Ed's up for police

A POLITICIAN who polarises opinion, Ed Balls is right to condemn coalition plans for elected police commissioners. Another tier of bureaucracy is unjustifiable when budgets are under such threat, and when Doncaster has failed to come to grips with the comparable concept of directly-elected mayors – a post that has only added to the town's difficulties.

The Shadow Home Secretary is also right to highlight the extent to which three of this region's forces will be particularly hit by the spending squeeze because a greater proportion of their annual budget derives from a Whitehall grant. Frontline jobs could go at a time when local residents want even more police on the beat.

This funding anomaly needs to be tackled, especially given the scale of the police's responsibilities across this region. However, while it is now the role of Mr Balls and others to hold the Government to account, they also need to be far more pro-active in coming up with sustainable and alternative policy suggestions. For, without Labour's financial recklessness when in office, chief constables would not be facing up to such difficult decisions.