This time last year, I set myself a challenge - to speak at the Lib Dem annual conference on an issue that mattered to me. Anyone who knows me will tell you I dread public speaking, which is why I set myself this tricky challenge.
I fulfilled that ambition last Sunday, when I added my voice to a debate on the Conference floor in Bournemouth on reducing crime and improving policing.
This debate was kicked off by a new policing policy paper launched by Chris Huhne and the Lib Dem Home Affairs Team last week which included the following proposals:
- 10,000 extra police on the streets, paid for by scrapping ID cards
- Decentralising the force by scrapping counterproductive central targets, introducing the local setting of priorities and budgets and the direct election of the majority of police authority members
- Creating a National Crime Reduction Agency to assess police and criminal justice policies on evidence and to spread best practice
- Respecting independent decisions on police pay
This policy was adopted by the Lib Dems in full on Sunday and you can see Chris Huhne's speech on the proposals here.
One of the great things about the Lib Dems, which makes us different from the other Parties is the way we make policy. At Lib Dem conference, Policy motions are published and then individual members from local parties are invited to speak in the debate that follows at federal Conference. This means that party members have a big say in making policy and any new policies cannot become official party policy without majority support of the membership. I'm not sure that's how it works in the Labour or Conservative parties! At their conferences it seems to me to be the case that any sort of debate on party policy is avoided for fear of scaring off potential voters.
Anyway, I focussed my short speech on the need to improve the responsiveness of Neighbourhood Policing. Local policing must reflect the actual priorities of local people, not the priorities of the Police or politicians.
I highlighted the problems local people in Reading are facing sometimes even getting through on the phone to the out-of-town call centre. I said that people will only have full confidence in Neighbourhood Policing when they feel that their voices are being heard and the issues that matter to them are being tackled.You can watch my speech and the rest of the debate here.
This is one of my local campaigns and something I have raised publicly with senior opinion formers: with the Home Affairs Select Committee in April and Labour-run Reading and Thames Valley Police chiefs in July.
I will be revisiting this issue at the end of the month when the issue is discussed by the Safer Reading Campaign, a partnership of Thames Valley Police and Reading Borough Council.
Fair pay for Police in the Thames Valley is also huge issue affecting Reading which the Lib Dems are campaigning on. Cllr Gareth Epps, prospective parliamentary candidate and Lib Dem Group Leader submitted an amendment on behalf of Reading Liberal Democrats to call for a reassessment of the way Central Government funds Thames Valley Police, in order to tackle longstanding difficulties of police recruitment and retention, and fund the Neighbourhood Policing programme to the extent it is funded in London.
The amendment has been accepted into the motion by the movers, and will almost certainly become Liberal Democrat policy.
My Redlands colleagues will be blogging about other issues that cropped up at Conference as will no doubt our esteemed colleagues over at Katesgrove LibDems.
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