When the role of Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) was created in 2012, Tony stepped back from Westminster to contest the role, which he saw as having the potential to establish a new process of communities actively being involved with — and taking control of — policing by building clear lines of accountability.
As Britain’s first PCC, he was passionate about victims’ rights and services, supporting work at the St Mary’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre and pooling resources to deliver better, more efficient services. This was particularly successful when police were called to attend to those suffering with mental health issues, as police were then able to transfer responsibility to health professionals — a task made so much more difficult following 14 years of austerity-driven cuts.
After the PCC role was subsumed into the Mayor of Greater Manchester role, Tony was defeated by Andy Burnham for the 2017 Labour candidacy. But the general election that same year saw him return to frontline politics after the disgraced Simon Danczuk was barred from standing as a Labour candidate in Rochdale, leading him to resign his party membership and issue a statement claiming Labour didn’t ‘have the interests of Rochdale at heart’.
Tony was rewarded with a majority of 14,819 by the people of Rochdale — the largest ever Labour majority in the town — while Danczuk, standing as an independent, lost his deposit.
Tony Lloyd 