Police reform and social responsibility Bill

There is a difference here, because we are not talking about having police officers—actual law enforcement officers—being party political, and neither is the hon. Gentleman. The commissioner will be a mode of accountability—on behalf of the public, who will have voted for him or her, they will be able to hold the chief constable to account in a more focused and single-minded way. They will do the job that the police authority attempts to do at the moment. We believe that it can be done better by one individual. I wish to deal with the issue of politicisation and the democratic mandate. In the last Parliament, the Labour party came to a pretty similar conclusion to my party about the accountability arrangements—the answerability arrangements—that currently pertain, as did our colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches; we came to the conclusion that those arrangements were not adequate and that there was a democratic deficit. We know that because of what was said by the hon. Member for Gedling, and although that has already been cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley), I wish to reinforce the point. In 2008, the then Labour Government's draft legislative programme announced that there would be a Bill including proposals to provide"““a clear and powerful public voice in decision making through directly elected representatives””." I understand that in the Committee stages of this Bill there were mild flirtations by Labour Members with various forms of direct election, and I think it is entirely proper for the Labour party to change its mind. I understand that the shadow Home Secretary now wants to ditch the whole idea of elections. However, let us just be non-partisan for a moment and accept that in the previous Parliament all three major political parties concluded that there was an argument for having a sharper, keener focus of responsibility. That involves letting the people or person holding the chief constable to account have a mandate from the public, arising from a direct election, on the basis of one person, one vote, in the police authority area over which a police and crime commissioner would preside. There is something incredibly important about a mandate being secured in that way, as both Labour and the Liberal Democrats were conceding in their policy pronouncements as recently as the end of the previous Parliament. So let us not kid ourselves that the end of the world is nigh as a result of this proposal for police and crime commissioners.