Second in command?
Police and crime commissioners (PCCs) will be able to appoint deputies – but the role raises may questions and few answers, writes Councillor Sam Chapman. See below for further comments from PCC candidates
Even before a single vote has been cast, some candidates for the police and crime commissioner (PCC) role are already choosing their deputies.
With the election in November and races in 41 different areas of the country it helps to give the election a little of the feel of that other election in the United States.
But a deputy PCC is not a vice-president. The winning candidate is not required to have a deputy, though they are free to appoint one if they wish. Deputies do not hang around waiting for their boss to get shot, as any temporary vacancies for PCC will be filled by whoever the local police and crime panel picks.
While vice-presidents' day-to-day jobs are pushed to extremes of being either very busy or completely ignored, deputy PCCs are able to have well-defined chunks of the main role delegated to them, and have to suffer a confirmation interview with their local police and crime panel, although technically they don't need to pass it.
A deputy will also not be elected, even though some candidates have been willing to reveal their nominees in advance of the election. Their name will not be on the ballot paper. Their contract may run out on the day of the next election but if things turn bad they may not last that long.
Candidates who have declared their chosen deputy already have taken an important and risky decision. They have accepted the budgetary cost of the post, but also the political risk of ignoring any disagreement to the appointment from their local panel and, while deputies are not required to be appointed on merit, this does not mean that equalities and employment legislation have been thrown out of the window. Some PCCs may struggle to justify employment decisions that they have already predetermined for political reasons.
Yet these are political appointments in the sense that they will be the only senior members of a commissioner's staff allowed to engage in politics. We are accustomed to vice-presidents being chosen because they represent a particular political, religious or geographic constituency. Will voters stand for that approach in a British election, or will they think it smacks of 'jobs for the boys'?
Will appointing a deputy to address a PCC's personal skills gap be seen as a sensible approach or as an admission of weakness? Will appointments to pacify parties or to secure electoral advantage from this or that voting bloc be thought excessively political in an election where many voters do not welcome party involvement?
So far the most noticeable things about deputies has been the general silence from candidates as to the role, and few commitments to do the job without one. Is it possible candidates do not know whether they will appoint a deputy, or have some deals already been done that voters will only be told about once votes have been cast?
One reason why there may be so many questions and so few answers is that the deputy PCC role was added to the legislation on its way through the House of Lords. While the PCC post has had a long gestation, the deputy post has not benefited from a similar amount of debate – so we will all learn about their good and bad points on the job.
Councillor Sam Chapman is Editor of the TopOfTheCops.com blog, and a Conservative member of Lancashire County Council
As well as allowing for the appointment of a deputy police and crime commissioner (PCC), the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act also allows PCCs to arrange for "any person to exercise any function of the commissioner".
Why would an elected PCC, answerable both to the community and to their local police and crime panel, appoint an expensive deputy? Because of the workload? Well, maybe in the metropolitan forces. Or because the PCC is unable to commit 100 per cent of their time to the role?
The PCC will be the most responsible post you have ever held. The safety of hundreds of thousands of people, the spending of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money, is in your hands. You are elected by the people, for the people, to be their voice. You, not your deputy.
As a full-time PCC, why not take the other route? Include the views of those whose voices are less audible by appointing ambassadors for young people, for victims, for those at risk of hate crime, by listening to them and by taking their views into account.
This will enable you to establish more accurately the priorities which should inform the police and crime plan and so become more truly accountable. Which is what it is all about.
Councillor Rachel Rogers (Lab, Weymouth and Portland) is Labour's PCC candidate for Dorset and twitters @DorsetRachel
The choice of running-mates is something we're all familiar with. President Kennedy's choice of Lyndon Johnson as his running-mate turned out to be more important than either ever imagined.
As a PCC candidate I believe there are four key considerations for appointing a deputy. Firstly, all appointments to key jobs within the commission will be professional officers as would be found in any other council or department. In contrast, the deputy will be a political appointment, an ally to the commissioner.
Secondly, I will be representing 692,000 people in 287,000 households within a county that covers more than 900 square miles. A deputy can help take the strain.
Thirdly, while exercising a large mandate and a unique democratic voice, I'll still be only one person. Two voices and two pairs of hands are better and more effective than one.
Finally – continuity. Lyndon Johnson's appointment by Kennedy as his nominee may have been originally founded on political expediency, but Johnson went on to be a driving force in Kennedy's efforts to reform civil rights and he pushed through the Civil Rights Act 1964, following Kennedy's assassination.
Appointment of a capable deputy makes good political sense and administrative sense, and provides clarity in leadership and decision-making when things get tough.
Adam Simmonds is a former assistant director at NorthamptonshireCounty Council and the Conservative candidate for the county's PCC. He twitters @adamsoffice
See the PCC pages on the LGA website:
Police and crime commissioners
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28 September 2012
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