My Lords, this order was laid before the House on 7 February. If approved by both Houses, it will transfer police and crime commissioner functions from the South Yorkshire PCC to the Mayor of South Yorkshire. It will also bring forward the next scheduled mayoral election in South Yorkshire from 2026 to May 2024, thereafter taking place every four years, so that the South Yorkshire mayoral election cycle is aligned to the existing PCC election cycle. We are grateful to the incumbent mayor, Oliver Coppard,
for providing his consent to the transfer and to the amendment of his current mayoral electoral term to enable this alignment.
This first mayor to exercise PCC functions in South Yorkshire would do so following the next mayoral election, which is to be rescheduled for Thursday 2 May 2024. This maintains the direct democratic accountability for policing and crime in South Yorkshire, as the mayor will be elected by the people of South Yorkshire on the basis that they are to exercise the functions of the PCC in that area. The incumbent PCC for South Yorkshire will continue to exercise the PCC functions until the end of his elected term of office. The person elected as mayor, from the point of taking office on Tuesday 7 May following the mayoral election, will act as the single, directly elected individual responsible for holding the chief constable and police force to account. They will be accountable to the people of South Yorkshire for this.
Their functions would include issuing a police and crime plan; setting the police budget, including the PCC council tax precept requirements; appointing and, if necessary, suspending or dismissing the chief constable; addressing complaints about policing services; providing and commissioning services for victims and vulnerable people; and working in partnership to ensure that the local criminal justice system is effective and efficient.
Part 1 of the Government’s review into the role of PCCs cemented the Government’s view that bringing public safety functions together under the leadership of a combined authority mayor has the potential to offer wider levers and a more joined-up approach to preventing crime. The Government’s levelling up White Paper, published in February 2022, sets out the Government’s aspiration to have combined authority mayors take on the PCC role where feasible. By working in partnership across a range of agencies at local and national level, mayors can ensure that there is a more holistic, unified approach to public safety.
As is required by Section 113 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009, the Home Secretary launched a public consultation on the proposed South Yorkshire police and crime commissioner functions transfer on 20 December 2023; it ran for six weeks to 31 January. Just over 3,000 responses were received to this public consultation and the Home Secretary considered the views gathered when deciding whether to lay this order enabling the transfer of PCC functions to the Mayor of South Yorkshire.
It is this Government’s view that incorporating PCC functions into the role of the Mayor of South Yorkshire, who is elected to deliver across a range of other functions, will bolster their mandate to bring greater join-up across the responsibilities that they are accountable for and help to facilitate a whole-system approach to crime reduction. It preserves the democratic accountability that underpins the PCC model while, at the same time, reducing the risk of competing democratic mandates within the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority area, providing greater clarity for the electorate on who is responsible for public service functions in their area.
The exercise of PCC functions by the Mayor of South Yorkshire is a significant step towards realising our ambition for more combined authority mayors to take on PCC functions, as is already the case in Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire. It means that people in South Yorkshire will be served by a mayor with a range of functions and levers comparable to the Mayors of Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and London, and will be able to hold their mayor to account for this enhanced range of responsibilities. I beg to move.