If you live in England or Wales, outside of London, then on 5 May you can vote for your Police and Crime Commissioner.
Do you know who your candidates are? Do you know what they think about wildlife crime?
No, nor me! But there is still just time to find out.
I’ll try to provide some useful information next week.
Any information and contributions will be gratefully received.
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Greater Manchester isn’t having a PCC election either – I presume as it’s to get Home Rule in 2017 on the Greater London model (sort of).
I have looked at the statements of each candidate in my area (Dyfed-Powys) and none of them mention wildlife crime. I’ll email each of them asking them for their views.
The current Derbyshire commissioner was keen to tackle wildlife crime (although it doesn’t seem to have abated over the last few years). He isn’t standing again though so I have messaged all the current candidates for their views.
I emailed my candidates and had a very encouraging response from Labour within 30 minutes. Still to hear from Cons & Libs.
See below:
Hello Stewart.
As you know the current Police & Crime Commissioner Alan Charles has been very strong on tackling Wildlife Crime issues and negotiated a proportionate and appropriate response from Derbyshire Police. As his Deputy for the last 3 and a half years I have been fully supportive of his position. So if I were to be elected as the next PCC I would continue to give the same priority to Wild Life crime as Alan.
Raptor persecution is one that Alan and I have also been concerned about. Indeed I have given talks on this issue promoting the fact that grouse moor shooting and other activities have endangered Raptors and nearly eradicated them in certain estates. I have also gone out on site supporting the work being done by National Trust and local Raptor groups to protect Raptors during the breeding season.
Hope this is helpful and please let me know if you would like to discuss this further.
Hardyal Dhindsa
Labour PCC Candidate Derbyshire
Any “useful information” yet Mark?
I contacted my candidates in Derbyshire via Facebook. I also got a very similar and encouraging response from Hardyal (see above). I got a good response from the UKIP candidate who said he was their candidate because he believes in their stance on Europe but if elected, they have no whip system and he could pursue his own policies. He said he took the issue seriously and would devote resource to it. I got an automated ‘dear resident’ response from the conservative candidate with nothing of relevance and a ‘we’ll pass it on to the candidate’ response from the lib dems, with as yet nothing to show for it.
A response from the current North Yorkshire PCC, Julia Mulligan to my question;
Me: Hello Julia, I wonder what your stance is on wildlife crime in North Yorkshire, particularly the continuing persecution of birds of prey?
Julia: Thanks Andy for your question; we’ve some award winning wildlife crime officers in North Yorkshire but I do recognise that there are certain areas where people feel this is not taken seriously enough. I don’t take sides on issues – it’s important that the police deal with incidents according to the law and that definitely includes wildlife crime. You may also be interested to know that I helped set up and chair something called the National Rural Crime Network – we’ve had the national wildlife crime unit present to us and our members (31 PCCs) take the issue very seriously.
I thanked Julia for her response.