PCC interview: Jamieson still working hard, six years after ‘retiring’

David Jamieson laughs as he is reminded of one of the political moments of his life that he would rather forget.

It is May 2014 and Mr Jamieson is leading the Labour Group on Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council.

He’s standing for election against UKIP candidate Debbie Evans and ought to be safe. Except the election goes wrong at Mr Jamieson is trounced, polling 713 votes to her 1,022. Speaking to reporters afterwards, the then 67-year-old, a former Minister under Tony Blair, decides the game is up. He says: “I will now enjoy retirement. I have already retired once but this time I mean it. Before I stood in this election I said that this would be the last time I stand.”

The next month, he gets a phone call. He’s asked to stand for the vacancy of West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner; following the death of Bob Jones, formerly a Labour councillor from Wolverhampton. After little arm twisting, he agrees. The election is held on 21 August 2014 and Mr Jamieson wins with 50.8 per cent of the vote. Two years later, he’s re-elected.

So we ask a simple question: “In 2014, you lost in the local elections and announced your retirement. How’s it been?”

He laughs. For in the six years that he might have spent gardening, taking his wife out for drives in his classic 1934 Austin Minor or watching cricket, he’s been up to his ears in one of the most powerful offices in the UK. Outside Parliament, only the Mayor of London has a bigger portfolio than the one Mr Jamieson presides. He, like West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, find themselves in the equal second largest offices in the UK.

We ask again. How’s it been. This time, he answers. “It’s been truly wonderful. I wasn’t seeking the job at the time. I’d left Parliament, left local politics and I was looking forward to spending more time in the garden.

“It only came about because of the very sad death of Bob Jones. I was asked if I would come in as a candidate for the PCC in that July 2014 and I have to say, of all the jobs I’ve had in public service, this has been by far the best. It’s given me the opportunity to do things and make things happen and also to have an oversight of one of the most important public functions in the area. There’s no better job. There’s far more to it than every I thought. The job was embryonic and didn’t have a full description, I built it around the ambitions that I and others had for the job.”

The power and influence were attractive, there’s no need to deny that. After all, Mr Jamieson had sat at the top table, being part of Tony Blair’s Government between 1998 and 2005. He’d sat at the Cabinet table and exchanged views with some of the biggest political animals of the time. He was serving as the MP for Plymouth Devonport, back then, an office he held from 1992 to 2005. Within six years of his election he was in the Government, as Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, before being promoted to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport.

Working at a high level attracted him. He’s the man responsible for policing across the Black Country, Birmingham, Coventry and Solihull. “The soft power, the convening role and the ability to influence events, to link public opinion, all of those things appealed. I’ve been able to use the experience that I’ve had in the past. It’s not an easy job, it’s a tough and exacting job.” But it’s one that he loves.

He came into the job at a difficult time. Austerity brought significant cuts and he’s presided over a declining police force, which has lost more than 2,000 officers. He’s had to maintain morale against swingeing cuts, redeploying resources and trying to make do and mend. He’s had to participate in tough decisions of the police estates, with numerous stations closing, in order to save other services that might have otherwise been cut.

He says: “The cuts have been the biggest challenge. We are now moving slowly in the other direction and seeing more money come in. We will see what we see. But make no mistake, the current situation in terms of the country’s finances is dire.”

Mr Jamieson is an avuncular man. Friendly and charming, polite and attentive, he’s got a head for figures and a grasp of detail. The former Grammar School Boy who was a mathematics teacher before moving to run a college in Plymouth, where he later became MP, has been involved in politics for some 50 years.

He tried unsuccessful to secure the Hall Green seat, in Birmingham, in 1974; failing again in 1987 in Plymouth, where he was third. Five years later, he succeeded in a neighbouring Plymouth ward. Ambition has been a driver, as has a determination to work for the common good and deliver to those unable to help themselves.

He was due to stand down as PCC this year, but Covid-19 meant elections were unable to take place and he agreed to stay for another year. “We might have a deju vu next year,” he laughs. “You never know.”

He’s proud of the inroads the West Midlands police have made, particularly in the war on drugs, while being frustrated at the slow rate of change caused by declining officer numbers. “We’ve made inroads in getting the police force to look more like the people in the area. The Met is just about more diverse than us, but we are making the changes more rapidly than anyone anywhere. The area of real concern to me is having the resources to tackle problems on violence, domestic violence and drugs. Those are big areas of concern to me still.

“The battle against drugs is being fought but we’re not winning it.”

A moment of insight. A telling of unpalatable truths. We’re deluded if we think we can hold back the tide by prohibition alone.

“The whole approach that the country has taken to drugs is wrong. We need a whole rethink. That’s an area where we need to do more. The drugs trade in the West Midlands is a multi, multi-million pound enterprise. It’s well equipped. It has a good business model. It’s run by people who are sharp and clever. It’s seriously problematic. The battle against drugs affects all public services. £1.4 billion goes into fighting heroin and crack cocaine use in the West Midlands.

“What we should be doing is reducing the harm to people. Addicts are feeding their drug habit with criminality. We are seeing drug gangs fighting for territory and the most horrific violence is taking place over that. We need a whole new approach that reduces violence and we need to look at the way we treat people on hard drugs, we need to look at them having a medical problem. Like any other disease, being addicted to heroin is a medical problem.

“Instead of banging up the drug users – I’m not talking about the importers and the guys at the top – the guys doing low level crime need help. We need to encourage the courts to offer people the courses where they can go on to redeem themselves and get off their drugs and off their alcohol. If that doesn’t work, they go through the courts and prison follows. But first, we need to turn them back into stable citizens who pay their taxes and make a contribution to society. The approach that the Government has is a punitive approach, rather than a rehabilitative approach. If we rehabilitate the people at the bottom, we’d end the market for very drugs that cause these problems.”

Domestic violence is a key issue and during the Covid-19 pandemic, the West Midlands force has made progress. Lockdown made it harder for criminals to carry out street crimes, car thefts and robberies and so police resources were deployed on those who’d slap about their partner: principally men against women, but also women against men and abusive partners in same-sex relationships.

“The victims of the crime were less able to get away than the perpetrator. It has been a very high priority to us. We’ve needed to make sure that services for victims of crime were kept open. We had a lot of take up. We had one lady in the Black Country who said we’d given her the impetus to go out and deal with what she was suffering every day. She said she’d found the courage to report what was happening and in a short period of time, her abuser was thrown out of the house and she was able to build a new life. She sent a very nice personal message.”

It’s moments like those that make it all worthwhile, that remind Mr Jamieson why he traded a life of vintage cars, tending dahlias and enjoying lunches with his wife for seven more years of public service.

Politics has been a source of personal validation in Mr Jamieson’s life. His earliest political memory came more than a decade before he was eligible to vote.

Though he’d not yet attended school, he distinctly remembers the birth of his cousin. His aunty gave birth, prompting an outpouring of tears from his grandmother. Mr Jamieson struggled to understand why his grandmother was tearful at a propitious event. “Then they told me. My grandmother had been brought up in poverty. She was from the Hull area in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Every child meant a burden to the family. You had to pay the doctor, you had to pay for the hospital. This child, my cousin, was the first to be born under the NHS. So she was shedding tears of joy that the family wasn’t financially impoverished by having a child. They didn’t have to pay for the doctor or the hospital treatment.”

His father tried to explain it to him and the memory remained. Soon after, another event happened. Mr Jamieson was a pupil in primary school, aged 6 or 7, and a fellow pupil was unable to afford shoes, even in the winter.

He lived in a one-up, one-down house, with no running water and no toilet. He had a range cooker and no electricity. “This was the 1950s, I remember asking my father why Lesley, my friend, didn’t have things. His family were poor. His father worked, he was a milkman, and that really struck me. His mother was the most wonderful, kind and generous person as well.

“Even at 7 or 8, I thought my friend Lesley and his family deserved better – I thought there had to be something different, even then.”

Fast forward to the early 1960s and there were vivid memories of slums around Birmingham. Rat-infested houses, with no gardens, tiny windows and no lighting were common place. So, at the age of 19 or 20, Mr Jamieson started taking deprived kids to Devon for a holiday – a route to affecting social change, coincidentally, that West Midlands Mayor Andy Street also took.

“I suppose my socialism was rooted in that practice of doing things that made people’s lives better. I didn’t have copies of Karl Marx and Trotsky on the shelf, I just wanted to make life better for people who were really poor.”

Roll forward to the Blair years, to colossal investment in the fabric of society, to an age of empowerment, to billions going into education. Mr Jamieson was a part of that era. He didn’t so much have a ringside seat, he was actually in the ring. “Those were profoundly exciting times. I’d worked in schools for a long time and was a headteacher in Plymouth. I’d seen so many of the buildings of the schools be poor and under-resourced. I’d met super committed teachers, wonderful and inspiring people, who were often working with poor resources. Those Blair years, that age of Education, Education, Education, those priorities were spot on.

“It children were getting a good education, if they were in a good place by the age of seven, they’d tend to go on and lead a successful life. Before that Government, waiting lists were 18 months – then it came down to 18 weeks. I’m proud to have been part of that and a member of the Government for 8 years.”

He’d been in politics before, of course. In 1970, he was elected as a councillor for Solihull. He was the entire opposition, a group of one. Even then, he effected change, providing better access for the disabled in public buildings. As a Parliamentarian, he rates the introduction of safety measures for children at activity centres among his finest political achievements. He received help from Wrekin MP Bruce Grocutt in getting it introduced.

Away from frontline politics, he engages in charitable work. He’s a semi-regular visitor to Africa, where cricket is used as a political tool to stem the scourge of AIDS and HIV. “I’ve been to Kenya and Uganda and we went into the poorest areas. Cricket was our hook for talking to children and helping them. We took out the ABC message, Abstain, Be faithful and use a Condom.”

One of the kids he met, a Ugandan, remains in touch. He calls Mr Jamieson Mzee, which means ‘a trusted, respected elder’. “Isn’t that nice,” he says. “He must be 28 or 29 now.” Another life changed. Another life improved.

As the next PCC election looms in less than a year, it might finally be time to call it a day. Not that Mr Jamieson will be going far. He’s lived through 50 years of the Labour Party and isn’t about to chuck that in. He’ll still be active, he’s an enthusiastic and committed support of Sir Keir Starmer and hopes he’ll win the keys to Number 10. “Anything I can do to help the Labour Party back into Government, I’ll do.”

He wants to carry on his charitable work and perhaps make one more trip to Africa. “I won’t be idle. I won’t be sat in my chair with a pipe and slippers. I shall be up and about.” He will, however, finally find time to ride around in his 1934 Austin. “I will be looking after that and taking Mrs Jamieson out for rides. We shall be enjoying ourselves and also doing more work in the garden and I’m very keen on growing my own vet. I definitely will not be taking any other role. Even if opportunities come along. The answer is no.” Yes, I know, we’ve heard it all before.