If Labour opposes police commissioners it must nevertheless prepare for next year’s elections
Why won’t Labour start thinking about the election next year of police and crime commissioners? If this were any other election the party would have selected the candidates and be campaigning already. It is true that this is no ordinary election: the bill which creates the commissioners has been delayed in the House of Lords until later this year and Labour is opposing it. But by doing nothing we risk waking up next autumn to find the thin blue line has turned a Tory shade of blue, with Conservatives or their allies controlling enormous parts of the country.
Some critics have tried to dismiss the changes, suggesting that commissioners will be colourful individuals similar to some directly elected mayors – that they might be mad, but will not pose a generalised political threat.
The problem with this argument is that no individual, eccentric or otherwise, would be able to mobilise support across the enormous areas covered by the 41 police forces in England and Wales outside London. To take one example, Thames Valley police force stretches all the way from Milton Keynes to west Berkshire, taking in Oxfordshire on the way. Only a party political machine can fight an election across such large swathes of the country. And the people who take this territory have control over a political issue – crime – which voters consistently rate as one of their top three concerns.
It is disingenuous of the Conservative party to have said that they might not stand candidates. If they do not, then the candidates they back will be Conservative in all but name. That is the Tory way in the shires. It is important that Labour realises this.
Commissioners will politicise policing and criminal justice in ways which may be dangerous and divisive. But it is not as though the current system works very satisfactorily. A recent ‘summit’ to discuss the London riots that I attended in Camden focused for at least half the time on the lack of accountability of the police.
Victims of crime have less confidence in the criminal justice system than people who have not been victims of crime, and this is almost entirely down to the way they are treated by the police (or, indeed, ignored by them). For other public services it is the opposite: the more contact you have with them, the more confidence you have in them.
That is where the democratic Labour tradition can find a model for commissioners – not by making the system deal with criminals more harshly, but by focusing on providing an excellent service to victims of crime.
So this does not just mean concentrating on antisocial behaviour, which is what critics of commissioners say will happen. What about a Labour commissioner who stood on a ticket of tackling violent crime against young people and teenagers – some of the groups most likely to be victims and least likely to report crime? Or a commissioner who made rape, domestic violence and hate crime a real focus of police activity? We may not like the system but we will have to be ready to make it work for Labour ends.
—————————————————————————————
Sally Gimson was parliamentary candidate for South Leicestershire
in 2010
—————————————————————————————
Only a complete loon would think rape, domestic violence and hate crime are not a real focus of police activity!
Think you may also find that “dealing with criminals more harshly” (whatever that means going by the above comment) would “provide an excellent service to victims of crime”.
Your actually right to say the party should be looking at candidates but political leanings should and hopefully will be the last thing they should be elected for.
As Sally said: “It is disingenuous of the Conservative party to have said that they might not stand candidates. If they do not, then the candidates they back will be Conservative in all but name”.
While I agree that there should not be “Labour” candidates, I do believe that there should be candidates that the Labour Party is supporting (incl financially) otherwise we will end up with Conservative-supported candidates.
This is a good case for where Labour should have closed “Primaries” where candidates address all members of the relevant CLPs to see who should receive the logistical support of the respective CLPs.
This is entirely the reason why the whole concept of elected commissioners is wrong. It is right that a democratically elected central government sets out its policies for tackling crime and provides a legal basis upon which the Police and others implement it. Beyond that local policing operations should remain the responsibility of operational police officers whom should be accountable to their local communities for their actions.
Elected commissioners threaten to undermine the ability of the police to fight crime. Forces do take tackling rape and sexual assault very seriously (it is a highly complex area with no easy solutions). The irony of Ms Gimson’s suggestion is that it could actually reduce the overall focus of police forces on tackling sex and hate crimes as an elected commissioner may want to push resources in a different direction. In any event it would be wholly wrong for a ballot paper to have a “Labour” candidate on it – and equally wrong for a left of centre candidate to assume the police do not take tackling sex and hate crimes seriously already.