Eastern Daily Press Campaigns Against Elected Police Commissioners

The Eastern Daily Press has launched a campaign against a Government proposal to introduce elected police commissioners for forces right across the country.

The campaign has already received the backing of former home secretary Charles Clarke who gave the Archant title an exclusive interview in which he attacked the Coalition Government’s plans.  

The paper has published a series of news and opinion pieces criticising the plans which would see elections for police commissioners for forces across the UK in May.  The commissioners’ powers would include appointment of the chief constable and setting the force budget.

On Tuesday, the paper splashed on Norfolk Police Authority’s response to Theresa May’s attack on the current system which sees committees, made up of a mix of elected and unelected officers, scrutinize the operations of the local force.

Following the England riots, Mrs May issued a stinging criticism of “unaccountable, unelected and invisible police authority chairmen”. Her remarks prompted the Association of Police Authorities, the national body that represents police authorities, to describe her comments as “ill-informed or wilfully inaccurate”.

Eastern Daily Press editor Pete Waters said of the campaign: “Feedback from readers has been supportive because Norfolk in recent years has regularly been 'the safest county in the country' according to crime league tables.

“The plans to have elected police commissioners will cost £130m to implement with another cost of £50m every four years for the elections themselves. This is money we can ill afford to spend, at a time when nationally the government want cost cutting and we've just seen rioting and looting in our major cities.”

"Our force has to save £24.5m over three years and they're helping to do this by merging backroom services with Suffolk. They're a well-run force and I'm sure that's the same across most of the country. The public want money spent on frontline forces, not bureaucracy."