Blair Gibbs: The Government now has a variety of options on votes for prisoners - with more tactical obfuscation looking highly likely

Blair Gibbs is Head of Crime and Justice at Policy Exchange and editor of the report, Bringing Rights Back Home

Yesterday’s debate delivered the predictable result – a heavy defeat for those opposing the motion that reasserts our current law that suspends the voting rights of sentenced prisoners. We are now in uncharted territory. One thing we know for sure is that this is not even the end of the beginning.

The vote on the backbench motion – 234 in favour of maintaining the ban, 22 against – was just that, a vote on a motion. It has no legislative effect. The Coalition Government now needs to prepare its own legislation to be laid, probably before the summer recess, to amend the 1983 Act in order to give effect to Strasbourg’s ruling. That legislation will require another vote, which even if it is heavily whipped, is unlikely to command a majority in the Commons.

A further watering down – perhaps providing the option of maintaining the ban for all those sentenced to 6 months or more (coherent at least, as a divide between those convicted by a Crown or magistrates court, as Anna Soubry MP argued) – is possible, but even that would probably still fail. The whole tenor of yesterday’s debate proved that many MPs from all parties have decided to dig in their heels. And they are in tune with the public, who are opposed to prisoners voting in principle. Besides, as was argued by Anne Main MP – whose amendment to explicitly prohibit compensation was not called – legislation with a new sentence threshold would not last long: “the litigation will not stop because we have put that line in the sand”, she said.

So, after the next inevitable defeat, although there is huge scope for uncertainty in all of this, it looks like the Government has essentially three political options.

Blair Gibbs: The case for directly-elected Police Commissioners

Theresa May will today outline a massive shake up of Britain's system of policing. Blair Gibbs, Head of Crime & Justice at Policy Exchange, examines the central feature of the Home Secretary's reforms; directly-elected police chiefs.

Policy Exchange first advocated wholesale reform of police accountability arrangements in a series of reports from 2005.  In the face of high crime rates, we recognised that the fundamental handicap of British policing was not just a dysfunctional Home Office obsessed with central direction that had eroded local discretion, but a serious and deepening democratic deficit that prevented police forces from serving the public, encouraged operational retrenchment and undermined public confidence.  To correct the drift towards illegitimate, bureaucratic policing, the police as a public service needed some form of direct accountability structure that would shake-up the institution, loosen Whitehall’s grip, and provide real oversight of Chief Constables.

This week, following on from the early signals sent by the Home Secretary on abolishing targets and ending central direction, the Home Office will finally set out proposals to bring this reform about.  The Conservative manifesto commitment to establish directly-elected oversight of the police originated with Nick Herbert in 2007, survived the Coalition negotiations and is now set to be the centre-piece of a green paper ahead of primary legislation in the autumn.  Along with far-reaching proposals to reform the national policing landscape and deal with the shortcomings of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and the bloated and largely discredited National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA), it will represent the biggest structural reform of policing for fifty years.

The directly-elected individuals, or “Commissioners” as they will be known (no, not “sheriffs”), will replace failing and invisible police authorities entirely.  Commissioners will have the power to hire and fire Chief Constables and set force budgets.  The new structure itself will be based on the existing police force areas (outside of London), so the elections when they happen – probably to coincide with local elections in 2012 – will create strong local personalities with large, personal mandates.  Liberal Democrat MPs – who favoured retaining police authorities albeit making them directly-elected – have wanted proper assurances that these new Commissioners will be subject to proper checks and balances.  What these may be and how much they might neuter the executive potential of Commissioners remains to be seen.

In Opposition, some senior Conservatives feared the creation of dozens of “mini-Home Secretaries” who could challenge the authority of Ministers over law and order policy.  But these objections were misplaced.  Commissioners will be accountable to their own electorate, but to be effective they will need to collaborate with others agencies and manage policing in their area with the budget that Ministers will continue to provide.  At their best, Police Commissioners will be able to shape their force’s strategic priorities in a way that reflects the public’s overwhelming desire for visible common-sense policing and cost effective crime fighting.  This will be instead of reacting to the misguided priorities of a succession of recent Home Secretaries and police leaders who have obsessed about equality agendas and performance targets while undermining beat patrolling.