Smith drops elected police plans
Home secretary Jacqui Smith has dropped plans for elected police chiefs, after fears of the politicisation of the police made them untenable.
Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, Ms Smith said opposition to the plans by senior police officers had influenced her decision and blamed the Conservatives for fuelling the “politicisation” of policing in recent months.
She said London mayor Boris Johnson’s rile in the resignation of former Metropolitan police commissioner and the Tories’ response to the arrest of shadow immigration minister Damian Green had made officers worried about the potential of political interference.
Plans for a directly elected portion of the police authorities in England and Wales were expected to feature in the upcoming policing and crime bill, but Ms Smith said that, while she still thought it was a good idea in principle, she had decided to put it on hold.
“The Tories’ behaviour has raised fears that the police were being politicised, making it more difficult to win public support for my proposals for some members of the police authority to be directly elected,” she told the Guardian.
“There has been a fundamental shift in the way people think about the politicisation of the police. I put that down to the London mayor’s intervention in the resignation of Sir Ian Blair and the events surrounding the Damian Green affair.”
In response to Ms Smith’s comments, shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said the danger of politicisation in fact came from the “complete micro-management that has been the hallmark of this government over the last 11 years”.
“Our plans to replace police authorities with directly elected police commissioners are entirely different from those of the government,” he added.
But the Liberal Democrats said the government dropped the plan because it would have played into Tory hands.
“This U-turn has more to do with Labour’s self-interest than police opposition,” said Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne.
“Jacqui Smith realised that her flawed plans would have handed control of most police authorities to the Tories, despite them having only a minority of the votes.”
Ms Smith has asked former home secretary David Blunkett to prepare a report on proposals for on how to make the police more accountable for Labour’s next manifesto.
