PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Police Reform - 13 November 2025 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on police reform.

Let me begin by expressing my sadness at the passing of Baroness Newlove, the Victims’ Commissioner. She was a champion for victims and made a huge difference, holding Government and agencies to account. I extend my sympathies to her family and friends, and I know that she will be a huge loss to the other place.

Last year, the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), informed the House of her intention to bring forward a White Paper on police reform. The White Paper will outline a programme of wide-ranging reforms that will drive quality, consistency and efficiency in policing to ensure that it is set up to deliver for the public. Ahead of publication, we are today announcing the first of those reforms.

In order for any institution or organisation to perform to the highest standards, it must be underpinned by strong, effective governance. That is all the more critical when the service in question is integral to the safe functioning of our society, as policing undoubtedly is. Police and crime commissioners have been in place since November 2012. The model was created to increase accountability and build a greater connection between policing and local communities by having a single public official, directly elected by the public, responsible for holding their chief constable to account, setting the local police budget and agreeing strategic priorities for their force through their local police and crime plan.

However, while the role of PCCs has evolved over time to include responsibility for commissioning services for victims, driving local partnerships and—in some areas—responsibility for fire governance, the model has failed to live up to expectations. It has not delivered what it was set up to achieve. Public understanding of, and engagement with, our police and crime commissioners remains low despite efforts to raise their profile; less than a quarter of voters turned out to vote for them in the 2024 elections, and two in five people are unaware that PCCs even exist. Home Office research conducted during the PCC review in 2020 found that 68% of the public in mayoral areas claimed that they could name their mayor, compared with only 16% of people in PCC areas claiming that they could name their PCC.

On an individual level, PCCs up and down the country have sought to provide strong oversight and drive crime prevention activity locally. I place on record my thanks to the individuals and staff in all the offices of police and crime commissioners and at the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners who have done, and will continue to do, their best to improve policing for their local communities. However, the reality is that the PCC model has weakened local police accountability and has had perverse impacts on the recruitment of chief constables. It has failed to inspire confidence in local people, in stark contrast to the mayoral model, which clearly has ultimately been more successful. The Theresa May model has not worked.

The Government announced in our English devolution White Paper that we will transfer policing functions to elected mayors in England by default wherever geographies allow. Five mayors now hold policing functions, in Greater Manchester, Greater London and across Yorkshire. In those areas, we have seen the benefits of the mayoral model, including greater collaboration, visible leadership and local innovation. We are working closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to create as many strategic authority mayors with policing functions as possible in this Parliament. However, due to the nature of how public services are organised across different areas, the process of establishing mayors across England is a complex one.

I can therefore announce today that we will abolish police and crime commissioners at the end of their current term in 2028 and transfer functions to mayors wherever possible. In areas where plans do not yet allow for a transfer of policing to a mayor this Parliament, we will establish new policing and crime boards to bring council leaders together to oversee the police force in their area until such time as mayors are in place in England. Those boards will replicate the benefits of a mayoralty before the formal transfer can be realised, with in-built, local collaboration, public accountability and a greater ability to join up budgets and local services. They will comprise local authority upper-tier leaders, co-opted members with appropriate skills and experience, and—if they are in the force area—mayors.

Preventing crime is everyone’s business, and giving local leaders these responsibilities will help create thriving town centres, help businesses to succeed and help people to walk without fear in their communities. We are absolutely clear that these boards will not be a return to the bureaucratic and invisible committee-based oversight of policing that existed before the establishment of PCCs. We will ensure that council leaders are empowered to exercise police governance functions. Boards will be supported by a policing and crime lead, akin to a deputy mayor for policing and crime, to carry out day-to-day activities on their behalf. This will mean that every area will have a visible, nominated lead who will be dedicated to the oversight of policing in their area.

Over the coming months, we will work with local government and policing to design new structures that will provide effective oversight of policing. As part of these reforms, we will also work with those in local government and policing to drive down the support costs of policing governance. We will no longer run separate policing elections, and we will also abolish police and crime panels, the current structure that performs scrutiny functions for PCCs. We estimate that at least £100 million will be saved this Parliament by moving to these new arrangements. Once delivered, these changes are expected to achieve savings to the Home Office of around £20 million a year, enough to fund around 320 extra police constables. Further detail will be set out in the forthcoming White Paper, and we will bring forward the necessary legislation as part of our broader police reform proposals as soon as parliamentary time allows.

There are no plans to create mayors in Wales. We wish to harmonise arrangements across England and Wales as far as possible, and we will therefore work with the Welsh Government to ensure new arrangements to replace PCCs provide strong and effective police governance for Wales, recognising the unique nature of Welsh arrangements. I also clarify that these reforms will not affect governance arrangements for the City of London police, which is governed by the City corporation.

Before I conclude, I stress that the decision we are announcing today is based on the shortcomings of the PCC model, not the PCCs themselves. PCCs have done and continue to do important work, and I will engage constructively with all of them until the end of their terms. I specifically thank the chairs of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners past and present for their endeavours: Nick Alston, the late Sir Tony Lloyd, Mark Burns-Williamson, Katy Bourne, Paddy Tipping, Marc Jones, Donna Jones, and the current chair Emily Spurrell. We recognise that this is a significant change, especially for the policing and local government sectors, but it is necessary. As a Government, we have a responsibility to do what is right for our communities. If there are steps we can take to improve outcomes for law-abiding citizens, we must act, because in the end, whatever police reform measures we pursue, our primary motivation is, and will always be, to keep the public safe. I commend this statement to the House.

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. The Minister mentioned at the beginning the Government’s plans to bring forward a police reform White Paper. That was announced, from memory, about a year ago, but there has not been a single sniff of that White Paper. Can she tell us when we can expect it and why the Government are so bereft of ideas that they have taken a year or more to publish it?

Today’s statement about police and crime commissioners represents tinkering around the edges from a Government who are failing on crime and policing. They are simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. This Government are failing. Police numbers are falling. They fell by 1,300 during Labour’s first year in office on a like-for-like, March-to-March comparison. Police numbers are not only continuing to fall, but will drop even more this year. Crime under this Government is surging: shoplifting is up by 13% in this Government’s first year to record levels, leaving shopkeepers in difficulty, and we have seen theft from the person going up by 5% and sexual offences going up by 9%.

If it were not enough to see all those crime types surging under this Labour Government, senior police officers are warning that they face a funding crisis. Indeed, the chief constables of our four largest forces—Merseyside, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and the Metropolitan police—all said publicly just a few months ago that they face a funding crisis under this Labour Government.

It is clear that this Government are failing on police and crime, with falling police numbers, increasing crime and a funding crisis, yet the Policing Minister comes to us today with some minor tinkering around the edges. The Government say that they want to transfer PCC powers to mayors where they exist and where the territories are coterminous. Broadly speaking, that is the approach the previous Government took. In fact, I recall transferring one of the Yorkshire forces, I think, into the mayoral model a year or so ago. She asserts that the mayoral model is superior to regular police and crime commissioners, and I wonder what evidence she can produce to support that, because the biggest police and crime commissioner in the country is the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who is also the worst PCC in the country. Knife crime is up 86% under Sadiq Khan, and the Met has the lowest clear-up rate of any force in the country at a lamentable 4.7%. He has closed down half the front counters in London, and police numbers are plummeting. How can the Minister make such an assertion?

For areas outside mayoralties, the Minister proposes essentially to abolish PCCs and replace them with some kind of committee comprised of local councillors. Will those have the same powers as police and crime commissioners? It is implied that they will, and if so, it will not save any money, other than from the election and the police and crime panel, which are very small costs. As far as I can see, this proposal will not save any money, but will remove a directly elected public official—the police and crime commissioner—who is accountable to the public and would certainly be more visible than some faceless committee of local bureaucrats. That is a retrograde step.

In the Government’s announcement today, they are tinkering around the edges. They are rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic while crimes such as shoplifting rocket, police numbers fall and the police face a funding crisis made in the Home Office.

I am not sure whether or not the shadow Home Secretary is in favour of this announcement—it is not entirely clear. Perhaps he can come back when he has made up his mind.

The right hon. Gentleman asked several questions that I am happy to reply to. He asked when the White Paper on police reform will come out. It will be this year, I can assure him. We have been working with local police chiefs, police and crime commissioners and the staff associations on what the reform will look like, and we are making the final changes to our reform agenda. As a former Home Office Minister, he will know that we need to make many improvements in respect of performance, accountability, technology, and the structure wherein we have 86 decision makers across the country who, basically, ensure that there are huge inefficiencies in the system while performance and productivity do not rise as fast as they should. Again, I assure him that there will be a significant White Paper that we bring out before the end of the year.

We made the announcement about police and crime commissioners today so that we can continue to work in good faith with the commissioners as we finalise our reform programme. It was right to tell them as soon as we could. I spoke to them at some length this morning, and will speak to them again, not least at their conference next week.

The shadow Home Secretary talks about crime rates. I do not have to remind the House of his and the former Government’s record in office. They cut 20,000 police and recruited 20,000 police, so we now have a police workforce that is very new, large numbers of whom have been in post for only a couple of years. Despite the recruitment done at the end of the Conservatives’ period in government, prosecution rates did not improve. The system is so unproductive, so inefficient and so badly managed that we need to make huge reforms. We have been making progress since we came to power—for example, just a couple of weeks ago, we announced an 18% fall in knife murders, 60,000 knives have been taken off the street, and knife crime has fallen by 5%. We are surging neighbourhood policing capacity, which was decimated under the previous Government, and we will have 3,000 extra police in our neighbourhoods by next April.

The shadow Home Secretary asked about the evidence of mayoral success. I encourage him to talk to the mayors and deputy mayors responsible for police and crime. The ability of a mayoral system, with all the public services beneath it working together more collaboratively and more effectively, is clear to see, so I suggest he has a look for himself.

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether powers will be transferred to the new models. They were. The new model will not be a faceless committee of local bureaucrats. Its members will be the leaders of the councils and a senior police and crime lead, who will drive the day-to-day work. Accountability will remain, as will the statutory responsibilities. This is an opportunity for us to work across local government and with other partners to make sure that we drive the best possible system.

A saving of £100 million is, I think, quite substantial, not “tinkering around the edges” as the shadow Home Secretary suggests. If he waits a few more weeks, he will see the reform agenda that the Home Secretary is designing in its totality. It will put policing on a much better footing than he left it.

What the people of Sunderland want is visible and responsive policing. There is no doubt about the decline in recent years. Northumbria lost 1,100 officers under the previous Government. How will the Minister ensure that the savings resulting from these changes are reinvested in the frontline, to improve neighbourhood policing in places like Sunderland?

That is of course the aim of this Government: we want to put policing in our communities, where people expect it to be, and make sure that the police are not, as they currently are, spending hours and hours of their day on bureaucratic, very outdated, very unproductive tasks. Indeed, in many cases police officers are actually doing the job of police staff, which is ludicrous. We need to work with our police chiefs to change that, ensuring that our police officers are doing the roles that we need officers to be doing, while the very important crime fighters of our police staff are doing what they need to be doing. That is not currently the case, but we are working hard to make sure that it will be.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. The Liberal Democrats warmly welcome the news that police and crime commissioners are being scrapped. We have been calling for it for years, and I personally called for this in one of my first contributions in this House, after the PCC election turnout in Cornwall was abysmally low, at just 18%. The model was a failed Tory experiment that has cost taxpayers dearly.

The Minister is right to point out the countless flaws in the overly politicised PCC model, which has diverted much-needed funding away from frontline and community policing. PCCs cost the public millions in council tax every year, yet the impact on their local communities has been negligible. However, transferring the role to mayors is not the answer; it would give even more power to single individuals with dubious democratic mandates and little scrutiny or accountability. The Government must learn the lessons of this expensive and failed experiment.

Instead, the Government should see through their plans for these “temporary” local police and crime boards, but give them the powers on a permanent basis. They should ensure that the money saved from PCCs goes where it is needed most: getting more officers out on our streets and repairing the damage done by years of Conservative mismanagement and underfunding. That is particularly urgent in the light of the slow progress the Home Office has made on its promise to deliver 13,000 new neighbourhood officers; only 200 were added last year, while the number of officers in frontline roles went down.

Will the Minister commit to investing the money saved from these unnecessary PCCs straight into frontline policing and towards proper, effective community policing? Could she outline the safeguards that will be put in place to hold mayors to account with their new-found policing responsibilities? Finally, could she elaborate on her estimated £100 million in savings from scrapping PCCs—has that figure been independently verified, and can she confirm that the funds will be not just transferred to mayors’ budgets but spent on frontline policing?

May I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for his robust attack on a policy that his own party introduced as part of the coalition Government in 2010?

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman that the impact of our police and crime commissioners has been negligible. I do not think that is true. In many cases, they have done a good job in quite difficult circumstances. The innovation we have seen from our PCCs and the partnerships that they have sought to build have been good. It is not the individuals and teams that we are criticising today; it is the structure.

The hon. Gentleman asked about funding. The PCC election savings sadly will not be coming to the Home Office; they will obviously, and rightly, go to the Treasury. The savings that we are making, through police and crime commissioner functions and the efficiencies we want to drive, are significant—at least £20 million—and we want to reinvest that back into policing, as I think everybody would want us to do.

The hon. Gentleman talked about making sure that the right safeguards and the right model are in place. Police and crime commissioners will continue for the next two years in the areas where we do not already have mayoral processes in place, so we have a good amount of time to work with colleagues on how the new structures will work. That said, there is already a process under way of moving police and crime commissioner functions into the mayoral structures; that is already happening.

At the moment, there are 37 police and crime commissioners. Six force areas will move to the mayoral model in 2027, and there will be more in 2028, depending on how the Bill progresses. The idea is that we see this progress, apart from, as I said, in Wales, which has a different system and does not have the mayoral model.

I welcome the work that the Minister is doing on reforming how the police can engage with our local communities, because all of us want to see a closer relationship in that regard. May I press her on what lessons she is learning for my part of the world? In London, the challenge is at a borough-wide level. My own borough commander now requires me to submit freedom of information requests to find out about policing in my local community, and will only meet me twice a year. Panels of people are selected to meet the police, and often their presentations are death by PowerPoint to my local community. The Minister makes a very powerful case about police reform. What lessons can we learn from this process—not just in restructuring to work with mayors, but to work at a very localised level so that we can restore people’s confidence in policing?

London is different in many ways due to its size and scale, and policing is therefore structured differently. I expect all local leaders to meet their Members of Parliament regularly, because that is how we can hold them to account and work together. Members of Parliament attend surgeries, have public meetings and talk to our communities, so we understand a lot of the issues that police chiefs face, and it is helpful for them to have those conversations and to learn from one another. I encourage all our police chiefs to make sure that they have good relationships with their local Members of Parliament, because those relationships make up a very important part of our structures.

The Minister mentions our excellent police and crime commissioner in Lincolnshire, Marc Jones, and perhaps she might pay tribute to him again. The poor man is tearing his hair out. His force is nearing bankruptcy, and our chief constable says that

“Lincolnshire is the lowest funded force in the country”,

with the lowest number of officers and staff per head of population. There is no point in having another reorganisation and just replacing Marc Jones with Andrea Jenkyns unless we get proper fair funding, so will the Minister commit herself now to funding Lincolnshire police properly?

I am very happy to pay tribute to Marc Jones. I have met him to talk about these issues, and there are particular challenges in Lincolnshire that we are looking at very closely. The funding settlement will be announced in the usual way before the end of the year, and we are talking very closely. I am very aware of the issues that the right hon. Gentleman raises.

I welcome this decision and think that the abolition of PCCs is sensible. The role was ill defined and poorly understood by the public, as the Minister has mentioned, and it failed to add sufficient tangible value to justify its existence. However, I echo the Minister’s comments about the individuals who have served, particularly Clive Grunshaw, who is the current police and crime commissioner for Lancashire, and indeed the hon. Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden), who is not in his place but who served as the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Lancashire.

As the Minister mentioned, the introduction of PCCs had an effect on the recruitment of chief constables. Their one-on-one relationships were too fraught, and it meant that a small falling-out could lead to chief constables being fired. Can she talk about how we can get more high-quality candidates to apply to become chief constables, and about how their relationship with the deputy mayors might operate?

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to our local police and crime commissioners, including Clive Grunshaw, for their work. He is absolutely right to say that there have been challenges. There has been a reduction in the number of years for which police chiefs serve, from about five to about two and a half—so something is happening there. There are also fewer people applying for such jobs as they become available. We want really healthy competition for these roles, which are very significant and important to us. Where there is a large force and only one applicant for the role, something is not working as it should.

My hon. Friend is right to ask questions on the wider question of leadership; we could have a whole debate about that. The former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is conducting a review for us on how we improve leadership from top to bottom across the entire policing system. Our reform agenda is looking at performance across the board within policing, and at the welfare, training and support that have to go alongside it. We ask a lot of our police, and we do not always give them the support that they need. Those two things, hand in hand, will form a major part of our reform programme.

May I first pay tribute to Matthew Scott, Kent’s police and crime commissioner, who, over many years and through working closely with chief constables, has seen a successive increase year on year in the number of police officers in Kent that he has managed to fund. While I am on my feet, and as one of the few Members of this House who have actually held a warrant, may I also pay tribute to Kent constabulary, which continues to do a superb job under the existing system?

The only example that we have of a mayoral system is in London, and it is a disaster. It has failed. I am sorry, but for the Minister to say that the model of the police and crime commissioner is broken, while seeking to praise the police and crime commissioners, is little short of disingenuous. At the moment, Kent has a basket-case county council, but it is likely to have three unitary authorities and no mayor. Who is going to replace our excellent police and crime commissioner, and how will they do the job?

To correct the right hon. Gentleman, there are five deputy mayors within the mayoral system that we have already—not just in London, but in Manchester, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, and York and North Yorkshire. That model is working really well. I suggest that he talk to someone like Tracy Brabin, who is bringing together all the different agencies under her model, and the system works very well. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has done an excellent job in working with police forces across the capital to keep us safe. I also pay tribute to Kent’s police and crime commissioner, Matthew Scott.

The right hon. Gentleman asks what the arrangements will be where there is not a mayor. The higher-tier authority leaders will provide the board, and there will be a paid person who is the police and crime lead. In some cases, it may be that they are the police and crime commissioner if local authorities make that decision, but it will be for local authorities and leaders on the board to make the decision. That is how the funding model will work where there are not mayors.

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I inform Members that I plan to run this statement until no later than 1 o’clock, so we need to have short questions and short answers.

I welcome the Minister’s announcement that she will abolish police and crime commissioners, which is the right move. That said, may I place on the record my thanks to John Tizard, our Bedfordshire PCC? He has always worked constructively with me, and I know he will continue to work constructively until 2028. May I press the Minister on the steps being taken to ensure a smooth transition from PCCs to mayor-led or council-led oversight, particularly in areas such as Luton South and South Bedfordshire, where we do not have elected mayors?

I join my hon. Friend in praising John Tizard for the work that he is doing and will continue to do. As I set out, and subject to legislation, the police and crime commissioner model will be abolished at the end of the existing term of office, in May 2028. The transition to the new governance arrangements will be overseen by a small programme team in the Home Office and me, and the legal framework to bring about those changes is expected to be included in a second-Session police reform Bill, subject to parliamentary time. Primary legislation will be needed to make those changes, and we will introduce that as soon as we can. We will be working very closely with existing police and crime commissioners, local authorities and the Ministry of Justice.

One function that our police and crime commissioners fulfil is commissioning victim services, which is incredibly important. When we transition those functions, we need to ensure that we do not drop any balls and that we keep on doing the important work that we need to do, so I am very happy to have more conversations with colleagues about how the model will develop over time. We will ensure not just that we save money and introduce a better system, but that we make people safer in our communities.

In my constituency of Richmond Park, our policing force has been decimated. We used to have three police stations, and now we have none. The next nearest police station is facing the closure of its front counter, and the Royal Parks police force has been scrapped. People in my constituency have no faith that common crimes such as shoplifting, burglaries or antisocial behaviour will be resolved or that offenders will be apprehended. With this in mind, does the Minister agree that the greatest reform needed to improve policing efficiency is sufficient funding, and what conversations has she had with the Mayor of London about bolstering the resources available to the Metropolitan police?

Funding is enormously important, and we are providing our police with a real-terms funding uplift this year. We are going through the allocation process at the moment, and we will make announcements in the usual way before the end of the year. I do stress that money is incredibly important, and we are providing more of it, but if we look at the day-to-day activities of many of our police officers, they are not productive, and they cannot be because of the ancient systems that are in place. As an example, if officers download data from a mobile phone, which they need as part of the evidence for a crime, they will be given it in an Excel spreadsheet and they have to ctrl+F to find the things they need. It is extraordinarily unreformed as a system. There are pockets of great innovation, but it is not the same across the whole system. We have to drive efficiencies, and officers are crying out for us to do that to enable them to do the jobs we expect them to do. Yes, money is important, and the Mayor of London has put more funding—much more money—from his own budget into policing, but we need to ensure the police are doing what we want them to be doing.

In Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, proposals have been put forward to take our incredibly hard-working police community support officers off the beat during the evenings. I am campaigning against this, alongside my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), and hundreds have signed our petition to save our PCSOs. I therefore welcome today’s announcement to abolish the role of police and crime commissioner. Does the Minister agree with me and my constituents when they tell me that the money would be better reinvested in visible frontline policing?

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I think the PCSO model is extraordinarily successful, not just because the model is slightly cheaper and therefore we get more bang for our buck, but because they do an incredibly important role. They do not have the same powers as police officers, but they have the ability to go in and build relationships with their community to reduce tensions, and in building those relationships, they can predict, see, understand and give everybody else the intelligence we need about the crime happening in our local communities. I think they are really powerful, and one of the awfully sad things that happened under the last Government is that that model was completely decimated. I want to see more PCSOs on our streets because, as I say, they play a fantastic role.

The train attack that took place in my Huntingdon constituency on 1 November was mercifully prevented from being far worse by the swift actions of Cambridgeshire constabulary in neutralising the threat and placing the suspect in custody within eight minutes of the 999 call being placed. However, the Government are lucky that that was the outcome. Cambridgeshire is the fourth worst funded police force in England and Wales, and it does not receive the south-east allowance. The current police allocation formula uses data from as far back as 2001. I know that our current PCC, Darryl Preston, and the current mayor, Paul Bristow, share my concern that our police are not adequately resourced, and we went through this last year with the Policing Minister’s predecessor. What commitment can the new Policing Minister offer me that she will completely overhaul the formula as part of the forthcoming police funding settlement, and give Cambridgeshire the fairer funding it needs?

I join the hon. Gentleman in praising Cambridgeshire constabulary for the way it responded in incredibly difficult circumstances. The quick wit of many—including, of course, the people working on the train such as the train driver and others—saved lives, and we are all very grateful for that. The hon. Gentleman makes a point about funding, and the funding allocation will be made in the usual way before the end of the year. I appreciate the points he made, but there is more money going into policing this year and we will ensure that it is given to where it is needed. As I say, the police reform programme is designed to transform how we do policing so that we can become much more effective and productive in the future.

I, too, thank John Tizard for his tireless work in securing extra resources for Bedfordshire police. I tend to agree that the mayoral model is the best way forward. Does the Minister agree that it is vital that we redouble our efforts to move at real pace to ensure there is a mayor in every area of England, rather than let one council block the ambitions of the rest of the area?

I thank my hon. Friend for welcoming this announcement. The transition to the mayoral model is complex, and people will have different views, opinions and fights locally about what comes next. I believe the mayoral model to be a good one. I think most people see the benefits, and on the whole this Government are in favour of ensuring we have the mayoral model where we can. I certainly think it is the best model for policing.

The last Labour Government forced through the merger of Staffordshire ambulance service with West Midlands ambulance service, and Staffordshire ended up with a poorer service. There will be and is real concern in Staffordshire that these reforms could lead to a merger and the takeover of the Staffordshire police force by the West Midlands police force. Can the Minister assure the House that that will not happen?

The announcement today is on police and crime commissioners, which will not change those boundaries.

I thank the Minister for her statement. I whole- heartedly agree that the public have not bought into this model, but that does not mean there has not been some excellent work done by PCCs and their staff with great commitment and professionalism. Will she join me in thanking Matt Storey, the Cleveland police and crime commissioner, for the sterling work he has done in engaging with young people. She heard from some of those young people just two weeks ago, and the voice of youngsters is being heard in Cleveland. Could she also say something about the services commissioned by PCCs, especially in the areas of sexual assault, domestic violence and drug rehabilitation? People today will be in shock about this decision, and they will want some reassurance that their good practice will not be lost in the transition,

I thank my hon. Friend for that thoughtful question, and I join him in paying tribute to Matt Storey. I met him, and a group of young people he brought to see me, who were also incredibly thoughtful, and he is doing some excellent work. He points to the challenges of transitioning all these services. We are already learning lessons because, where the mayoral model is coming in, we are already transitioning from the police and crime commissioner model to the deputy mayor model, and we are learning as we go. There are statutory responsibilities for commissioning, such as victim services, and he mentioned sexual abuse and serious and domestic violence services as well. We will ensure that those statutory functions are maintained, and we are already talking to local authorities, our PCCs and other Departments to ensure we get that exactly right. I welcome any thoughts from hon. Members on that.

I welcome the Government’s decision, which I think is long overdue. I thank Clare Moody, the PCC for Somerset, who has worked very hard with me over the last 18 months and has visited my constituency three times. She is an inspiration. May I seek some reassurance on behalf of my constituents that extra resources will be put into tackling rural crime? As a result of the austerity under the last Conservative Government, people in my constituency have had bullocks, sheep and, in one incident, an entire flock of 1,500 chickens rustled from their farms.

I am very sorry to hear about the incidents of crime that the hon. Lady mentioned, and I am very happy to talk more to her about that. Rural crime is incredibly important, and we are working hard on the rural crime strategy. I join her in praising Clare Moody for the work she has done, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for recognising that the work of our police and crime commissioners has in many ways been excellent.

I welcome the Labour Government’s progress on policing, including Dudley town centre’s new police station, which will open this year, and the new police officers being redeployed to Dudley borough in April. Given the urgent need for police reform, will the Minister go one step further and commit to reviewing the west midlands’ outdated funding formula, which does not align with local crime and deprivation levels?

My hon. Friend is right to raise the funding formula. As I said, the allocations will be set in the usual way this year. The White Paper on police reform will introduce some significant changes to how we do policing, making it much more efficient, productive and targeted at the crimes we want our police to be focused on. We will have more on that in due course.

May I put it on the record, on behalf of my constituents, that both Martyn Underhill, the initial Dorset police and crime commissioner, and the current PCC, David Sidwick, have done sterling work with their teams to protect and look after my constituents over the years that they have served? Following up on the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), I urge the Minister to use the savings that she believes she has made in making this announcement today to support rural police funding where there is a differential between rural and urban. The early part of her statement noted that the police and crime commissioner model was created to increase accountability. She talks about oversight with the new arrangement in non-mayoral authorities. Will she say a little more about to whom the chief constable would actually be accountable in terms of hiring, firing and delivering on the priorities of local communities?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and join him in praising Martyn Underhill and David Sidwick for their work. The police and crime commissioners have a very important function to hire and sometimes remove their chief constables. That will be passed on to the policing and crime board and the police and crime lead who will navigate day-to-day working. They will set the proposed budget, agree the policing precept and be responsible for hiring the chief.

I welcome today’s announcement, particularly the savings that have been identified. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can use the savings in the Cleveland area to reverse the disgraceful decision in 2019 to close Hartlepool’s custody suite? So far, there is an unwillingness to look at reopening the suite. Will she meet me to look at options for how we can make it happen?

I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend. Of course, local decisions will be made locally and there are limits to what I can do in that way, which is absolutely right. The ability of the police to make their own local decisions is sacrosanct, and we need to ensure we maintain that, but I am very interested to hear how we can ensure he has the right services for his constituents.

In Thames Valley, we are fortunate enough to have a model that is working under the leadership of Matthew Barber, our police and crime commissioner. Police numbers have gone up, and he has led the creation of the country’s best rural crime taskforce and brought in other great initiatives on things such as shoplifting. Instead of throwing the whole system up in the air and scattering it back out across the country with different models for different areas, why not take the police and crime commissioner models that do work and make them the norm for everywhere, and not just in areas that are failing?

I join in the praise for the hon. Gentleman’s police and crime commissioner, particularly on the rural crime taskforce. I have been very clear on a number of occasions that I am not criticising the work those individuals have done, but we believe the model has not worked.

I thank the Minister for her statement. My constituents want a focus on neighbourhood policing, improving standards and a major police station in the local area. However, after an excellent PCC in Lord Willy Bach, and Sir Clive Loader before that, our current PCC has created an office mired with controversy. Will the Minister confirm that in the council-led model, the focus will get back to policing and public service, as well as improving accountability and partnership?

I can absolutely confirm that the focus will be on providing the best possible service to our communities. That means neighbourhood policing and giving the police the powers they need to fight crime, while also holding them to account for everything they do, because their role is incredibly important.

May I thank Dafydd Llywelyn for his excellent for his excellent work, especially on rural crime and domestic abuse, and take the opportunity to welcome Ysgol Gynradd Nantgaredig to the Gallery today? Today’s statement makes clear the absurd complexity of an England and Wales justice system. The UK Government will look to the Welsh Government to help replace the PCC system in Wales, but they have refused the same Government powers over policing. Does the Secretary of State now concede that the Welsh Government is the best place to control policing in Wales, and that devolving the entire justice system to Wales makes logical sense?

I thank the hon. Lady for the promotion— I am just a Minister, not the Secretary of State. We are very conscious that the system in Wales is different from the system in England, which is why we will take some time talking to stakeholders there, not least because Wales is not having a mayoral model. To be clear, this announcement is not about the devolution of policing, but structural changes to a model that simply was not working.

I welcome today’s reforms. Across Loughborough, motorbikes have been stolen for years and years; it is a huge scourge. I am really glad that a recent police operation helped to seize some of those bikes, and I really glad that we are getting more police and more powers, but there is clearly a lot more to do. Will the Minister set out how today’s strengthened governance will make my constituents safer and stop their motorbikes being stolen?

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly important point that a lot of his constituents care very deeply about, and he is right to bring it to this place. The savings we will make from the programme will fund up to 320 police constables, or 430 PCSOs, showing the value for money that they bring. We will ensure that the savings go into policing. The particular crime he talks about is pernicious. and we are talking with police chiefs to ensure we can tackle it. I am very happy to have more conversations with him.

Will the Minister pay tribute to Philip Wilkinson, Wiltshire’s PCC, who has realigned policing in my county with the priorities of my constituents? Will she account for the difference between the £100 million that she says in her statement this measure will save, and the £20 million she cited in response to an earlier question? Will she do all she can to ensure that the new formation is less bureaucratic than that which preceded it? At the moment, it rather looks like it will be much the same but without the PCC.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question and I join him in paying tribute to Philip Wilkinson for his work. On the two figures I mentioned, the £100 million and the £20 million, the lion’s share of the £100 million is in the cost of the elections that we hold and the £20 million is what we will make in initial savings from this programme, where we want to drive efficiencies. We believe that the elected model has not worked, which is why are getting rid of it, but we are very mindful that we will have to ensure that important statutory functions are maintained.

I thank my hon. Friend and join her in paying tribute to the Dorset PCC. There are PCCs who have worked really well across the party political divide, and we should pay tribute to them for their work and for how professional they have been. She raises a point about the police funding formula, which I know many Members are concerned about. As I said, the funding formula allocations will be announced before the end of the year, and we will also be announcing a major programme of reform.

I thank the Minister for her statement. In 2021, Thames Valley police closed the front desks at Bicester and Kidlington in my constituency, removing a key means for local residents to report to local officers antisocial behaviour, vandalism, mobile phone theft and other crimes that blight and damage their lives. Does the Minister agree that the money saved from today’s announcement should be put towards reopening the front desks at Bicester, Kidlington and elsewhere?

It is for local police areas to decide how they use their funding. Our priority, to be frank, is to get our police officers out on to our streets to police our neighbourhoods and communities, which is why improving neighbourhood policing is a top priority for this Government. Of course, police stations provide an important function, and there needs to be provision for people who cannot get to the police by any other means, but our priority is to get our police on to our streets.

Norfolk, which is already progressing through local government reorganisation and devolution, has several existing partnerships working to protect and support victims of crime. Will the Minister meet me and Sarah Taylor, Norfolk’s police and crime commissioner, to discuss how we can ensure that these arrangements continue to serve the people of Norfolk? There are worrying signs that some partners are withdrawing services because of these reorganisations.

I am always happy to meet and talk about these issues. The transition will happen in 2027, and we need to ensure that we learn from previous transitions and that we do not drop any balls with regard to the services we are providing to local people.

I thank the Minister for her statement, although it will have caused some consternation in my constituency. Spelthorne is in Surrey, which is being carved up into two unitary authorities, and recent so-called clarifications by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have stated that there are no promises as to whether they will get a mayor. I ask the Minister to use her good offices to go to that Department and say, “I’ve taken away their PCC—it’s up to you now to make a decision as to whether or not they are going to get a mayor.”

I obviously talk to my colleagues in MHCLG often, but I will leave to them the decisions they make in the areas they are responsible for. I am, however, happy to pass on the hon. Gentleman’s comments.

I welcome today’s announcement. I want to ask about the transfer to council and mayoral oversight in the context of a challenge I have locally. I have an amazing local police force in Hemel police. Officers often encounter instances of individuals and families who are responsible for antisocial behaviour affecting their neighbours where the landlord of the house or site is the district or county council, but those offices—the county council in particular —are not upholding their responsibilities as a landlord to deal with antisocial behaviour, and the police are therefore struggling to deal with some of these issues despite their best efforts. I wonder whether the Minister would outline how the changes today might tackle that specific problem.

My hon. Friend is right. Preventing crime is everybody’s problem, and we need to ensure that everybody feels the responsibility of that and works effectively together to tackle crime. Our police cannot arrest their way out of a lot of the challenges that we face. In the example my hon. Friend gave, we rely on the local authorities, which are the landlords of those properties, to ensure that people are behaving as they should. We are endeavouring to ensure that the police, and the local authorities, have the right powers to take action in a speedy fashion. We genuinely believe that if organisations are brought together in the models we are suggesting today, that will improve joint working.

The Government are creating new boards from council leaders, but abolishing, not restocking, the police and crime scrutiny panels. Does the Minister recognise that this risks creating a chasm of scrutiny right when police reform is most urgent on issues like racism, misogyny, police conduct and the ill-governed use of AI? Does she not see a role in better scrutiny for elected local opposition leaders?

I think that the accountability that comes with the leaders of our councils, who are of course elected, will be powerful, but I am happy to work with the hon. Lady to ensure that she gets what she wants to see locally. I think that the provision of local authority leaders coming together will be powerful. On her wider points about misogyny, behaviours in policing and AI, we are working on reform through our White Paper to tackle some of those significant challenges. On AI, we will shortly be bringing forward consultation on providing a framework within which it is used.

I thank the Minister for her statement. I pay tribute to the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, Simon Foster, who has served diligently and ably since 2021. He has always been community focused; he worked with me to secure a police hub in Stourbridge and helped me to negotiate with police estates to retain the old Brierley Hill police station for community use. I am proud to call him not just a colleague, but a friend. He has also reformed victim services, championed youth commissioners and overseen a reduction in all types of crime across the region. Will the Minister join me in thanking Simon for all his work and assure me that good work already established will continue?

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in praising Simon Foster and the work he has done. She is absolutely right to say that we need to ensure that where there is good work, we carry on.

I wish to correct what I said in my previous answer: when I talked about AI, I was talking specifically about facial recognition.

As was I.

As was the hon. Lady. I just wanted to be clear about that.

In Suffolk, the police and crime commissioner’s powers will be transferred to a combined mayoralty for Suffolk and Norfolk; the mayor will be responsible for the two police forces. This is only one step away from a full-blown merger of the two forces, which local people are very concerned about. Will the Minister take this opportunity to categorically state that the Government will never allow a police merger between Suffolk and Norfolk?

Just to be clear, the arrangements we are announcing today are not changing the 43 models at all. We will bring forward reform, which hopefully the hon. Gentleman will support, and he will have the time to consider it when it comes forward.

Will the Minister join me in thanking our hard-working named neighbourhood police officers across Portsmouth North, PC Jamie Christian, PC Chris Middleton, PC Nicholas Joyce, PC Ben Treend, PC Hannah Kelleher, PC Matt Lamper and PC Susan Smith, for their continued dedication to keeping our community safe? As we look at reforms to police governance, will the Minister ensure that any savings made by abolishing the PCC role are reinvested directly in the frontline? More broadly still, will she meet me to discuss how we can fund our policing more fairly, given Hampshire’s unfair allocation?

I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and talk about the services that she needs in her local community. We will of course ensure that the money we save is directed to frontline policing, because that is where it needs to be. I join her in praising her local police force for everything it does.

I welcome this statement. I have always been opposed to diverting taxpayers’ money to police and crime commissioners and their offices, and away from officers who can fight rural crime in our area. I have a couple of concerns. First, what will happen if a police force area like mine is split between two mayors? Secondly, could the Minister write to me to confirm the number of police officers that Avon and Somerset force might expect to employ, and to say whether this will happen by the end of the decade? Rumour has it that the previous police and crime commissioner had 28 or 29 staff, which is a lot of money.

Police and crime commissioners make their own decisions about how many staff they have; on average, I would say that they have between 20 and 50. Many of those staff do excellent work, and I pay tribute to them. Many carry out functions that we will need to continue; they are commissioning victim services, for example. I am happy to meet the hon. Lady to talk about her area; there are complexities to do with the mayoral model and how it is playing out that I am happy to discuss.

I pay tribute to the Conservative police and crime commissioner for my area, John Campion, with whom I have worked well over the past 10 years. In fact, we are meeting the Minister next week to discuss local policing. Can she confirm that the savings that this initiative will provide will go to community policing? That will allow West Mercia police to reverse the 8 pm PCSO cap that it recently imposed; PCSOs have been barred from the streets of Telford and West Mercia after 8 pm.

As my hon. Friend says, we are meeting next week, so we can discuss this matter then. I am very happy to join in his praise for his Conservative police and crime commissioner. As I said, we praise PCCs that have worked cross party, and we want that cross-party work replicated in the replacement models. I am happy to have another conversation with my hon. Friend about his local force and the services that his constituents need.

As a former deputy police and crime commissioner, I know the hard work that police and crime commissioners do, and I know that the Hertfordshire police and crime commissioner, Jonathan Ash-Edwards, does all he can to keep Hertfordshire residents safe. The Government’s English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill bans councils from making decisions by committee and forces them to change to a strong leader model. Can the Minister explain why the Government think it is appropriate to have police governance by committee, but not local authority governance by committee?

That is a question for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and I would expect it to answer it with reference to the structures that exist in local authorities. We believe that the mayoral model is the best model when it comes to policing. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for the work that he did when he was deputy police and crime commissioner. While we believe that the mayoral model is best, where we cannot have that model at this point, we will have a committee, led by leaders of the council, which I think is right.

In Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, we have a police, fire and crime commissioner. While I welcome the Minister’s statement, I worry about the impact on our fire service. Could she reassure me that we will consider the fire service as well, and how oversight of it will be transitioned in areas that now have a mayor, like my area?

In 2017, new powers were introduced to enable police and crime commissioners to have a fire-related role. We have the Minister responsible for fire, my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), on the Front Bench right now. The transition to the new structures will relate to fire as well as policing; the role will move to the new police boards.

While we Reform Members welcome the abolition of police and crime commissioners, will the Minister explain how these reforms will deliver clearer accountability for policing, particularly in areas like my constituency, where a strategic policing board is likely to be necessary, given that the PCC in Cheshire has proved to be one of the starkest examples of failure? He has achieved no meaningful improvement when it comes to crime or policing, and devotes his time to political campaigning.

I repeat that I am not here today to criticise the PCCs; I think that they have done a really good job. It is the role and the elected function that is not working. The hon. Member is right to ask about accountability. It is incredibly important we have the right accountability for our police, who have very significant powers and do an incredibly important job keeping people safe. Our expectation is that in the mayoral model, accountability will lie with the mayor; in the board model, the leaders of the council will provide the accountability. We are also looking at how accountability is delivered at national level—this will be in a White Paper that will come out—so that we know exactly what our police are doing and how they are doing it, and so that the inspection regime is beefed up.

May I place on record my thanks to South Wales police and crime commissioner Emma Wools and her team, and Alun Michael before her, for the great work they have done for my community in Cardiff West? I note what the Minister said about the unique arrangements in Wales, so can I ask that when she consults the Welsh Government, as she is right to do, she also consults Welsh Labour MPs, to ensure that we get the best possible arrangement for Wales? Will she meet me and other Cardiff MPs to talk about a fairer capital city funding deal, and whether some of the money that will be saved through this reform could be ploughed into Cardiff?

I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend and other MPs. I appreciate that he supports the approach that we are taking in Wales. I pay tribute to his police and crime commissioner—and of course to Alun Michael, with whom I am in regular correspondence, as I suspect many of us across the House are—for all their work. Alun Michael was a real shining light for the PCC model, and we should thank him for that.

I thank the Minister for her statement, and for recognising the great work that has been undertaken by many PCCs across the country. I want to take this opportunity to recognise Lisa Townsend, our excellent police and crime commissioner in Surrey, and her deputy Ellie Vesey-Thompson. We need to be aware that there are employees who support all PCCs’ activities who now know that their roles are going in the next few years. It is good to put on record that we thank them for everything they have done. Can the Minister confirm what the announcement means for Surrey, given that we are moving to a unitary model, but that the Government are yet to confirm solidly that we are getting a mayor?

I join the hon. Member in praising her local team. She is right to talk about staff. There are about 1,000 staff who support police and crime commissioners. We will work with them to transition—where they need to be transitioned, and where they carry out statutory functions that we need to continue—to local authorities. It is not by any means the case that they are all losing their jobs. It is very important to stress that the function continues as is for the next two years. We will continue to work with staff, and I will be talking to police and crime commissioners about the transition a lot, I suspect.

The hon. Member highlights one of the challenges of the move to the mayoral model: there is legislation going through Parliament, and some decisions are yet to be made. I am very happy to work with her on how things will work going forward, but we are very clear about the model that we want to introduce. Where there are moving parts, we will work as best we can to make sure that we get the right outcomes.

Having sat on a police and crime panel, let me say that I am thrilled to see the abolition of the police and crime commissioner model. This will save £20 million a year, which is the equivalent of an extra 320 special constables. In my area, the Liberal Democrat council is introducing pointless town councils, which raises local taxes. We as a Labour Government will bring down local taxes by abolishing the PCC role, which is very good news.

I want to put on record my thanks to Dave Sidwick, who has been an excellent police and crime commissioner. He is Conservative, and I am Labour, but it does not matter. We work together in service of the public, and that has yielded very good results. I must confess to having regularly experienced difficulties accessing my chief constable in Dorset. Could the Minister please set out what she thinks are reasonable expectations when it comes to a chief constable engaging with local Members of Parliament, particularly on important issues to do with policing and community safety?

I repeat what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy): it is incredibly important that chiefs have a good relationship with their local Member of Parliament. It is a two-way street; Members of Parliament bring a huge amount of insight, from all their conversations with constituents, about what is important to their local community and what its fears are, and about where crime is occurring. It is very important that police chiefs have that relationship with them, so that we can help each other to deliver better services.

Sarah Taylor, the Minister’s Labour colleague and Norfolk’s police and crime commissioner, has been turning things around in Norfolk, where PCCs have a very chequered history. She is taking real action on road safety. Under the Conservatives, PCCs sacked all the PCSOs, tried and failed to take over the fire service, and had no rural crime unit in a rural county. One decided that the commute was too long and stood down. How can we ensure that, in future, money goes to my residents’ priorities, such as vital safety improvements on the A148?

The hon. Gentleman raises the important issue of road safety. I am working very closely with colleagues in the Department for Transport on reforms in that space, which we will bring forward soon. I can assure him that we will put the money that we save into the frontline services that the public expect.

I thank the Minister for her statement. It falls to me, the only Essex MP in the Chamber, to put on record my thanks to Roger Hirst, police, fire and crime commissioner for Essex. I had the pleasure of standing against Roger in two elections, and although our political views may differ, he has always been really dedicated to supporting the police and tackling crime in Essex. I thank him for his service. He would want me to ask the Minister about a fairer funding formula for Essex. Specifically, what difference will the decision make to residents in my constituency, who are concerned about an historical lack of neighbourhood policing?

I join my hon. Friend in his praise for Roger Hirst, and indeed all other PCCs, who have done some really good work. This Government are prioritising neighbourhood policing. We are putting thousands more neighbourhood police officers into our communities. That is what the public want, and it is what we were elected to do. This money will help us do it.

The abolition of police and crime commissioners is welcome. My constituents in Chichester are understandably frustrated by how unclear it is what benefit the role brings; they rarely see a PC due to decreased numbers in our area. The policing function will pass to a mayor next year. Can the Minister confirm that the savings made will deliver more frontline policing in areas with low numbers of police officers, such as Chichester, so that they can tackle the growth in antisocial behaviour and rural crime?

I appreciate that the hon. Member wants to see more police officers in her communities. It is for the Government to set the priorities, and the funding to enable local police chiefs to make the right decisions, but micromanaging where the police go is not my role. She can be reassured that through the neighbourhood policing policies that we are introducing, and through the wider reform agenda, we intend to make sure that there are more police on our streets and in our communities.

I thank the Minister for her statement and her answers. It is always good to hear how money is being spent, and how policing can be delivered more effectively. She probably has direct contact every month with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland, where the problems relating to the moneys available are similar. Will she work alongside that Minister to ensure that what is being done here to ensure effective policing with the moneys available can be done there?

As ever, I am happy to meet colleagues in Northern Ireland. We have much to learn from each other about how to make sure that we are policing the streets in the safest and best way.