My week ahead - 25 - 30 August 2014

Tuesday – 26 August, 2pm – Labour campaigning in NE Ipswich
5pm – Culture Portfolio meeting
6pm – Labour Group meeting

Thursday – 28 August, 10am Labour campaigning in SW Ipswich

Saturday – 30 August, 10am – Labour campaigning in South East Ipswich

Sunday – 24 August, 10am – Labour campaigning in South West Ipswich

Another week of campaigning planned as we continue to ‘raise our game’ as we head towards the next General Election.

We are now also beginning to see the national party release details of policies that will be part of our manifesto. I hope that we make an announcement quite soon that we will be getting rid of the post of Police and Crime Commissioner. The poor turnout at last week’s election for the West Midlands PCC was yet another example of public apathy over the role. What was more shocking is that the cost of the by-election was in in the region of £3.5 million!

The whole concept of PCC was rushed through, no thought was given to how do you replace a PCC mid - term or as in the case in Norfolk if the PCC finds himself suspended.

I do not think we should go back to the old Police Authority model but I hope the cost of and the poor turnout at the PCC election last week will convince the Shadow Home Office team that we need to be quite radical in our proposals of how our police force is run. Possibly using some of the ideas that were suggested by Ronnie Flanagan (former Head of the RUC) when he produced a report for the last Labour Government.

Our own Suffolk PCC can then concentrate on his ‘other’ job – a councillor on Mid Suffolk District Council.