Press stories over the weekend have suggested that my colleague in the House of Lords, John Prescott, might consider standing as Police and Crime Commissioner for Humberside in the autumn.

I have no idea whether he is seriously thinking of doing so – he didn’t mention it when I saw him on Thursday, but that doesn’t prove anything either way.

However, one thing I am certain of is that he is not the sort of person that David Cameron had in mind when he first dreamt up the idea of elected Police Commissioners.

Yet in many ways, John Prescott would be ideal.  He is high profile and well-known; he has a wealth of senior-level experience (Deputy Prime Minister after all – perhaps Nick Clegg ought to sacrifice/offer himself to the people of South Yorkshire); and he is more than robust enough to stand up to any Chief Constable and hold them to account.

And after all profile, experience and toughness are the core attributes of any potential Police and Crime Commissioner candidate.

The Government’s e-petition site has rejected an e-petition calling on the Government to improve “the flow of passengers through busy London Underground stations” by installing slides in place of escalators.  The e-petition also suggests that:

“Small prizes should be available for those reaching the bottom in the fastest time. These would be paid for out of the savings of not having to maintain and operate down escalators.”

The e-petition has been rejected because this is a matter for a devolved authority – in this case the Mayor of London – and therefore it is for the Mayor of London to consider this proposal.

I see Mark D’Arcy has picked up on the rumours that have been sweeping the House of Lords for the last few weeks that Number Ten is about to announce the appointment of another sixty life peers: forty Tories; fifteen LibDems and five Labour.  This would be a net gain for the coalition of fifty votes – enough to swamp two of the three defeats that the Government suffered on the Welfare Reform Bill last week.

The current membership of the House of Lords is a whopping 787 (excluding 22 peers who are on leave of absence and 17 who are disqualified or suspended for one reason or another).  The new additions (which would mean approaching two hundred – yes, two hundred – new peers since the General Election) will bring the size of the House of Lords to 847.  (Contrast this with the plans to cut the elected House of Commons by fifty members.)

The extra members will make the Tories the largest grouping in the House of Lords and give the combined coalition 364 members against Labour’s 244 – an effective majority of 120.  (Although there are 186 cross-benchers they tend to split on votes with some supporting the Government and some opposing and their rates of participation tend to be lower as well.)

Anywhere else in the world this would be regarded as packing the legislature, termed as gerrymandering or deemed to be crony politics of the worst sort.

The scale of increase of membership far exceeds that an any previous time in the House of Lords’ history.

In the two years since the General Election, the Government has been defeated 28 times in the House of Lords – in all but a handful of instances the margins of defeat have been less than fifty.  So had the new peers been in place most of those defeats would not have happened.  Twenty-eight defeats over two years is in any event a small number compared with the average of more than forty defeats a year during the lifetime of the last Labour Government.

The cost of the extra peers will be two to three million pounds per year – so I suppose from the coalition’s point of view that will be money well spent to ensure that they are not troubled with poor quality ill-thought through legislation being sent back to the House of Commons for reconsideration.

This is a piece I have written for the Mayor Watch blog on the occasion of today’s last meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority:

“The Metropolitan Police Authority was established in July 2000 as a by-product of the legislation that also created the London Mayoralty, the GLA and the London Assembly.  Until then the Metropolitan Police had been solely accountable to the Home Secretary, who was uniquely the Police Authority for London.

The MPA is now to be abolished and replaced by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC – pronounced “MOPSY”) as a by-product of the legislation that will see Policing and Crime Commissioners elected outside London in November.

The MPA’s final meeting is taking place today and the MOPC will take over responsibility on Monday 16^th January.

So what did the MPA achieve in its eleven and a half years of existence?

The early years of the MPA saw a dramatic transformation in the Metropolitan Police. In 2000 morale in the Service was poor, more officers left the Met each month than joined (police numbers had declined each year for a decade), public confidence was low, financial controls were virtually non-existent (the Met had no system for telling if bills had been paid more than once) and the quality of many serious investigations was poor.  The first tasks of the new Authority included the introduction of financial controls and discipline; establishing a new culture of openness and accountability; and reversing the decline in the number of police officers so that the MPS saw the most significant increase in its size in its history.

This was followed by a sustained focus on turning round street crime and cutting burglary.  The MPA led the way nationally on the introduction of Police Community Support Officers and then the setting up of the first Safer Neighbourhood Teams before rolling them out across London.

This contribution led to a general increase in public confidence in the police service, but specific initiatives led by the MPA on stop and search, on hate crime, and on recruitment and retention of black and minority officers also changed perceptions of the Met.

Inevitably, the direction of travel changed somewhat with a change in administration in City Hall after the 2008 elections, but the MPA continued to deliver a much clearer visible accountability of the police in London than had existed before.

Certainly, throughout its life the MPA has ensured that far more information about the policing of London has been put in the public domain.  The MPA also meant that the Commissioner and senior officers were seen to answer questions in public at full Authority meetings and at its Committees.  And this was supplemented by detailed MPA scrutinies ranging from rape investigation and victim care to counter-terrorism policing, crime data recording to mental health policing, and landmark reports on the Stockwell shooting, of the Race and Faith Inquiry, and on public order policing.

So will all this disappear with the MOPC?

The first thing to emphasise is that London’s model will – as ever – be different from that in the rest of the country.  There will not be a directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioner.  Instead, the functions will be carried out by the MOPC, led by an appointed Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime.

The policing priorities will be set by the MOPC and it remains to be seen how much these will change from those previously set by the MPA with its more widely drawn membership.

The real danger is, of course, that much of the visible accountability and answerability will be lost.  Some will be provided by the London Assembly who will have a new and enhanced role in respect of policing and crime, but their focus – as envisaged by the new statute – will be very much on the MOPC and not on the police service itself.

How this will develop will depend on the personalities involved – both at the MOPC and on the Assembly – and on the willingness of the Met itself to be open and transparent.  There are certainly no guarantees on any of this, yet police accountability in the capital will remain as important as ever – as the events of the last few months have demonstrated.

Perhaps the message is watch this space.”

Just in case LibDems in London were in any doubt about Tory triumphalism, the LibDem role as (very) junior partners in the coalition and what the Government’s stance on Europe is all about James Cleverly AM, Leader of the Tory Group on the London Assembly, has spelt it out:

“The Indi is running a story about a potential “rift” between Clegg and Cameron over Europe and the veto.  This is such a non-story, Clegg’s position on Europe is well known.  Cameron’s position on Europe has been made clear and is much more in tune with the wishes of the British people.

David Cameron is the Prime Minister and his position is both right and popular.  Nick Clegg is not Prime Minister and his position is wrong and unpopular.  Bets please on whose views will win out.”

Squelch!

At some point, the LibDems are going to realise that their post-General Election sell-out to the Tories is getting them nowhere …..

In March of last year I tried (innocently) to find out whether Home Office Ministers spent more time meeting the police leadership of the Metropolitan Police or the political leadership of the Metropolitan Police.

The saga – for anyone still listening – is reprised here.

In November, I formally raised the strange refusal of the Home Office to divulge this information with the Information Commissioner.

On 11th November his office responded saying:

“I have today spoken to the Home Office regarding your complaint; they have acknowledged there have been significant delays in responding to your information request.  I have been advised that you will be getting a response within the next five working days.”

You might think that this would be progress.  (Admittedly, the Information Commissioner’s Office were less confident saying that “If the Home Office responds and refuses to release the information you have asked for and you are dissatisfied, you may, after exhausting their internal complaints procedure, complain to us again.”  They’d clearly been there before.)

In any event, with mounting excitement that I was about to see a response from the Home Office I waited for five working days.

And then another five working days.

And then five more working days.

Suffering a patience failure (if not a sense of humour failure), I left a telephone message for the Information Commissioner.

And his office responded on 7th December saying:

“I have today spoken to the Home Office who have advised me that they have in fact not sent out any response to your information request.  In the light of this information I have passed the case to our case resolution team who will contact you as soon as possible to explain how your complaint will be progressed.”

And guess what?

I am still waiting.

According to this morning’s news reports a £500 million tunnel is to be built in the Parliamentary seat of Cheryl Gillan MP, the Secretary of State for Wales, to mitigate the impact of the High Speed Rail connection being proposed to run through her Amersham constituency and to try and avert her resignation from the Cabinet over the issue.

So now we know the starting price of a Cabinet seat in the Tory Party – £500 million.

But will it be enough to stave off her resignation?  And what else could that money have been spent on?

This Thursday the last meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority will take place before it is abolished and replaced by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC – pronounced “MOPSY”) on 16th January.

The meeting on Thursday is not being held in City Hall and is much more low-key than usual with no written report from the Commissioner and with most of the agenda given over to formal reports winding up the remaining aspects of the MPA’s business.

There is, however, an item grandly-entitled “MPA Retrospective” which you might assume was intended to deal with what the MPA has achieved during its eleven and a half years of existence.

You might assume that, but you would be wrong.

In fact, the report only looks at the achievements “under the current administration” – i.e. since Mayor Boris Johnson and his Deputy Kit Malthouse AM got their hands on the tiller - so it is a record of the three and a bit years when the MPA was Tory-led and ignores the previous eight when its was Labour-led.

I am trying to establish whether this is simply an attempt to save paper (clearly a report that looked at what has been achieved since July 2000 when the MPA took office would be a good bit longer).  I am assured that a “there will be a full retrospective on the website”.  However, it is not there yet and the MPA website will be archived after this coming weekend, so that’s not much help…

Only an extreme cynic would suggest that this is yet another effort by parts of the GLA family to promote the record (sic) in office of a Tory Mayor in advance of the elections next May …..

Interestingly, one claim rather confirms the view that the Conservative tenure has provoked an unusually – and possibly unhealthily -high turnover of senior police officers at New Scotland Yard:

David Cameron is on the Today programme banging on about making the NHS more patient-centred and suggesting regular patient-led hospital inspections to ensure that this is the case.

Nothing wrong with this in principle.  Indeed, every successive Prime Minister and Health Secretary in the last sixty years has talked about “putting the patient at the heart of the NHS” or some such soundbite.  Equally, patient-led inspections are an important tool to support such an aspiration.  Indeed, when I was Director of the Association of Community Health Councils in the late-1980s and through much of the 1990s, I was well aware of the importance of unannounced CHC inspections in promoting improvements in patient care at local level and in highlighting wider issues of health policy.

But – and it is a big but – the Government’s proposals for local HealthWatch organisations still fall a long way short of guaranteeing the network of vibrant independent patient-led structures that CHCs (shamefully abolished by the last Labour Government) provided in their hey-day.  There are two big problems with the Government’s ideas on this in the Health and Social Care Bill, currently paused in its long slow grind through the House of Lords.

First, the new local HealthWatch organisations will be creatures of the local authorities in their areas, even though they will be expected to monitor the social care provisions commissioned and provided by those same local councils.  Hardly, independent.

And the national structure, HealthWatch England, will be packed with Secretary of State appointees and will be a creature of the Care Quality Commission (constituted as a CQC Sub-Committee), even though much of the work of HealthWatch may involve calling on the CQC to take action on specific matters and may require criticism of the effectiveness of the CQC itself as a regulator (hardly easy if you rely on that body for all your support services).

And second, the system is likely to be grossly under-resourced.   The Government is planning to “provide” resources for the new local HealthWatch organisations as part of their general grant to local Councils.  No ring-fenced money.  And, at a time when local government is having to make very substantial cuts in their core provision, it is hard to see that this will be much of a priority in any local council’s deliberations.  The evidence in the last year of the way in which the budgets of Local Involvement Networks (LINks – the current iteration of the Department of Health’s attempts to replace CHCs) have been cut – in some instances by as much as 70 or 80% by local councils – does not provide much hope for properly-funded local HealthWatch organisations in the future (especially when they start criticising that council’s own provision).

And, of course, with so much of health and social care taking place outside a hospital setting, the Prime Minister’s comments do suggest a mindset locked in the concept of an NHS that is all about hospital/acute care .  Delivering patient-centred community-based care will require both a willingness to invest properly and sustainably in those aspects of the NHS and also a recognition that patient-led monitoring of those services is not only important too but will also need to be resourced properly.

Without any of that, the Prime Minister’s comments today are nothing but empty soundbites.  So, no surprise there …

Michael White, the Guardian’s veteran Assistant Editor, has an article today assessing the shape of UK politics over the year ahead.  Although sometimes verbose (a problem I am well aware that I suffer from myself), he is usually extremely perceptive.  Today’s article is therefore well worth reading and I agree with many of his conclusions.

However, there is one line in it that is total nonsense.  After pointing out the threat that reinvigorated Boris Johnson would present to David Cameron if re-elected to the London Mayorality in May, he goes on to say:

“If Ken beats Boris he will make Miliband’s task harder.”

The reality is the exact opposite.  So much so that David Cameron has recognised that his number one priority in 2012 is to ensure that London’s City Hall must remain in Conservative hands.  Not the economy; not the growing housing crisis; not Europe and the Eurozone; but London.  That is the Prime Minister’s priority for the coming year.

Why?  He knows that a Ken Livingstone victory in May would be an essential first step for the Labour Party to win a General Election in 2015.

He also knows that Ken Livingstone’s flair for articulating the impact of Tory policies on the people of London would resonate with millions elsewhere in the country.

The Prime Minister’s grasp on history is probably a little shaky, so he may not be aware that a Labour-run London County Council in the 1930s laid the groundwork for the victorious and reforming Labour Government of 1945: trialling and showcasing how the power of Government can be harnessed to boost the chances of the vast majority of the population.

However, Cameron’s instincts will tell him that a Labour Mayor in City Hall would demonstrate that there  is an alternative to a Conservative-led Government more concerned with the interests of a privileged minority than the rest of society.  (A Conservative trait also shown by Mayor Johnson and his penchant for meeting bankers and representatives of the financial services in preference to other interests in London.)

So if Cameron is so desperate for Ken Livingstone not to be elected in May, it follows that Ed Miliband is, if anything, even keener to see the Conservatives turned out of City Hall in four months time.  This is where Michael White is wrong and dwelling in a 1980s past.  Ken Livingstone has more positive and supportive relations with the national Labour leadership than ever before.

A Livingstone victory will be a boost for Ed Miliband and the Labour Party.  It will be a sign that the people of London have rejected not only a Conservative Mayor but also those Conservative policies being pursued by his friends holding national office.