Policing in the 21st Century

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I think that everybody in politics aims to represent the people and their views. The point of directly elected commissioners is to replace bureaucratic accountability with democratic accountability. However, the hon. Gentleman is right that checks and balances need to be in place. That is why we will introduce the police and crime panels, drawn from local authority representatives and independent members, with powers to look at the commissioner of police’s plans in their area and to raise public concerns if they wish to do that.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I will leave aside the fact that the Government came to power promising to stop constant reorganisations but have done nothing but reorganise. Will the Home Secretary confirm that SOCA in its current guise is being abolished and that the intelligence function, which is crucial to dealing with, for example, the cybercrime and e-crime that she mentioned, will go with it? Does she therefore propose to enhance the role of the excellent police e-crime unit in the Met, or to transfer the powers to that amorphous body, the NCA?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman’s assumption that SOCA’s intelligence-gathering capability will be abolished is completely wrong. We intend to build on and harness the intelligence-gathering expertise that has been built up in SOCA in the past few years as part of the serious organised crime command in the national crime agency.

Given that, in November 2003, the right hon. Gentleman’s proposals included changing police authorities so that they would be wholly or partially directly elected rather than appointed, I am sorry that he has not supported our proposal for directly elected commissioners.