Like them or loathe them, the elections of Police and Crime Commissioners will be an important change to one of our most vital public services, says Steve Bundred.

On 14 September, as the former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was launching his new battle bus in his campaign to be elected as the first Police and Crime Commissioner for Humberside, his Labour Party colleague and former home secretary, Charles Clarke, was arguing that these elections will lead to a 'total disaster', that it would have been better if his party had decided not to put up candidates and that the elections should be called off.