Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Home Office

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve McCabe Excerpts
Monday 17th November 2014

(9 years, 5 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Baroness Featherstone Portrait Lynne Featherstone
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The national crime agency for banking fraud has been set up and people are, of course, coming forward to report crime when they previously did not.

Steve McCabe Portrait Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
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16. What assessment she has made of recent turnout in the police and crime commissioners by-elections.

Mike Penning Portrait The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)
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In the west midlands, 200,000 people voted in the by-election for the PCC and in South Yorkshire it was 150,000. None of those would have had a vote if we had carried on with the old unaccountable police authorities—not one.

Steve McCabe Portrait Steve McCabe
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I understand that the rather low turnout for this quite unpopular experiment in policing has cost the taxpayer in excess of £5.3 million. Is that what the Government mean by “value for money”?

Mike Penning Portrait Mike Penning
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I am very surprised by an Opposition and a Labour party that have PCCs out there such as Vera Baird—[Interruption.] Is the hon. Gentleman decrying the work that Vera Baird does? That is interesting—we have a Labour party that decries its own PCCs.