John Spellar
Main Page: John Spellar (Labour - Warley)Department Debates - View all John Spellar's debates with the Home Office
(11 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Damian Green
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. It shows that good chief constables can decide how to deploy their resources effectively. The vast majority of them around the country are seeing crime fall in their areas, and that is what the public want.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
9. What recent estimate she has made of the cost to the public purse of the elections for police and crime commissioners in November 2012.
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)
As the Government set out to the House during the passage of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, and on a number of occasions since then, the elections will cost up to £75 million. That money will not come from funds that would otherwise have gone to police forces.
Mr Spellar
We already knew that the figure was £75 million; what the Minister did not say was how much extra, over and above that, the Government were going to spend on adverts to try desperately to get people out to vote in these unwanted elections in the middle of November. Why are the Government not holding the elections at a sensible time and spending the money on front-line police officers?
Damian Green
The elections may be unwanted by the right hon. Gentleman, although I suspect that they will be less unwanted by some of his Labour colleagues; at the last count, seven former Labour Ministers were standing in the PCC elections.
I am genuinely surprised that the right hon. Gentleman is so afraid of democracy. On the whole, during its history the Labour party has welcomed advances in democracy. It is a sad comment on the state of the modern Labour party that it should be frightened of democracy.