On 13 November the (relatively new) Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced the government’s intention to abolish Police and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales. The dramatic and unexpected announcement made some bold claims – that the PCC “experiment” had failed; that PCCs would be replaced either by transferring their powers to regional Mayors or “elected council leaders”, and others to which we will turn shortly. The absence of detail and analysis – either about why PCCs had failed or why replacing them with Mayors or council leaders would be better – was obvious.
Another confusing aspect of the announcement were the ‘savings’ figures quoted. In particular, claims of a “£100 million” saving were strange as later the same statement said that only £20 million would be saved each year. As PCCs are not due to be abolished until 2028 and the next General Election must happen by 2029 it’s hard to see where £100 million figure comes from by then?
There was also, apparently, a complete lack of consultation with existing PCCs prior to the announcement – the majority of whom are Labour. One Labour PCC immediately resigned from the Party in protest (Sarah Taylor, Norfolk).
The Labour head of the Association of PCCs, Emily Spurrell, Mersyside PCC, put out a highly critical statement immediately and made a stinging critique five days later at a major policing conference. She claimed the announcement risked “chaos” and placed too much power in the hands of “operational police leaders and Home Office officials”.
So what is going on?
Politics and geography
There are 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, plus the Metropolitan Police and City of London Police. There are a few other forces like the British Transport Police or the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, but these are not included in the PCC issue, though there are plans afoot to reform much of this, for which see a recent report in The Times.
Most of the 43 forces are based on the historic counties of England and Wales, or in a few cases combined counties like Dyfed-Powys or Devon and Cornwall. One result is they vary enormously in size – Warwickshire has only about 1,000 officers whilst the London Met has over 35,000. Various attempts to rationalise policing territories over past decades, for purely operational reasons, have failed.
More importantly policing geographies no longer correspond, in most cases, to political geographies. With the exceptions of Greater London, Manchester and the West Midlands – which correspond to Mayoral boundaries – most forces do not have a single corresponding political authority. Where they do, i.e. in those areas, the powers that were given to Police & Crime Commissioners elsewhere were instead given to the so-called “metro Mayors”. In practice they were delegated to (unelected) deputy Mayors, although ultimate responsibility remains with the Mayors of Greater London, Manchester and the West Midlands.
The Labour government appears to be intent on expanding the ‘metro’ model of Mayors overseeing policing. So, for example, a new combined local authority structure and directly elected Mayor is proposed for Norfolk and Suffolk. At present, Norfolk and Suffolk are separate police forces, each with their own directly elected PCC. Sarah Taylor in Norfolk is the PCC who has resigned from the Labour Party in protest.
If the mayoral model is imposed on Norfolk and Suffolk and PCC powers transferred to the new Mayor, it is still unclear how this will work in practice. Will there be two (unelected) deputy Mayors, one for each force in place of the current PCCs? Or a single deputy Mayor over seeing both forces? Or will the police forces be merged? Similar issues will arise in many of the other areas designated to become combined authorities and with elected mayors under current plans. In July this year the Association of PCCs set out just how complex this transfer will be.
New mayors were expected to be elected in Greater Essex, Norfolk & Suffolk, Hampshire & the Solent, and Sussex & Brighton in May next year. These are 4 of the 5 areas where PCC powers are supposed to be transferred to Mayors in 2028. These elections have now been postponed until May 2028, though. The time needed to sort out the PCC to Mayor transfers is almost certainly one of the key reasons Labour have decided to delay the Mayoral elections for these areas.
Not everywhere in England and Wales is currently planned to be included in the new combined authority-mayor set up. For those that aren’t, PCCs will still be abolished and replace with “elected council leaders” – although at the moment no one seems to know exactly what that means. The pre-PCC system was Police Authorities, which were first created in 1964 and reformed in 1994. A typical authority would have 17 members. Nine would be elected councillors from the local authorities in the force area, in proportion to their political groups. A further 8 would be appointed by the authority itself from the local community. It is unclear if “elected council leaders” means a return to something like Police Authorities, or something else.
Criminal misalignment?
It is important to note that the PCC role does not just include policing. They are Police and Crime Commissioners, with a role in trying to co-ordinate across the whole criminal justice system in their areas. And more broadly with other agencies, local government, and civil society. Working across the criminal justice system (CJS) alone this no easy task. Hardly any of the main CJS institutions internal structures – for police, prosecution service, courts, probation and prisons – align geographically with each other or with a PCCs geographical jurisdiction.
Transferring PCC powers to Mayors who cover more than one police force area is going to make this even more complex. One of the main reasons for creating the PCC role was to provide a single point or person of responsibility who could be held to account by the electorate. In some areas – like London – that may still be the case for Mayors, but for many more this will be lost under abolition.
In somewhere like the proposed Norfolk-Suffolk mayoral area – with two police forces – how would accountability work? If one force is a shining example of good policing but the other is an abject failure, how will a single Mayor be held to account? In some proposed combined authority-mayoral areas there may even be more than two police forces, or parts of them, and so the picture becomes yet more complex. In either case, it seems vanishingly unlikely that accountability will be improved by the reform.
Concluding thoughts
This brief blog post hasn’t touched on the broader issues of governance and accountability in the wider policing and CJS eco-system. These involve not just the Home Office, which in reality exercises a great deal of central power over policing, but also the Ministry of Justice (courts, probation and prisons) as well as, as always, HM Treasury lurking in the background wielding its large public finance truncheon. Then there are multiple inspectorates, Parliamentary committees and the National Audit Office who all exert some degree of governance.
The introduction of PCCs in 2012 was meant to simplify and make much more transparent who was accountable for policing and crime reduction in a geographical area. It was an answer to the ancient question “quis custodiet ipsos custodes” – who guards the guardians?
With the introduction of geographical complications, un-elected deputy mayors, unspecified “elected council leaders” and a period of turmoil for the next 3 years, it’s difficult to see how the current proposals answer policing accountability question any better? I have written the above not as a defence of PCCs. I have always thought they were another undiscussed and unwarranted step in a process of “presidentialising” local government, but it’s hard to see that what comes next will be any better.
Colin Talbot.
Colin is Emeritus Professor of Government, University of Manchester. He also has relationships with the Cambridge Judge Business School and the Federal Trust. Colin has worked extensively with all levels of British government and public services, including being an advisor to two House of Commons Select Committees and appearing as an expert witness over two dozen times in both Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh Assembly. He has also advised more than a dozen other governments, from the USA to Japan.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.