Tag Archives: bob ashford

Second Labour Police Commissioner candidate falls foul of “exceptionally tough condition of eligibility”

By Mark Pack | Fri 10th August 2012 - 1:45 pm

Alan Charles has now joined Bob Ashford in standing down as a Labour candidate for November’s Police and Crime Commissioner elections due to a youthful brush with the law.

His statement points the finger at the Home Office and Electoral Commission:

The Labour Party has only now received clarification from the Home Office and the Electoral Commission that juvenile convictions for imprisonable offences will bar people from becoming a police and crime commissioner.

That is, however, not quite the full story because this issue was directly debated when the legislation was going …

How Parliament walked eyes wide open into the Bob Ashford mess

By Mark Pack | Thu 9th August 2012 - 1:08 pm

Would-be Labour Police and Crime Commissioner candidate Bob Ashford is rightly getting a positive press and sympathy from across the political spectrum today for discovering he’s disqualified from standing thanks to a £5 fine he paid 46 years ago.

It is absurd that he can’t stand. It is an absurdity that Parliament deliberately decided to enact, for the ban does not arise from unintended side effects of another measure or from poor drafting. Instead, it was a deliberate decision to introduce an unprecedented restriction on who can stand in the Police …