Last week’s decision by Merseyside’s Labour Police Commissioner Jane Kennedy to appoint yet another Labour councillor – the third in a row – as her Deputy Commissioner has come under attack from Southport’s former Lib Dem MP John Pugh.



The post is on a 3 day a week basis pro-rata to a full-time rate of £53,000 a year, and the appointment was announced by the Police Commissioner on her website at

http://www.merseysidepcc.info/36/sec...be_next_deputy

Despite being elected just under 5 years ago on a pledge not make such an appointment, Former Liverpool MP Jane Kennedy soon changed her mind and chose a Liverpool Labour councillor as her first Deputy Commissioner.

The manner in which that first appointment led to serious concerns being voiced at the time by the cross-party watchdog, the Merseyside Police Panel, particularly as the well-paid post was unadvertised.

“Having appointed one Labour councillor from Liverpool as her Deputy in early 2014, Jane Kennedy followed this up in August 2015 by appointing another Labour councillor, this time from St Helens, as her new Deputy” commented John Pugh.

“Now, within the last few days, she’s announced her third Deputy Commissioner and this time we are back to yet another Liverpool Labour councillor.”


“Back in 2014, Jane Kennedy stated quite openly that membership of the Labour Party was a key requirement of the publicly-funded Deputy role. In contrast, in many places the Police Commissioner role itself has no party affiliation. Sadly this is the sort of cronyism that is all too prevalent in the Labour Party.”

Why do we need a Police Commissioner at all, and now she is empire building appointing more and more subservient cronies to make her feel good and powerful.

To whom is she accountable? Just another layer of expensive bureaucracy which we tax payers have to pay for, not to mention the ongoing meggabucks pension pot.

Although agree and have said well before John Pugh that the PCC (which he voted for) is a very expensive organisation chart I'd say maybe our former MP should come back when it's clearer what he and his party delivered for Southport over the last 20 years other than meaningless monologues and apparently keeping "the nasty Tories out". I'd think if they'd delivered something top cheerleader Prasnee would have said as would the whole forest of spam shoved through our letter boxes.

As for what could be seen as cronyism:

1) we have more than 10 times the number of Lib Dem peers than MPs....hardly representative of the people
2) at the end of the coalition we had Sir Vince Cable, Sir Simon Hughes, Sir Ed Davey and the shadow chancellor Sir Danny Alexander which is astonishing seeing as the Libs say the financial issues and cuts are all the nasty tories
3) we had party members and councillors as John Pughs caseworkers which especially with Cllr Dawson it felt he was fighting with other parties and releasing press releases more often than not popping up at any time of day to thwart Cllr Barton pointing at something first.
4) Wheb it was allowed John Pugh employed family members, did he advertise the position?
5) The Lib Dems rented their southport office using taxpayers money and received quarterly donations which was reported as "office re-renting" and is it transparent that the rate paid was the right market rate

Also, would we trust the chaos that is our local Lib dems in a position of authority, they can't work together with own party let alone cross party or where they need to spend money.

However on the brightside it feels like with our new MP and campaigners like Liz Savage we have a far better chance of positive change....I was also wondering why we haven't heard much from the libs since the election despite the press release to keep on councilloring.

Will John Pugh be issuing an apology for his attack given the article on the other site which states?

In the Panel’s letter of confirmation, Vice-Chair Cllr Simon Shaw wrote: “The Panel wished to place on record its satisfaction with the openness and transparency of the recruitment process carried out for this position.”