Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Police & Crime Commissioners: 10 years on, HC 123
Wednesday 8 November 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 8 November 2023.
Members present: Dame Diana Johnson (Chair); James Daly; Simon Fell; Carolyn Harris; Tim Loughton.
Questions 1-59
Witnesses
I: Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, Chair of the Nation Police Chiefs’ Council and Sir Thomas Winsor, former Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary.
II: Donna Jones, Chair, Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and PCC for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Dr Rick Muir, Director, Police Foundation, and Councillor Sue Woolley, Conservative Lead Member for the Safer and Stronger Communities Board, Local Government Association.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Witnesses: Sir Thomas Winsor and Chief Constable Gavin Stephens.
Q1 Chair: Good morning and welcome to the Home Affairs Committee. This is our first session looking at the role of police and crime commissioners. There are two aims for this session: we want to explore the scrutiny to which police and crime commissioners are themselves subject, along with their relationships with chief officers; and we want to explore the impact of police and crime commissioners so far and the efficiency of their collaboration with others to improve community safety. We are very pleased to have before us this morning Sir Tom Winsor and Chief Constable Chief Constable Gavin Stephens.
Before we move on to the first set of questions, I wonder, chief constable, whether you might be able to say anything to the Committee about the issue of protests, which is very topical at the moment, and particularly the comments that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner made last night about the protest planned for this Saturday. Is there anything you would like to say about that?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: Clearly, I am not in possession of all the information that the commissioner has to make his decisions in relation to London. My role as chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council is to assist in co-ordination of the national effort. I can reassure the Committee that that activity has been ongoing since the start of the conflict. We are planning for many other protest events around the country at the weekend. The majority of what we have experienced so far has been largely peaceful. Where arrests have been made and disorder has broken out, that has been well reported in the media. Nationally, we are providing resources from right across the other nations to support the effort here in London.
Q2 Chair: Do you concur with the comments of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner about not being in a position to ban the protest on Saturday?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: Within the National Police Chiefs’ Council, I am the chair, and each of the members of that council—each of the individual chief constables, which includes the commissioner of the Met—has operational independence in their decision making. They will base their decisions on the information they have. I am not in possession of the same information.
Q3 James Daly: I want to ask a quick question, chief constable. I am not asking you to comment on the decision by the Met commissioner, but there was reference by Sir Mark yesterday to a threshold test in respect of the use of section 13 of the Public Order Act. Can you explain to me not Sir Mark’s view on that but your view on what that threshold test means and what circumstances have to be met for it to be passed?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: The threshold relates to both serious violence and the ability of the police service to deal with serious violence when it arises. Those are two of many factors that I am sure would have been in the commissioner’s mind.
Q4 James Daly: To follow that up, because it is important for the public understanding of how senior police officers deal with this in general, if the threshold test is serious violence, what does serious violence actually mean? I am asking you from your perspective as a very senior police officer. I am not asking about what Sir Mark has decided, but in a general sense. What does serious violence mean?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: With serious violence and disorder, there is a risk people of being injured or coming into serious harm, and it is beyond the capability of the police service to intervene and keep police safe.
Q5 Chair: Thank you. Perhaps I should have given you the opportunity to introduce yourselves properly before I started on that. Sir Tom, would you like to introduce yourself and explain your background?
Sir Thomas Winsor: I am Tom Winsor. I was the chief inspector of constabulary for almost 10 years. I finished that job in March 2022. After that, the Home Secretary appointed me to a non-statutory public office to investigate the circumstances in which the Mayor of London contrived to secure the removal of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. My report on that was published on 2 September. Since then, I have been relaxed.
Q6 Chair: We are very pleased to see you before us today. Chief constable, would you like to explain your role as well?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: Good morning. I am Gavin Stephens. I am the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council. That is a membership body; it is an elected role by the peer group of members. Our role goes across the four nations, British overseas territories and Crown dependencies to co-ordinate the operational activity of policing.
Q7 Chair: Thank you. This is the first session looking at police and crime commissioners. Could both of you set the scene on what you think the impact of police and crime commissioners has been since they were brought in by the coalition Government? I was reading through the notes; both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives had manifesto promises to bring in this role. Could you talk through what the impact has been over the last 11 years? Would you like to start, chief constable, and then we will move to Sir Tom?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: First, the impact is a generally improving trajectory. The role is still in its relative infancy, just approaching 11 years, and we have seen good progress in a number of areas. Our assessment is that police and crime commissioners have certainly established their role in the public’s voice. They are more visible and approachable, some would say, than former police authorities. From the perspective of chief constables, the speed of decision making has increased. That one-to-one relationship, the regular exchange of information and the openness of information helps in that decision-making process. Where the relationships have been positive, we believe that they have been helpful in the level of trust and confidence that residents have been able to get in their local forces.
There are some areas where we think there is room for progress and development. We recognise that not all the relationships over that 11-year period have been positive. Where there is a one-on-one relationship, sometimes care and attention is needed to prevent that from breaking down. We have certainly seen an increase in turnover of chief constables. In 2018, for example, the average length of service in the rank was 3.8 years, compared with over five in 1980. During my predecessor’s term of office as chair of chiefs’ council, we saw chief constables for 31 of the 43 forces in England and Wales change, so that is a 72% turnover of chief constables in a four-year period. Given the electoral cycle, there is less continuity in operational leadership. The reason why that is important is that the office of chief constable is a custodian—a guardian that offers long-term decision making for the future good of the locality. We think that there are some downsides to that turnover.
Q8 Chair: You talked about the turnover of chief constables, but what about the recruitment of chief constables? Is there an issue about only one candidate being put forward for interview for chief constable roles? Is that something that concerns you?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council have all observed the smaller pools of candidates coming forward. Another phenomenon that we have seen is colleagues making the jump directly from assistant chief constable to chief constable and missing out the rank of deputy, which is vital experience to gain. I think there are a number of factors in colleagues’ decisions about whether to go for chief constable or not. I certainly would not say this is solely or predominantly down to the PCC relationship, but it is a very important factor in whether both sides feel that the one-to-one relationship will work, and that may well be influencing the availability of candidates. The College of Policing has recently made some changes to the overall executive leadership programme, which we hope in time will increase the pool.
Sir Thomas Winsor: I agree with everything that Gavin has said. PCCs replaced invisible police authorities. In some respects, they have had some really very good results from the things they have done. They have more power than police authorities. They can give grants and commission services in relation to victims. Their visibility, and the public understanding of their role, is increasing. It is certainly higher than it was with the police authority. The speed of decision making, which Gavin mentioned, is certainly higher. The chief constable of Merseyside—several chief constables ago—said he liked having a police and crime commissioner because he could get a decision from one person, rather than a committee of 17.
These things are positives, but there are undoubtedly negatives. If you invest so much power—the power to set the budget and the priorities, and to hire and fire the chief, which are the principal powers in relation to the chief constable—you better be sure that you have somebody who is going to exercise those powers lawfully, rationally, procedurally, fairly and proportionately, and sometimes that has not happened. The London case is the high watermark of where things went very badly wrong.
Q9 Chair: Do you want to say a little bit more about that?
Sir Thomas Winsor: Yes. I say this in the context that what happens in London with policing very, very often has a knock-on effect everywhere else. Therefore, what happened to the last Commissioner of the Met at the hands of the present Mayor of London has had a chilling effect—a very damaging effect—on the perception of other police and crime commissioners. I cannot name any, but I think that it will have had a damaging effect, because they have seen what the Mayor of London did with impunity and they may very well think, “Well, I can do the same.”
It is about undue political pressure. There is a dividing line of operational independence; it is set out in paragraphs 32 to 34 of the Policing Protocol Order 2023, and it is pretty clear. But in the case of London—this happened in South Yorkshire as well in 2015, and I was involved in that as well. When a politician loses patience and says, “I’ve lost trust and confidence in the chief,” he or she has the obligation to initiate the appropriate steps. They do not only have to dismiss the chief—there are sanctions for falling short—but in the case of the Mayor of London in February 2022, things went badly wrong.
There is a statutory scheme for the removal of the Commissioner of the Met, which is very like the statutory scheme for the removal of a chief constable. But in the case of London there is a Home Secretary veto and one or two other changes, which make it harder for the Mayor to dismiss the commissioner than it is for a PCC to dismiss a chief constable. But in the case of the Mayor of London—my report was published by the Home Office on 2 September 2022—he circumvented the statutory scheme for the removal of the commissioner from office. My findings were that his behaviour in that respect was oppressive and unreasonable. It was unjustifiably politically brutal. He carried out a political ambush on the commissioner. Threats were made to her. His behaviour was improper. He knew that what he was demanding the commissioner to do would be unlawful. His pressure on the commissioner was wholly improper. His conduct was below the conventions of proper conduct by a public office holder. He scapegoated the commissioner and short-circuited the removal procedure. His statements to the media at the time seriously undermined the commissioner. He pre-empted the statutory procedure. His actions risked the stability of the Met being undermined. His actions amounted to constructive dismissal. His conduct was unfair and contrary to law, and it was an abuse of power, but he got away with it.
Q10 Chair: Those are the conclusions from your report. You set out in your report a series of options for how the procedure could be strengthened. I do not think you actually said which one you were minded to push through or which was the key one, but you set out quite a lot of changes. What has happened to them? Where have we got to in terms of strengthening the procedures that you obviously felt were not good enough?
Sir Thomas Winsor: Nothing.
Chair: Nothing has happened?
Sir Thomas Winsor: As far as I know. The policing protocol has been adjusted in a number of respects, but not in relation to this. When David Crompton, chief constable of South Yorkshire, faced—again—hostile action that was illegal and improper by the police and crime commissioner, he did get sacked, but he won on judicial review two years later. The Mayor of London could have been legally challenged, but again it would have taken time and money. For the Commissioner of the Met to be fighting the Mayor of London in court, that would have been highly undesirable for the Met and the people of London.
I made nine recommendations for reform, some of them quite light. They are adjusting the policing protocol to make things stronger; mandatory mediation between a chief and his police and crime commissioner—MOPAC is the police and crime commissioner for London—which I think will take effect; increasing the power of the Secretary of State to veto a removal earlier in the process; delaying the resignation taking effect until the chief inspector of constabulary has opined on it; giving the chief inspector of constabulary a veto; involving the Home Secretary at the beginning of the process, rather than at the end; recreating the Metropolitan Police Authority; and removing the power of the Mayor to remove the commissioner altogether. London is the centre for our national life. What happens in London has an effect everywhere else in the UK, so it is right that the Home Secretary has primacy. The Mayor is the local policing body, but London is more than a local authority area.
Chair: I am sure we will come back to this. I call James Daly.
Q11 James Daly: Sir Thomas, for the effective running of the police force, or the various police forces in England and Wales, do we need police and crime commissioners?
Sir Thomas Winsor: We need democratic accountability for the police. Sometimes, with the first generation of PCCs—we have had three sets of elections now—the impression was that some of the police and crime commissioners thought democratic accountability of the police began in 2012. No, it didn’t. The ancient obligation of the citizen is to suppress crime and to apprehend offenders. The police are citizens in uniform who are given special powers and who are paid to do that.
Q12 James Daly: But I think we know, just for the record, that effectively before police and crime commissioners came in, it was generally local councillors who formed—forgive me for the terminology; I am sure it is not called this—a police supervisory board, so effectively you had democratic accountability. To get back to the point, if we say that democratic accountability was there before police and crime commissioners came in, why do we need police and crime commissioners? How do they make policing better in this country?
Sir Thomas Winsor: For the reasons that Gavin gave earlier. There are real strengths in the PCC system as long as—again, Gavin’s qualification—the relationship between the chief and the PCC is a positive one. When it has been positive, and this is borne out in the inspectorate’s reports in my period and since then, the public have a much better service, and the PCC and the chief have worked well together. Where the relationship is negative, the opposite is the case.
James Daly: I am the MP for Bury North in Greater Manchester; Greater Manchester, as you both know, went into special measures in 2021. Much like the situation in London, the Mayor of Greater Manchester is the police and crime commissioner. When the issue of the police going into special measures was raised with him, he said, “I don’t consider it a policy failing, for this reason: I don’t run Greater Manchester Police.” That is correct—the chief constable runs Greater Manchester police—but I am trying to understand something. Do you both see the role of police and crime commissioner as simply an accountability role? Yes, you can give grants and do certain positive things in the community, but in the wider sense it is simply a role that exists to hold the chief constable accountable without having any day-to-day involvement in the running of the police force.
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: Clearly, there is the line of operational independence for the running of the force, which rests with the chief constable. There are the legal responsibilities, which Sir Tom has outlined, but the other benefit brought by police and crime commissioners is convening a co-ordination role in relation to local services.
On collaboration at the local level—whether on victim services, working with third sector organisations to support the police in a whole range of activities, or through local criminal justice boards—we have observed that having a single democratically elected person to help has a benefit at that local collaborative level. It can bring additional capabilities into community safety. When we step back from it all, our responsibility is to keep the King’s peace, keep people safe and keep people feeling safe, and there are many things that a democratically elected individual at the local level can assist us in doing that.
Q13 James Daly: Just give us an idea—both from your own personal perspective and, Sir Tom, from yours—as to how accountability works between a police and crime commissioner and the chief constable. How are you or your colleagues held to account for your failures, or none, as the case may be?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: I mentioned earlier that there is some work-in-progress activity, and I would put this in that category, because there are excellent examples that we have seen and there are some that are less strong.
The other thing to remember is that, in law, chief constables themselves have a legal duty to consult local communities on priorities. So, there are some things that are vested directly in the office of chief constable as well, and one of the responsibilities of the chief constable is to do that directly, on behalf of the force, have regard to the police and crime plan, set by the police and crime commissioner, and to take account of the strategic policing requirements in terms of our national responsibilities.
At the local level, the practicalities of accountability are about the transparency and provision of information. That varies from place to place. And the extent of scrutiny that a police and crime commissioner can question and test the chief constable on that information could include everything from local performance data on how confident your local community is feeling—
Q14 James Daly: How is that done? That is what I am trying to get at. Is it done in a forum like this, or is it done in a room every Friday afternoon, when there are just the two people together?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: There isn’t one set model for this; there is a whole range of activities. As a chief constable under three different police and crime commissioners, I have done events like this, in scrutiny panel-type arrangements; I have done open public forums in person; I have done open public forums online; I have done livestreaming events; and we have done street meetings and town hall meetings. There is a wide variety of activities that can lend to that scrutiny, and I think that adjusting that scrutiny to meet the needs of your local community is really important. That’s one of the things that I know police and crime commissioners give a great deal of thought to.
Q15 James Daly: These are my final few questions. Accountability is a very interesting concept. Chief constables and police and crime commissioners exist to give the best possible service to the people they represent. Reading between the lines, I think that what you are saying, chief constable, is that if there is diversity of opinion on the priorities in carrying out that duty to local people, then there will be tensions in that relationship. We MPs are interested in how those tensions are worked out.
I am sure that there are good models all over the country, but I am not satisfied that, “You can have scrutiny, but it happens in a room, perhaps every month, or however often the police and crime commissioner wants it,” is a good model. Chief Constable, if we have police and crime commissioners, there should be a public method of showing the public that there is accountability.
Sir Thomas Winsor: Well, some chiefs meet their police and crime commissioners on a very regular basis, but that is in private. They can hold public meetings and can have public scrutiny meetings. Of course, the police and crime panel tends to be more interested in scrutinising the police than in scrutinising the PCC, but that is not its job; its job is to scrutinise the PCC. Nevertheless, the democratic accountability model is enormously important, and as we said, when it works respectfully and co-operatively, it can engender considerable benefits.
However, when I was doing my report into what happened in London, I was very struck that the then deputy commissioner of the Met said that he spent 40% of his time just dealing with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime—just talking to the politicians. Of course, communication with politicians is enormously important, because the politicians are the elected people charged with holding to account, but some really like the idea of running the police, though they are not supposed to run the police. That is a point that you have made: Andy Burnham does not run GMP; Ian Hopkins did, although he doesn’t now. That point is enormously important, but some police and crime commissioners quite fancy the idea of being seen as the “police chief”. For example, on the letter paper of the first police and crime commissioner for Merseyside, it did not say “Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside”; it said “Police Commissioner for Merseyside”. I don’t think that was a typo.
Q16 James Daly: A chief constable is a chief constable because they have shown a certain level of experience and expertise in policing. I am assuming that, when you are interviewing, that is the thing to look for. As we have outlined, democratic accountability is great, in the sense that police and crime commissioners are elected, but there is a lack of experience, understanding and expertise. I am sure that all police and crime commissioners, wherever they come from, are good, decent people who want to do things for their communities, but if they have not got a background in policing or legal matters, or an understanding of how a force works, how is accountability delivered in that model? In some of these situations, are you essentially having to teach the police and crime commissioner what being a police and crime commissioner is, and that understanding of running a police force?
Q17 Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: No. First, there are great benefits in having a range of police and crime commissioners from different backgrounds bringing their different expertise into policing. An independent view—a view representing local constituents—is really important in that. I know that the Committee will hear evidence from the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in just a moment on their work to support colleagues in exercising strong governance. Some of that comes through the design of the governance arrangement. Some police and crime commissioners will just adopt the previous governance arrangements that were there, although they clearly have different styles and approaches. I mentioned that I have worked as a chief officer under three different police and crime commissioners; all had very different styles and approaches, but the governance structure remained roughly the same.
Of course, that is not the only check and balance. For example, there are joint force and police and crime commissioner audit committees. Members of those audit committees are often very experienced in governance matters. They make observations on how well the overall arrangements are working, as do the police and crime panels.
If there is an area that the National Police Chiefs’ Council thinks needs additional attention, it would be standards and performance issues. Absolutely, we understand that a PCC is a democratically elected position, and that that democratic accountability provides the ultimate sanction. However, for chief constables, and indeed for MPs, we have a code of conduct, a code of ethics and standards of professional behaviour. There are very clear rules by which we are held to account, and in this evolving model of police and crime commissioners, that is less clear at the moment. I think that would help.
Q18 James Daly: Thank you very much. Very briefly, Sir Tom, is having a rounded view of life, and coming from the outside, as the chief constable says, a positive? Or do you think that those holding a position of such importance to local communities should have a level of expertise, or a background in policing?
Sir Thomas Winsor: It is democracy. Parties choose their candidates, and if they choose really good ones, things will go well.
Q19 Chair: Can I ask about former police officers who go on to be police and crime commissioners? Has that worked well, or not so well?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: I think there are examples of both—examples where it has not worked at all well, and where it has worked well. There is a risk that former police officers can blur the operational line; that is their area of expertise and interest, but the role is not about that. The role is as Sir Tom described it. It is important that we each stick to our respective roles.
Q20 Chair: Sir Tom, do you have anything to say about that?
Sir Thomas Winsor: I entirely agree with that.
Q21 Tim Loughton: Sir Tom, welcome back. None of us here thought your valedictory appearance a while ago was going to be your last, so it is interesting to see you in this role. We seem to be slightly at risk of the success of police commissioners being seen through the prism of what has happened in London, where we obviously have a rather different historic set-up. Can you comment on dismissals, or where relationships between a PCC and chief constable have not fared so well in parts of the country that aren’t the metropolis? We are looking at PCCs generally, not just the London one.
Sir Thomas Winsor: The early departure of a chief constable can be brought about in a number of ways. The formal procedure for places outside London is under section 38 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. That process has been invoked only twice in the last 11 years: once in Avon and Somerset, where the process went as far as the chief constable seeing my statutory views on the reasons for the PCC getting rid of him, and he resigned then, so it stopped; the other case was South Yorkshire, where it went all the way to the end, and then there was a successful judicial review.
We have talked about London, of course, but other cases, such as Humberside or Greater Manchester, were triggered by severely adverse inspectorate reports on the performance of the force. The PCC, perfectly legitimately, was able to have a proper, private discussion, not in front of the television cameras, with the chief constable to say, “I no longer have trust and confidence in you.” The chief could, and in some cases should, say, “I do not believe your grounds for removal are sound. I will stand and fight. I will make you invoke the statutory removal procedure,” which is perfectly proper, but the chief may also say, “Yes, I think there has been a very significant failure, and I would rather resign.” Both are proper. My report on London was about an improper circumvention of the procedure.
Q22 Tim Loughton: To come back to the point you were making to Mr Daly about the real need for democratic accountability, and that being why PCCs are seen as a good thing, are they really democratically accountable? In the last elections, in 2021, the turnout was 33.2%. Some 86% of those elected in England were Conservative and 14% were Labour, although in Wales, there was a Plaid Cymru PCC. It was very much weighted towards the Conservative party, which some of us may say is a good thing. I am not saying that we should go back to what happened before, but on local police boards or whatever they were called, there were councillors of different persuasions. The democratic accountability amounts to a single person, under a single party colour, who has to be subjected to democratic accountability once every four years. Are they now more democratically accountable?
If you take the case of London, the Mayor of London, who is an elected Labour Mayor, is accountable to the London Assembly, whose members are from a number of different parties. They put him under the spotlight on policing and other matters on a regular and high-profile basis. That does not happen in most counties, where the PCC is effectively the be-all and end-all.
Sir Thomas Winsor: The London Assembly’s job is to hold the Mayor to account, not to hold the Commissioner of the Met to account. The Commissioner of the Met is accountable to the Mayor, and the Mayor is accountable to the London Assembly. That is the model that prevails in other parts of the country as well. It is not as high profile, because London is London, but as we said earlier, putting that much power in the hands of one individual is a bit risky. When I interviewed Ken Livingstone, the first Mayor of London, for my report from 2 September, he said that he thought that the Mayor of London model was a bad idea, and that if you are going to have a Mayor, it should be the leader of the largest party in the democratic body—the London Assembly—because those people would be able to exercise a restraining influence if they though that the Mayor would do something ill advised.
Q23 Tim Loughton: But by the same token, you would have a gridlock, in which the Mayor could not do something, if he did not have a majority of people supporting what he was trying to do; or he would constantly have to go back for endorsement.
Sir Thomas Winsor: That would be for major things. The Mayor would have a lot of freedom of action, but for major things, such as dismissing—or indeed taking part in, and offering views on, the appointment of—the Commissioner, he would have a restraining influence. In the same way, when the Home Secretary appoints the Commissioner of the Met, it is not just her decision. Under the law it is, but I have interviewed several Home Secretaries, and the reality is that they say it is a Prime Ministerial decision. The Home Secretary would not be able to appoint the Commissioner of the Met unless the Prime Minister was happy with the choice. That is the democratic accountability that the single-person model has. It does carry risks, including the risk of undue politicisation of the police, and that is dangerous. As I said in paragraph 324 of my report, we must not allow things to slide into the US model of policing, “where the police chief goes in and out of office with the mayor, serves at the pleasure of the mayor and is dismissible and dismissed at will.” That would be true politicisation of the police, and that is something we have never had and must never have.
Q24 Tim Loughton: I think the Committee will probably agree. We visited the New York Police Department, met a very impressive police commissioner who would be brought in by the Mayor, and almost before our plane had got back, she was gone under strange circumstances. I think we would all agree that that is not the model we want to follow.
Chief Constable, there is democratic accountability, and there is politicisation. When the first elections were held, there was a view that the police commissioners should be independent, and some people raised eyebrows about party political candidates being put forward. Interestingly, though perhaps it was a reflection of the political climate at the time, a number of independents were elected. Virtually none, or maybe none of them, were re-elected, and now we have no independents; it is not a thing. Did you, as chief constable, and your colleagues find that political influence and the politicisation of the role encroached on your ability to police without pandering to the political policy of a particular party?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: There is certainly more attention drawn to the issues because of the single nature of the role, but this is dealt with in the policing protocol order, which describes very clearly the difference between the role of the Home Secretary, the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner. That is the document that we all return to, should we need to, when there is a point of friction of the kind that Mr Daly described.
My perspective is that it is healthy that we have those points of friction, because the responsibilities of policing and the choices that we have to make are many and varied. There is always more to do than we have the resourcing for, and dialogue about prioritisation leads to healthy discussions that can be points of friction. There is no doubt that there is more political attention drawn to it, but ultimately, we have very clear guidelines about how to maintain operational independence.
Q25 Tim Loughton: Would you feel more comfortable if all police commissioners had to be independent and not have a party label?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: I have worked under an independent police and crime commissioner, one who was Conservative but served the remainder of their term of office not in the Conservative party, and then another Conservative. They have all been different. In any event, I would not say that party politics had any direct bearing on the decision making of the force.
Q26 Tim Loughton: Do you think it has any bearing on the public’s perception of how well equipped the police commissioner is to do his or her job?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: Potentially. I do not have any data from polling or otherwise to help the Committee on that matter.
Q27 Tim Loughton: Sir Tom, what do you think about having independent police commissioners? First, is it feasible and practical? Secondly, is it desirable? How might it change the complexion of that relationship?
Sir Thomas Winsor: I think asking for a political office to be occupied by somebody who is not political is unrealistic. Some of the independents—I can think of one in particular, or more than one—from the first crop were truly crazy. Happily, they did not get re-elected and therefore we do not need to talk about them. However, the relationship is perfectly properly a political one, because that is what democratic accountability is all about, as long as everybody behaves lawfully, rationally, procedurally, fairly and in accordance with proportionality. As I said earlier, as long as there is a respectful, trusting relationship of mutual endeavour, it can work, but too many police and crime commissioners regard it as superior and supplicant, master and servant, employer and employee. That was the case in the terms of appointment for Bernard Hogan-Howe and Cressida Dick that MOPAC drafted. I criticised them in my report, and I am pretty sure Mark Rowley does not have those terms, because it is not that kind of relationship. It is not the US model, where basically you just do what the mayor wants.
Q28 Tim Loughton: I will make my last point. I am keen to get away from the London model, because I am more interested in how PCCs work. London is a very special case, and it has gone very wrong for all the reasons you have flagged.
You clearly think that improved democratic accountability is a key advantage of the PCC role over what went before. What do you think of not leaving it to PCCs to have whatever local sounding board they choose? My PCC, who has been in place since 2011, is quite high-profile, and holds regular fora, so that the public can come and ask questions of her and the chief constable. I think that is a good idea. Should she be subject to a country-wide model, in which there is scrutiny from local political representatives from all the councils in an area—in this case, Sussex? It would be a version of what the Mayor has in the London Assembly. That is there to scrutinise the Mayor in his role as the equivalent of the police commissioner. In that model, there could be true, open and democratic accountability by people who are not necessarily of the same party political persuasion, and who could do a slightly better-informed job than random members of the public who were turning up for a public question and answer session. Would that be a way of better strengthening genuine democratic accountability?
Sir Thomas Winsor: That is largely the system we have with police and crime panels. The problem is that nobody shows up. The panel members show up, but what about the public? You might have two or three people who want to get in from the cold, but that is it. They are televised and you can watch them on YouTube—I have done that—which is a bit strange. Most of the time the public show very little interest, perhaps because they do not really know it is there.
The police and crime panel is supposed to be the nearest thing to a police authority holding the PCC to account, but the PCC often takes the chief along with him or her because the panel really wants to talk to the chief and not the PCC.
Q29 Tim Loughton: So that model needs to be overhauled if it is to work properly and for the public to think that it is something of value that they can also have an input through.
Sir Thomas Winsor: It is probably no worse, and may be better, than the old police authority model, because the police and crime panel is drawn from the local authority members. They are not separately elected; they are local councillors. But, as we all know, the interest of the public in local democracy—until something goes catastrophically wrong—is pretty low. You mentioned that the turnout for the last PCC elections was 33%. That was the turnout for the local government elections, so if it was thought that PCCs were illegitimate because they got only 30% turnout—I know that you are not saying that—then that would be true of all the local authorities as well. I just wish that democracy was taught in schools rather better.
Tim Loughton: That is a whole different subject.
Chair: It is, and one that we can probably agree on.
Q30 Carolyn Harris: Sir Thomas, I worry about the politicisation of this role. I really am concerned. A former Mayor of London saw a former commissioner leave under similar circumstances, but there was no inquiry launched into that. That was Boris Johnson and Sir Ian Blair. Why do you think that the Government decided, with Cressida Dick, to make a special case for this?
Sir Thomas Winsor: I don’t think that they did make a special case, except in relation to—perhaps what you mean is, “Why did Boris Johnson get away with getting rid of Ian Blair, and why did Sadiq Khan not get away with it?” Well, he did, actually, but there was a fuss. I think that what Boris Johnson did in relation to Ian Blair was improper, and Ian Blair still bears the scars, but there was no separate inquiry. That was in 2008, and it would have been open to the Labour Home Secretary to inquire into the circumstances in which the Conservative Mayor of London had done what he did, but they did not. I think it was Jacqui Smith at the time; I do not know why she didn’t, but she could have.
My nine recommendations for reform are about London, but I think that they apply with almost equal force in the case of any other PCC. I think that those reforms could, to great advantage, be implemented and improve things.
Q31 Carolyn Harris: Were you disappointed that the then Policing Minister, Kit Malthouse, appeared to disagree with your report by saying that the police and crime commissioner—that is, the Mayor of London—was ultimately totally responsible for the fact that the Met had gone into special measures, and therefore needed to “get a grip” and deal with the situation?
Sir Thomas Winsor: I was a little puzzled by what Kit Malthouse said, except in so far as to understand that, as the Policing Minister, if things had gone badly wrong in London, he needed somebody to blame—
Q32 Carolyn Harris: Politically?
Sir Thomas Winsor: Politically, yes, but that is politics. Forgive me for putting this you, ladies and gentlemen, but politicians often like to have a lightning rod for blame. But he was right, in so far as the accountability of the commissioner of the Met, in terms of day-to-day policing of London, is primarily to the Mayor. The Home Secretary’s role is in relation to London being special and the Met doing a lot of things that are not just about London. I was not surprised that he said, “It’s the Mayor’s fault that the Met is in special measures”; the London Fire Brigade is also in special measures, so this Mayor has both of his principal emergency service organisations in so-called special measures.
Q33 Simon Fell: I have a couple of questions. We had the Bedfordshire PCC in front of us for the policing inquiry a little while ago. He gave an example we probably all recognise, which is the conflict you feel between the need to get visible police on the streets to reassure the public, and some of the bigger strategic challenges that policing faces now, whether that is grooming, online fraud, or cyber-crime. I am really interested in your views as to where you see politics sitting in that conversation. Where we have political PCCs who are elected, they have an electoral cycle where they have to face up to the public and say, “This is what I will deliver as a PCC.” Do you think that helps or hinders the process of setting a strategic vision for where forces should be and where they should be putting their efforts and scarce resources? I come to you first, chief constable.
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: Sometimes false assumptions are made about this distinction between what is visible in the public mind and concerns them most locally, and the wider regional and national responsibilities that policing has to keep people safe from, for example, online paedophile activity, fraud and cyber. I would purely give the example that in my final month before leaving the role of chief constable of Surrey Police, one of the things that we did jointly between the force, the office of police and crime commissioner and, indeed, the local authorities in the area, was to survey residents on their concerns. Their top three policing concerns in the month that I left were all online-related, and the next three were roads-related. So it is not necessarily true that just those visible activities are the ones affecting local communities and informing their police and crime plan.
Returning to what I said earlier, those conversations about healthy balances as to where to allocate resources are often held in public. Certainly, in setting local force plans in response to a police and crime plan, those dialogues will often happen in public. There will often be a session before the police and crime panel to do so, and that has to be an ongoing iterative dialogue. From a practical point of view, I don’t necessarily see that distinction.
Simon Fell: That is reassuring. Sir Thomas?
Sir Thomas Winsor: The police and crime plan is the democratically mandated set of policing priorities to which the chief must have regard. But “have regard” does not mean that it is a set of orders that must be dutifully and obediently without question carried out. “Have regard” means just have regard. The overriding obligation of the chief constable is to maintain the King’s peace and to apprehend offenders and keep people safe.
In Merseyside, there was quite a good example of how things could have gone badly wrong. The first elections were in 2012. There was a candidate—happily not elected—who, misunderstanding that the police and crime plan was a set of orders and that the chief would just have do to what he was told, said that, “In my police and crime plan, if I am elected, the police will never go to any call for service involving domestic violence.” “Because,” he added, “what happens between a man and his wife behind closed doors is nothing to do with the police.” Now, he got a respectable proportion of the votes. Happily, he didn’t get elected. What would have been the obligation of the chief constable of Merseyside if that had been in the police and crime plan? The answer is that he would “have regard” to it for about a nanosecond, and then he would put it in the bin, because the common law obligation of the police is there. The police and crime plan is not a set of orders.
I had a very disturbing conversation with one of the police and crime commissioners a number of years ago, where she said, “I don’t trust my chief constable.” I said, “Well, you appointed him.” She said, “Yes, but I don’t trust him. But I have appointed somebody I can control. And if he doesn’t do what he is told, I’ve told him I’ll invoke the removal procedure.” The individual matter on which she wanted to exercise control was keeping a police station open and requiring the chief constable to deploy officers to it. The chief had said, “You can keep the police station open—it’s your police station—but I am not deploying officers somewhere I don’t think they are needed.” She said, “Well, I will, if necessary, invoke the removal procedure.” I explained to the police and crime commissioner that that would be illegal, and if the matter ended up on my desk as chief inspector of constabulary, I would do everything in my power to stop it.
That is an illustration of the operational independence. The deployment of officers is specifically provided for in paragraph 32 of the policing protocol as something the PCC should not interfere with; it is a matter for the operational independence of the chief. Some PCCs—I certainly don’t say most—do not understand where the line of operational independence is, and some PCCs do not care. That was much more true of the first generation of PCCs; I would like to say that I think the present crop of PCCs are far better.
Q34 Simon Fell: Do you think there is enough training for incoming PCCs around what their role looks like and the extent of their remit?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: I can take that. Before I do, I will just add a comment to the previous question, bringing it back to the practicalities. Often, those discussions are around the allocation of financial resources, which flow through the police and crime commissioner. There have been some helpful amendments to the Policing Protocol Order, which now makes it very clear that the police and crime commissioner should not fetter the operational independence of the chief through the allocation of finance—by overly controlling the levels at which the delegated authorities stand, for example. But there are other financial drivers in play here, not least because we have a very wide range of local precept to central Home Office Government grant. It is in the region of below 20% to well into the mid-50% area. There is no doubt that that affects the balance of local versus national prioritising, and the dialogue that takes place.
The other big influencing factor is the current lack of financial resilience in policing. For example, as of today, if you were to accumulate all the medium-term financial plan savings that need to be made across England and Wales policing, it would be £1.2 billion. There is constant dialogue about where to effectively reduce services or make prioritisation decisions. Those are the things that more practically affect our day-to-day operational decisions.
Sorry, could you just repeat the following question?
Simon Fell: Training for PCCs.
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: Again, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners will no doubt speak to this. At a local level, what tends to happen is that, for all the candidates who put themselves forward for election, the force will provide and awareness and induction session to inform their activity in the run-up to the election. I have done that three times in my local force. There is then an intense period of activity and dialogue between the force, the police and crime commissioner and their office—the chief exec, which has some permanency—to make sure they are well briefed and informed. I know that, at the national level, there are awareness and briefing sessions too.
My personal view is that there is definitely more that can be done. In professional policing, we benefit from having a college, which can clearly set guidelines and expectations. There is no such equivalent for police and crime commissioners. Our view is that additionality in that would be welcomed, and also in some of the wider responsibilities. I am not here speaking for the Chief Police Officers Staff Association, although I am a member of the panel of friends. As Sir Tom described, there is not a line manager relationship between PCC and chief, but there is a responsibility to look after the health and wellbeing of chief constables. It is a very pressurised job, and there have been some very notable examples where colleagues have felt that pressure and struggled in their professional and domestic lives as a consequence. There is a mutual responsibility that police and crime commissioners need to recognise.
Sir Thomas Winsor: May I add something on the subject of training? When you are appointed to judicial office, you are required to go through mandatory training even though you are a very experienced lawyer, so there is a lot to be said about that.
I remember a conversation I had with Theresa May when she was Home Secretary. I was getting a lot of heat, because I was the only chief inspector of constabulary who had never been a police officer. I had done things in the police before, but she said: “Well, you don’t need training. The person who takes the biggest decisions in relation to national security and policing is the Home Secretary, and I haven’t been trained in any respect in these matters.” However, she has some very clever, very hard-working civil servants in the Home Office, which is a great advantage.
I know we are coming to the end, but may I say something about the relationship? I will just sum this up. It is undoubtedly, as Gavin says, a relationship in which there can be friction—it might be healthy friction—but let us try to ensure that the relationship is one of friction and not of fracture.
Q35 Chair: I have a couple of questions, one on the role of PCCs dealing with complaints. This Committee has been particularly concerned about complaints to the police and how quickly, efficiently and effectively they are dealt with. In our report on “Police conduct and complaints”, we were concerned about the models open to PCCs to oversee complaints. Most PCCs were only taking the very minimum approach to dealing with complaints. Will you both say something about whether you think that that is an area that PCCs need to address and look at, moving to model 3 rather than, at most, model 1?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: Stepping back from it all, in the shift from police authorities to police and crime commissioners, I do not think that there has been any deterioration in the handling of complaints. As you said, Chair, the vast majority opted for model 1, with a few exceptions. Our professional standards lead at the National Police Chiefs’ Council certainly has not picked up from fellow chief officers any sort of dissatisfaction with how complaints are handled, and we are not picking that up directly from communities either. The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners might be able to speak to that more later, but I think there is growing confidence in the system. Where forces have stepped into using models 2 or 3, confidence is growing, and there should be an opportunity to share best practice. It might be a maturity point, and that we will progress through the different models as confidence grows.
Sir Thomas Winsor: I agree. I have nothing useful to add.
Q36 Chair: There has been a lot of talk about infancy, and moving along and things developing. On a scale of one to 10, where are we with police and crime commissioners? Where would you put them with that kind of score?
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: I would find it difficult to give a score for the overall model, because of the point that I made about variability. Some will get 10 out of 10 and some—Sir Tom has given some examples—one out of 10. I could not give an overall score.
Chair: We go from one to 10, gosh—some are one out of 10 and some 10 out of 10.
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: As Sir Tom described, there have been some pretty disastrous experiences, which would clearly score low, but there are others. Mr Loughton described one which was an enduring relationship over three electoral terms, and that is very stable.
Q37 James Daly: You are talking about individual evaluation, which is interesting, but we are talking about the model, the actual police and crime commissioner concept. What would you give from one to 10 for the concept? We appreciate that there are good and bad.
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: The concept on what level of effectiveness, though, because we have discussed—
Chair: Just generally. We have been discussing the model all morning and whether it is working for communities and providing the scrutiny that we wanted.
Chief Constable Gavin Stephens: If it is a working-for-communities test for the overall model, I would give it seven and a half out of 10.
Chair: Seven and a half, right. Sir Tom?
Sir Thomas Winsor: B-minus.
Chair: Thank you very much for appearing before us this morning and answering our questions. That has been very helpful to set the scene. I am sure that we will see you both again—I would imagine. Thank you. We will move to our second panel.
Witnesses: Donna Jones, Dr Rick Muir and Councillor Sue Woolley.
Q38 Chair: Good morning and thank you for appearing before us today. I am going to ask you to introduce yourselves and explain your role. Shall we start with Donna Jones?
Donna Jones: Hello. I am Donna Jones, the police and crime commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and I am chair of the National Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.
Councillor Sue Woolley: Good morning. I am Councillor Sue Woolley. I am from Lincolnshire, and today I am representing the Local Government Association.
Dr Rick Muir: Hi, I am Dr Rick Muir, director of the Police Foundation, an independent policing think-tank.
Q39 Chair: Thank you again for your time this morning. I think you were all present for the first session, so you heard the kinds of questions we’re asking. Would each of you give your initial thoughts about the success of police and crime commissioners over the last 11 years, what has worked well, and what has not worked so well? Donna, would you like to start?
Donna Jones: Thank you very much. I start by thanking the panel for looking at this important subject. I think that 11 years in—11 years next week, 15 November—is an optimum time to be looking at the role and how it has changed quite significantly over those 11 years.
There are many successes of police and crime commissioners, but there are also still many frustrations among the commissioners themselves around the role that we would like to be playing to improve, to hold people to account and to build on trust and confidence. That is the first thing.
When I explain the role of a police and crime commissioner to somebody, I say that while it started out as almost a pure scrutiny role of holding to account the chief constable, it has developed quite significantly. In layman’s terms, the police and crime commissioner is much more akin to the chairman of a company, with the chief constable being akin to the chief executive running the business on a daily basis. For example, as you know, police and crime commissioners have to set local policing priorities in adherence with the national strategic policing priorities.
Four national police leaders support the Government on a daily basis, and we work incredibly closely together. They include Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, who you have just had evidence from and who is chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council; Andy Cooke, who is the Chief Inspector of Constabulary for His Majesty; me, as chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners; and the chief executive of the College of Policing. The four of us—NPCC, APCC, HMIC and the college—work incredibly closely together to support the Government, Policing Minister, Home Secretary and others.
In terms of our roles, we are akin to the chairman of a company. We set the budget and treasury management, and we sign off key documents. For example, if a chief constable wants to have a partnership with umpteen other police forces for forensic laboratory services, it is the police and crime commissioner who has to sign that document. When police officers or police staff members are requested to go overseas to support investigations or to provide support to countries that the UK Government works very closely with, it is the police and crime commissioner, with the Home Secretary, who has to sign off that member of police staff or police officer travelling abroad. Clearly, the chief constable is responsible for selecting the “who”—the right person with the experience—but because of the risk of a member of staff going overseas and the potential financial implications, police and crime commissioners get very involved.
Police and crime commissioners are also the owners of several key national police companies, such as the Police Digital Service and BlueLight Commercial, which runs all our procurement services for us. I am also on the board of the Association of Criminal Records Organisations, which involves criminal record data sharing. I think we now have a legal agreement with 98% of the countries around the world to share criminal record data for British people arrested overseas and foreign nationals arrested here. Then there is the National Police Air Service—police helicopters—which is again led by police and crime commissioners in conjunction with chief constables. Police and crime commissioners have a lot more skin in the game than people might think in terms of the actual delivery of policing services on a daily basis. This is not all about just holding people to account, although that is a key part of our role.
Finally, I think it is important that the Committee understands that the role has massively developed over the last 11 years, which is a very good thing. There is a will from the Government that police and crime commissioners are working much more into the criminal justice space. For example, all police and crime commissioners now chair their criminal justice boards. On those boards, we now have responsibility to oversee the serious violence duty and adhere to the new victims code when it comes into play. Police and crime commissioners have a duty to report back to the Government if the respective organisations have a responsibility either under the serious violence duty or the victims code, just to quote two bits of legislation. If organisations such as the Prison and Probation Service are not adhering to their respective requirements under the code, we need to report that back to either the Ministry of Justice or the Home Office.
I would say that 60% to 70% of my time is Home Office-focused, and 30% of my time is working with the Ministry of Justice, apart from obviously the day job of being in my own patch and representing the public. In terms of my Government interface as a police and crime commissioner, we actually work closely into the MOJ as well, particularly for our victims services, because it pays for a lot of them.
Q40 Chair: That is a very interesting statistic. In terms of your role locally, with all these other things you have described so eloquently and dealing with the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office, how much time are you actually focusing in on your local area—on your locality?
Donna Jones: Almost all police and crime commissioners, like chief constables, hold a national role as well—a portfolio lead. However, the vast majority of their time—I should really caveat this—is spent in their local area going to public meetings, representing the public and carrying out casework and surgery appointments. It is very much the same as a Member of Parliament, because we are democratically accountable to the people we represent. We go on visits and meet charities and inspect the charities delivering the services. My patch is one of the larger police force areas, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and I commission just under £10 million of commissioned services to support victims or prevent reoffending. More than £6.5 million of that comes from the MOJ; the rest I pay locally.
Q41 Chair: Can you put a percentage on your time locally?
Donna Jones: I would say that around 80% to 85% is spent on the local and the remainder is spent on supporting the national. Obviously for me, being chair of the APCC, that is not reflective of all PCCs, but I would say that is roughly the split.
Q42 Chair: That is helpful, thank you. Councillor Woolley?
Councillor Sue Woolley: In terms of what has worked well, it has been a slow burn as far as PCCs are concerned, but as we move through it is about the relationship with the public. We are seeing that if you go out on the street, PCCs know more and more what members of the public are talking about—more so than they perhaps did when they first came in. You could say, “Yes, that is probably always going to be the case, isn’t it?” It is about that ability to be able to be the democratic, independent voice and be an alternative to an operational police officer.
As for what has not worked quite so well, again, it is not black and white, is it? Where there is room for improvement is probably in the relationship. The relationship between the police and crime commissioner and the panels is not always as robust as it could be. That healthy tension that both crime commissioners and panels need is something that panels would certainly like support on. Sometimes they feel like a bit of a toothless tiger, so the ability of the panel to hold to account the crime commissioner is something that is a slower burn than the public perception.
Q43 Chair: What support do they need to be able to hold the PCC to account?
Councillor Sue Woolley: There are one or two things around, for example, what they are able to do. If you have not heard it already, you will hear about this business of the veto. Panels can veto the budget, but they can only veto once. If the crime commissioner reduces his budget by 1p—I think that is the favourite phrase—that’s it; there is no more that a panel can do. Likewise, the ability to exercise the veto on the election of a chief constable means that they can make their feelings known, but the veto can only be offered once. It is the “What comes afterwards?” that is the issue. That is not to say that it is an enormous problem, but there is just a frustration that panels can only step so far to hold that healthy accountability, I would say.
Q44 Chair: Thank you very much. Rick, would you like to give your assessment?
Dr Rick Muir: I would say four positive things. One is that when PCCs were brought in, there was a lot of fear about excessive politicisation, and I do not think that that has transpired. There are examples of it—we can all think of cases in which things have not gone so well—but broadly PCCs have respected the operational independence of chief constables. There was a real fear when this was brought in that the sky would fall in and that we would have politicians dictating operational policing matters. That has not happened, in my view. There may be some people who have flown a little close to the wind at times, but by and large it has worked out.
PCCs have sharpened the accountability of chief constables. Having a single person with the powers to appoint and dismiss—albeit with some qualifications—and to set the budget and the police and crime plan is a much clearer set of accountability arrangements than existed with police authorities. Frankly, chief constables used to refer to them as “my authority”; the budget was basically prepared by the force, and the authority normally just voted it through. I think it is a much stronger form of accountability, and that is a good thing.
It means there are quicker decisions, because you have one person, rather than a group of people, to involve. It has unlocked innovation, particularly in the commissioned services area. You can see examples of PCCs doing quite interesting things in terms of commissioning victims services and working with partners locally. Sometimes they are not even using their money but using their public voice as a way of convening people around particular issues.
It is also a more visible office than the old police authority model. We looked at the figures on this in 2015—it may have changed since then—and 68% of people had heard of the police and crime commissioner; so most people had heard of the office. Only 10% of people could name their PCC, but I think that that is probably quite a high bar—only between 20% and 40% of people can name their Member of Parliament, which is an office that has been around for a lot longer. I think it is better than what was there before, and we have to be realistic about the degree to which the public are going to be able to keep tabs on all these things.
I would say that there are some areas that need to be addressed. There have been issues around the appointment of chief constables. It is true that we have seen less competition for chief constable posts and often the local deputy being appointed. That has definitely been a trend. We have argued in the past that there should be more national co-ordination—developing a shortlist of PCCs to consider. I do not think it is right that, when appointing a chief constable of a police force, you have an interview with one person and no competition, which has happened on occasion. That is not right. We need to have more competition for chief officer posts. It is not just about the PCC model—there are other issues around that—but it needs to be looked at.
On dismissal, generally it has worked okay, but there have been some instances in which chief officers have—quite clearly in some cases— been treated unfairly. There have been court cases around that. I would strengthen the role of the police and crime panel around dismissal.
The other area that I think needs some further thought—Donna was talking about the role of PCCs—is the role of PCCs in the national system. PCCs play a positive role in the national system, and the APCC in particular plays a very positive role. The role of the APCC should be strengthened and perhaps formalised in various ways; maybe it should be put on a statutory footing.
We need to think about how decisions are made collectively. Where we are talking about developing national programmes—whether on forensics, big national IT projects, or air support—currently you need unanimity between all the chief constables and all the PCCs to agree to proceed with something, and someone can always say, “No, I don’t want to proceed with that.” That is not a good way of making decisions. You need some form of voting system to make sure that clear decisions can be made and can be binding on all parties. It is understandable. PCCs were brought in to play this local role, and I don’t think enough thought was given to how they play that important national role. We just need to think about the decision-making mechanism.
So my view is that this has broadly been positive. It is better than what was there before. There are some things that I would change, but I do think we should build on it and I very much support what Donna was saying about expanding the role of PCCs into the criminal justice system—into things like youth justice and probation. It would be a positive thing if those things were more locally accountable and more linked in with local public services, and I think PCCs could play a positive role in that.
Chair: Thank you very much.
Q45 Tim Loughton: Commissioner, welcome back. That was a really interesting list of some of the non-localised roles that commissioners now do. Also interesting, Dr Muir, was your last point about whether that was particularly thought through. Most people, including some of us here, would not have been aware of the full remit of some of the roles beyond being our local police and crime commissioner. Was that ever envisaged when the legislation came in? That is a question we should answer, I suppose; I can’t recall that it was. For the initial police and crime commissioners, was it ever envisaged that you would be doing such a range of things beyond your county police boundaries?
Donna Jones: In relation to the criminal justice part of our role, I think not. When this was originally set up, it was about giving the public democratic accountability for their policing services, for which they pay a separate tax—other than your tax to the Treasury, your tax is your council tax and then your police precept tax and your fire authority tax. Because the police are such a big chunk of the money that you pay in your monthly or annual tax bill locally, that is where the accountability came.
That said, a review was undertaken by a previous Home Secretary, Priti Patel, which was published in March 2020 and March 2021; that was the PCC review part 1 and part 2. A number of things came out of that. When a previous Policing Minister, Kit Malthouse, was in post, he was very keen for us to be working very closely with the probation service. For example, I had a meeting on Monday this week with my director of probation for South Central in England and Wales to talk about how we are going to run community payback schemes together and how we can get YOTs. We are also working with the Local Government Association. I had a meeting with the chair of the LGA last week to talk about immediate justice and about antisocial behaviour, following the Prime Minister’s ASB taskforce and the stuff that he has made that pledge around.
So in answer to your question, no, I don’t think the criminal justice element and the part that we play was originally envisaged; I think it has very much grown and morphed. There is the part that PCCs are playing in the current Operation Safeguard in relation to the problem with prison spaces. There is the fact that we are going to have to commission services that our police forces will be able to refer people to in order to have a greater number of people dealt with through out-of-court disposals, and not necessarily through the criminal justice system. It falls on police and crime commissioners to ensure those contracts are in place, are managed, are performing well and are fit for purpose. We then report that data back to the MOJ on a monthly and quarterly basis.
We all chair local criminal justice boards. I have five resident presiding judges in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. They all sit on my board. Magistrates are represented, and the Crown Prosecution Service—I have my director for the Wessex prosecution service. It is the same for all police and crime commissioners.
If you have prisons in your patch, the prison governors, for the most part, also now sit on the LCJBs, because of the part that prisons have under the serious violence duty that I referred to previously. Either they can make sure that they are fulfilling their duty on their own or they can come to the police and crime commissioner and say, “PCC, can you help me, as a prison governor, in making sure I am doing what I need to do and reporting that back?”, because we get given money under the serious violence funding to make sure that everyone who needs to fulfil their mandatory duties is doing so.
Q46 Tim Loughton: The implication of all this is that your role is going to get very much bigger.
Donna Jones: Yes.
Q47 Tim Loughton: In terms of linking it with local justice and out-of-court disposals, the public would take quite an interest in that because of the complaints about, first, “Why are the police not rounding up those hooligans more?” and secondly, “Well, nothing ever happens to them, and it is just a slap on the wrist at best.” If there could be a more transparent process so that they can see that, actually, you are doing something about local public disorder and antisocial behaviour—those sorts of lower-level things that cause real annoyance, as we all know—and that, very visibly, those people are then serving penalties, in the community, that are meaningful and hopefully have some rehabilitation element to them, the public would take more interest.
The point that I am making is that it ties into democratic accountability and the low level of understanding or interest, which Dr Muir contrasted with MPs, but there is not a lot of difference. What will it take for the public to take more of an interest in the people they can now hold democratically accountable, albeit every four years or through various other fora that are not well attended?
Has anyone got views on how we get the public to say, “Actually, police commissioners have really made a difference; I can see what policing is now doing and I now have a channel to say that, actually, they are not doing the right thing. I’ve got somebody who will listen and has the power to do something about it”? Where do we go from here?
Donna Jones: I think it is a really good point, and we do need to do more to raise awareness so that the public are aware. There are various different scrutiny committees that police and crime commissioners run through their offices with independent people. For example, any member of the public can come forward and sit on one of those independent scrutiny committees. We have independent people who sit on our body-worn video scrutiny panels, on our out-of-court-disposal scrutiny panels, or we have independent custody visitors, who ensure that what is going on in custody when someone is arrested meets the standard prescribed by the Home Office and the College of Policing. We have a number of ways already—touchpoints. Unelected, completely independent people—not councillors—can come and be involved in scrutiny committees that we run. Do I think that they could be more high profile and shared, perhaps livestreamed or encouraging more public participation? Yes, I do. I think that it is a fair point.
Dr Rick Muir: I do not think that we should see the office of PCC as being the only element of public participation in policing. I think that public engagement—public involvement in shaping police priorities—has to go beyond that. The PCC office is at the heart of it, but that then needs to be supplemented by some other things. Some PCCs have done that, for example, by having citizens juries or inviting members of the public to come in and discuss particular issues. There are plenty of controversial issues in policing; it is probably one of the most controversial areas of public policy, whether that is the use of stop and search, the approach to drugs, or the choice of whether we should use live facial-recognition technology. There are all sorts of controversial issues, and I think that PCCs could supplement the accountability that comes through their office by directly involving the public in some of those discussions. Some of them are doing that, but I think that that would be a positive thing. It is not just about, “You vote for this person every four years and then that is it”. It is supplemented by a range of other things as well.
Councillor Sue Woolley: One of the great things about technology—Lincolnshire is a particularly good example because it is huge. The ability for people to physically pitch up at a meeting is a problem in its own right, as far as transport, time and everything else is concerned. Social media has been a useful tool that our PCC has certainly used and continues to use. Every time that you look at it, he is there because he is asking the residents about his policing plan and what we want to see in it. Likewise, he is having conferences for young people and getting their views on things. Obviously, you could turn around and say, “Well, you’re going to miss out a section of society—those who don’t use social media,” but that ability to then work that in with the visits that he makes in person to far-flung areas our county—that combination of all of those tools; it is not just one thing—raises the profile with the public. As I have said, it is a bit of a slow burn but it is getting there because there are a variety of means.
Q48 Tim Loughton: We have a PCC in Sussex, and she is very experienced and very senior. She has been there all the way through, and her profile is probably higher than most PCCs. We have had a succession of chief constables, some better than others. My criticism is that the police are useless at communication with the public. When we have problems in part of my constituency and we really need the police to show their face, explain why there has been a spate of knifings, shoplifting with impunity or antisocial behaviour in certain town centres, and tell us that they are on the case and what they are doing about it, the response is usually, reluctantly, “Okay, we’ll have a street surgery at 2 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon with 24 hours’ notice.” Nobody knows about it, everybody is at work, and when only two people turn up, they say, “Well, we consulted, and nobody seemed to have any concerns.” That is a broad generalisation, but there have been many instances like that in the last year in particular in my constituency. It is really, really annoying.
The role of the police and crime commissioner—who is much more amenable to coming along and taking on a group of 100 angry residents in front of her—should be to prod the police that they should be doing that. Although they are not democratically accountable, they are the ones doing the job that people pay their police precept and their taxes for and they expect them to do it. When they do not see it, they suspect that it is not being done. Should police and crime commissioners be more proactive in booting their senior officers, led by the chief constable, to be more public-facing and in engaging with the police? In my area, I am afraid it does not happen as well as it should.
Councillor Sue Woolley: I would suggest, being slightly controversial, that it is a partnership. It is a partnership with councillors and local members, in those areas of work where you can discuss things together with the police and crime commissioner, and you can knock on his door and say, “Look, this is coming through from the councillors in and around the area. Please can you do something about it?” Where it works—and it does work well predominantly—it is an arrangement. It is exactly the same within the health setting. A lot of police and crime commissioners now sit on integrated care partnerships, which is great.
Dr Rick Muir: Communication is essential, and it is important that people hear directly from the police. It is important for confidence in the police. It has got better, but a lot of the problems we have had in London have been in relation to some examples of quite poor communication, sometimes on social media, by the Met. As I say, it has improved a lot in the last year, but I have been very critical of some of the Met’s communication. It causes problems—not keeping people up to date, not explaining why they are doing what they are doing and just assuming that people understand why the police are doing this thing. It is really important. Of course, the PCC has a crucial role in holding the police to account and talking to the public about their concerns, but it is really important that chief officers and local commanders are out there talking to communities.
Q49 Tim Loughton: Commissioner, I want to ask you one specific question with a follow-up. What role do you think police and crime commissioners have in the wellbeing of police officers in their area?
Donna Jones: It is a really important point. When I recruited my new chief constable, who started in February this year—around 10 to 12 new chief constables have been recruited in the last 12 months, so it has been a big change for commissioners—I had four red lines on the recruitment and on his appointment. One of them was the wellbeing of police officers and police staff members, because I think it is very important. There are too many police officers who leave policing at the end of 30-odd years and are not just physically tired but mentally very tired. We have a duty to care for them, and I think it is incredibly important.
Q50 Tim Loughton: The reason I ask is that I have been approached by my county police federation about the big increase in suicides and attempted suicides by police officers. We see the huge pressures they are under, not least in relation to public order issues at the moment. The federation is advocating that suicides and attempted suicides should come under the RIDDOR regulations—the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013—so that we can assess the nature of the problem and then bring to bear whatever support we need to make sure those police officers are getting the proper attention. Do you think that is a feasible way forward?
Donna Jones: I do, and I think it is incredibly important. I have paid for an independent domestic violence advocate and an independent sexual violence advocate to be placed within my force to support victims and/or the partners of victims if the perpetrator is a police officer or police staff member, but particularly for police officers themselves if they have been victims of crimes. On two or three occasions since I have been in this role, which has been two and half years, I have been physically moved to tears. One was a horrific incident of an attempted murder—domestic violence. It was an attempted domestic homicide. It was horrific.
One of the other ones was a stereotypical burly police officer in his mid-40s who had always been what we call a public order police officer. That was his specialism. They are the ones who go to the riots and protests; they are the tough cops, if you want. He was always the first through the door when there was something going on, even though he had police officers in their 20s behind him. He was the brave one. Something happened on a stairwell in a block of flats, and he fell down a stairwell with somebody who was on drugs who he was trying to arrest. He went on his own. A back-up car was 10 minutes away, and this person was hurting someone in this flat. He went to arrest them, and he was very, very badly injured. I can’t tell you the level of shame that he felt because he didn’t arrest them properly and because he was injured himself, as he was always seen as the tough one. What that did to him mentally has had a lasting effect on him. Actually, when this happened three or four years ago, what help and support did he get beyond the basic level of occupational health? It was that—basic. We are now having to layer much more to support police officers. It is absolutely essential and it is certainly an area of my budget that I do not begrudge spending money on at all.
Chair: There is an urgent question in the House at half-past 11 that involves the Home Office, so I think we will draw this to a conclusion just after 25 minutes past, just so everyone is aware, and so we can tailor the questions and answers. I turn to James Daly.
Q51 James Daly: Thank you, Chair. It has been interesting to hear the evidence today. I am looking at something from 2012, which was before the first police and crime commissioner elections. The Prime Minister at that time said about PCCs: “This is a big job for a big local figure. It’s a voice for the people, someone to lead the fight against crime, and someone to hold to account if they don’t deliver.” The idea behind it from the Government perspective was about leading the fight against crime. The problem you have then is that if you go and say that the PCCs, as it says here, “will not interfere in operational decisions,” it is somewhat difficult to lead the fight against crime if you can’t interfere in operational decisions. I have been trying to understand this from my questions. Obviously, roles evolve naturally, but clearly the role that has been outlined today seems to be somewhat different from what the original intent was.
I am on the Justice Committee as well as the Home Affairs Committee, and while statistics can be challenged and we don’t always agree on their nature, one thing that is absolutely certain is that the charge-out rate for offences such as rape and serious sexual offending across the country is appalling. As a general question for the three of you, if in a police area the charge-out rate is in line with the national figure, which is about one point something per cent, is the police and crime commissioner as responsible for that appalling set of circumstances as the chief constable? I will start with Dr Muir.
Dr Rick Muir: Yes, in the sense that the police and crime commissioner has political responsibility for policing in their area and for all aspects of it. The chief constable is managerially and operationally responsible for that, and the PCC, clearly, would be wanting to monitor how they are doing and wanting to see improvement over time. All of that is in the context of a whole set of things that partly explain why those figures are bad.
Q52 James Daly: That is quite an interesting point, because if you look at the charge-out rates—we could provide the statistics for a whole range of offences in this country—they are pitifully low. If we are to look at the impact of police and crime commissioners in terms of what the basic thing is, and if to actually lead the fight against crime you have to charge people with criminal offences, it would seem to me that police and crime commissioners in general, even though I am sure they are all trying their very best, have failed spectacularly.
Dr Rick Muir: I don’t think this just lies with them. There is a whole set of issues around why the charge rates have gone down. Some of it is to do with austerity, which is being reversed now with the new police officers who are coming in. If you have fewer police officers, you have fewer arrests, and you have fewer people being charged. It is also to do with the fact that the crime mix has changed.
Q53 James Daly: In all honesty, therefore, police and crime commissioners are not going to be responsible for anything, because there is always an excuse as to why these things happen. There is no accountability, is there?
Dr Rick Muir: Well, there is. All I am saying is that you have to see it in the context of lots of things that are going on. I agree with you that those charge-out rates should go up, particularly for things like rape and sexual offences. There is a lot of work going on in that space at the moment. PCCs have a role in that, but they are only one player; there is a bit of national responsibility there as well as local responsibility.
Q54 James Daly: Councillor Woolley, what do you think?
Councillor Sue Woolley: I agree with you that, from a media point of view, the conviction rates appear low—well, they are low.
James Daly: Charge-out rates.
Councillor Sue Woolley: Charge-out rates—you are absolutely right. The one place, I would suggest, where police and crime commissioners come into their own is that they are able to focus more on the victim as opposed to the person being charged, which, for me, is the role of the chief constable. Victims, particularly of sexual offences, are only likely to come forward if they know that they have got the support. I can only speak for my own area, but our PCC certainly noticed that there was a mechanism whereby a victim had to report the offence to the police before any more could be done. He has taken victim support into the role of the PCC, so it is independent.
Q55 James Daly: But, Councillor, if you, as an elected representative—or any of us—say, “I have a statistic here which is concerning,” and it appears generally that the only person accountable is the chief constable, although you may be able to speak to other officers, and if the chief constable says, “That figure may be appalling, but there is this, that and the other reason,” what is the method by which you say, “That is nonsense, and you need to do this”? Or is it the nature of the role, because you are not to interfere with the operational everyday policing, that you have to accept the explanation that is given to you for very bad practice?
Councillor Sue Woolley: I think you have to satisfy yourself—and certainly from the public’s point of view—that the PCC is using all means possible and, indeed, satisfying themselves that all procedures are taking place to lift that rate and make sure that people are wanting to come forward. That is the bit where the PCC needs to really push back at the chief constable to ask whether they have got their practices right.
Donna Jones: In terms of leading the fight against crime, that is a great point, and I think that is exactly what PCCs should be doing. They absolutely can do that without stepping into the operational. Back in 2012, with the first PCC elections, there were a lot of issues with ex-police officers who became police and crime commissioners and went to their comfort zone, which was operational policing. We now have people who are experienced in democratic accountability and have often come on a political path, being councillors or even ex-MPs—for example, Kate Green, who has become the de facto police and crime commissioner for Manchester. What you have now is people who understand how to connect with the public.
I am conscious of time, but in terms of leading the fight, I have just announced that I am bringing back local bobbies into my force. Every community will have a named local police officer, with their name, phone number and email address. There will be 90 officers in my whole county: a patchwork quilt—all carved up.
Secondly, the reason the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister made the announcement around attending 100% of domestic burglaries is that PCCs lobbied them. We tell them what is going on on the ground. That helps them form their position around facial recognition. Katy Bourne, PCC for Sussex, whom you referenced, Tim, has just led the fight on a new, national shoplifting taskforce. That brought in nearly £1 million of investment. The Policing Minister made that announcement last week, in conjunction with the announcement on facial recognition, because of the work that Katy has done in taking the fight to tackling serious and organised criminals working in shoplifting and stealing high-value goods. The actionable lines of inquiry have come because we said to the Policing Minister and the Home Secretary, “There are still too many occasions where chief constables are not following all lines of inquiry.”
Q56 James Daly: Donna, forgive me, but I want to interrupt, because of time. I appreciate the point you are making, but it goes back to what the Chair was saying. If it is the role of the PCC to influence the Home Secretary on national policy guidelines, that seems a very different role from that originally intended.
The point I was making was, yes, you can rightly make those, and I am sure you are doing a fantastic job, but it should be the role of the PCC to ensure that the local chief constable is doing that anyway—not that you have to lobby the Home Secretary to tell the chief constable to do it. We seem to have lost a little of the local accountability of the PCC role.
Donna Jones: If I can come back; I get the point you are making. Sorry, it was probably the way I explained it. Katy has led this through Sussex. It is absolutely about her working with her chief. What she did was recognise a deficit in terms of the shoplifting issue. She then developed a local programme and brought on board national retailers working in the Sussex area, and used her position to influence Government.
I have one final point around the charge rates, if I may. It is such an important point, and I am glad you raised it—thank you. The rape and serious sexual assault offences—RASSO—charge rates are woefully low, as you say. They are really under where they need to be, but there are some reasons for that. The role of the police and crime commissioner is to understand that, and to ensure that we are not getting excuses and being passed off, and that we get this.
First, more needs to be done. Secondly, we need dedicated rape and serious sexual assault detectives and investigators, and they need a manageable caseload—not holding 20, 30-plus rapes or serious sexual assaults each. We need to ensure that the report to court—that whole process—is much quicker.
There are a couple of significant things that have happened that I would like to share with the Committee in one minute, if I can. First, crime data integrity really ramped up, going back four or five years. Previously, if you reported a rape by a partner or someone you worked with, saying, “I have been raped or seriously sexually assaulted four or five times over the past six months by my colleague at work,” that would have gone down as one report, because it was one person. Now it will go down as five or four, depending on how many there have been.
Secondly, there is the role the Crown Prosecution Service has played in pushing back around the Director’s Guidance 6 around redaction, which means that detectives now have to spend much longer redacting a file before it can go to the CPS to get that charge. Then there is the MeToo movement, with a lot more people coming forward and reporting historical things. Those are not excuses, but I want to give you that as an explanation.
Q57 Chair: We have carried out an inquiry into that area. We are fully aware of all those issues. We still take the view, however, that the charge-out rate is just woeful.
Donna Jones: I agree.
Q58 Carolyn Harris: How effective are PCCs at communicating areas of good practice? I am thinking of Swansea in particular, where we have a night-time hub that does a huge amount of triage. That takes the pressure off A&E, in cases of spiking or looking after youngsters who have maybe overindulged. We also have an excellent unit, funded by the PCC, through Women’s Aid, which works with victims of voluntary prostitution, providing sexual health advice and all kinds of things. How good are you at getting that information across the country?
Donna Jones: Through the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, we have a quarterly general meeting, and PCCs are given the opportunity to showcase and share their best practice.
We also organise the APCC so that we have portfolio leads. Prior to being the chair, I had two portfolios. I was the lead for victims, which included violence against women and girls, with Sophie Linden, the deputy Mayor of London. She was the Labour lead and I was the Conservative lead. I was also the lead for serious and organised crime. It is very much the same way the Local Government Association works, where you have experts and people who are working in that field, and then you share best practice with each other.
There are some unique things that are coming out of what PCCs are doing. The PCC for Avon and Somerset is currently working with the probation service on a prisoners’ home-building programme, to get them a trade in the building industry, to help them get employment beyond prison life. That is just one example of really good things that are going on.
Carolyn Harris: Brilliant. Thank you.
Q59 Chair: Very quickly, tell us one thing that you think would improve the functioning of PCCs.
Dr Rick Muir: I would come back to what I said about how PCCs work nationally. It is not about their local role, and it is not just about PCCs. It is about how decisions are made nationally about funding national programmes. There is a need for a proper formal decision-making process.
Councillor Sue Woolley: I do not know how you would do it, but I would probably like to address the churn of the panels. With the mechanisms of the elected members, especially in a two-tier area, there are county council elections, district council elections, and a council that is in thirds. The PCC ends up having to answer the same questions over and over again, and that can impede progress.
Chair: That is interesting.
Donna Jones: I have two things. Raising the profile: there are still too many people who do not understand what we do. The role is ever-changing, so we have to do more, supported by the Government, to raise the profile of the role. Secondly, the part that PCCs play in trust and confidence, and repairing the damage that has happened to the reputation of policing. Now is the time for us to say, “Okay, we now need to draw a line, move forward and start talking about some of the positive things.” In terms of chief constable dismissals, and all of that work, that stuff has emanated from the PCCs.
Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate your time today. We will have another session on this in the coming weeks and will produce a report.