Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Aidan Burley and Ed Balls

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

I agree, and effective accountability really ought to happen in the main in the basic command unit. We need to ensure that the police are accountable to their community, but that they can demand support from the local authority, the health service and the other agencies that are vital to tackling the causes of drug crime and wider youth crime. All that will be ripped up under the Government’s proposals, and we will end up instead with one elected person for a massive area, who will be able to visit each ward perhaps once every other year. That is not local accountability at all.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has just said that a single elected individual could rip apart the policing in an area. Is that what he would say to Bill Bratton, who was the single elected individual who increased the detection of crime in New York and Los Angeles?

[Ed Balls]

The shadow policing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), read out to me earlier the views of Bill Bratton on the Conservative proposals and the risky and reckless way in which they are drawing conclusions from the American experience. Bill Bratton said:

“What I would suggest is create your own experience; don’t try to learn from us—seriously.”

He went on to explain exactly why the American policing model does not translate into a British context, and why it is dangerous to draw such a conclusion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ed Balls]

I fully agree about the importance of that middle tier of political accountability for chief constables. What I and many other experts fear, however, is that if one individual is elected on a direct mandate for policing, it will be very hard indeed to prevent their supposed mandate from crossing operational dividing lines. That does not happen now, because each police authority—half of which comprises independents, the other half of which is indirectly elected—covers a number of areas and often comprises a number of political parties. They ensure that there is a collective sense that operational responsibilities are properly respected. I have no doubt that some elected police and crime commissioners will want to respect operational independence, but I have no doubt that individuals might be elected on a mandate that explicitly crosses that line. Unless that element of the Bill is sorted out quickly, we will end up with an expensive politicisation of policing in this country that will overturn 170 years of policing tradition.

I have looked carefully to find support for the Bill. I have already quoted Sir Hugh Orde and ACPO. I have also quoted the Association of Police Authorities. Police superintendents take the same view, as do Liberty and the Local Government Association. I have spoken on this matter at two conferences where I have urged anyone in the room who supports the proposals to identify themselves to me privately afterwards, because no one will dare admit to it publicly. As a member of a responsible Opposition, I want to know the arguments, yet nobody will come forward. It is very hard indeed to find anyone who supports this policy.

As a result of assiduous research by our shadow team, however, I have identified three organisations that support the proposal. The first is a think-tank called Policy Exchange. Yes, it is the think-tank that was founded by the Secretary of State for Education, and the think-tank that said that the solution to unemployment in the north was for people to move to the south. Mr Blair Gibbs made the case for these commissioners on behalf of that organisation. He was in fact chief of staff to the Policing Minister between 2007 and 2010.

The second organisation is called Direct Democracy, which included in its book “Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party” a chapter on the case for independent police commissioners. Yes, that is the Direct Democracy that was founded by the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) and by the Tory MEP Mr Daniel Hannan—he who described the NHS as a “60-year mistake”. Unfortunately, the chapter in the book was authored by the Policing Minister himself.

The third organisation is a think-tank called Reform. In its 2009 pamphlet, it also advocated this policy. Yes, the Reform think-tank is now headed by the former Tory central office head of political research, and it was founded by the Policing Minister. So there we have it: a former chief of staff to the Minister, a chapter written by the Minister and a think-tank founded by the Minister. Unusually for the coalition, the Minister responsible for the policy actually supports it, which is quite a turn-up for the books.

[Mr Burley]

The right hon. Gentleman has been talking about operational independence for the past five minutes. Does he not agree that, when Tony Blair summoned all 43 chief constables to a knife crime summit in Downing street and urged them collectively to do more about knife crime, he was illustrating exactly the way in which politicians could constructively influence the police?

[Ed Balls]

Of course the hon. Gentleman is right: Prime Ministers should take an interest in these matters, and I am sure that the Prime Minister of the time did that while fully respecting the operational independence of the police. The present Prime Minister is an advocate of individually elected police commissioners; in fact, it was in his 2005 manifesto. It is always good for the Home Secretary to support the Prime Minister if she can, but sometimes, as I know, it is important to say no. I am afraid that, on this matter, she has been remiss in her duties. It would have been much better if she had said to the Prime Minister, “I am very sorry, Prime Minister, but a policy that sounded good in opposition is deeply flawed and unimplementable in government.”