/2000th of the MOD budget by halving the amount of training they get. And I have even heard chunterings about the alleged superiority of an exclusively full-time fire service.
In any era, I think this fashion of decrying the part-timers would be foolhardy. But, at a time like this, it is particularly unfortunate – because they provide a marvellous opportunity to improve services at little cost.
So let’s respond with gusto to the call from Bridport’s award winning special constable that we should get more specials back on the streets.
Like the other part-time professionals, part-time special constables can play a huge part in helping to give new live to proper neighbourhood policing, using their knowledge of the community to help prevent crime at low cost.
This, as they say, is a “no-brainer”.