Bejan Shoraka was nominated to serve the community as a Magistrate, and after several courses in the Law and its applications, he was eventually appointed as a Magistrate by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, on behalf and in the name of her Majesty, on 9th October 1998.

Bejan came to England to continue his education at an early age, and started in a boarding school in Birmingham in October 1962. After the usual “O” & “A” levels, he obtained a degree in Computer Science, in 1971, and then he went to Iran to start working in the computer industry at the bottom of the ladder, and finally became computer manager at Tolidaroo, and Benz Khavar.

After his successful start in Iran, he returned to England in 1978 to continue his career in the computer industry, with the last position with Wonderman Worldwide as a European Systems coordinator in 1988 before he resigned. He then started his own business as a consultant and also participating in Community work to help and guide the Iranian community at the same time. He soon became involved with Working Community Relations Forum (financed and supported by Surrey County Council) as a member of the management team, with the added responsibility of being the Treasurer. Since then his activities in serving the ethnic minorities, in particular the Iranian community has expanded and continued.

The German owner of the Mercedes-Benz car marque lost a High Court action yesterday aimed at stopping a Carnaby Street clothes trader calling his shop merc.

Mr Justice Pumfrey ruled that Javid Alavi had been using the name on his shop and on the clothing he sells for so long that it was too late for the car company to complain.

DaimlerChrysler AG had argued that it possessed the goodwill and reputationassociated with the word Merc, which was a frequently used abbreviation for Mercedes-Benz cars.

The company said that the public would be likely to regard clothes bearing the word Merc as having its licence and accused Mr Alavi of passing off his clothes as something they were not.

Mr Alavi produced evidence that his shop had been using the name Merc for 33 years. He said that during that time there had not been a single instance of confusion.

The judge said: "There must come a time after which the court would not interfere with a continued course of trading which might have involved passing off as its inception but no longer did so."

After the verdict Mr Alavi said:"It was absolutely fantastic to win."

----------------------

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 16 2001

Law Report - Daimler Chrysler AG v Alavi (t/a Merc)

For a claim for trade mark infringement under section 10(3) of the Trade Marks Act 1994 to succeed, the claimant had to provide evidence that the association between the proprietor’s mark and the defendant’s sign was such that the defendant either gained an unfair advantage from his association with the proprietor’s mark or that the association of the defendant’s sign with the claimant’s mark had damaged the reputation of that mark.

Mr Justice Pumfrey so held in a reserved judgment in the Chancery Division, dismissing the action of the claimant, Daimler Chrysler AG, against the defendant, Mr Javid Alavi, trading as “Merc”, for infringement of the claimant’s registered UK and EC trade marks in the names “Mercedes” and Mercedes-Benz”, and or for the defendant passing off himself and his business, a shop called “Merc” selling clothing and shoes in the Carnaby Street area of London’s West End. Mr Henry Carr, QC and Mr Mark Vanhegan for the claimant; Mr Alastair Wilson, QC and Mr James Graham for Mr Alavi.

MR JUSTICE PUMFREY said that despite evidence of usage of the word “Merc” as an abbreviation of or nick-name for Mercedes-Benz, there was no evidence of spillover in relation to the clothing marks, and none of confusion between the defendant’s sign and the claimant’s UK trade marks in relation to clothing. The main thrust of the claimant’s case on detriment was that Mr Alavi’s business was heavily concerned with mods, skinheads and casuals, none of which groups Mercedes wished to be associated with.

It was further alleged that the defendant’s website contained links to skinhead websites, which were distasteful, and which contained links to other websites which were more distasteful still.

No objection to the defendant’s use of the sign “Merc” could be made out on that ground. There was no evidence that any member of the public associated the use of the mark “Merc” on the website with any of the claimant’s marks, still less that that somehow damaged the viewer’s perception of the claimant’s products.

Kourosh Shamlou, a 30-year old lawyer working for one of the best litigation American law firm in tax and bankruptcy in the glamorous eight district of Faubourg Saint-Honore in Paris has started a law society.

There are 38 Iranian lawyers in different law firms in France and they are all in Paris. Most of them are in corporate MNA law and some specialising in tax law and some in bankruptcy and finance.

His main reason for becoming a lawyer was he wanted to defend the powerless against the powerful and all the injustices he sees in the world.

He works in the corporate law, M&A and in merger accusation department. There are branches in New York, Washington, Tokyo, Beijing and Hong Kong.

SAFIR started in September 2000 and there is an annual membership fee of £30. The financial help for the association comes mainly from the annual membership fee. His aim is to create a network among Franco-Iranian lawyers to help each other, finding work for lawyer students, providing them with bourses, professional training and jobs. Also for Iranians who don't have any money and who need help can seek help from SAFIR who do not charge any money for guidance in the French jurisdiction.

"Safir is not sponsored by any Company or Organization, the Companies that have been named as sponsoring Safir was a mistake."

For more information you can visit: www.safir-france.com


Kourosh Shamlou

Supt Dr Ali Dizaei will be part of delegate attending a international police conference in Toronto Canada week commencing 14\8\2000. Dr Dizaei will be addressing the conference on all aspects of criminal justice and police role as major stakeholder in the process. His views were recently televised on ITV news and in the Sunday papers. Other speakers include US Attorney General, Janet Reno, Asst Director of FBI (to be confirmed) and many other leading academics.


Supt Dr Ali Dizaei

Further to our interview with Dr Ali Dizaei, Superintendent for Kensington & Chelsea and Notting Hill, in April on Racism in the Police Force, we have been given an update by Dr Dizaei on the post-Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

It would appear that the Government is anxious to put the recommendations put forward in the McPherson report into practice. This would have a huge impact on the ethnic minorities living in this country. Recently the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, assigned Dr Dizaei and his team to travel to the United States to find out how issues of race are being dealt with over there. As a result of briefing a number of presidential appointments to various organisations, notably a meeting with Jesse Jackson, not to mention addressing a conference to a number of congressmen in Chicago By Dr Dizaei, a full report of recommendations has been submitted to the Home Secretary and is currently under consideration. In the report, Dr Dizaei has put forward a number of radical ideas that have never before been considered in the UK. He has recommended that there be an appointment of a Ministerial Ombudsman for the Police.

The Ombudsman would independently assess the progress of forces with regards to community and race relations, rather than allow the police to inspect themselves. In other words if, for instance, a Chief Constable fails to achieve certain targets, then the Ombudsman will have specific powers of financial sanctions.

Dr Dizaei has also asked the Home Secretary to consider sanctions for Police forces who do not achieve various targets to do with race relations, and more importantly he has asked for the creation of a completely separate agency called "The Community Service Agency" to act as a mediator between the police and the ethnic communities in times of tension to bridge the gap by means of a reconciliation process. In the States, the idea of having a Community Service Agency seems to have worked and it is hoped that it also works for the UK if the same concept is implemented.

Copyright, together with patent law and trademark law, make up intellectual property law, although copyright is nowadays by far the most important of the three branches. Copyright protects original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works by regulating what rights the owner of copyright have and how such rights can be infringed. Items which are protected by copyright can include private letters, home videos, photographs, business cards, brochures and business reports. Clearly, therefore, copyright affects us all, both as members of the public and in our business lives. As a leading copyright lawyer rightly stated, ‘No business can afford to be ignorant of the implications of copyright in its daily work'.

In order to obtain copyright protection a work must fall into one of four categories, (1) a ‘literary work' e.g. a letter, a table or a computer program; (2) a ‘dramatic work' e.g. a dance or a musical; (3) a ‘musical work' e.g. music exclusive of words or action; or (4) an ‘artistic work' e.g. a diagram, a photograph, a chart or even a building. The work also has to be ‘original' which means that it must originate from its author and not have been copied. Generally if the author has spent sufficient independent skill, labour and judgement it will be an ‘original' work and, provided that copyright has not yet expired, the work will qualify for copyright protection. Each case needs to be examined on its own facts. A translator who translates a speech in Farsi into English will be entitled to copyright in that work as they have used their skill to complete the task and have also changed the medium of the work from oral to written. Similarly an architect who designs a building using a combination of features from preceding designs will be entitled to copyright protection as he has expended skill in creating the finishing product. However a person who slavishly copies the Mona Lisa, making an exact replica, will probably not be entitled to copyright protection!

The next important question that needs to be answered is ‘who owns the copyright?'. Generally it will be the author, (i.e. the creator) of the copyright work. Thus in the case of a private letter, the person who wrote the letter, in the case of a business table the person who compiled the table, and in the case of an advertisement the person who designed the advert. It may be that more than one person has designed the advertisement, in which case there will be ‘joint ownership'. The exception to the general rule is that where the ‘work' was made by an employee in the course of his or her employment his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work, subject to any agreement to the contrary. It is also important to consider whether copyright has been transmitted to another person. This can only be done in writing signed by, or on behalf of the assignor who would be the copyright owner. Businesses seeking to buy copyright should make sure that these formalities are complied with as a verbal assignment or an assignment not signed by the assignor is worthless.

The owner of copyright is entitled to certain rights and can sue anyone who infringes those rights. Thus if someone else copies the work, issues copies of the work to the public, broadcasts or performs the work without the authority or consent of the owner they would be liable. Ignorance is not a defence! Thus the person who spent days writing a verse which, unbeknown to him, had already been written is as liable as the fraudster who meticulously copied it! The owner would normally be entitled to an injunction to prevent the infringer from continuing to abuse the work in question, damages or an account of profits. The author is also entitled to sue the ‘secondary infringers', being those who have, for example, imported the work in question or offered it for sale. For secondary infringers ignorance is a defence and they can only be successfully sued if they knew or had reason to believe that the work was an infringing copy. Therefore if, for example, your internal business manual has been copied and is being sold on the high street it is important that you immediately write to the retailers ‘fixing' them with knowledge by informing them that they are dealing in infringing copies of your manual. By doing so they will be liable if they continue to sell the manual and you may be entitled to an injunction and damages.

If a person is unfortunate enough to find themselves in such a position where their copyright is being infringed it is always worth first considering whether the infringement may be prevented by reporting it to the appropriate authority, such as the Commissioners for Customs and Excise or Trading Standards Officers, as this could save the expense of pursuing a civil action and could be a more sensible approach commercially.

Copyright law is extremely complex and this article merely sets out the broad position in relation to works of authors who are resident in the United Kingdom or work of an author who is not a resident in the United Kingdom but whose work was first published in the United Kingdom. Where works are of Œforeign origin' different considerations come into play.

What do the most powerful judges in the land have in common? Quite a lot! The English Law Lords are all white, male and Oxbridge educated. Not all are privately educated though, 1 out of 12 actually went to a grammar school. They are all selected to a system of secret soundings by the department for judicial appointments which has recently come under attack from the Law Society as being outdated and discriminatory.

The department for judicial appointments resides on the second floor of Selbourne House close to Westminster. This is where as the branch of the Lord Chancellors Department almost 12,000 confidential files on lawyers and judges are kept. Only a handful of officials have access to these files, as they are exempt from access under the Data Protection Act. The confidential and secret surroundings kept on these personal files are the basis for the appointment of judges and Queen's Council.

The Law Society, the professional body for 80,000 solicitors in England and Wales, announced just recently that it was boycotting the system of secret surroundings and that it would like to get rid of QC's altogether. Whether or not they become silk, so called because of the silk gown they are entitled to wear, is the whim of the Lord Chancellor, a privilege afforded to only the top 10 per cent of the Bar and the odd solicitor. The Society is also calling an end to QC's altogether, signalling an end to a world of privilege and exclusivity.

By setting up an enquiry into the way judges and QC's are selected the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irwin, has kicked up a row in the legal world. Opinions in this argument are strongly felt and forcefully put. The statistics are pretty damning too. In 1996, the last year for which figures are available, almost 3000 judges or QC's were men, compared with around 300 women, and only 15 were non white. Things have not got much better since Labour has come into power. Of the 85 judges appointed or promoted since May 1997, 79% have been to public school, and only 7 have been women. According to the Law Society this domination by the old school tie can only be reduced by changing the current methods of choosing judges. In England and Wales they are currently by the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister or the Lord Chancellor, following a confidential system, secret surrounding, whereby leading figures in the law world are sounded out about possible candidates. The system has been compared, in terms of secrecy, to the appointment of a new Pope.

What some would favour is an independent judicial commission who would interview candidates in public before appointing them. Judges wield enormous power and influence and it is very important that the public should know what their interests are, what their background is, and they should also know what clubs and organisations they belong to.

The Bar's Queens Council was appointed at the time of Elizabeth I when she appointed somebody who could act on her behalf in court. That was the idea of the Queen's Council who represented the Queen in Court. Nowadays that is not what they do so there is really a serious question concerning their relevance in today's climate.

The main effect of becoming a QC today is to enable them to charge higher fees. It is claimed that more than 20 QC's earn more than £1 million a year, with legal aid or public money accounting for almost half their earnings.

On the one hand those justifying something which has been called an old boys network say that the secret surrounding is not secret in the area where it is carried out as it is performed in the Civil Service, the Lord Chancellor's department by an extremely wide ranging written consultation which has been developed over the years. Furthermore, they believe that it is a way of identifying the high-flyers, those at the top in the profession, top in every sense, not only in terms of integrity but also in terms of quality of performance and who also have the proven experience and expertise to handle the more difficult and complex cases.

Those opposed to the system of secret surroundings are of the view that the system is fundamentally flawed and that in this modern age it should not be allowed to have a system in which people are appointed behind closed doors in secret surroundings, especially when the judges, the most powerful men in the country, are appointed in this way. The system is believed to be totally unacceptable, unfair, out of date and discriminatory. It has been said that the problem with the system is that unless you actually score a certain number of points, you do not even get to the stage of being interviewed and therefore it is all done on paper. Out of the 150 top judges in this country, one is a solicitor and only nine are women. The rest are male, middle-class, white and from Oxford or Cambridge.

It is generally believed that there are thousands more solicitors around who have been acting in social welfare law and in the criminal justice system and who have got experience in a whole range of the way the society is developed, as opposed to the cloistered environment in which barristers operate.

Other bodies such as the Justice, the human rights group, and the Association of Women Barristers have all been sharing the Society's criticisms.

The problem is that the judges only respond to those who they may know either socially or through work because of the social class, the economic background they came from, the education system they have been through, and that generally they tend to know people who are appearing in front of them, they would also fit the bill because that is what most barristers are. Solicitors and a lot of women do not actually appear on their feet in front of judges and they would never actually reach that stage. So if you are not part of the right set, you cannot rise in the legal profession.

The privileged days of those at the top of the legal profession may not be over, but they are under pressure, and one thing is certain, a system that has lasted so long will not be given up without a fight.

As a lawyer specialising in the investment of fraud and asset recovery, individuals and organisations in a state of panic regularly approach me. There is something very unsettling about having been defrauded. Some feel that it is not dissimilar to coming home and finding out that you have been burgled. The only difference is that in the case of fraud you often know the identity of the perpetrators, who could be a colleague, a business partner or a ''friend''.



One thing is for sure, there are not many businesses or individuals that can confidently boast that they have not been, or do not know of, a person who has not been, a victim of fraud. The cost of fraud in the UK is estimated to be in excess of £5 billion per annum. An overwhelming proportion of frauds is said to have been committed by employees of businesses in positions of trust. One thing however, is taken for granted. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

First things first.

So, what should you do if you find yourself the unfortunate victim of a fraud. Without a doubt there are some basic important decisions that you should turn your mind to early on. Going to the police is not always the best option if your primary objective is to recover the money, which you have lost. If you intend to maximise your chances of recovery, I believe that one of your key decisions should be to choose an expert to advice you as to how you should go about recovering your assets. Often your family solicitor who has previously carried out your conveyancing or sued someone for an unpaid invoice may not be your best option. Basically, you shouldn't go to a dentist if you have a broken leg!

The best way forward is to think about the team you want on your side to recover your money. These could include:

Your lawyer
Investigators
Forensic accountants
Public relations advisers etc

Lawyers fee - waste of money or an investment?

I will be the first to accept that at times the mere thought of lawyers' fees can be enough to scare you into doing nothing about the fraud. However, it all depends on what is at stake. Most lawyers will give you very different advice if you loss is £1,000 as opposed to a £1,000,000. The bottom line is, there are times when investing money in legal fees is likely to bring you huge returns. Also do not take it for granted that the fraudster does not make mistakes or does not leave tracks that can make your recovery a possibility. Fraudsters are by and large careless and after a lapse of time can become rather arrogant and drop their guards. The fact is I have not come across a fraudster who has not slipped up.

What is available to you?

The English Courts provide some of the most far-reaching relief for combating fraud.

- You can of course sue the fraudster.

- However, there are many other very powerful weapons in an English civil lawyer armoury, which can often land a significant blow on the fraudster.

These include:

- Court Order to freeze your target's assets. This will include stopping him from using his bank account, selling his house or other property ranging from shares and stock to cars and jewellery.

- Court Order to allow your lawyers to search the property of the fraudster weather it is business premises or his home. This does not involve the police and is obtained by means of an application to Court. This is the nuclear weapon of the fraud lawyer. These orders are not granted very often but when you manage to persuade the Court to give one of these, you can usually obtain access to the most private core of your target's life. You can imagine the surprise on your target's face when you knock on his door and effectively present him with a search warrant.

- Court Order for disclosure of information by the fraudster. This forces your target to provide answers under oath in relation to his assets (which may after all once have been your assets!). This will tell you where the assets are and how much they are worth.

- Court Orders for disclosure of information by others. In some circumstances you can also force third parties to give you important information. For example, a fraudster's bank can be ordered to give you all the information about his accounts. This way you can often see the movement of money in and out of your target's possession. Moreover, very often such information leads you to other linked assets and accounts, which allows you to trace your property. This is particularly important and useful where the fraudster refuses to give you accurate or for that matter, any information.

- Court Order to confiscate your target's passport to prevent him from leaving the country.

Finding the unknown

I certainly do not want to give you the impressions that above orders are handed out like candy by English judges. Before you can have a hope of getting such Orders, you need to have done plenty of homework. This is when your investigations and detective work becomes most important.

In a sense your investigators and how your lawyers supervise your investigators can be the make or break of your case. Investigation techniques have to be legal and your lawyer's job is to ensure that the investigators instructed is reputable, efficient and operates within the ambit of the law throughout the investigation. There are many 'cowboy' investigators in the market who can embarrass you by their behaviour and jeopardise your chances of recovery. So be careful about who you chose; it is always preferable to seek advice from those with experience in this field.

So long as these broad principals are adhered to, then the options for investigations are enormous. It would be outside the scope of this piece to provide detailed discussions of such techniques but some examples are as follow:

1. Checking database whether private or public to ascertain:

- Credit ratings
- Property ownership
- Ownership of companies and shares
- County Court Judgements
- Electoral Resister Searches

Many of the above can provide you with a combination of information which can help you build up an asset profile of your target. This will hopefully enable you to find out whether or not the assets exist and if so, their whereabouts

2. Electonic surveillance including of telephone conversations (in certain circumstances) together with use of hearing devices, as well as interception of faxes and e-mails which are often a rich source of important information.

3. Dustbin searches - you will be amazed what people leave in their dustbins. However, great care has to be taken to ensure legality.

4. Pretext calls and visits leading to 'sting' operations are used to lure your target into trusting the investigators and sharing crucial and damaging information, which would be used against them in Court.

5. Other more traditional surveillance methods including mobile and stationary surveillance enabling you to track your target's movements including any suspicious or key visitors, for example, to a bank or off-shore tax centre where monies are often hidden from their rightful owners.

As you can imagine, the above can provide a wealth of information which may eventually enable you to obtain help from the Court. However, it is crucially important that your lawyers bring all the factual strands of the investigation together such a way as to persuade a judge of the strength of your case.

In addition to lawyers and investigations the case may often require input from forensic accountants and public relation consultants who often deal with very important respects of coping with unwanted publicity resulting from a fraud. It is said that an overwhelming percentage of fraud is not even reported for fear of bad publicity.

This article is merely designed to highlight some key issues in a complex area of law, which often demands enormous investment in man-hours and requires action in a relatively short space of time. The most important thing to bear in mind is that if you are unfortunate enough to be a victim of a fraudster, you should not just ''take it on the chin''. The message is do not let them get away with it; the law is generally on your side and you have many options to recover your money.

Richard Branson, Elton John, Jonathon Aitken and Albert Reynolds are just some of the high profile businessmen and celebrities who have appeared in libel trials in recent times.

Yet little is known about this complex area of law. It exists to protect the reputation of the individual from unjustified attack. And their origins date back to Alfred the Great. He decreed that a man found guilty of making untrue statements about another should have his tongue removed or redeemed by the price of his head! Thankfully, today the defendant only has to pay out money compensation.

Libel trials are unique. Unlike nearly all other civil trials, they still use a jury. It is the jury, which decide whether a person has been defamed. This can prove tricky. In 1959, the pianist Liberace sued the Daily Mirror, who said he was: ''a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, ice -covered heap of mother love.'' This implied that Liberace was a homosexual whom the jury thought was defamatory. Whether a modern jury would think the same is debatable. And during the Fist World War, it was defamatory to say that someone was German.



Clearly this would not be the case now (but would it be defamatory to say that someone was Iranian in the States). Successful plaintiffs can win huge sums. Last year a lawyer and his psychic healer wife got £350,000 when the Daily Telegraph accused them of brainwashing a man into leaving his wife! And in 1995 the former head of Scotland Yard's Obscene Publications squad got £ 15,000 from a woman's magazine who said he liked to dress up in women's clothes.

Temping, as these awards may be the prospective plaintiffs should beware before rushing off to the courts. In one famous seventeenth century case, the plaintiffs sued for being called a highwayman. At the libel trial it was proved that he was one, he was arrested then and there, committed at Newgate and hanged! More recently, in Northern Ireland, a Catholic man sued a newspaper, which claimed that he was an IRA informer. In fact the court said that it amounted to praise and that the man should be proud of his new label!

Libel law does try to strike a balance between the individuals right to have their reputation protected from freedom of speech. If the statement is true, then this is a complete defence. And if the statement is only someone's opinion and is based on true facts, on a manner of public interest, then a libel action will fail. In some areas, such as Parliament; freedom of speech has total reign. So no matter how rude an MP is about someone, they can never be sued-as long as they make sure what it is said occurs during a House of Commons debate. And it is not just celebrities who rely on rely on libel laws. Ordinary businessmen and women also benefit its protection. A person can sue a publication that suggests they can not do their job properly, or if the publication disparages the products they sell or manufacture-so long as this reflects badly on their character.

When a TV documentary said that; country to its owners' claims, Body Shop products were in fact tested on animals, a jury gave both Anita and Gordon Roddick and their company substantial damages. This was because the programme harmed their reputation as it implied that they had lied to consumers.

No legal aid is available for libel, but it is malicious falsehood. To sue for malicious falsehood, you must show that the statement was untrue, that it was made recklessly or knowing it to be untrue, and that it is likely to cause financial harm. When a magazine claimed that plaintiff's house was haunted, the plaintiffs successfully sued, as the owner could show that the article was likely to cause financial harm. Because no one would want to buy a haunted house.

Razi Mireskandari is the Head of Civil Litigation st Simons, Muirhead & Burton. The department has a thriving media practice.

Banafsheh Poostchi is a qualified barrister who works in the litigation team

Dr Ali Dizaei is a Commander in the Metropolitan Police in charge of Kensington & Chelsea and Notting Hill, and here he talks to BIBN about the Privatisation of the police Force in the UK.

(BIBN) What is the concept behind the privatisation of the Police Force?

(AD) This government believes that by simply pouring resources into the public sector, you are not necessarily going to improve the quality of service. Education, the NHS and the police service have been proof of that. therefore, it must be said that there is no direct correlation between resources, outcome and output. What this means is that there has to be better management of resources which would improve the quality of service and therefore output. This government appears focused on the relationship between the citizen and the state and holding public sector organisations accountable. It hopes to do that through what it calls the principle of best value. That means that public sector organisations, including the police, must scan the environment and the market, check their process and give and get the best value in terms of services to the customers. The history of policing in the last 50 years has shown the police's monopoly over various activities decline. Guarding cash in transit, policing inside football grounds, escorting prisoners and policing of shopping malls were all the traditional responsibility of the police, but have now moved to the private sector. I believe that the trend towards privatisation will continue and within the next 10 years I believe that a further chunk of police roles will be absorbed by the private sector. A likely candidate may be the idea of police foot-patrol. Many of your readers take pleasure in seeing the traditional bobby on the beat. The fact of the matter is that if you put constraints on the resources then you will not see many. So the "foot-patrol" function of the police could well be privatised, with security companies providing foot-patrol on the streets under the control of the police.

(BIBN) What is the second tier of policing?

(AD) If the first tier is foot-patrol, then the second tier would be the highly trained police officers who deal with complex issues of crime investigation and so on.

(BIBN) Have we had examples of two-tier policing elsewhere in Europe?

(AD) Yes, in Holland that is already taking place, where the less-trained officers do the basic patrol and the better trained do what the police officers do here. If the police service adopts this model there will be huge savings which can then be used to investigate complex cases.

(BIBN) Where does the concept of Police privatisation come from?

(AD) The idea originated in1993 when the Conservative government issued the Home Office Circular 114. That basically stated that all public sector organisations must strive for public efficiency, effectiveness and economy. It soon dawned on the Conservative government, and later the Labour government, that pouring resources into the public sector was not going to improve the quality of service. The Labour government has translated that into best value. In order to get best value all our practices should be challenges to maximise efficiency. In other words, public sector organisation should adopt the private sector ethos; can it be done for less without the quality being affected?

(BIBN) Are there any other examples of privatisation?

(AD) Another example is police property. Police stations in big cities are often on prime sites worth millions. The question you have to ask yourself is, "Do they need to be there?". Take a city like Oxford. All the senior police officers sit in a prime building in the middle of the city centre. It would be more cost effective if those magnificent listed buildings were sold and the main offices moved to the suburbs, and another building can be hired outside the city centre. The savings for the sale can be used for crime prevention and crime fighting. The core function of the police would remain in the city centre, the police officers fighting crime stay in the city in a smaller building, but the managerial team, the support team and the secretariat can move into a less expensive building outside the city centre.

(BIBN) Apart from the Netherlands, are there any other countries which have considered privatising their police force?

(AD) Yes, in the US there are a lot of communities which are policed privately. There are small pockets of private policing in this country, but it is very much in its infancy and members of the public pay for it.

(BIBN) Will privatisation of the police force work for the UK?

(AD) It will have to work, as it is no longer an option. Investment in policing has increased five-fold in the past 10 years and it is unlikely to increase in the future. There are less police officers now then there were 10 years ago. Given the constraints which are facing the police and all public sector organisations in this country today, the government must seriously consider how it can go about increasing outcome and output with less money. Obviously, there are certain core functions of the police that can never be privatised. On the other hand, the peripheral aspects can be privatised. It will release police officers to do the main function of crime prevention and it will allow policing to be done cheaper whilst allowing them to focus on their main role.