
The role of a Police and Crime Commissioner is one that can make a significant difference in our communities to improve the Criminal Justice System. A system which Nick Herbert claimed 10 years ago was incoherent and yet in that decade the Tory led Governments have managed to make it even less coherent than it was a decade ago. A few weeks ago David Munro, the Surrey PCC who was elected as a Conservative in 2016 but is now claiming to be Independent, presumably because the Conservatives have selected an alternative candidate was spot on to demand more resources for the Courts Services in Surrey from the Ministry of Justice. His willingness to raise this demand from the Government that has spent 10 years stripping funds out of the Courts is very good if a bit late in the day, as he prepares for the next election of his PCC role. However his call in the last few days to the Home Office is a completely ignorant one and looks far too much like a way of increasing his votes. He has been calling for an change to the law to speed up the ability of Police Officers to evict travellers from illegal encampments. The reality is that Police Services have more than sufficient power to move groups of people on from sites they are not allowed to stay on. There are many reasons why people travel around and indeed we have a van that appears every so often and parks near our home. With the significant number of homeless people in our nation that is another element for people like David Munro to be mindful of. However once a site has been disclosed as not being appropriate for people to stay on, the law is very robust in enabling police officers from moving people on. Making more laws won’t improve the prospects of the police from moving the people, and it won’t improve the prospects of people finding somewhere else to go. However it will appeal to the people who get very upset about such issues until the next time that people arrive on the site they have a concern about. David should be working with a range of other groups to find out how to improve matters for the people who lack a permanent home, rather than pretending that we need more laws, or not being well enough informed that the laws are already fully sufficient. It is vital that people like David help to reassure people rather than feeding into their lack of confidence in a very robust arrangement.