Cooper confirms Labour will scrap Police and Crime Commissioners

That Labour would be scrapping Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) had been all but confirmed already. Now the Sunday Times(£) reports that Yvette Cooper will announce that they’re to be scrapped in her conference speech this Wednesday, but in the meantime, here’s what she told them:

“This was Theresa May’s flagship reform and it just hasn’t worked…The model is just fundamentally flawed. It’s costing too much. They spent £80m on the original elections. It will cost £50m to hold the next elections. It cost £3.7m to hold the by-election in the West Midlands.

“To spend all that money on something where so few people vote, when you could put that money back into policing, is wrong. Only 15% turned out for the original vote for the elections.

“You’re concentrating power in the hands of one person who can’t be held to account for four years. As you saw in South Yorkshire, we called for Shaun Wright to stand down but there was no mechanism to hold him to account.”