The government has made clear that, despite its recent defeat in the House of Lords, it will introduce elected police and crime commissioners in England and Wales. Having performed embarrassing ‘U-turns’ on the NHS, selling the forests, and sentencing, ministers are in no mood to see another key Tory policy lost. The home secretary is likely to offer some concessions to the Lords on checks and balances, but will reject the idea of piloting the reforms and will instead push the legislation through, leading to elections in 42 police forces across England and Wales in May next year.
PCCs will have control over millions of pounds of public money, will be able to hire and fire chief constables and will set the priorities for police forces up and down the country. Despite this, few people have given much thought as to who these people are likely to be. None of the major political parties have decided on a selection process – and yet, after the party conferences, there will be just six months to get candidates in place before the elections in May.
Labour in particular needs to start taking PCCs seriously. There will be some successful independent candidates, including a sprinkling of local ‘celebrities’ with the money to compete, or people with a background in policing such as former chief constables. In terms of the first group, is it inconceivable that someone like Nick Ross of Crimewatch fame could stand and win? Or Digby Jones in the west Midlands? The danger here, those particular individuals aside, is the emergence of eccentric, unqualified and indeed crudely populist PCCs elected on an anti-politics ticket. Such people will very likely lack the qualities to make a success of the role.
Many of the second group – who might also comprise judges or victims of crime – would be well qualified for the role and would possess the knowledge to hit the ground running. The danger with this group – particularly former chief constables – would be if the existing policing establishment simply reasserts control of the system and that a role that is intended to inject new energy into policing simply leads to business as usual.
Nevertheless, police force areas are in many cases very large and it is only really the big political parties that have the organisational reach to mobilise voters on a regional scale. Given the midterm unpopularity of the coalition parties, Labour stands to do very well in these contests.
So what kind of people should the party be looking for? In many ways a successful PCC will need a similar set of skills to a directly elected mayor: a powerful communicator, with strong leadership and management skills, who can work well in partnership with other agencies (in this case including not just the police but the prison service, probation trusts and local authorities).
Labour should be thinking innovatively about the kind of people it should be encouraging to stand in the coming internal selections. Frankly, it would look uninspiring if most of the candidates were simply existing police authority chairs. The party should be seeking out members who have direct experience of tackling crime in their local areas. Labour would also put itself in a strong position if a few former ministers with a criminal justice background were to come forward. What about Hazel Blears for Greater Manchester, Jack Straw for Lancashire, or David Blunkett for south Yorkshire? Such figures would lend serious credibility to the party’s campaign.
Many of us would prefer a different model of police accountability to the one we are likely to get. Nevertheless, PCCs are likely to be elected in less than 12 months’ time to run the police service in England and Wales. It is time all of us started taking them seriously.
Jack Straw and David Blunkett were both Home Secretaries who failed to ensure the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act was adhered to in full. It is the failure of the implementation of the key objectives in the Community Safety Strategies that this act introduced which brought about what as seen as the need for Police and Crime Commissioners along with the scrapping of ASBO’s and other ideas that the Tories wrongly believe will deal with the issue. I agree the party should be seeking out members who have direct experience of tackling crime, in their local areas but have concerns about popular political names being seen as the ideal candidate when they attributed to the failure.
a timely piece Rick – thanks – though since the bill is going to be at least 3months the timetable still looks tight for elections in May (cf. Electoral Commission’s concerns about whether they can prepare in time)… Digby Jones might be a good headline in the West Mids but he, along with 75% of the other Cross Bench Peers present voted against this costly, risky policy in the Lords. When the police face cuts of 20%, where’s the sense in spending £132m on a new system of governance when there’s no compelling evidence the old one has really failed (crime down – public confidence up… etc, etc). APA
Nathan crime has not gone down reported crime has. Public confidence isn’t up go to any PACT meeting, Area Committee meeting or even just read your local newspaper and you will see it is very much still on the agenda of priorities.
Police roles are musch more extensive than crime as the Manchester Tweets showed (just for the reponse officers.) They are invovled with other care and enforcement agencies in local authorities, and with social care in child protection and domestic violence. And of course they are invovled in social control (anti social behviour, traffic, demos and festivals beggars rough sleeping mental health.). Yet the only role discussed by Rick Muir is ‘crime.’ Local Labour New, Blue ar jusat Real must be clear about it’s its key values policy and objectives in these domains.