Is any comment needed?

The National Policing Improvement Agency, launched in April 2007, spent £71.4 million on consultants in its first year of operation .

It is tasked with improving police efficiency and cutting bureaucracy.

It is still undermanned, having 344 new posts available. (This at a time when police forces up and down the country are reducing staff or freezing numbers!) So while the front line fighters against crime are carrying greater and greater burdens with fewer fighters, those back at headquarters are growing in numbers and resources. This is obviously a successful way to prosecute a war!)

The quango is a perfect example of all quangos - they are excellent ways of generating employment and expenditure, as well as promoting the consultancy fat cats. It also illustrates what top-down government leads to - unaccountable bodies which go about expanding their empires and influence with little discernible improvement in the area they control, as well as providing jobs for friends of the government.

What is required is to get the government off the backs of the police, whether this is direct or indirect, and make them accountable to the areas they are supposed to serve. In the end voters and press are by far the best and cheapest monitors and regulators of any service.