Reading an article in today's Telegraph, I never thought I would ever say this but I actually agree with Yevette Cooper in that all successful candidates in Thursday's PCC elections should disclose details of their dealings with lobbyists and private contractors.
I wish, however, that Yevette would be bold enough and instruct all Labour PCC candidates to reveal how much they are being funded and supported by unions and what strings are attached if and when they are elected.
Amid growing controversy about the backers of police and crime commissioner candidates, it can also be revealed that at least one Labour candidate has taken money from a police staff union for his campaigns.
Clive Grunshaw, who is running in Lancashire, declares a £5,000 donation from the Unite union for his campaign. Unite represents thousands of police civilian staff. To my knowledge, no other Labour candidate declares any financial backing at the Electoral Commission.
Another union, Unison, whose members include PCSO's and other police civilian staff and is the second biggest in the police after the Police Federation, has said it is “supporting” the campaigns of three Labour candidates, John Prescott in Humberside, Shaun Wright in South Yorkshire and Mark Burns-Williamson in West Yorkshire.
It doesn’t feel right to me. The Labour PCC's who are elected are going to have to make decisions about staff whose representatives have given them money. You might have to decide, for example, about the balance of PCSO's versus police in your force, with the PCSO's in a union which has funded them and the police officers in the Federation, which hasn’t.
Independent candidates, for all their claims of purity, can potentially have even more baggage than candidates from the established parties. Under a loophole in Electoral Commission rules, independent candidates do not have to publish details of their donors until after the election.
In Sussex, the Independent candidate David Cocks has been embroiled in a scandal after his company, Take Care Now, has been accused of trying to hide a criminal from the police of which he now is attempting to become a commissioner leading some to suggest that he is unfit to hold any position of responsibility and must not be placed in any position of trust under any circumstances.
In Lincolnshire, the independent candidate, Mervyn Barrett, had to resign after it was exposed by the Sunday papers that he was being funded and supported by American right-wing lobbyists and companies backing police privatisation.
In Dorset, another independent, Martyn Underhill, is refusing to say which “household name” company and businesses have backed his campaign to the tune of £23,000 and the Independent candidate in Durham has also been accused of the same.
Despite the tub thumping by the Independent Party here in Southend about taking party politics out of policing, for me, candidates having to repay back favours to their big business donors and backers is something that they seem happy to ignore.
Wouldn't it be nice if the Independent candidates here in Essex led the way and were up front before polling day about who may be potentially bankrolling their campaign.
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