Police and crimewatch

Whatever happens tomorrow, one thing is certain. England and Wales will end up with 41 PCCs and a new system for setting policing priorities and holding chief constables to account. For some, including many in government, this itself is a success. An important pillar of the Coalition’s programme for government will have been implemented -an interesting contrast to Government’s attempt to introduce directly-elected mayors, where the decision to hold referenda backfired. The success of PCCs should be judged on more robust criteria than whether elections take place, however. There are, perhaps, four obvious tests which should be used to assess success in the short term: 1.    Turnout: Low turnout is almost certain. Last month, the Electoral Reform Society estimated that a cold winter evening where few parallel elections are taking place could see less than 18.5% of eligible voters casting their ballot. Public service broadcasts and a concerted effort from the BBC to crank up awareness of PCC elections may see numbers edge a little higher – but probably not by much. If turnout exceeds 25% on Thursday it will probably be judged “not too bad”. Under 20% and it will be easier for opponents of the government or the policy to argue that new PCCs lack a popular mandate. 2.    Effective administration: This election has already seen some basic mismanagement. Taxpayers paid a £350,000 bill for the failure to print Welsh ballots in both English and Welsh. Polling day and counting difficulties could raise further questions about how the Home Office has overseen this set of reforms. 3.    Candidate quality and diversity: Last year, the Institute highlighted significant concerns about whether selection processes would deliver high quality and diverse candidates. Success requires: a)    Independents. Then Policing Minister Nick Herbert and Home Secretary Theresa May repeatedly expressed a desire for independent candidates to stand in these elections.  Many non-party-aligned candidates were deterred by the expense of running election campaigns without government funding. Those who were not will require herculean efforts to defeat candidates backed by party machines far better equipped to engage voters across these exceptionally large geographical areas. Public antipathy to party politics could help – but unless at least a handful of “independents” are chosen it will be hard to argue this goal had been achieved. b)    Gender and ethnic diversity. Police authorities were at least quite diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity but few steps were taken to avoid a “pale, male” bias in the candidate selection processes for PCCs. With 15 areas being contested only by men, will PCCs be more or less representative than MPs (22% female, 4% BME) or councillors (31% female, 4% BME)? c)    New big hitters. A major concern has been whether the elections will simply result in current police authority members being paid much more to do a similar job with a new title. Former police authority members might be well qualified but the Government might find their policy less easy to justify if more than half the new PCCs hailed from the organisations they pin-pointed as the problem that PCCs were intended to solve. 4.    Voting on local, rather than national issues: PCCs have always been intended as a decentralising reform, empowering the public to hold the police to account for how well they address local concerns. If the outcome of elections simply reflects the current standing of the mainstream political parties nationally something hasn’t quite worked. Boris Johnson’s London win in the May local elections (where Conservatives generally suffered) proves that mayoral elections can be sufficiently high profile to ensure voting on local issues. Will PCCs achieve similar success? In short, turnouts of under twenty per cent, poor administration, a lack of inspiring and diverse candidates and voting patterns that reflect only the fortunes of national political parties will suggest that the PCC election process has been a flop. Of course, even this flop might not be terminal for the policy. The longer term judgement needs to be based on a further set of factors, including whether this reform increases public confidence in policing. More on that as soon as the results are in…