This about police forces doesn’t seem logically correct
This is not to weigh in on the first idea itself. Rather, to explore the logic here:
A national police force will fight terrorists, international fraudsters and organised crime as Britain’s answer to the FBI.
The National Police Service (NPS) will take over the roles of the National Crime Agency (NCA), counter-terrorism policing and the regional units that tackle serious organised crime gangs.
In the biggest police reform in a generation, Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, will overhaul the “outdated” and “fragmented” model of policing, which she believes is “buckling under the strain” of tackling complex modern crime and leaving “serious offending unpunished”.
Well, OK. So there are economies of scale here. In information perhaps, expertise, national coverage and so on. This could be true we guess.
Ministers claim the NPS, with its own uniform and headed by a commissioner, will free up police forces to fight everyday crimes such as shoplifting, drug-dealing, phone theft and anti-social behaviour, instead of being distracted by national and international threats.
As we say, well, OK.
The establishment of the NPS will be accompanied by a reduction in the number of police forces in England and Wales, with some merged to create bigger regional constabularies tackling complex crimes, such as murder, drugs and county lines gangs.
But that’s not logically consistent. The aim of having larger police forces was to create that economy of scale in those larger crimes. Thus if we shift those crimes requiring the economies of scale up to a larger, national, force, that would mean that the optimal size of the local police forces will be smaller. For we’ve already - in previous reorganisations - increased the size of the local forces to deal with those larger and more complex crimes.
As we say, we’re not commenting upon the creation, or not, of the national force (although we do indeed have severe doubts about the idea) but upon the joint plan there. Shifting some crimes up to national level does mean the optimal size for others is smaller, not larger.
Tim Worstall