The Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire has branded Labour’s decision to scrap the role entirely a “load of rubbish”.
Hitting out at the decision, Donna Jones told GB News that the policy has been “plucked out of the air” and is merely a “smokescreen”.
Confirming the decision in the House of Commons today, Policing Minister Sarah Jones told MPs that the model has “failed to live up to expectations”.
Reacting to the decision, Ms Jones told GB News: “This is not completely unexpected. They did announce last year coming out of the general election that they wanted all of England to be in a mayoral devolved devolution program by 2029, by the time of the next general election.
Donna Jones has hit out at Labour’s plan to scrap Police and Crime Commissioners
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PA / GB NEWS
“What they also said, like in my area in Hampshire, in the Isle of Wight, that where the Police and Crime Commissioners boundary was coterminous with that of the newly proposed mayoral area, that they were going to subsume the police and crime commissioner role into the mayoral area.”
Noting the loss of her job, she stated: “So my area is electing a Mayor for the first time in May next year. My role will go, and I’m running to be the Mayor as it happens.”
Explaining how she had initially supported the move, Ms Jones told host Martin Daubney: “Actually I supported this, and I did a lot of work with Yvette Cooper when she was Home Secretary. There were 12 different police reform boards that I sat on.
“And actually one of those boards, I did speak about the role of the Police and Crime Commissioner, to say that I don’t think it’s helpful to have both a Mayor and a Police and Crime Commissioner, two people that are directly elected to represent the same county or a city like Liverpool or Manchester. It’s not helpful to have two elected politicians in that same space.”
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said that the role of Police and Crime Commissioners has been a ‘failed experiment’
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GETTYCriticising the claims by Labour that the scrapping of the roles will save “£100million”, Ms Jones said: “One of the things they are saying is they’re doing it to save money, and I disagree completely with that.
“This thing about saving £100million, what a load of rubbish, it’s a one off saving. They’re saying they’ll save £100million by not running the elections. Well, actually, Police and Crime Commissioner elections happen on the same day as the local elections, so the cost of opening polling stations and paying for counting agents in the city halls across the country is covered anyway by the fact we’ve got local elections going on.
“So yes, there will be a saving and not printing the ballot papers and not counting some of those extra ballot papers, but it is a one off cost. It will not save £100million a year.”
Hitting out at the Government’s move further, the Police and Crime Commissioner fumed: “What this is is a Labour Government whose backs are up against the wall. They ran on a general election pledge last year that they were going to bring in 13,000 more neighbourhood police officers. They said they were going to do that.
Ms Jones told GB News that the policy has been ‘plucked out of the air’
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GB NEWS
“Yvette Cooper was very clear they were going to do that by finding all of these efficiencies, cutting all this meat fat off the bone in the policing system. They’ve not been able to do that.
“No10 yesterday were clearly short on an announcement today. The pressure is on the Prime Minister for many other things that are going on, including the migrant situation, and so they’ve plucked this one out of the air.”
Ms Jones concluded: “They know that Police and Crime Commissioners have never been particularly popular, and so they’ve plucked this one out of the air when actually it dovetails into their mayoral policy.
“Anyway, it’s a little bit of a smokescreen and yet again, a hollow promise that’s not really founded to try and fund their 13,000 cops. It’s not going to work. They won’t be able to fund them from that.”
In a statement, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “The introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners by the last Government was a failed experiment.
“I will introduce new reforms so police are accountable to their local mayoralties or local councils. The savings will fund more neighbourhood police on the beat across the country, fighting crime and protecting our communities.”