Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

I am pleased to be able to inform the hon. Gentleman that wheel-clamping is being abolished altogether on private land. Local authorities will still carry out wheel-clamping on public land.

[Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

5. What recent steps she has taken to make police forces more accountable to local residents.

[Lorraine Fullbrook (South Ribble) (Con)]

8. What recent steps she has taken to make police forces more accountable to local people.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

The introduction of elected police and crime commissioners to hold their chief constable and force to account through a strong public mandate will restore the connection between the police and the people, ensuring that the police are held to account democratically, not bureaucratically by Whitehall.

[Mark Lancaster]

Government attempts to make police forces more accountable to local people are welcome. Thames Valley police has decided to scrap the basic command unit. In the light of that, how does the Minister intend to ensure that central resources previously held by the basic command unit will still be allocated fairly across Thames Valley police?

[Nick Herbert]

Decisions on whether to continue with the basic command unit structure within forces are a matter for chief constables to decide, and not one on which the Government have taken a view. I appreciate my hon. Friend’s concerns about resources and am happy to discuss them with him and to find out from the chief constable when I next see her, which will be this week, what she plans to do to allay them.