Fighting Crime (Public Engagement)

The hon. Gentleman may not realise that I favour a change in the electoral system for the House—and I think that my electors in Eastleigh know that. If I had my way, my constituents would have the opportunity of electing a Conservative Member and a Labour Member as well as a Liberal Democrat Member in a multi-Member constituency. I believe that that would help re-engage people in our national politics, but Mr. Deputy Speaker will pull me up for making irrelevant remarks, so I will revert to the subject of the debate. The police in this country have an extraordinary, honourable tradition of being non-political. We have a fantastically good and successful police force. I do not want the professionalism of police services throughout the country to be tarnished by the sort of yah-boo politics, which, I fear, would ensue if we accepted what the Conservatives advocate and had one person, after election by first past the post, in which the issues would be polarised as much as possible to clarify support for one person against another. That is a recipe for polarising the debate about policing and leading to much worse police outcomes in many parts of the country. Senior police officers, who have thought about the matter, are worried about the proposal. They buy the argument about local accountability because they rightly want national targets to be abolished. It has taken some time—11 years—for Labour Members to reach that view, but, thank heavens, having exhausted all the alternatives, the Government seem to be stumbling into the right policy area. The method whereby we hold people to account is crucial. We need a system, which not only represents fairly all the groups in the police authorities that will act as a sounding board for the chief constable, but will, by virtue of representing all those groups, including the party groups, have to work together through co-operation and consensus rather than confrontation. That is much more likely to guarantee a continuation of the tradition that we all support—professional, non-political policing—than the proposals that Conservative Members have made or those that appear in the Government's Green Paper. Using first past the post to elect one person for each crime and disorder reduction partnership will have a similar effect to that I have outlined. On analysis of the likely outcome of the proposals in the Government Green Paper, police authorities will probably be unrepresentative. Let us go back to the drawing board, agree that we need a decentralised system, with real power for local people, and ensure that the system of accountability genuinely engages local people by drawing everybody in, and does not attempt to polarise and make more confrontational a debate that does not need to be confrontational.