Police and Crime Commissioners

Yesterday the government launched a review into the role of Police and Crime Commissioners, helping to give the public a greater say over local policing that affects them. 
  • Police and Crime Commissioners are elected to deliver on the people’s priorities, and we want the public to have confidence that they are doing so – including recruiting 20,000 additional officers, and making the most of the biggest funding increase to policing in a decade.
     
  • That is why the government has launched a review into the role of PCCs, focused on improving public scrutiny and transparency in their work, and ensuring the views of the law-abiding silent majority who voted for them are always at the centre of their decision-making.
     
  • This will ensure that voters can better hold PCCs to account for their performance – giving the public a stronger say in the issues that matter to them.
Personally I am absolutely convinced that the PCC system is vastly more transparent and accountable - and cheaper  - than the system of police authorities which we had before.

I bet the percentage of Cumbria voters who could name Peter McCall as our Police and Crime Commissioner is an order of magnitude higher than the proportion who could have correctly named even two of the seventeen members of the Police Authority which had exactly the same responsibilities before. And the salary of the PCC is less than half the total of the allowances which were paid to those seventeen people.

But it is right that as we approach the end of the second term of the elected commissioners, there should be a review of how the system has worked.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Inadvertent cut & paste job in first para. Anyway we won't need a P&CC when your mate Starkie becomes Mayor of Cumbria
5:56 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Thank you for pointing out the accidental extra words which I have removed.

Personally

1) There is a precedent in the North West for an area having both a directly elected mayor and a directly elected police and Crime Commissioner (in Liverpool.) I would favour that option.

2) We won't select a candidate for mayor of Cumbria until the position is created, and

3) This is not an attack on Mike Starkie, it is a comment on people who would have something to offer. I am absolutely 100% certain that if the position is created there will be more than one, and probably more than two, strong contenders for the Conservative nomination.
9:43 am
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