In recent weeks the Home Secretary has toured UK Police forces, using the opportunity to meet Police and Crime Commissioners across the country and calling in on Conservative MPs in their constituencies ensuring that her Political Party gets the maximum exposure from the tax payer funded roadshow. Her visit to Brighton to inspect Sussex Police included a meeting with Simon Kirby MP whose constituency includes the HQ of the Brighton & Hove Division and of course Katy Bourne as the Police and Crime Commissioner. There are various news items on the internet including this one which helped to ensure that the visit received plenty of good publicity for the campaign to help re-elect Simon and return a Conservative Party in 2015. It now appears that it may only have been the Conservative PCCs who were invited to meet the Home Secretary on this tour. According to this news report, the PCC for Northumbria Vera Baird who is a Labour PCC and a previous Attorney General has been asking Theresa May for a meeting to discuss a number of issues for several months. Despite this request, Ms May told Ms Baird to contact Policing Minister Damian Green and that she would instead visit the Northumbria force without including the PCC in her itinerary.

British Policing is too important to be allowed to be used as a party political football. Under Ms May’s tenure in the Home Office, the Government first of all established the Police and Crime Commissioners to replace Police Authorities, calling for people whose background was not part of the usual political processes to put themselves forward. They then decided that these roles were too important to be left to people who would remain outside of tribal activities and so one by one the parties found candidates for some of the areas (The Lib Dems and Greens did not put up candidates across the country). The public made their distaste of the concept clear by staying away from the elections in large numbers with only 15% turnout, and then by rejecting the Party Political candidates in 30% of the areas. Something that would return 190 Independent MPs to Westminster if replicated in a General Election. Even in Sussex where I stood as an Independent candidate, over 20% of the voters cast their first preference votes for me, a mere 2000 behind the Labour count. This is a result that would have caused substantial impact if it had been replicated in any other election. Sussex elected Katy Bourne as its PCC, she appeared on the national Conservative PCC party video and spent 100 times my own campaign budget. All PCCs were then asked to sign an oath of impartiality which is not technically an oath and has not stopped our own PCC from participating in Party Politics such as canvassing for candidates in Council and Parliamentary elections, using her role as Police Commissioner to encourage people to vote Conservative. Indeed she too has been out canvassing for Simon. We now have this spat between the Labour Party PCC in Northumbria and Conservative Party Home Secretary with one refusing to talk or even meet with the other.

In May 2016 we will once again be asked to elect 41 Police and Crime Commissioners. Let us hope that voters across the country will send another clear message to the Government of the day and the Home Secretary that they want a Police Service that is free from Party Politics at all levels as they have clearly not really absorbed the message we sent in November 2012. We need to see PCCs elected who are not in the pocket of either Conservative or Labour Parties in particular, people who will be willing to challenge some of the failings in the Home Office and its policy turns and U turns along with decisions about which Crime is recorded and which is allowed to go unrecorded to suit the prevailing political ideology. We need to ensure that our Police Service is accountable first and foremost to all local people, not just to the small numbers who as members of these parties determine who we are able to vote for.