Sir Norman Bettison, writing in today's Yorkshire Post, says health and safety zealots are, from their armchairs, disarming the service of its ability to respond to crisis.

And he accuses society of a "sleep-walking acceptance" of their mantra.

Sir Norman's scathing attack follows the prosecution of the Metropolitan Police for the shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes.

He also refers to the case of two police community support officers who did not jump into a Manchester lake to save a 10-year-old boy because they had not been trained in underwater rescues.

But the more immediate prompt for his hard-hitting criticism of a health and safety culture was the brave response of one of his officers to a crisis last week in Knottingley, near
Pontefract.

The police were called after a young man took a break-up with his girlfriend badly and went to a bridge, saying he was going to jump into the canal below.

Two PCs, Robert Dovey and Glenn Preer, responded. PC Dovey decided to dive in after the man. "There is absolutely no doubt that PC Dovey saved a life last Thursday. I am proud of him and you may feel the same emotion," Sir Norman says.

"But, in these days when health and safety regulations appear to have an elevated and authoritative status, how should I respond? The officer put his own life at risk. There are dozens of cases of water rescuers dragged down by panicking victims. To commend PC Dovey is to encourage others to follow his example."

The Chief Constable has decided he will commend PC Dovey and is urging other officers to follow his lead.

But Sir Norman believes health and safety legislation poses a very real threat to that example.

"The world is a little mad these days. The world, and the people who inhabit it, are not perfect. There is this organisation called the 'police service' that is a service of first and last resort.

"We in the service joined it because we wanted to be of assistance to people in a crisis. But the armchair perfection of the 'health and safety Taliban' is intent on coming between us: creating doubt, where there was once certainty, over our mission; and demonstrating, post hoc, the chaos that surrounds all crises as evidence of a failure to plan and protect.

"It is genuinely easier, in that kind of environment, to do nothing. We are not trained, equipped, practised or informed sufficiently for this or that particular scenario so we'll stand back," he says.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, MP for Haltemprice and Howden, supported the Chief Constable's sentiments, saying Labour's regulations have undermined the heroism that traditionally defined the police.

"A Conservative government would slash the burden of paperwork and targets and make police accountable to local communities rather than the latest whim from Whitehall," he said.

Tom McGhie, chairman of the West Yorkshire Police Federation, said concerns had been raised in the past over honouring the bravery of officers who had dived into water but health and safety legislation was also important to protect the lives of officers.

Read Norman Bettison's article »