Weekend Update, Part 2- 25 March 2012

Posted on 25/03/2012 by samchapman

The how-many-days-till-TopOfTheCops-election scandal continues. On Saturday we revealed a seven day discrepancy between the wait till the election given by the Association of Police Authorities and that given by CREST Advisory. The latter, who obviously work weekends, have been in contact to claim victory. I still haven’t actually counted, but I do have a theory. For the APA the election is unimportant, as elections always have been to their members. What’s actually important to them is that one week later the advent of Police and Crime Commissioners will abolish the Police Authorities, and all their members will be shot. Hmmm – maybe that last bit didn’t make it through the Lords. So it wouldn’t be surprising if they said “election” but their timer was set to their own personal version of Armegeddon one week later.

Also this week…

Kash Walayat OBE confirmed he was on the Labour longlist for South Yorkshire…

Lisa Brett confirmed she was a candidate for the LibDem nomination in one of the few areas where they are choosing candidates, Avon and Somerset, where this week the Police Authority launched an information site, and tweeted the view of Bristol Council’s deputy returning officer that elections using Supplementary Vote (the PCC system) usually see 25% spoiled ballots.

Bernard Rix was surprised to find out that Bedfordshire police authority had issued a Strategic Policing Plan to deal with crime that didn’t mention drugs. He was astonished when it was pointed out it didn’t mention alcohol either. But, to be fair, the Police Authority members are probably equally overcome that anyone actually read all the way through their plan. (Sorry Alf, couldn’t resist).

The Police Federation announced they would ballot their members on whether they should have the right to strike. Here’s what is going to happen – They will support it, like last time. They won’t get it, because it’s not feasible. They may extract a concession like the removal from Winsor 2 of compulsory redundancy, and the watering down of the requirement for fitness tests but, seeing as those items are probably only on the table for the purpose of being negotiated away, other stuff they don’t like from Winsor will get through with less attention paid to them. Was it being in the police that made me cynical, or being cynical that made me join the police?

Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Condon (types it carefully) said in the Lords that only celebrities and politicians will win elected police roles, due to the Government’s refusal to publicise candidates in an election booklet. The rest of that exchange of views around a question in the Lords is here. Note that the Minister says options are being considered, and took time to say what everybody expected Theresa May to say in the Commons earlier in the week -i.e. that people could phone up to get a printout of candidate details if they didn’t have internet access. What May actually said was that those people could order the material through the internet! Oh, my aching sides!

Anyway, the Lords question gave Baroness Browning the opportunity to observe “… although there was a lot of opposition to police and crime commissioners when the Bill went through, a great many people, including in this House, now believe that it is a job worth doing?”. It also gave Baroness Stowell the opportunity to wind-up Lord Prescott, who duly stated that the Department of Employment would be administering the Mayoral elections. Er, no John, you had a really good point, but about the Communities Department. I suppose one might think it was the Department for Employment if one thought that Mayors were just jobs for the boys.

Elsewhere, we asked if a force cuts £50 million should it really fill 5 vacancies in PR? Meanwhile, Andrew Gilligan pointed out the radically different approach to Police reform in Scotland, which Blair Gibbs described as “Inspector John Rebus would never have been born in Salmond’s new Scotland with its McCops megaforce“

Meanwhile the Government have announced that they will pay Police and Crime Commissioners less if they have dependent children, and less still if they have a bunch of them.

Oh, you missed that announcement did you? Well, they didn’t use exactly those words, and it was the Treasury rather than the Home Office, but under the cover of the fabled ‘granny tax’, in the Budget-announcement-that-got-away, the Government did reform its cliff-edge Child Benefit changes into a fairly steep hill, and did it so very well. You can have little but admiration for the evil genius who came up with the way of describing it as a reduction of 1% of the benefit for every £100 between £50,000 and £60,000 per annum. 1% isn’t much, is it? Well, that’s actually an effective increase to the marginal tax rate at that salary, which is already 41%, of an extra 11% for the first child, and 7% for each child thereafter till it’s all gone. That will impact on every PCC with kids, and everyone else with kids who was thinking of earning over £50,000 in a year, as Mac draws out in the Daily Mail. Well, at least you’ll know for sure that they are not in it for the money!

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Weekend Update Part 1 – 24 March 2012

Posted on 24/03/2012 by samchapman

Is time moving a little quicker these days? I know I’m writing this before the clocks spring forward, but a tweet at the beginning of the week from the Association of Police Authorities about their transition seminar began with “246 days till elections decide“, whereas a tweet from Crest Advisory just 3 days later began with “With 236 days till the PCC election...” Now, even if Einstein was on to something, they can’t both be right, but obsessive about the elections as I may be, I’m not so far gone that I’m going to work out which it was.

However reader, please pause and give a moment’s thought to those police officers who are on a quick changeover tonight, and will find they have one hour less sleep because of daylight saving time. When I was a PC, it worked with the cruel twist that the same shift who suffered this indignity also later in the year got to work an hour longer when the clocks went back, and so lost both ways. If there are any of you in this position, we salute you!

Candidates

As Labour’s selection process rumbles on, we’ve had a little of the results. By and large people who are not longlisted or shortlisted are not shouting about it, so reporting on it is somewhat difficult. However, a few details have emerged. Jane Kennedy has been shortlisted in Merseyside, but is still campaigning for the nomination, and picking up endorsements left, right (for the left) and centre-left. As John Ashton has not said he has applied, and as Les Byrom has confirmed he didn’t make the longlist, it’s a fairly safe bet that Peter Kilfoyle is at least one of her rivals.

The Yorkshire Post’s Rob Preece confirmed that former Chief Constable Meredydd Hughes has made it on to Labour’s long list of potential candidates for the South Yorkshire PCC election, whereas in Northumbria The Journal was reporting that Henri Murison was withdrawing from the race as he had spotted a better candidate.

In North Wales, Tal Michael left his role at the Police Authority and felt the fresh air of being able to speak without worrying about political restriction rules, and so headed here to talk about the Budget. Been there myself. Feels good!

On the Conservative side, the Police Foundation reported that Angus Campbell, Leader of Dorset County Council, had confirmed he was seeking the Conservative nomination for PCC, and in Lincolnshire Lee Rotherham launched his very impressive website featured in the graphic above.

Articles galore

Cllr Jon Harvey, who obsesses on Police and Crime Commissioners almost as much as I do, was writing on LabourList: “why a simple ‘all outsourcing is bad’ policy cannot wash“

Dr Tim Brain was scribbling away in Policing Today on graduate direct entry schemes.

The Daily Politics were asking “Who wants to be a police commissioner?”, looking at how the political parties approach the elections.

And in the Guardian someone pretending to be John Prescott strung together not just a sentence, but a whole article, the point of which was to repeat the plea made on TopOfTheCops for space for candidates in the Electoral Commission’s PCC brochure.

In other news

There was evidence that the Police and Crime Commissioner election has been accepted into the British way of life. Firstly, the former Home Secretary Alan Johnson made reference in the HuffPost to Nixon’s comments about how difficult it is to get the toothpaste back in the tube, as his way of saying that Police and Crime Commissioners are here to stay, which takes things just a little further than Shadow Justice Minister David Hanson did a fortnight ago.

But the real proof is the news that Lord Toby Jug, local leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party, is standing for PCC in Cambridgeshire. Ahh, so good to see the resurgence of a British institution.

Favourite Tweet of the week belongs to Jake Berry MP for this:-
“One of my new followers is the BBC obituaries editor. Is that a good sign?”

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Tal Michael’s perspective on the Budget 2012

Posted on 23/03/2012 by samchapman

Tal Michael gives his personal perspective on the Budget, having recently stood down from being Chief Executive of the Police Authority in North Wales, where he hopes to be the Labour candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner. If you have a perspective to share on TopOfTheCops.com let us know at Editor@TopOfTheCops.com

This week’s budget debate shows the stark economic choice facing the country. Cutting your way out of a recession doesn’t work: cutting the public sector too far and too fast has hit the economy so hard the deficit will actually grow over the next few years, rather than reducing. It didn’t work in the 1930s or the 1980s. Keynes theorised and the New Deal in the United States demonstrated that if you put people to work – even if they are only digging holes and filling them in again – you will get the economy back on track.

Public services are so much more useful than that! Whether it is reassuring the public through visible policing, teaching, caring or looking after our local environment, public servants improve our quality of life. Investing in schools, hospitals, housing and transport infrastructure isn’t wasting money: it is an investment which will be good for the long term. And by making these decisions now, we could really get the economy going again.

So what will Police & Crime Commissioners inherit in November? Other agencies have been told their funding is transferring – but actually it is being cut. The CSR included totals for 2013-14 which have now disappeared. Will we be given the actual figures before the elections?

It is not that savings cannot be made from public services: they can. There is always more to be squeezed out by doing things better. But the benefits of outsourcing are overstated. What is needed is good leadership: managers who work with their teams to find a better way of doing things. But the savings are at the margins: if you cut one in ten of the people doing the job, the remaining people will get less done. The thin blue line is thinner now than it was a year ago.

So given a little wiggle room, what does George Osborne do? He cuts the top rate of tax. There’s no point in it because people like him find a way not to pay. So here’s an idea. Why not tax property properly? As the following graph shows, the wealthy pay a much smaller percentage of the cost of their dwelling than the poor:

The red line is proportionate and a sharper line would be required to be redistributive.

All properties valued over £320,000 in 1991 (worth about £650,000 in late 2010) pay the same rate – except in Wales where there is one further band. What’s more, second homes get a discount instead of being charged a higher rate. This tax would be difficult to avoid: the number of people willing to rebuild their mansions brick by brick in a foreign country must be fairly limited but if they did, it would help the economy…

Tal Michael
Seeking selection as Labour candidate for North Wales

www.talmichael.net

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Make the vote!

Posted on 23/03/2012 by samchapman

As further proof that Lancashire is the connected part of the Police and Crime Commissioner world, see this video from Lancashire Police Authority. I say ‘further’ in reference to Blackpool Councillor Chris Maughan’s ‘666’ and other videos. Chris sadly didn’t make it past the Labour longlisting process, so those of you who like a short film with your interweb may have been worried about a diet of text from here to November, but fear not – in celebration of the new Lancs PCC website, there’s this video. The site itself is so new it hasn’t passed its final testing yet, but some wag found the video on YouTube and soon it was all over twitter, so I couldn’t deny you the pleasure from moving from ‘reader’ to ‘viewer’.

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What happened to the squirrel?

Posted on 22/03/2012 by samchapman

If you want a bit of sport, send me, Michael Crick and the Police Foundation an email saying you intend to stand for the office of Police and Crime Commissioner in your area, wait a dignified amount of time, and then turn up at the next meeting of your local Police Authority. I visited mine today, and the rumours of my interest in the post had clearly got there before me, for as I walked into the room I was met by a selection of familiar faces that rapidly changed into either knowing grins or studied indifference. OK – there were also a fair amount of unfamiliar faces too – I don’t know everybody.

The meeting was far more interesting than the agenda might have led one to believe, interspersed as it was by insights from the authority members, such as an observation that people in Dorset eat squirrels. I’m not sure what that had to do with policing Lancashire, although from memory the Detective training course used to start with a complicated scenario where a squirrel was mentioned briefly at the start before a long set of distractions. Good detectives apparently were the ones who asked “What happened to the squirrel?”

Now, this site has visitors from the world over, but unsurprisingly mostly in the UK, and by the law of averages some must come from Dorset, so if you feel that the reputation of your county has been impugned, or if you feel that the non-Dorset section of the population doesn’t know what kind of delicacy they are missing, please use the comments section to let us all know.

The Chief Constable gave us what the agenda called an oral update, and this turned out to involve an update on crime figures. Now I’ve seen a lot of crime figures in my time, and I’ll not go into the details, which if you’d wanted to have, you could have got at the meeting, but they were not at all bad. Sure, one or two of the figures were in red, not green, and the force was at the wrong end of a couple of iQuanta charts, but these were the exception, not the rule, and with a little understanding of how these things are generated, and how certain offences work, it could be seen that the general picture was encouraging, and the force were trialing some promising solutions to the problems that remained.

The force has had to slim down over the past 12 months, and will continue to do so for the next year. I have no doubt that has been tricky, and having been consulted in the earlier stages of the review, I have reason to believe it has been wide-ranging. My point however is that there are some who will note changes to police numbers and changes to the odd crime category and seek to establish a link. We have been warned in the past of the dangers of any changes to police numbers, and the FactCheck team have had their work cut out in this, as various politicians have not appreciated the extent of work done to protect the front line. But the world has not ended. The fight against crime continues undeterred, and largely with success.

The outgoing Chair of the Authority commented that he had been sceptical of the Police and Crime Commissioner reform when it was announced, but that his work had led him to appreciate that the new Commissioner would be surrounded by people who would not let it fail. I suspect he might be right.

The sky is not falling, and for now the squirrels are safe. Except perhaps in Dorset.

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Cock-up or Conspiracy?

Posted on 21/03/2012 by samchapman

Remember how a few days ago we considered the case of Labour’s unexpectedly early choice of Tony Lloyd MP as PCC candidate, and wondered as to the implications of comments on Michael Crick’s blog about a rival candidate being tempted away by an unannounced by-election? Well, Mr Crick has been in contact to tease me that I am, in his words, “an even bigger conspiracist than me”.

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Questions in the House miss so many points.

Posted on 20/03/2012 by samchapman

The debate on just how the voters will find out more about who they get to vote for made it to the floor of the House of Commons yesterday, with Shadow Justice Minister and TopOfTheCops twitter follower David Hanson MP putting a question to Home Secretary Theresa May:-

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Candidate Statement of Councillor Seán Woodward

Posted on 19/03/2012 by samchapman

Seán Woodward is seeking the Conservative nomination to be the Police and Crime Commissioner in Hampshire. If you are intending to stand to be Police and Crime Commissioner where you live, you can submit your own Candidate Statement, so get in touch by emailing Editor@TopOfTheCops.com . Others are on the way, and we are looking for 400 words, a photo of you that you have rights to, and preferably an imprint, which will be needed for the formal election period later this year.

The main role of the Police and Crime Commissioner is to be the people’s voice and hold the Chief Constable to account. In my role on the Police Authority I was the only Conservative responsible for appointing the Chief Constable, his Deputy and his Assistant. This gives me a unique insight and strength which I would use to carry out this important role. I also have regular liaison with senior officers as well as involving myself in the accreditation of new constables and PCSOs. I am good at listening, learning and only then bringing my own views to bear. It is important to let professionals run the force and to hold them to account as necessary.

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Weekend Update- Part, The Second – 18 March 2012

Posted on 18/03/2012 by samchapman

LGA

This week I received my copy of the Local Government Association’s ‘First’ magazine with a flyer for their Police and Crime Commissioner Association quoting a favourably disposed candidate from each of the major parties. Didn’t quote TopOfTheCops though, funnily enough, though there’s plenty to go at.

I object to the Local Government Association, funded by the taxpayer, spending taxpayers money to persuade PCCs themselves to spend more taxpayers money on a new association which will end up supporting the LGA which, let us remember opposed, at public expense, the elections for PCCs just a year ago. But North Yorkshire PCC hopeful Peter Walker perhaps put it best – ” I would sooner buy an extra Police Officer than pay a subscription out of taxpayers money.”

Candidates in the News

Conservative Home commented favourably on the candidacy’s of Bernard Rix in Bedfordshire, Sir Clive Loader in Leicestershire and Anthony Kimber in Sussex.

Also in Sussex, Councillor Paul Dendle was writing about a “Police levy for the Night Time economy to pay for Police“, while Independent candidate Ian Chisnall complained “attendance at Int Womens Day at BMECP in Bton to express support for womens issues thwarted by my gender“.

Peter Walker, Chris Wright and yours-truly, all ex-cops, were expressing concern at plans to release the killer of PC Nina Mackay, as authorities seemed to believe his pathological hatred of police officers could be controlled by him being situated somewhere where he would not often come into contact with them. This is the sort of issue PCCs will have to press. Irrespective of their formal powers, they will have political capital to spend.

On the Labour side Cleveland hopeful Sajaad Khan was busy asking Police and Crime Panel members to forego their allowances, giving an interview to the ‘Republic for Teeside’ and, together with Labour competitor Barry Coppinger, declaring what jobs or allowances they would give up before election. Khan is ‘drop Councillor allowance if elected’ whereas Coppinger is ‘stand down to fight’.

In the latter report, one commenter expressed concern at Cllr Coppinger’s described employment as a political assistant to Redcar and Cleveland Council. Rightly so, as this would disqualify him from being a Councillor, but on contacting Cllr Coppinger he clarified that the report was wrong- he is an ‘assistant’, not a ‘political assistant’.

Hampshire’s Jacqui Rayment cast doubt on whether she really will be a candidate when she commented “HPA transition board went well moving forward. May not like the thought of a PCC but need to prepare for this expensive mad cap idea!”

Henri Murison expressed his support for a new area in Newcastle where new clubs/pubs would be banned.

Humberside’s Keith Hunter was interviewed by Peter Levy, who apparently gave him a rougher time than a certain “heavyweight politician”, and who didn’t understand Hunter’s motivation to get the job, and to give up his Chief Superintendents salary to run for it. Adding the PCC salary to your House of Lords allowance and parliamentary pension of course are all too easy to understand.

Hunter sought to engage in some informal rule-setting for who should be PCC. “The media want celebrity PCCs because it helps them with audiences. Stand up for #substanceovercelebrity Give the public something better“

Bedfordshire Conservative Richard Stay did a bit of the same thing but from a different perspective, saying “PCC’s will need to have broad community experience, we do not need more Police ‘experts’ – that is the Chief’s job!”, leading to agreement from Sajaad Khan and this sage intervention from TopOfTheCops- “When people invent rules to exclude people from PCC elections, these rules rarely exclude the people who invented them.”

Really, I’m wasted here. I could be writing fortune cookies or something.

There is an exception though – Lord Geoffrey Dear has said that PCC posts should not be filled by ex-police officers, by which he seems to mean ex-Chief Constables, of which he is one.

Back in Bedfordshire, Labour’s Olly Martin was asking “Who would want to be a police commissioner?” given how awful a job it would be (answer – he would), but Blair Gibbs responded with ” Thanks @OllyMartins for interesting post. Can you point me to source for Lab pledge to abolish PCCs? Important if true”

The Fat Blue Line

Mr Gibbs also pre-empted a certain Mr Winsor’s big day with an article on police reform.

The Times’ Sean O’Neill summed it all up with “Winsor2 at a glance: direct entry at Inspector level; fitness test; A-levels required to be a cop; compulsory redundancies; pension at 60“

Sussex Police Chief Superintendent Graham Bartlett noted that “Taking #winsor Recs 17, 18 & 19 together does that mean retired officers can return inc as direct entry Supts? Post #a19 choice for some?“

Absolutely! And TopOfTheCops noted that this also applies to PCC hopefuls. If they lose, they could always be a direct entry superintendent. All the fun, no troublesome election, and a uniform.

They might have to pass a fitness test though, which some thought of as a deliberate distraction to ease other reforms past the public’s attention, and whether or not deliberate, it probably did just that. TopOfThe Cops wondered aloud “Police fitness tests. Do they still do the “shuttle run”? That was a killer. Who is liable if a fat bobby dies taking Winsor’s fitness test?” – but barrack-room lawyers there were none.

Mind you, I noted, as did the Guardian’s Alan Travis, how much of what Mr Winsor was saying boiled down to his perception that there was a need to professionalise policing, to move away from a blue-collar mentality to bring the profession to a place where someone who studied jurisprudence at Oxford could feel happy there. Wait a minute! I joined the cops after studying jurisprudence at Oxford! Is the Winsor report all about me?

Praise and flattery

I was going to say that in the last week TopOfTheCops had drawn favourable mention on ConservativeHome, Britain’s foremost Conservative grassroots website, but then it happened again. Being mentioned any given Sunday by what Ken Clarke calls Tim Montgomerie’s “blasted website” certainly makes for a lot of attention. The visitor count was hugely helped by further endorsements from Dan Hannan MEP who said “This blog on the coming police elections deserves to be far better known”, and by Douglas Carswell MP who wrote an article calling TopOfTheCops “this brilliant website”.

But if you want true praise, look at what the Electoral Commission revealed the Home Office want to do – set up a website for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections where people can find out who is standing in their area and featuring statements from each candidate. Sound familiar? As one Civil Servant (who I shall not name) tweeted of TopOfTheCops- “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” They’ve not taken up my suggestion to give me lots of cash for this domain, or for the .co.uk variation, which currently lies idle, but then I suppose I never have been keen on nationalisation.

My favourite tweet of the week, however, was off-topic and came from @politic_animal via Iain Dale – “The next Archishop MUST be from Canterbury. I’m sick of these parachuted-in candidates.”

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Tony Lloyd “unopposed” for Greater Manchester. Was it a fix and what’s Crick up to?

Posted on 17/03/2012 by samchapman

Remember all that stuff about Labour members choosing the candidates for Police and Crime Commissioner? Well, in Manchester, not so much.

Tonight both the Manchester Evening News and the BBC are reporting that veteran MP and Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party Tony Lloyd has become the official Labour candidate for the Greater Manchester Police Area without a single vote being cast.

Continue reading →

Posted in Labour, Media coverage, Selecting Candidates | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment