Murnaghan 21.10.12 Interview Lord Blair and Simon Weston on elected police commissioners

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: In less than a month people across England and Wales will have the chance to elect their first ever Police and Crime Commissioners but polls are suggesting that few people are aware of the elections and fewer still even intend to vote. I’m joined in the studio by Lord Blair who of course was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and from Cardiff by Falklands veteran, Simon Weston, who was going to stand as an independent candidate but pulled out of the race in July. Good morning to you both, we’ll stay with you Simon and you feel they have made rather a mess of it all, why?

SIMON WESTON: Well I don't think they have made a mess of it so much as the system has taken over and the party political machines have come into play and the police don’t need any more pressure than they’ve already got. They do an incredible job but at this moment in time there is a definite problem with trust with the general public and they needed support. I believe going for the commissioners was the right idea but I just think the implementation was completely wrong. To do it this time of year obviously is a bad time to do it but I just think that for me personally it all became far, far too political. I wanted to be able to support the police in the way that I felt right and I also wanted to be the representative of the general public but I didn’t feel that that was ever going to be possible with the massive amount of politics that was coming to play.

DM: Be more specific about it, Simon. Of course you had a misdemeanour in your past, didn’t you, that became a little bit of an issue, do you feel it was that or more broad pressures?

MG: Well all that did was bring to light the sort of scrutiny that I would come under as a politician because that’s what this post is, it’s a political post and I don’t want to be a politician. What I did when I was 14, I was a passenger in a stolen car to clear it up if people are wondering, but it is hardly the crime of the century. It is enough to be imprisoned as they say – and not in my case and not at that time – but the fact of the matter was the scrutiny I came under but more so, one of the biggest problems I had is that whilst I was doing all of these things the amount of publicity I was getting, the amount of pressure I was getting and I hadn’t even won a post yet and my life was becoming peeled open by the media. I thought, I don’t need this. The job is there to be done, it’s a difficult job, it’s not going to be easy, you’ve got to create the post but the real thing about my criminal conviction when I was 14, that has nothing to do with it, it was never part of my real reasons for pulling out but it certainly opened me up to see what was waiting for me if I got any decisions wrong whilst in the post.

DM: Okay Simon, thanks for that. Let me just throw some of this forward, some of the points you made there, forward with Lord Blair sitting here with me in the studio and that point that Simon is making about the politicisation of these posts, what potentially could that mean in the future for police forces?

LORD BLAIR: I think this is a disaster to be honest. The situation will come where police officers, a police chief officer will hold his or her post at the whim of this politician. Over the years to come we will politicise the British police if we stay with this system because the young men and women who are currently coming through maybe just about to become an Assistant Chief Constable, by the time they come to Chief Constable, they will have had eight years of working directly for a single politician. The effect of that in the United States is that most police chiefs are either Democratic or Republican, that’s what happens.

DM: Are you saying this because of your experience with the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson?

LORD BLAIR: I am on this point. There are pages and pages and pages in the Greater London Act about how to dismiss or suspend the Commissioner. Boris doesn’t need that, all he needs to say is there is going to be a vote of confidence and you’re going to lose it and that is exactly what any other politician will be able to say on the Town Halls of Britain. This is an American model which works in America but let me take you to Martha’s Vineyard, a third of the size of the Isle of Wight, six police forces, the largest one has got 26 people in it and the police chief sits every evening in a coffee bar and sees his constituents and it is perfect but of course that is not what’s going to happen here. If you take somewhere like Thames Valley, that is the whole of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. Which coffee lounge is he going to sit in?

DM: But do you see here, Lord Blair, the potential for more clashes and I say more clashes between police and politicians because if we can put the Andrew Mitchell affair in that bracket, it was said by many politicians, some in very senior positions in the Conservative party, that it was the Police Federation that kept pushing on the so-called Mitchellgate affair because they had a beef about cuts and changes in practices. Is this something else that could be …?

LORD BLAIR: Well I am on record as saying I think the Police Federation took that too far but that isn’t the issue, my greater concern is going to be less clashes. When we were investigating Tony Blair for cash for honours nobody was threatening my job but that is what is going to happen in the future. You would not get that type of investigation in the US by a police force. You might get it by the FBI but the FBI director is deeply protected in law by political interference.

DM: I just want to bring up the other point because we’re running out of time, about legitimacy because of turnout. I think Simon is still with us, Simon Weston is still with us in Cardiff, Simon the other point about this, about people like you getting involved is people have heard of you, people want to listen to what you are saying but we’re looking at the polling at the moment and the Electoral Reform Society say something like, they are predicting something like an 18.5% turnout, that really does affect the power and legitimacy of whoever is elected doesn’t it?

SW: Well I would think so. Not being a politician or having any place in this any longer, I look at it and I think yes, I had an advantage certainly of being a public figure but I do fear for the independents because they haven’t had the party machine, they haven’t had the money, the support, they can’t bring out the people, the constituents who will go and lobby on their behalf, they can’t post leaflets. The money that is in the whole thing is disproportionate and I do feel for the independents because I don't think many of them will get through. I think it is going to come down to two party politics. I would have had a terrible time down here in the one party democracy of Wales, I looked at it all and thought, no, I can’t be doing all of this, I’ve got better things to do with my life than to come under that type of problem and scrutiny all the time, every decision you make and every second guessed decision.

DM: Okay, Simon, thank you very much. Just the last thought with you, Lord Blair, I’ve got to put to you the reason these elections are being held is because the government is saying this will enable people to connect and identify with their police force.

LORD BLAIR: If they were doing what I was describing in Martha’s Vineyard and they were going to break policing up in a completely different way so that it is small cities, small towns, perfect but that is not what you’ve got. How can one person represent the Conservative shires of Oxfordshire and Slough? What is this? Remember, the Police Authorities are being swept away, they are being replaced by a Police and Crime Panel who can’t even talk to the Chief Constable. This is just a very strange issue to come forward with at such a difficult time for the country. I have never ever said this before but I actually hope people don’t vote because that’s the only way we’re going to stop this and I have always been someone who said vote, people have died going up beaches so you could vote but this is not an appropriate system.

DM: So boycott the election?

MG: Boycott is a strong word but think very carefully about what it is you’re voting for.

DM: Okay, Lord Blair, thank you very much indeed and our thanks once again to Simon Weston there in Cardiff.