Tory plans for sheriffs unveiled
The Conservative Party’s shadow home secretary, Oliver Letwin, unveiled plans today to introduce US-style sheriffs to curtail Britain’s growing crime problem.
Speaking at the party’s annual conference in Blackpool on Tuesday, Mr Letwin, delivered a keynote speech, in which he told delegates that the Government must devolve more power to the regions.
He advocated power handed directly to elected sheriffs, mayors or police authorities and said the aim of the proposals was to bring police forces closer to the communities they serve.
Mr Letwin perceives sheriffs as able to bear responsibility for ‘the allocation of resources’ at local level and as providing a key figurehead to whom chief constables could be answerable.
Under the Tory plans people would be given a bigger say on policing on their local streets and the home secretary would be stripped of powers to control police forces’ priorities.
Mr Letwin said the Tories had to show they were on the side of the victims of crime on Britain’s ‘hard pressed estates’.
The plans also involve setting up a new National Police Bureau and repeated the Tory promise to recruit an extra 40,000 police officers over eight years.
The extra police would be paid for by scrapping the current asylum system and replacing it with a quota system through which asylum seekers would be processed in offshore immigration centres, he said.
Earlier in the day former party leader William Hague responded to recent in fighting within the Conservative Party, telling critics to “shut up” and support Iain Duncan Smith.
A number of Tory MPs and senior figures have criticised party policy and the embattled leader in the run up to this year’s conference.
Mr Duncan Smith has refuted rumours that he plans to step down and has insisted that he will lead his party to victory in the next election.
