Four bishops in the House of Lords helped vote down the Government’s plans for elected police and crime commissioners. The surprise defeat removes the Government’s flagship policy from the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, although MPs could still bring it back when the legislation returns to the Commons. The Bishops of Hereford and Chichester both spoke against the Government’s proposals and were joined in the division lobbies in favour of the rebel Liberal Democrat amendment by the Bishops of Hereford, and Ripon and Leeds. During the debate, the Bishop of Hereford, Anthony Priddis, attacked the idea of police and crime commissioners (PCCs). He told peers: “As the PCC can be only one person he or she will not have the broad constituency that exists for panels or committees. “If we go for the path which the Bill suggests of locating the authority in just one person, I would have strong concerns, which I am sure many other noble Lords will share, about the processes for appointing our chief constables and about what would happen in situations – which we all hope never arise, but which occasionally will – where there are suspensions or disciplinary issues. “Nothing in the Bill addresses these issues, and putting the power in one person’s hands seems an unnecessary and unjustified risk. “If we are to walk this path, and I hope that we do not, then surely this path, at the very least, needs to be piloted, tested and tried so that there is an evidential base showing it will improve a system which we all agree could be improved but we do not agree is broken. “If we locate authority over our chief constables in one person, the police and crime commissioner, how will that individual spend his or her time? “Locating the role in an individual without the clarity of processes for appointments and other things is a recipe for interfering with the role of the chief constable.” And the Bishop of Chichester, John Hind, raised concerns that under an elected system some areas would be overlooked. “My own county of Sussex is a leafy, largely prosperous place, but with huge pockets of both rural and urban deprivation -— precisely the places that are likely to feel themselves excluded because our community as a whole feels itself to be prosperous and settled,” he said. “It seems extremely difficult to deliver policing, as it is to deliver the services that the church tries to offer, in a community as diverse as that. Great sensitivity is needed to the nature of the communities that are being served.” He also raised fears PCCs would “affect the operational independence of chief constables”. He added: “I have a deep concern for our local communities, the confidence that they have in their police force, and the confidence they can have in that person in whom such trust is placed —- the chief constable. “The issue of operational independence, and how accountability is set in a properly democratic and neither populist nor party political framework, goes right to the heart of the constitutional dangers in the Bill as it stands at present.”