The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. He has huge experience from being leader of one of the great cities of this country, he knows what he is talking about and he spoke eloquently in August about how the riots affected Manchester. His is a genuine point that is not easily resolvable. The idea is that a directly elected police commissioner will be able to set the precept, and one of the strengths of a police authority—probably the only strength I can think of—is the fact that a proportion of the members of that police authority also sit on the precept-raising authority with their councillor hat on. That means there is a connection between the council raising the precept and individual members of that council, wearing a different hat, sitting indirectly on the police authority. That was a useful nexus and it will not necessarily be the case here.
In practice, I would expect any police and crime commissioner worth his or her salt to listen carefully to the priorities of, and arguments put by, the leading group on the relevant precept-raising authority. I do not pretend that this proposal is perfect in that regard. There will be quite a big disconnect between the person wishing to set a police precept and the authority that has to go out and raise it, but that might be the rough edge of an otherwise quite unremarkable proposal. That returns me to my theme and my next point.
This is not a radical revolution that will throw all the police cards up in the air and it is not a case of letting the chips fall where they may. I do not believe that that is a sensible way to make public policy and neither do I think it is a sensible way of running the police service. I think we are in agreement on that point. However, many of the powers and duties of the new police and crime commissioner will be virtually identical to those of police authorities at the moment.
At the end of the last Parliament, I was rather a sad individual and I counted the number of duties and powers that police authorities had under a wide range of legislation from the Local Government Act 1999, under which they had value-for-money audit responsibilities, to the police Acts and so on. There were about 120 to 130 such duties and responsibilities and it seemed to me that those authorities exercised quite a lot of power over the police, such as the power to call police officers to account. I struggle to see how the panoply of powers possessed by the average police authority is very different from the powers, duties and responsibilities that a police and crime commissioner will have. We know that the setting of a precept is an identical power and we also know that police authorities, in conjunction with a chief constable, set police priorities and objectives for the year. Police authorities have strong views on the strategic objectives for a local police area and it seems to me that the police and crime commissioner will have similar strongly held views but will have the advantage, at least, of a public mandate through the ballot box when he or she sits down with the chief constable and they set out their plan to run the force in any given police area. Equally, police authorities can appoint and, in certain circumstances, dismiss chief constables. That is a power that police and crime commissioners will have, too. For me, those are the big ticket items.
Police reform and social responsibility Bill
Proceeding contribution from
David Ruffley
(Conservative)
in the House of Commons on Monday, 12 September 2011.
It occurred during Debate on bills on Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
532 c801-2 
Session
2010-12
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House of Commons chamber
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Timestamp
2023-12-15 18:40:56 +0000
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