Labour’s priority

Take Mark Burns-Williamson, the public face of policing in West Yorkshire. Under pressure for appointing former Labour parliamentary candidate Isabel Owen as his £53,000-a-year deputy, it has emerged that he has selected Henri Murison, a former Labour councillor, as his research director on an annual salary in the region of £40,000.

This appointment is disturbing on three fronts. First, it affords a platform – at the public’s expense – to another Labour activist, even though Mr Burns-Williamson stressed that this role was advertised on his force’s website. Second, Mr Murison has not been recruited because of his local expertise; his most recent work has been in Newcastle. And finally, why does the commissioner need a research director? After all, Mr Burns-Williamson was chairman of the former West Yorkshire Police Authority for nine-and-a-half years.

Unless he thinks again about the size of his entourage, Mr Burns-Williamson’s continuing consternation over coalition police cuts – and a lack of manpower on the front line – will begin to sound even more hollow.