Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I congratulate Angus Macpherson on his election; indeed, it was good to see that as the first result. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that PCCs will have an important role to play in ensuring that police forces are delivering against their budgets in a way that we all want, which is by ensuring the protection of services such that we can continue to cut crime.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

In last week’s elections for the Home Secretary’s flagship policy, 85% of the public decided not to vote. She chose to spend £100 million on having these elections and this transition, which could have been spent on 3,000 police officers this year. She chose to hold the elections in November, to get the Home Office to run them and to deny the public proper information. She was warned in the Commons and the Lords, and by the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Reform Society, that those decisions were wrong. Given the overwhelming public message she received last week, will she now tell us which of those decisions she regrets?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady really needs to get her story straight on this. She complains about the amount of money that was spent on the police and crime commissioner elections, yet in the same breath she wants more money to be spent on them. Which is it: too much money or too little?

[Yvette Cooper]

That was not an answer to the question. The Home Secretary has to take some responsibility for the shambles that she has created. In April she got the decision and the date wrong over Abu Qatada by accident; in November she got the date wrong on the elections deliberately. By not holding them in November, she could have saved £25 million alone, but she chose not to. People did not want these elections last week. They said it was a waste of money, they said they did not know anything about it, they objected to the policy and they did not want to vote in the dark. She did not listen to those warnings and she is not listening to the public now or the message that they sent last week. Why does she not listen to them and apologise for the shambles that this Home Secretary and her decisions have created?

[Mrs May]

I make no apology for introducing police and crime commissioners, who have a democratic mandate for the first time. For the first time, the public know that there is somebody who has been elected who is visible, accessible and accountable to them. PCCs have replaced invisible, unaccountable, unelected police authorities. I think police and crime commissioners are going to make a real difference to cutting crime in this country.