The spendthrift police force

However, regardless of whether or not this should officially be deemed misuse of taxpayers’ money, there will be few members of the public, in Cleveland or indeed anywhere else, who do not see such behaviour as excessive, particularly at a time, in 2009, when it was clear that public-sector spending would have to be reined in.

In this context, it is particularly disturbing that Dave McLuckie, the then chairman of the police authority which is supposed to act as a check on force spending, was one of Chief Constable Sean Price’s companions on trips to the United States and Estonia, along with Mr Price’s staff officer, Heather Eastwood, with whom he now lives in North Yorkshire, and the then deputy chief executive of the police authority, Julie Leng. It is equally concerning that Coun McLuckie paid restaurant bills totalling thousands of pounds on his police-authority credit card.

Behaviour like this may be the exception rather than the rule, but it is to be hoped that the new wind of austerity blowing through the British police service will make such excess a thing of the past.

For it certainly makes a mockery of police chiefs’ protests that cuts will inevitably affect front-line policing when forces such as Cleveland have been indulging in such blatantly gratuitous spending sprees.

It should not need Government cuts, however, to instil in public servants the sense of duty and responsibility that should bring with it the belief that public money is to be carefully stewarded and not self-indulgently splashed around.