PARLIAMENTARY EARLY DAY MOTION
POLICE AUTHORITY FOR LONDON (24 May 1993)

That this House expresses its astonishment at newspaper reports that the Secretary of State for the Home Department would bow to back-bench Tory prejudice by abandoning plans to create a police authority for London along similar lines to those proposed for the rest of England; recalls that on 23rd March the Home Secretary spoke of 'creating a new police authority for the Metropolitan Police in line with the new national pattern, thereby strengthening local accountability in the capital' and that this national pattern was expected to have 'about half its members drawn from the local government'; considers that any decision to exclude from a London police authority, elected local councillors, on account of back bench Tory prejudice, would be a gross insult to Londoners, flying in the face of local accountability and democracy at a time when morale at the Met is at an all-time low and public concern about crime at an all-time high; and calls on the Home Secretary to stand by his statement and not treat people of London as second class citizens incapable of having a say in the control of their own police service.

Sponsored by:
Dame Joan Ruddock (Labour)