Lisa Townsend is the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey.
Liz Truss isn’t the first Conservative seeking election to propose a “bonfire of the quangos”. She told The Sunday Telegraph last month that too many aren’t delivering for the public. Her suggestion was that the money would be better spent on frontline services. The current Prime Minister has already put the DVLA and Passport Office on notice. When speaking to MPs, many will tell you that their inboxes have been bulging with tales from constituents unable to get passports or learner drivers unable to find a date for a test.
Yet both clearly provide a service that we need, and so an alternative must be found to keep the country moving, both on our roads and abroad. Allow me to therefore propose a quango that provides no discernible benefit and that no-one would miss were it to be abolished tomorrow. No-one, that is, except the Liberal Democrats who lobbied for its existence.
Back in the heady days of the early Coalition, when compromise and negotiation were necessary in order to get just about anything done, two concessions were made by Conservatives in order to get elected Police and Crime Commissioners through Parliament. This first was Lib Dem favourite, proportional representation. Earlier this year legislation was changed and the next PCCs will be elected under first past the post in May 2024.
The second was the establishment of Police and Crime Panels. Even as far back as 2010 and at the height of their powers, Nick Clegg and others realised that the only chance the Lib Dems had of being involved in policing was to have their councillors sit on these panels – and they were right. No Liberal Democrat has ever been elected as a PCC. Even their own voters don’t trust them on law and order.
As Harry Phibbs wrote here last November, “PCCs should be accountable to those they serve – not committees agonising over the meaning of complicatedly worded regulations in response to politically motivated complaints.” Phibbs’s column reported on the ‘misconduct’ process I had just been through for saying that trans men and women deserve support, but not at the expense of women’s same-sex services, including hospitals, domestic abuse services and prisons.
Complaints from a small number of trans activists came in, and the Surrey Police and Crime Panel cleared me of any wrong-doing, stating I was free in a democratic society to hold and share these beliefs on behalf of my constituents. Last week, I was again cleared after a third round of complaints (although some members felt that I should be sanctioned).
That’s three separate sets of meetings utilising the legal and administrative services of Surrey County Council to come to the same conclusion, as well as the time my office and I had to spend defending my right to say that trans women are not female. I fully accept that some people found this offensive, but being offensive is not an offence. As the previous chairman of the Surrey PCP had to admit, the Panel has no powers to compel the PCC to do anything – we are held to account at the ballot box by our residents.
For those who reasonably hold the view that PCCs themselves should be abolished, the main question is: what should replace us? The old police authorities were just as political, but without the transparency of knowing who to hold to account. There were many who used former PCC for Kent, Ann Barnes, as an argument against PCCs. She was replaced after four years by the excellent Matthew Scott after a series of own-goals and embarrassing disasters proved her unfit for office. But for the six years she was chair of the Kent Police Authority her unsuitability went unnoticed.
I don’t believe anyone would seriously argue that police forces should be free of scrutiny. Even Sadiq Khan was forced to do something when it became clear the Met wasn’t capable of cleaning up its own mess. Surrey residents expect me to ask the awkward questions, to put the Chief Constable on the spot and to get answers – and to take action if those answers aren’t good enough. Nor am I suggesting that PCCs should be scrutiny-free: that is why we are elected. But what do you do when elected officials mis-behave between elections? I’m all in favour of equivalence for our elected offices and would welcome recall for PCCs.
We don’t put policing under ministers for local government – rightly it has its own important department of state. We shouldn’t be expecting councillors to do it at a local level either. Let’s start the bonfire with impotent Police and Crime Panels and leave the electorate to decide whether my, or any PCC’s words, are offensive.