Police and Crime Commissioners

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for securing this debate. Liberal Democrats are in favour of greater police accountability but the system of police and crime commissioners appears to be broken, as the examples provided by other noble Lords have demonstrated.

Much criticism has been levelled at police leadership in recent years. We have seen justified criticism of the lack of Home Office involvement in the development and selection of the most senior police officers. Gone is the previous requirement that no chief constable be appointed without experience as an assistant chief constable or deputy in another force. Gone is the Home Office assessment of the suitability of candidates, including the grading of candidates for promotion. Instead, chief constables can appoint their own senior officers and PCCs can select their own chief constables—almost always the incumbent deputy.

Competition for chief officer posts in forces has all but evaporated, given the belief that the incumbent will always be selected, having developed a relationship with his or her police and crime commissioner. As we saw in the Wiltshire Constabulary case of the investigation of Sir Edward Heath, and as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, has said, the PCC failed to launch an investigation into his own chief constable, and the Home Office then failed to hold either the chief constable or the PCC to account. Under the old tripartite system of Home Office, police authority and chief constable, the Home Secretary could and did overrule the police authority, but, because PCCs are allegedly democratically elected, they can be held to account only every four years by the electorate.

I say “allegedly” for a number of reasons. In places like Wiltshire there is an inbuilt Conservative Party majority. An Electoral Commission report in 2016 found that 72% of the electorate knew not very much or nothing at all about police and crime commissioners. With PCC elections costing £50 million a go, plus two by-elections so far—and on the last count only a 33% turnout, with voters clearly voting along party lines in most places—this is a very poor example of democracy. I understand that there are no independent police and crime commissioners left. The Home Office has abdicated responsibility for policing, placing it on police and crime commissioners who are dubiously elected on small turnouts, based on little or no public awareness, with voters voting along traditional party-political lines.

Placing too much power into the hands of one individual—in this case police and crime commissioners —creates the potential for other accountability issues. We saw this in Avon and Somerset, where inappropriate behaviour towards women was alleged against a chief constable. Vulnerable victims came forward and a case put to the police and crime commissioner, who then allegedly passed the details to the chief constable concerned, including details of the victims. While the chief constable was eventually forced to resign and has subsequently had his Queen’s Police Medal “cancelled and annulled” by the Queen, the police and crime commissioner remained in place.

The problem with the whole system of police and crime commissioners can be summed up by the current situation in the Metropolitan Police, which was placed into special measures by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, the subject of a damning report by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, with the Government blaming the de facto police and crime commissioner, and the police and crime commissioner blaming the Home Office, with the public confused as to where responsibility lies, and no one being held to account.

Liberal Democrats want police boards with similar powers to PCCs, composed primarily of local authority members, to replace police and crime commissioners. Representing a broad cross-section of constituencies and political parties, minority groups and ideas, and having responsibility for the overall funding and provision of local services, not just the police precept, most if not all of the problems with the existing system of police and crime commissioners could be overcome. At the very least, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, said, there are now so many problems with police and crime commissioners that a review is necessary, if not their removal and replacement.