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WATCH: Police and Crime Commissioner hits out at Labour's 'smokescreen' plans to scrap role
Nov 13, 2025
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire has branded Labour's decision to scrap the role entirely a "load of rubbish".Hitting out at the decision, Donna Jones told GB News that the policy has been "plucked out of the air" and is merely a "smokescreen".FULL STORY HERE.
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Now, Labour is gearing up for the biggest policing shake-up in years
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with plans to scrap police and crime commissioners altogether. Well, joining me now is one of those
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It's the Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Donna Jones
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Donna, always an absolute pleasure. How do you feel about the Labour Party, given your role
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and all the other police and crime commissioner roles, to chop? Well, look, I mean, Martin, this is not completely unexpected
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They did announce last year, coming out of the general election, that they wanted all of England to be in a mayoral devolved devolution programme by 2029
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by the time of the next general election. What they also said, like in my area, in Hampshire, in the Isle of Wight
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that where the police and crime commissioner's boundary was coterminous with that of the new proposed mayoral area
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that they were going to subsume the police and crime commissioner role into the mayoral area
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So my area, we're electing a mayor for the first time in May next year. My role will go. I'm running to be the mayor as it happens
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So actually, I supported this. And I did a lot of work with Yvette Cooper when she was Home Secretary
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There were 12 different police reform boards that I sat on. And actually, one of those boards, I did speak about the role of the police and crime commissioner
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And to say that I don't think it's helpful to have both a mayor and a police and crime commissioner
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two people that are directly elected to represent the same county or couple of counties, as in my case
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or a city like Liverpool, let's say, or Manchester. It's not helpful to have two elected politicians in that same space
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One of the things they are saying, though, is they're doing it to save money. I disagree completely on that
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And the only other final point I'll make is that when we see things like the programme
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that was on the news about six weeks ago about the Met and some of the atrocities that have happened
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in the Metropolitan Police Service, you do need independent scrutiny of the police
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so the Labour government just needs to be careful that we don lose that oversight on behalf of the public Well Donald Jones they are claiming it would save the taxpayer million That a good chunk of change if it came in
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But I put it to you. How can mayors be trusted to run the police forces
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when they can't really seem to run around Mario who have to collect your weedy bins
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Yeah, it's a good point. And also, this thing about saving £100 million
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what a load of rubbish. Let me explain what they mean by that
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It's a one-off saving. They're saying they'll save £100 million by not running PCC elections
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Well, actually, Police and Crime Commissioner elections happen on the same day as the local elections
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So actually, the cost of opening polling stations and paying for counting agents in the city halls across the country is covered anyway by the fact we've got local elections going on
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So yes, there will be a saving. You're not printing the ballot papers and not counting some of those extra ballot papers
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it is a one-off cost it will not save a hundred million pound a year what this is is a Labour
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government whose backs are up against the wall they ran on a general election pledge last year
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that they were going to bring in 13 000 more neighbourhood police officers they said they
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were going to do that I bet Cooper was very clear they were going to do that by finding all of these
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efficiencies cutting all this meatless fat off the bone in the policing system they've not been able
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to do that they can't now pay for those extra 13 000 police officers number 10 yesterday were
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clearly short on an announcement today. The pressure's on the Prime Minister for many other things
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that are going on, including the migrant situation you've just been talking about, and so they
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plucked this one out of the air. They know that Police and Crime Commissioners have never been particularly
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popular, and so they plucked this one out of the air, when actually it dovetails into
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their mayoral policy anyway. It's a little bit of a smokescreen, and yet again
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a hollow promise that's not really founded to try and fund their 13,000
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cops. It's not going to work. They won't be able to fund them from that. Well, Donald
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Jones, you've certainly had your Weetabix. That's the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner
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for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Donald Jones, thank you very much for joining us on the
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show today
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