As local MPs prepare to today debate plans to put policing under single-person control they have been warned against imposing a structure which ‘can only cause enormous upheaval at a time when all efforts should be concentrated on protecting front-line policing in an era of shrinking resources.’
The warning has come from Cleveland Police Authority Chair Councillor Dave McLuckie who has written to the area’s MPs explaining why the proposal to create so-called Police and Crime Commissioners and Panels ‘is a recipe for conflict, confusion—and costs.’
The proposals are contained in the Government’s Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, and Councillor McLuckie says it’s important to underline the concerns shared by all members of the Authority—and across a wide spectrum of the police service—at the potential consequences.
In the letter the Authority challenges the claim that there is a democratic mandate for single-person control, pointing out that the Election manifesto of one of the coalition Government parties proposed exactly the opposite, with plans for direct elections of police authorities and giving them greater powers.
Councillor McLuckie says the idea that a single individual can represent the interests of hundreds of thousands—in some force areas millions—of people is ‘clearly nonsense’ and says that the proposal to set up Police and Crime Panels to hold Commissioners to account raises the prospect of ‘continuing power struggles with policing—and the public—being the lowers.’
With Government documents suggesting the costs of new structure could be as much as £136million over ten years and reports that Commissioners will be paid around £122,000 a year, the Authority Chair points out that the support needed for single Commissioners will clearly be much greater than the current structure where all police authority members share duties and responsibilities—and in addition the Police and Crime Panels will require their own independent support structures.
Adds Councillor McLuckie ‘Even if there was a valid argument for making the changes proposed within Bill—and we do not believe there is— there can be no justification for imposing it against a background where the funding for providing the police service in your constituency, along with that of every other member of Parliament, will be reduced by 20 per cent or more over the next four years.
‘There is little or no evidence to show that there is significant public enthusiasm for the proposals within the Bill and it is likely that the vast majority of people will find it hard to understand why it is being proposed to create Commissioner posts attracting salaries of £122,000 at the same time as they are seeing police office numbers being cut.’