Police bureaucracy review set out

The long-awaited paper by Home Office policing adviser Sir Ronnie Flanagan - a copy of which was leaked earlier this week - proposes sweeping changes to bureaucracy which could save millions of police hours a year.

The report suggests only 10% of policing tasks require fully-trained officers, and duties such as taking statements could be carried out "more effectively" by civilians, according to the BBC.

Sir Ronnie, a former chief constable, is also expected to recommend scrapping a form that police must fill in every time they stop someone in the street.

Lengthy paperwork was introduced after the inquiry into the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

The so-called "stop and account" form can take officers up to seven minutes to complete. Sir Ronnie is due to say the form should be scrapped when people are stopped by police, but it should be retained if an individual is searched.

Officers should hand their business card to anyone they stop instead of being required to fill in the form, it may suggest.

The stop forms were designed to keep tabs on whether ethnic minorities were being unfairly targeted, and also to monitor the actions of individual police officers.

Tory leader David Cameron dismissed arguments last week that scrapping the paperwork would alienate ethnic minorities. He argued that black and Asian youngsters would benefit most from a tougher regime as they were the ones being stabbed and shot.

Official figures showed last year that black people were seven times more likely than whites to be stopped and searched by the police in 2006, an increase on the previous year. Asians were about twice as likely to be stopped and searched.