Justice Secretary, Jack Straw has told the BBC he is "sceptical" about claims by some police that they are overworked and spend hours filling in forms.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I'm afraid I'm rather sceptical about the excuse that a public service, in this case the police, is overworked and therefore can't change.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I'm afraid I'm rather sceptical about the excuse that a public service, in this case the police, is overworked and therefore can't change.
"With a given level of resources, some police forces, or some parts of police forces do very much better than others.
"And it is the ones who are the less efficient and who have the wrong approach to the public who fall back on this 'Oh, I'm overworked' [argument]."
He said while some officers would claim it took four hours to fill in forms, "good police officers will take an hour to fill in the same forms because they want to get out and catch criminals".
He added: "Some police officers, whatever they say, actually quite enjoy being in the police station in the warm. We are dealing with human beings, but we are also dealing with the kind of discipline and culture in the police service."
But Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said the remarks were "irresponsible and inflammatory".
"It wasn't police officers who brought in 3,000 new laws, it wasn't police officers who brought in a 30-page prosecution file and it wasn't police officers who brought in multiple forms and authorities to use a pair of binoculars," he said. "This was all done by politicians. Police officers are not the architects of bureaucracy, they and the public are the victims of it."
Chris Grayling reacted with;
"What we have now is a group of Ministers who are utterly out of touch with what is really happening in policing. They heap more and more bureaucracy onto our police, leaving them filling in form after form, often with the same information on it, and then pretend that nothing is wrong. It's not police officers who are sitting at their desks in the warm - it's Ministers stuck in their ivory towers. They should get out a bit more and find out what is"
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