Mr.
Coaker: The hon. Gentleman made an unusually cynical point
for him. Clause 1 deals with police authorities in a broad sense. The
councillor-call-for-action process is trying to respond to local
authorities, local councillors and local CDRPs, by saying that the
councillor should have a role in bringing to the attention of local
authorities things such as graffiti, damaged fencing, street lighting
and so on. I should have thought that a councillor would be able to do
that, and whether they respond well when a member of the public raised
such matters would be up to them. To use the logic used by the hon.
Gentleman in the rest of his arguments, how well the councillor deals
with such matters would be one of the things that people would use to
judge whether they should re-elect him or
her.
Paul
Holmes: I agree with the Minister to a point. But, again,
I cannot see how any decent councillor does not do that now. I
certainly would not expect any of my
councillors in my town not to do that when their constituents and ward
voters brought them such an issue. The obstacle is that, having run
around and brought it to the attention of this or that committee, the
answer that comes out is that there is not enough money or police to do
anything about it. We want to give police authorities some real
accountability: they should be directly elected, respond to the
community, raise the funds and put on extra policing if that is what
the community wants, but the community must also realise that it has to
pay for it. It is not something that just appears, like manna from
heaven. The
final issue that I want to tackle is politicisation. The problem with
one alternative—the directly elected single figure, the
commissioner, the sheriff, the Robocop, however we wish to term
it—is partly that I have never quite understood the desire for
the single heroic figure who is right at the centre of everything. As
we have seen with mayors in some parts of the country—I am
thinking about the north rather than London at the moment—they
can just ride roughshod over what the majority of the councillors in
their area want and go off on their own personal tack. There is a big
danger in that, and we have seen part of it here in London.
The Mayor of
London played a very active public role in getting the police
commissioner to resign and to be replaced by another. Is that quite the
role that we want an elected politician to play individually? We see
the Mayor of London going to the press after an MP is arrested and
their office is searched—whatever the rights and wrongs of
that—and almost immediately saying, “Well, I’ve
looked into this and I don’t think that anything will come of
it.” Is that what we want elected police commissioners of some
kind to be doing all over the country?
If we look at
the example in the US that that would be modelled on, we see that the
average commissioner lasts about two years in the job before they are
pushed out of office either as result of electoral fortune or political
circumstance. In this country, chief constables sign a five-year
contract and quite often serve at least two terms. Certainly, the
previous chief constable of Derbyshire, who retired last year, did. Do
we want commissioners who are politicised on the American
model—directly elected individuals, subject to all sorts of
highly political pressures, who demand action because they are up for
re-election and get shoved in and out of office very
quickly? Lynda
Waltho (Stourbridge) (Lab): The lobbies that I got from
the west midlands were about the single person—the commissioner
and that focus. I do not know sufficient about Chesterfield or Bury St.
Edmonds to know about the local political set-up there; but in the west
midlands, we have a significant problem with the British National
party. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds was talking about
democracy, but I feel that the BNP is an affront to it. BNP candidates
have been elected as local councillors on low turnouts. It is quite
possible that, on a similarly low turnout, that could happen in this
case. That would be horrific for any part of the west
midlands—Stoke, Dudley, Sandwell—where we have
significant problems. That is what really got to the police authority,
as I understood from lobbying by councillors. To have the BNP in charge
of policing across the west midlands would be absolutely
horrific.
Paul
Holmes: I agree with those comments, and I will return to
the question of the BNP in a couple of minutes, as I finish this last
section. I
want to consider new clause 2 with regard to how one would directly
elect a police authority and why that would be better than direct
election under first past the post—which is what the Government
initially proposed but have now withdrawn, perhaps
temporarily—or directly electing a single person as a
commissioner. We propose the direct election of the police authority by
single transferable
vote. If
we were to start from scratch, we would not start with the local
government system that we have in this country, which has developed
over 200, 300 or 400 years and is a bit of a mish-mash. Problems arise
whenever people try to reform it. If we could simply say,
“We’re going to give all these powers to the police
authority and give it independence from London. We’ll let the
local councils do it, because they exist and are elected
already,” that would be fine. Eight police
authorities—only eight out of 43—are coterminous with
elected councils. What do we do about the other 35, when we cannot just
say, “We’ll let the locally elected council also be the
elected police
authority.”?
12.45
pm The
fudge that we have at the moment, with far less powerful police
authorities, is that people are co-opted: they get elected to the
county or city council, or unitary authority, and then indirectly to
the police authority. They are still elected politicians, but there are
lots of barriers and buffers between them and the people who voted for
them. If we went to Chesterfield, for instance, and asked people who
their representative is on the police authority, many would not have
the slightest clue, and they would not really know the difference
between the police authority and the council.
For the 35
police authorities and councils that are not coterminous, we would
elect two thirds directly by single transferable vote. The other third
would still be appointed from the councils that make up the composite
area that the authority covers. In that way, the councils would get
some input, and two thirds would be directly
elected. We
would provide that independent people such as magistrates could still
be appointed. That is a great strength of the current system. Why not
make that a third of the authority, as it is now? Simply put, under the
single transferable vote, there would not be much need for it. Most
people to whom I have spoken, or who gave evidence, said that one
virtue of the one-third appointed system is that that third can
represent all the under-represented groups in society, meaning women,
ethnic minorities and so forth—people who are not white,
middle-aged councillors or MPs, if we were talking about this place.
They are the ones who tend to get picked for co-option to redress the
elected
imbalance. One
great virtue of the single transferable vote—they found this in
New Zealand almost immediately after its introduction, and in
Scotland—is that it creates a much better balance of elected
candidates. Under the first-past-the-post run-off, when the winner
takes all, people tend to go for the safe figure—it might be
someone who has always been a politician, meaning, by and large, a
white,
middle-aged male. Under the single transferable vote, panels of people
are elected, so a greater mixture of people tends to get
elected. In
New Zealand, not long after the system was introduced, more women and
ethnic minorities—Maoris and South Pacific islanders, for
example—were elected. That did not happen because of all-women
or black and minority ethnic shortlists, or any of the mechanisms that
we consider using in this country, but because the electorate said,
“I’m electing four people for this council area. I can
spread the way I vote and pick different people.” The proof is
how such systems operate in the real world. As I said, this is not a
wild, mad idea that we want to introduce in England even though it has
never been tried anywhere: it has been tried and tested all over the
democratic world, and it works. It produces better democracy and
accountability, and a more mixed slate of councillors, as it would of
MPs, if it were used in our election
process. As
we heard, there is a danger that members of the BNP could be elected,
but they could be elected under whatever system—some 50 or 60
BNP councillors out of about 12,000 in the country were elected under
first past the post. Under STV, people have to get a quota to be
elected. It is not like the Israeli system, by which if a party gets 1
per cent. of the vote, it gets 1 per cent. of the representatives. Only
a serious, organised group has a chance of getting people elected under
STV. As the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds pointed out, we should not
say that we cannot have democracy because people whom we do not like
might be elected. They could get elected in any democratic system. The
STV tends to work against that and produce much broader
slates.
One of the
things about having an elected police authority with, say, 17
councillors, rather than one police commissioner, is that there is a
broad and balanced group, and eight or nine of the group have to be
convinced to vote a certain way. A single police commissioner has much
more dictatorial power, certainly with the press, whatever
constitutional restraints are placed on him or her. If that person, who
might cover an area such as Stoke, which I know reasonably well because
I have friends there, happened to be BNP, he or she would have a lot of
power, but that could happen under any electoral
system.
Mr.
Ruffley: I understand that the hon. Gentleman is
STV-positive. I am enjoying his analysis, which has a wealth of
information and evidence behind it. In his travels around the country,
has he found a police authority, or anyone in the APA or ACPO, who is
supportive of his proposals?
Paul
Holmes: From police authorities, ACPO, Liberty or the LGA,
no, but neither have I found anyone supportive of what the Government
or the Conservative party propose. We are generally agreed there should
be directly elected and accountable police authorities, but we differ
on the mechanism and the process. They want the status quo, but for
different reasons. Some want it because it works well, as a very close
friend of mine in Chesterfield who is on the police authority says.
Liberty and the police, seeing it from opposite directions, fear
directly elected authorities with more power because it might make
authorities politicised. I have not found the
police or the LGA to agree with my view, but then they do not agree with
the view of either of the other two party spokesmen. Sometimes one has
to lead from the
front. My
final point about what the Government proposed but have now
withdrawn—perhaps only temporarily, from what the Secretary of
State said—is that if an authority was directly elected under
first past the post, as opposed to STV, which we now use in Scotland
for example, it would lead to those huge electoral distortions that we
always see. University research found that if we applied the 2007 local
election results to the directly elected police authorities proposed by
the Government, there would be massive electoral distortions. For
example, outside London, the Conservatives, with 38 per cent. of the
vote in 2007, would get 66 per cent. of the seats on those authorities.
The Lib Dems, with 26 per cent. of the vote, would get 14 per cent. It
does not take a great genius at electoral arithmetic to work out that
that leaves 20 per cent. for the Labour party, the Greens and others to
share between them. That would not be a very good democratic electoral
outcome, in terms of the votes cast for people. That, again, is why we
should go back to PR—preferably STV, but there are other
varieties—for this
system. I
am under no illusions that the Government will accept the two new
clauses, but I hope that the debate helps the Secretary of State and
the Minister in their pursuit of a suitable method of directly electing
an accountable and independent police authority, which on 19 January
the Secretary of State said she was going to
consider.
The
Chairman: From the Chair, I perhaps interpret
democracy slightly differently. My interpretation of it is that the
whole of the Bill should be scrutinised by this Public Bill Committee.
We are making slightly slow progress today. I hope that hon. Members on
both sides of the Committee will take account of that, so that slightly
faster progress can be made and the whole Bill, all of which is
important, can be
debated.
Miss
Kirkbride: I want to begin, as others have, by commending
my own police force, West Mercia—an excellent force that
delivers a first-class service, while receiving among the least amount
of money. The force does an excellent job, is ably led by Paul West
and, I might add, has a good relationship with its police authority,
especially when it came to opposing Government plans for merging police
authorities, which would not have been satisfactory in my
area. I
was interested in the exchange of views that took place. I start by
accepting the premise that there is a democratic deficit in how police
forces are accountable. I see it from my own experience as a
constituency MP, very much recognising the figures mentioned by my hon.
Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds on how many people know how to
complain about the police service, when that is necessary. People come
to me because it seems an obvious port of call, but they are not aware
of the structure. I was not at all surprised to hear those figures on
how many people understand how the system works. Very often, especially
when it is aggravating behaviour, the public feel genuinely aggrieved
that they have no real mechanism of forcing people to take action to
address their concerns. I fully accept that that is a serious
problem.
It goes wider
than the public’s experience, however. In our household, we have
a particular view of one of the chief constables in Wales, who seems to
have an obsession with speeding rather than anything else that the
public might get aggrieved about. While I am sure that that is
extremely important, it would not be my priority when it came to police
resources. How does one curtail and contain a chief constable’s
obsession and look at the public’s wider concerns?
I have
sympathy with the argument that we have not got it quite right, but at
the risk of upsetting my hon. Friends, I also have sympathy with the
Government’s desire to proceed with caution. The important thing
is to make the system better, and not just to reform it for the sake of
reforming it because it is not as good as it could be at the moment. We
have to consider how we proceed on that
basis. Elections
are clearly the most tempting way forward. All parties represented in
the room today are not just flirting with the idea, but looking at it
with great seriousness. One of the things that has been teased out by
the debate is just how many forms of democracy there are, and therefore
which, if any, it would be preferable to take forward. I shall look
with interest at my party’s and the Government’s
conclusions on how we should proceed. Compared with how we have
operated our police service over time, this will be a new way of going
about things.
We are not
America. I applaud the way that America is very democratic and requires
a democratic input to its public services, but it is an alien structure
to us. Americans are used to knowing that it is a police commissioner
who is responsible for the kids at the end of their road and what the
responsibilities are of the attorneys and everyone else they elect.
They are completely signed up to that system. It is how they operate
their democracy, and I believe it works. I was interested to hear that
the commissioner gets changed every two years if he or she has not done
the job properly or to the satisfaction of the voting public. It is,
nevertheless, part of the way they operate. It has not been part of the
way that we have operated, up until now. Therefore, while I do not wish
to get into bed, so to speak, with Liberty or police constables, I
understand where they are coming from.
I sympathise
with the view of my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for
Stourbridge, that there would be a terrible risk of the BNP being
elected for the West Midlands force. That cannot be a good thing. Quite
a few hon. Members have said that we must not be afraid of democracy,
that it is great and that whatever the outcome, it is acceptable, but,
at the risk of upsetting you, Sir Nicholas, some countries around the
world—Israel, perhaps—might want to change their form of
democracy. If Israel did things slightly differently, it might be
better off in relation to the answers that it seeks in the middle east
peace process.
Democracy has
a variety of forms. The way in which a democracy is organised has a big
impact on the outcome of an election. We should not proceed merely on
the basis of the mantra of democracy, as if that were the only way
forward, which cannot be gainsaid because it has to be a wholly good
idea.
We have to
think carefully about how we make the police responsible to an elected
representative. Today’s ideas on how we could do that, and
whether it should be one person, were interesting. Although the idea of
having one person is attractive, the problem in my
police area is that there is not a complete community of interest. It is
a collection of counties. Bromsgrove is a very long way from most parts
of Shropshire. How does that one person become relevant to all the
people whom he is supposed to represent? Will people feel comfortable
with that person representing them? How tempting would it be for
someone to seize on a dreadful murder,
such as the one that happened in my patch, and exaggerate its impact to
acquire the votes that he needs to be re-elected? That is a huge
risk. 1
pm The
Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put
(Standing Order No.
88). Adjourned
till this day at Four
o’clock.
|
