Liberal Democrat candidate for Surrey Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) Nick O’Shea has pledged that: “Any contracts I award as PCC to the private sector will not involve front-line policing and contractors should have to cooperate with the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigations under the same rules as the police.”

Mr O’Shea was speaking during the Liberal Democrats’ conference in Brighton, where the party called for private contractors who take on police duties to be answerable to the IPCC in the same way serving police officers are.

Speaking in the debate in support of the decision, Mr O’Shea said: “Many police forces already use private contractors, and many more PCCs will be tempted to use them to reduce costs.

“The problem with this is that private contractors may not perform these tasks to the same high standard that the police themselves do, but at the moment they cannot be held accountable for the quality and standard of their performance in the same way police officers are.

“The IPCC should be given the same powers to investigate complaints and the actions of private contractors doing police jobs as they have when investigating police officers.

He also demanded that the IPCC should stop using police officers to undertake IPCC investigations: “The present situation where the IPCC frequently uses police officers, often from the same or a neighbouring force, to undertake investigations referred to them, is quite unacceptable. To reinforce public confidence in the police and IPCC, the independence of IPCC investigations must be transparent and assured.”