ONE of the South West’s former Members of the European Parliament is hoping to be elected to oversee Avon and Somerset Police.

Clare Moody is the Labour candidate for Avon and Somerset Police and Crime Commissioner in the elections to the role on May 2.

If elected, she has five key priorities: investing in neighbourhood policing, supporting victims of crime, reducing violent crime such as knife crime and violence against women and girls, preventing crime and restoring trust and confidence in policing.

The police and crime commissioner sets the police precept part of council tax, decides how the budget is spent, sets local policing priorities, and can appoint and dismiss the chief constable.

They also hold a regular performance and accountability panel, holding the chief constable and deputy chief constable to account on local issues.

Ms Moody said: “I think my experience feeds into that strategic role.”

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From 2014 to 2019, Ms Moody was one of the South West’s six representatives in the European Parliament where she worked on the security and defence committee and the budget committee.

She also said she also worked “at the heart of government” in Gordon Brown’s No. 10 between 2008 and 2010, as well as spending 20 years in the trade union.

She said: “When you have budgets, when you have public policy, its about political choices. These are things I’m all too familiar with.”

She previously stood for police and crime commissioner in Wiltshire in 2012, coming second.

If elected in May, she hopes to use the Police and Crime Plan, one of the police and crime commissioners legal duties, to tackle her priorities.

She said: “It’s about where you have that focus.”

She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Wherever I go in the region, whether it’s Bath, Bristol, whether its rural Somerset, the thing that’s constantly coming up is that people don’t feel they see the police. We have lost that neighbourhood policing focus.”

Ms Moody said that she wanted to make sure victims “feel that they are heard and listened to.”  She added: “We really have to do more around crime prevention. […] The best way to solve crime is to stop it happening in the first place.”

She said: “Finally, its about standards in policing and making sure Avon and Somerset Police are the best that they can be in upholding the highest standards so the community feel trust in their police — and also so the great police officers and staff that there are can justifiably be as proud in the force that they serve.”

Ms Moody also hopes to use the “convening power” of the police and crime commissioner to help public services to work together.

She said: “The police are not the only answer to some of those problems.”

Ms Moody said she wants to be a “visible and accountable” police and crime commissioner.

She said: “It’s also about getting out, meeting with communities all over Avon and Somerset. It's engaging with community groups, its engaging with the voluntary charity sector.”

On knife crime, she said: “Obviously when there has been a stabbing — and dear god we have had too many of them — we have to respond by finding the perpetrators and the offenders and they are charged and the weight of the law is brought down.

“But a really important part of this job is prevention.”

She said that messaging and communication in schools was important, adding: “Young people are frightened, their parents are frightened for young people.

“A lot of the motivation for carrying knives is a lot of young people thinking other young people are carrying knives. But if a knife is being carried anyway, it’s a danger.

“We have to do everything we can to keep young people out of the criminal justice system.”

The election for Avon and Somerset Police and Crime Commissioner takes place on May 2, the same day as local elections to Bristol City Council and a Somerset Council byelection for Mendip South and a South Gloucestershire Council byelection for New Cheltenham.