MPs are expected to try to block the appointment of a controversial lawyer to the post of Chief Inspector of Constabulary, setting up a dispute with the Home Secretary.
The cross-party Home Affairs Select Committee has already clashed with Tom Winsor over his report on proposed reforms for police pay and conditions, which led to him being branded a “reluctant witness” who made mistakes when gathering evidence.
And it is being inundated with comments from officers who say the former rail regulator has no understanding of how forces work, and that his proposed appointment as the £195,000 a year watchdog is an act of provocation by Theresa May who is determined to shake up their culture.
It is likely that when the powerful committee holds its pre-appointment hearing for Mr Winsor, its members will conclude that he does not have the required experience for the role and will write to Theresa May asking her to re-open the selection process.
Steve McCabe, a Labour member of the committee, said: “The committee has the power to say that in their judgment, he’s not the ideal candidate.
“I think it’s perfectly possible they may come to that conclusion because unless they’re going to be presented with an entirely new job description, then he doesn’t have the experience or the qualities or the characteristics to make him an ideal candidate. He’s a departure from 156 years of history for this job.
“I’m not saying the Home Secretary shouldn’t innovate, but I think she should explain what it is she’s innovating on.”
Another MP said: “I am beside myself with surprise as to why on earth they should appoint someone who has never been a police officer to this job, which requires day to day contact with police officers. What kind of message are they sending out?”
Lynne Featherstone, a junior Home Office minister, admitted on Radio 4’s Today programme that there were “still hurdles for Tom Winsor to pass” because he must prove to the select committee “he has the understanding to do the job”.
Keith Vaz, chairman of the committee, said: “The Committee looks forward to hearing from the Home Secretary’s candidate.”
But he also wrote to Mrs May saying it was “worrying” that he only heard the announcement about Mr Winsor from a journalist.
If the committee does try to veto Mr Winsor’s appointment, following a hearing either on June 19th or 26th, the Home Secretary may simply choose to over-rule its decision.
In a similar case this February, the education select committee rejected the appointment of Prof Les Ebdon as a new universities “tsar” but Vince Cable, the business secretary, brushed its criticism aside.
Meanwhile there continued to be surprise at the announcement on Thursday that Mr Winsor was the preferred candidate for the HMIC role, which would make him the first civilian outside policing or the military to hold the post.
Several commentators believe it is another deliberate confrontation between the Conservatives, who once prided themselves on being the party of law and order, and the police. It follows budget cuts of up to 20 per cent, the imposition of elected Police and Crime Commissioners who have the power to fire chief constables, and the proposed Winsor reforms which will make it easier to sack officers and bring in outsiders to senior ranks.
David Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary, told Radio 4’s World at One: “It is almost like poking a stick through the bars of the lion’s den, at a moment when the police service are most on edge and most subject to disagreement and friction.
“I think the Home Secretary has taken a deliberate decision to say to the service ‘Not only are we not backing off to your objections to Tom Winsor, we are not actually going to be listening to your cry of pain in terms of what’s happening to the service as a whole’.”
The former chief executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency, Peter Neyroud, said: “The Chief Inspector’s role has been a pivotal role in providing independent advice to the Government about policing and I just don’t think that is a role that Tom Winsor – a man for whom I have a high regard – can possibly do.”
Ian Hanson, chairman of the Greater Manchester Police Federation, representing the rank-and-file, has written to the select committee describing the planned appointment of Mr Winsor as a “deeply provocative and ill-informed step”.
He said the commercial lawyer with White & Case did not have the experience to guide chief constables, and would be ill-placed to judge the success of his own reforms to the service.
Nick Herbert, the police minister, insisted: “Tom Winsor is somebody who not only has experience as a regulator, where he was rail regulator – and everyone will remember just how independent of the government he was when he did that job – but also having authored his report for the last 18 months.”
MPs likely to try to block Tom Winsor’s appointment as police watchdog
Read also: Winsor: Committee Hearing Delayed
And - Theresa May: Ministers ‘not picking fight’ with police over Winsor appointment
Euro Converter
Whilst this is a cross party committee I cannot imagine that there will be much support from the Labour members for Winsor as they will remember what he did when he was the rail regulator under the last government.
There was a lot of political infighting over Rail Track and it eventually went to the wall, (the same day the US and UK began the war in Afghanistan). The government realised that ending Railtrack’s administration required the High Court to be satisfied that the company was solvent. Alistair Darling needed Winsor to announce his willingness to carry out an interim review of the company’s financial position, with the probability that he would allocate substantially greater sums to the company for the operation, maintenance and renewal of the network.
To enable Winsor to make that decision, Darling knew that he needed to make a formal statement to Parliament to the effect that the government had reviewed the economic regulatory regime for the railways and was satisfied with it, and in particular that its independence was an essential cornerstone of the regime and of continuing private investor confidence in the railways. Darling made that statement on 12 June 2002, and Winsor announced his intention to carry out the interim review on 22 September 2002.
As a result, on 2 October 2002 the government was able to tell the High Court that Railtrack was not insolvent because the regulatory review had been promised and could lead to substantially more money for the company. The High Court was satisfied with that explanation and discharged the railway administration order on 2 October 2002. Railtrack was immediately acquired by Network Rail and renamed Network Rail Infrastructure Limited on 3 February 2003.
It was reported that Tom Winsor announced a £7.4 billion increase in funding for Railtrack taking it’s income for the five years 2004-2009 to £22.2 billion.
Winsor was severely criticised by some politicians -- notably the House of Commons Transport Select Committee under the chairmanship of Gwyneth Dunwoody MP -- for his power to increase public spending on the railways by such a large amount without Treasury approval.
Winsor’s reply was that that was his statutory remit and he would not be deterred by irrelevant political considerations in carrying it out.
So it does not bode well for the future of policing because if he is prepared to ignore ‘political considerations’ then the Federation has no chance.
Even if the committee does not endorse the appointment what’s the betting that Theresa May will appoint him in any case
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