It is a sure sign of a government's vulnerability when it starts to listen. In Westminster the u-turn was seen as a weakness long before Mrs Thatcher told the world the ‘lady's not for turning'. But local government has been the big beneficiary of home secretary Jacqui Smith's sensible volte-face over plans to introduce direct elections for police authorities. In the current political and economic climate – with Labour compelled to announce a general election date despite a likely recession throughout 2009/10 – Mrs Smith's decision last month to ditch the unpopular election plan augurs well for Whitehall's campaign to keep community leaders onside as the downturn bites. It was classic Westminster chutzpah: the Home Office happy to suffer short-term ‘harrumph-ing' from opposition MPs in favour of being seen to listen to local leaders who, after all, are currently appointed to lead the 43 police authorities across England and Wales. A row with Labour councillors would have been an easy way to derail an embryonic election campaign. Smith is adamant she has merely ‘parked' her proposal, created to give citizens more control over local policing. She blames low support for the idea on recent events that ‘politicised' police forces, such as London mayor Boris Johnson's intervention in the resignation of former Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair and his public criticism of the raid on Conservative MP Damian Green's parliamentary office. Having carefully delayed the plan, the home secretary has commissioned one of her predecessors, David Blunkett, to examine a range of accountability frameworks for policing and his recommendations will inform Labour's general election manifesto. A Home Office spokeswoman told The MJ: ‘We believe direct elections is still the best model for local accountability and the home secretary is convinced it is both an affordable and viable policy.' The reality, however, is that the policy was derided by Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat council chiefs, who fear a loss of their control over policing priorities, as well as influential MPs including the home affairs select committee. The idea of direct elections is therefore unlikely to return. Sir Jeremy Beecham, the leader of the LGA's Labour group who led local government's opposition to the plan, told The MJ that was ‘a victory for common sense'. ‘I've written to and spoken to large numbers of people – across all parties and walks of life - about Jacqui's proposal and nobody said they support it,' he said. Sir Jeremy also claims that Ms Smith's rationale for dropping the idea – the politicisation of police forces - reflected just one of the problems with the plan. Experts also believed that elections could be hi-jacked by extremists such as the British National Party, who may have seized control of local policing by preying on local fears over crime rates. Privately, Home Office sources told The MJ that this fear of ‘entryism' also influenced Ms Smith's decision. But Sir Jeremy said concerns over extremism missed the bigger point about the weakness of direct elections. ‘The problem was not just potential extremism. There was too much emphasis on the BNP threat. It was general populism, and the stoking up of the fear of crime as a means to get elected, that struck me as the real danger. ‘There are many people who could ride that tide: they might be BNP, but they might just be anti-police groups or single issue groups. The notion of a single-purpose elected authority runs contrary to the kind of local governance that we need.' The extent to which direct elections could have distorted policing priorities was exposed by recent figures which showed that police spending accounts for 11.3% of average Council Tax bills in England and 15% of bills in Wales: billions of pounds annually in the hands of inexperienced, single issue operators with no control over other local spending. In a letter to senior Labour figures, another former home secretary, Charles Clarke, warned that handing control of significant budgets to elected authorities – with their own, diverse ideas about how to use that money effectively - could undermine local partnerships that have delivered successful community safety initiatives. As Mr Clarke and Sir Jeremy infer, a significant proportion of local authority anti-crime work – such as youth engagement programmes - is undertaken outside of the traditional policing realm, in partnership between forces, councils, other criminal justice agencies, and third and private sector bodies. ‘That [work] would be even more difficult under the government's proposal,' Sir Jeremy says. Despite effectively ditching the election plan, senior advisers to Prime Minister Gordon Brown insist that police reforms must include attempts to introduce additional transparency police authority operations. But LGA policy makers are quick to remind us that transparency and accountability considerations are more complicated than implied by direct elections. Accountability operates on different levels: at neighbourhood level (the sort of policing about which the public are concerned); basic command unit level (for example, London boroughs); and force level (such as the Met in London, or Greater Manchester). With this division in mind, the LGA's Labour group will shortly write to Mr Blunkett proposing the empowerment of local councillors in driving the transparency agenda. Local government already has a statutory duty to hold health authorities to account, and Sir Jeremy believes councils should adopt a similar duty to scrutinise policing. ‘You'd want that to operate at different levels. So in Newcastle, for example, we'd have scrutiny panel within the city council looking at local policing and community safety issues. That wouldn't be limited to scrutiny of police forces, because there are other services involved. ‘You'd then need something in place to assess things at force level across Northumbria. So you'd have a panel - perhaps a joint panel made up of both elected and appointed members - to look at that, which would bring together people from different councils.' This increase in scrutiny powers would require additional support for councillors assessing local operations - including extra resources. Central and local government could share additional burdens – but that's a proposition unlikely to whet ministerial appetites. Regardless of where the money comes from, an effective system of local and regional scrutiny necessitates stringent training to ensure that people appointed to scrutiny roles have the skills to monitor complicated policing procedures. Here, Sir Jeremy believes the regional development agencies (RDAs) and leadership centres could be critical. The scope of responsibility for this new system of scrutiny could also be widened to include local chambers of commerce or voluntary services agencies which, in the absence of a council, could help appoint independent police authority members. ‘I'll be pursuing these ideas with David Blunkett, and we hope to glean significant support for them across the rest of the LGA,' Sir Jeremy says. That is ambitious. While the Conservative group at Smith Square is keen to explore new methods of policing accountability – and many support the Labour group's plans – how national Conservative leaders want to operate is another matter. Party leader David Cameron, and London mayor Boris Johnson, have indicated their preference for US-style elected police commissioners to take responsibility for forces. The problem with this system, critics warn, is that the tenure of the average US police commissioner is just two years, which creates instability and could undermine long-term community safety goals. It would also increase the politicisation of policing. Conservative Central Office claims the fine detail of the party's policies are still being ironed out and that, if the Conservatives form the next government, Mr Cameron would engage a ‘wide-ranging debate on police accountability'. Research published last year by the former head of the government's Respect Taskforce, Louise Casey, suggests that accountability is of marginal concern to the general public: it did not feature in the top ten crime and policing issues. But rigorous scrutiny of forces' work is crucial to successful anti-crime initiatives. In the absence of public appetite for activism, the requirement for extra accountability should mean ministers look to local government for solutions. The sector awaits David Blunkett's proposals...
