A refusal to mourn the demise of police and crime commissioners

Home secretary Shabana Mahmood announced today that police and crime commissioners will be abolished in 2028 when their current terms expire.

A home office press release says:

Since 2012, PCCs have been elected to hold forces to account, but turnout at the polls and public knowledge of who their local PCC is has been incredibly low.  

Public understanding of, and engagement with, PCCs remains low despite efforts to raise their profile. Two in five people are unaware PCCs even exist. 

Their roles will be absorbed by regional mayors wherever possible, meaning measures to cut crime will be considered as part of wider public services such as education and healthcare.  

In areas not covered by a mayor, this role will be taken on by elected council leaders.

I'm pleased to see this move, having called for it 18 months ago.

I wrote then:

Yesterday saw the third round of PCC elections, and I believe we can now say that the experiment has failed. It has not delivered any of what Cameron and the Home Office promised.

Not only that, it has proved an expensive experiment. PCCs have discovered the need to appoint a deputy on a generous public salary as well as the need to employ researchers.

Here in Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, there was no visible campaign - on the doorstep or online - for the PCC election. And the Labour and Conservative candidates were both party hacks who have never made it to Westminster.

Though to be fair to Labour's Rory Palmer, he has, unlike his Conservative opponent Rupert Matthews, never been a lecturer on the paranormal for the International Metaphysical University or expressed the view that "the evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling".

You can still see a short clip of Rupert Matthews, who recently joined Reform UK, introducing his university course online.

As to the turnout for PCC elections, here in Leicestershire, at least, that was a function of the other elections being held at the same time. I said of the contest here:

In 2016 it took place at the same time as Leicester City Council elections, so the Labour vote came out there and we got a Labour PCC. Five years later it coincided with county council elections, so the Tory vote came out and we got a Tory PCC. 

The Guardian report on this story claims:

The abolition is a victory for chief constables and a sign of how influential they are in the Labour government’s thinking about policing.

It also makes the merger and abolition of local forces, which chiefs want and government is considering, potentially easier.

This doesn't cheer me, as something of a centralisation sceptic, but the PCC experiment has certainly failed.