Policing in the 21st Century

Glenda Jackson Excerpts

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

That was a slightly convoluted question, if I may say so. I believe that directly elected commissioners will ensure that the police forces in their areas are responsive to local needs rather than being responsive simply to the bureaucratic imposition from Whitehall, as they were under the Labour Government.

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

Notwithstanding the Home Secretary’s response to her hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick), who gave the example of directly elected commissioners in the United States, is it not the case that, far from crime falling there, the United States has vastly larger crime totals than we do and vastly overcrowded prisons? Is it not also the case that once elected, the directly elected police commissioner tends to spend the next three years campaigning for re-election rather than tackling crime? Is that really the model that the Home Secretary wishes to introduce to this country?

[Mrs May]

I neither accept nor recognise the picture the hon. Lady paints of what happens with directly elected commissioners in other parts of the world. Labour Members who are so against directly elected commissioners should ask themselves two questions. First, why then do they support the arrangements we have in London, where the Mayor is directly accountable? Secondly, why was it, therefore, that in 2008 the then Labour Home Secretary brought forward proposals for directly elected police representatives?