Tories to decentralise control of police

A Conservative government would wrest control of policing from central government, place it in the hands of local politicians, and increase police numbers.

Shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin made the pledge in a keynote speech to senior police officers, in which he opened up debate on an American-style system of chief constables answerable to local politicians being introduced into the UK.

Addressing the Police Superintendents' Association conference in Newport, Mr Letwin said: "The Home Office has got to let go because, sooner or later, the obsessive, centralising tendencies of the current regime will end in disaster. You can't steer a ship from the shore. And you can't police a neighbourhood from Whitehall."

Pledging that a Conservative government would reverse the recent direction of policing policy, he said: “We will push power down from the politicians and bureaucrats, through the police force hierarchies, and to the police officers on the front line against crime and disorder. Each of you will be accountable, not to me, but to the neighbourhoods in your care," he said.

Mr Letwin denounced as a “misperception” the idea that neighbourhood policing was "dull, dirty and out of date" and said Conservative’s would provide an extra 40,000 police officers for neighbourhood policing.

Claiming that this would triple the number of police on the beat, he added that the Home Office would be involved in policing to a “small extent".

Mr Letwin said more details of the proposals would be unveiled at next month's party conference in Blackpool.

(SP)