My Lords, this amendment is really important for democratic overview of policing in a combined authority area. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, has said, West Yorkshire already has a mayor and a non-elected police and crime commissioner, because the arrangement for West Yorkshire—sadly, in my view—was that the two roles would be combined. The elected Mayor of West Yorkshire is therefore also responsible as police and crime commissioner. The consequence of combining those two roles has been that the Mayor of West Yorkshire was able to appoint a police and crime commissioner for West Yorkshire.
The whole concept of police and crime commissioners was that there would be democratic accountability for the oversight of policing in a police service area. In West Yorkshire and other places, I think including Manchester, that democratic accountability has disappeared because the mayors in those places—I live in West Yorkshire so I know the situation well—have appointed people they know as police and crime commissioner.
That is no reflection on or criticism of the job that that individual does, but it is a criticism of the lack of democratic accountability. If the oversight of police and crime in a very large area—2.5 million people—is given to an appointed person and the electorate cannot vote them out of office, there is something fundamentally wrong with the system. That is why Amendment 54 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is so important. The Government have gone in the wrong direction on this one. If we are to have police and crime commissioners, they need to be elected, as they are everywhere else in the country.
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In introducing her amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, described how local authorities have direct involvement in significant parts of policing in an area, in particular in domestic violence but also in all sorts of neighbourhood policing issues. An alcohol and drugs unit in a council can work closely with the addiction section of a police force. There are lots of issues on which the democratically accountable council has to work together, we hope, with a directly accountable and elected police commissioner. That accountability is being removed, so we support the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.
It is quite wrong to combine the two roles. We need to hold on as much as we can in this country to democratic accountability, because it is seeping away; the creation of bigger councils, meaning that they represent many more people than they used to, is removing elected representatives from the people they represent. That is not right and we must say so at every opportunity. I hope the Government will move away from that, because it is not right.
On the last point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on Amendment 53A, we think the case has been made and will support it if she pushes it to a vote.