Police and Crime Commissioners

Mark Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David]

That is absolutely correct, Mr Speaker. My right hon. Friend is not known for unusual practices in any shape or form. I think that he was about to make a fair point, however. It is strange that the Minister who is to respond to the debate is not from the Home Office, when it is the Home Office that has responsibility for the matter under consideration. Instead, we have a Minister from the Cabinet Office. Perhaps he will explain the reason for this when he responds to the debate.

The Minister—although he is from the Cabinet Office—will be aware that genuine concern has been expressed by Members in this House and the other place that the Government do not intend to have a publicly funded mailing or booklet distributed locally, giving details of the candidates standing in the elections for police and crime commissioners. Like the Electoral Commission, I believe that the Government have failed to recognise the importance of such material.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

The Government’s assertion is that there will be a central website on which all our constituents can readily access information about the candidates. Has the hon. Gentleman examined the difficulties that that could pose, certainly for my constituents in Ceredigion and across the Dyfed-Powys area who have no internet provision?

[Mr David]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, and I agree with him completely. In the last Government, I was, among other things, the deputy Minister with responsibility for digital inclusion. I know only too well that some 7 million adults in England—excluding London—and Wales do not have internet access and have not used the internet at all in the past 12 months. Sadly, those people will not have the same access to information as those individuals who have digital computer access. The hon. Gentleman is correct to say that it is people in rural areas and the elderly who will be disadvantaged, as they will not have the same access to the kind of information that I believe they should have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman who secured the debate spoke for just over half the time available, so let me address at least some of his questions before taking interventions from other Members.

Our view is that top-down control, with chief constables looking upwards to the Home Office, did not work particularly well, so we want locally democratically accountable figures setting policy. However, operational matters will, of course, remain the responsibility of the chief constable. There will be police and crime panels to ensure that there is scrutiny and transparency.

The hon. Gentleman made a number of points about the elections themselves and I shall deal with some of them in turn. As I said, I am pleased that so many Members of this House and the other place are stepping forward and that we are seeing candidates from across the country. I think we will have a good slate of experienced people. To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I believe that a number of people who have had experience in the criminal justice system, some of whom are former police officers but others of whom have been involved in that system, have put their names forward. So I think that the public will be offered a good range of candidates—people with practical experience and people with policy-making experience. Like the hon. Member for Caerphilly, I trust the public to be able to sort out the qualities that they want in police and crime commissioners and to make the right decisions in November.

The Government agree that it is important that candidates get their message out. To pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), candidates obviously have a responsibility to do that themselves. Of course it is not the case that candidates can spend a limitless amount of money; there will be limits on expenditure, which will be broadly proportionate to those for other types of election. So candidates will be able to spend some money, but they will not be able to spend limitless sums. We thought carefully about how we could assist candidates in doing that, and provisions will be made in the draft legislation to enable candidates, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly said, to publish information on the centrally funded website.

In addition, if the public are not able to use the website, they will be able to call a freephone number and request, on demand, printed information to be sent to them directly. We recognise that this is a novel approach, but we think that that blend of online and on-demand information will be very helpful. The website and the print-on-demand phone number will be printed on polling cards sent out in advance of the election.

[Mr Mark Williams]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will adopt the same stricture as I did in respect of Labour Members. Let me deal with the points that the hon. Member for Caerphilly raised, as it is his debate, and if we have time, I will be happy to take further interventions.

Polling cards will contain this information, so it will be widely distributed to voters. The Electoral Commission, with which we are working closely, will include that contact and access information in its own literature—indeed, this will be in the booklet that it is distributing to households, which will provide some information about the elections and the supplementary vote system.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly raised the issue of internet access. Although 77% or so of the population can use the internet, we recognise that there are people who cannot; my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) referred to people who live in his constituency in this regard. That is why we have the combination of online and print-on-demand information. I am pleased to tell the hon. Member for Caerphilly, as I anticipated that he would ask about this, that the information will be available in both English and Welsh. Candidates will be able to submit their information to go on the website in either language, and we will make sure that the website content and the printed copies are available in both languages. We will of course make sure that the information is available in a range of accessible formats for those voters who have some form of disability, to make sure that we maximise the opportunities for people to see the information.

Let me deal with why we have chosen that option rather than completely free mailings paid for by the taxpayer. We did consider funding mailings of the type used for UK parliamentary and European elections. We are minded to conclude—this is our preferred option on the website, rather than our final position—that at a time when budgets are tight, it is difficult to justify those mailings for PCC elections. There are also some logistical difficulties involved in producing a candidates booklet, such as those used for mayoral elections. The difficulties are partly to do with the size of the PCC areas and having to produce the 41 booklets simultaneously; this would be very difficult to co-ordinate across the country. We think that the approach we have adopted is a proportionate one that will give people access to the information. We will, of course, look at the experience in practice; we will look very carefully at what happens. I am sure that hon. Members in this House will not be backward in coming forward about any issues, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be sure to tell us of issues in his area in Wales. We will look at this carefully but we are confident that we have adopted a sensible approach; we have worked closely with stakeholders and we think it will be successful.

As I mentioned, the Electoral Commission will be working on some public awareness information. This is in its plan, so it is in the money that it has bid for and had approved by the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission and by the House. This is something that has been in the Electoral Commission’s programme, so I am confident that it will be effective.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly also asked about the conduct rules. The elections, as he said, will take place in every police force area in England and Wales outside London, although it is worth saying that the first time that people will be able to vote for the directly elected person who will control policing will be in the London mayoral election, now that the Mayor has that responsibility. The detail for the other elections will be in the secondary legislation that we intend to lay before the House shortly. I can confirm that “shortly” means by 15 May, so that legislation will be laid before the House six months before the elections.

We have, of course, worked closely with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, returning officers, the Local Government Association, the Welsh Government, the Wales Office and the Association of Police Authorities, among others, to check that the legislation is in good order and that it will work in practice. Preparations have started. The police area returning officers will be administering the elections across the police force areas, a number of meetings have taken place and the preparations are in good order.

The hon. Gentleman asked one or two other questions and I have dealt with his question about the language. He raised some concerns about the website and I can make it very clear that the Government have ensured that they will have no role at all in the content on the website, which will be dealt with by the police area returning officers. The Government’s role is to set up the function and ensure that the information is posted; we will not have any editorial control at all, as is appropriate.

[Mr Harper]

I can confirm that the legislation will be drafted—I am sure this will be tested when it is debated in the House—to ensure that it is clear that there will be no opportunity for the Government to have any role in deciding the content of the information. That would clearly not be appropriate.

Let me come to the final point about victim support services, which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). It has been proposed—the consultation by the Ministry of Justice finished just a few days ago—to move from a national to a local model. The Government’s view, on which we consulted in our consultation document, is that rather than Whitehall attempting to pick those services and fund them across the country, the police and crime commissioners, who will be accountable to local people, will do a better job of making those judgments. I have read through the Ministry of Justice consultation document in full, as a local victim support organisation wrote to me in my capacity as a constituency MP and I wanted to ensure, having worked with Victim Support in the past, that I was confident about what would happen. I have been through the consultation document and I think the proposal is a good one that will mean more money gets spent, rather than less, and that decisions will be taken more locally. That makes sense, rather than trying to have a one-size-fits-all policy. The Ministry of Justice will consider the responses to the consultation very closely to see whether it needs to alter its policy in any way.

I think that I have answered all of the points raised by the hon. Member for Caerphilly, so, as we have one or two moments, do any of my colleagues who jumped up to intervene earlier want to do so before I sit down?

[Mr Mark Williams]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he said about the Welsh language, which is very important in large parts of Wales. What costings were made to examine combining the Electoral Commission’s booklet with an insertion from candidates?

[Mr Harper]

We did consider that and we discussed it with the Electoral Commission, which is, of course, producing one booklet to be distributed to every household across England and Wales. The difficulty is that if a booklet is going to be produced with the candidate information, 41 different versions will have to be produced. Logistically and for cost reasons, that is quite complicated. It is not quite as straightforward as my hon. Friend put it.

I hope that I have dealt with colleagues’ concerns and I am pleased that the debate was so well attended. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Caerphilly for raising points in the way that he did.

Question put and agreed to.