Draft South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Transfer of Police and Crime Commissioner Functions) Order 2024

Keir Mather Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 General Committees

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Transfer of Police and Crime Commissioner Functions) Order 2024.

As always, Mr Dowd, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. The draft order was laid before the House on 7 February. If approved, it will transfer the police and crime commissioner functions from the South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner to the Mayor of South Yorkshire. It will also bring forward the next scheduled mayoral election in South Yorkshire from 2026 to 2024, with elections then taking place every four years thereafter, so that the South Yorkshire mayoral election cycle is aligned to the existing PCC election cycle across the rest of the country.

I am grateful to incumbent Mayor, Oliver Coppard, for providing his consent to the transfer and to the amendment of his current mayoral electoral term to enable alignment. The PCC for South Yorkshire will continue to exercise the functions until the end of his elected term of office in a few weeks’ time. From the point of taking office on 7 May this year, following the mayoral election, the Mayor will then act as the single directly elected individual responsible for exercising PCC powers, which include the duty to hold the chief constable and police force to account. Of course, the Mayor will be accountable to the people of South Yorkshire through the ballot box.

The functions of the PCC will include, as they do elsewhere, the issuing of a police and crime plan; the setting of the police budget, including the PCC council tax precept; the appointment and, if necessary, suspension or dismissal of the chief constable; and the addressing of complaints about policing services that are non-criminal in nature.

[Keir Mather (Selby and Ainsty) (Lab)]

Will the Minister speak a bit more about the role that a Mayor with the new powers will be able to play in co-ordinating between police forces in the region? In the village of Kirk Smeaton in my constituency, offences can happen on either side of the border between North Yorkshire and South Yorkshire, and police forces will often not answer calls if the incident is in the wrong field, making for a bit of a ridiculous situation. Does the Minister think that a Mayor with the new powers will better be able to address such cross-border issues?

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[Keir Mather]

The hon. Member has raised quite a few points about accountability. First, there will be accountability through the ballot box for an elected Mayor. Secondly, is it not the responsibility of South Yorkshire MPs to work in a spirit of pragmatic co-operation with the Mayor to allow this change to happen? If they will not, I can think of a fantastic candidate—Jake Richards in Rother Valley—who would be very happy to do so.

[Alexander Stafford]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but if we are talking about accountability, only 24% of people voted for the last Mayor. That is a fundamentally undemocratic part of it. We have accountability in this place. For instance, I had a public meeting only last Thursday with the current police and crime commissioner, and he told us, “Nobody wants police stations on the high street.” I took a vote among the 50 or 60 people in the room, and 100% of them wanted the police station open on their high street. But can we, as Rother Valley, force the police and crime commissioner? No, because in the wider Sheffield, the focus is on Sheffield. The pork barrel nature of funding for Sheffield means that we are all neglected. That is deeply concerning.

It is very upsetting that we are in a situation where more money and resources are being pumped into a South Yorkshire Mayor who then does not spend them on what we want. We are spending £12.2 million on a bike lane between Maltby and Rotherham. We are getting £6.5 million to put in the roundabouts. Who wants that? We do not want that. What we want is the bus route between Swallownest and Aston and Crystal Peaks restored, and he is not even doing that, even though he has the power. We want Doncaster Sheffield airport reopened, but he has not done that. What faith do we have in the whole system working for the people of South Yorkshire?

I have taken up enough time, but I beg colleagues in the room: we do not want this in South Yorkshire. The people in South Yorkshire do not want it. The Members of Parliament who are here—those who bothered to turn up and to represent their constituents and give them a voice—do not want it. The MPs who did not turn up today clearly do not care about this. They must be among the many thousands of people who did not respond to the consultation. They do not care about it. The people who care about the community—the people who care about South Yorkshire—are the people who bothered to turn up today to speak for South Yorkshire, for the people of South Yorkshire, for responsibility in South Yorkshire and for good spending in South Yorkshire. This SI goes against all of that. I beg you all: please, vote it down.

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[Nick Fletcher]

At this moment in time, considering the place that South Yorkshire is in, if we are going to have PCCs and Mayors, which is not serving South Yorkshire well, both of those positions should continue to be elected separately, rather than giving all the power to a Mayor who can then appoint somebody who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley has said, will not be elected. The measure gives too much power to an individual whose record so far has been appalling for South Yorkshire. As I have said, I urge all Members to vote against this, because it is not the right thing to do. Once again, we have three Members of Parliament here who have given up the time of day to attend, as opposed to those Opposition Members who have failed to turn up, and we need to ensure that our voice is heard.

[Keir Mather]

We have heard a lot from Government Members about democratic accountability, even the risk of dictatorship, and how nobody wants this and the will of the people needs to be respected. This provision was in the manifesto for the current South Yorkshire Mayor who, I remind Government Members, received 71% of the vote in his mayoral election. Does that not equal democratic accountability?

[Nick Fletcher]

This is why we are living in a dictatorship. I need to take this moment to encourage all the people in South Yorkshire, if this goes forward today—[Interruption.]