“I might well be interested in putting my name forward”

What we asked Matthew Scott, Kent Police and Crime Commissioner

Matthew Scott is currently serving his third term as Kent Police and Crime Commissioner. We caught up with him to discuss crime rates across Kent, the recent election results for the Conservatives, and whether he is eyeing the job of Mayor of Kent…

Kent Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Scott.

Politics has become even more confrontational and divisive. Have you had to change anything about your approach to the role to remain apolitical?
No, not personally. I've always said I'll work with anybody who wants to achieve the same goals. My goals are quite clear: to cut crime, support victims and build trust. I'll work with anybody who wants to do that. In the last couple of years, we've got the new Labour council in Medway, got a new Labour government, we've now got a Reform county council. Pretty much all three things which were Conservative before are now different. But that doesn't change the way in which I operate. I've already had an initial engagement with the new leader of Kent County Council, and we're going to get together and have a chat about a few things. It's not going to change very much. The only time that I will push back is when someone is being overtly political and it's unnecessary. In fact, I think we are in a pretty good place in that respect.

For the first time since you've been Police and Crime Commissioner, you have a Labour Home Secretary. Has that changed your relationship with the Home Office at all?
Not especially, no. The government's priorities around its safer streets mission, there's nothing in there you would say, ‘That's not right.’ They're talking about knife crime, domestic abuse, violence against women and girls, anti-social behaviour. They were things that the Home Office were already focused on. I think the only real challenge we've had has been, again, the continuation of funding. The Home Secretary promised to compensate fully for the rises in National Insurance, and they didn't. That was a really early test of the relationship between us, so was disappointing, but we'll carry on making the case in the comprehensive spending review to do that. Over the last nine years, whilst the political leadership of the Home Office has changed, the relationships that my team and I built up with Home Office officials is really positive. I'm still involved at the national level on the Police Efficiencies and Collaboration Programme, which is at our Home Office Board. There hasn't been too much by way of change really, but we'll see where it goes.

You are now one of the more high-profile people in Kent within the Conservative Party. What are your thoughts regarding the recent KCC election and what it means for the party?
It was a big result. It was a surprising one. I don't think anyone was under the illusion that we were necessarily going to win a majority, but I think the scale of the defeat was something of a surprise. As Conservatives, we have to learn the lessons of what happened last year. Not all of them are of Kent Conservatives’ making. A lot of it was we were being punished again for what happened under a Conservative government. We had 14 years in which we got a lot of things right. In the first term, when we increased the tax personal allowance, when we introduced free schools, the educational achievements that we delivered, bringing back the 20,000 police officers. It wasn't all bad, but there were lots of things in which people had lost trust in us, on immigration, on the constant infighting within the parliamentary party, the changes of leaders.
We have to acknowledge that people had had enough, and unfortunately, a lot of county councillors paid the price for that. That, coupled with the rise of Reform, meant that a lot of good people who didn't deserve to lose their seats. Lots of really hardworking county councillors, as is tragically the case at these local elections, lose their seats because of what's happened nationally. We'll wait and see what happens with the actual administration. If they want to work with me to cut crime and support victims, I will work with them. There's no point in being standoffish about it. Also, the experience that I've got will help them as they come to get to grips with something quite significant, where a lot of their new councillors don't have experience of local government.

If there was a future PCC election and Reform stood, do you think that that trend would continue? Could Conservatives win that election?
I think they could. Yes, the General Election was tough. The KCC elections were tougher. We may or may not have district and Medway elections in 2027. A lot depends now on local government reorganisation as to what is going to happen next. There is now a lot of pressure on Reform to show that they can do what they say they're going to do and what they actually are going to deliver for their residents. I don't think it's an open and shut case that that means that we will lose again in 2027 or in 2028 or in 2029. I think they need to be held to account for what it is they're going to deliver. As Conservatives, we're working really hard to understand why it is we did lose in 2024 and in 2025. But we're out there already knocking on doors, talking to residents, understanding what we can do for local communities. That's where I think the party has some work to do and where the rebuild is going to come from. We have to rebuild again as community activists in our local areas, but our policy renewal teams need to understand what it is our country wants and what the country needs. I hope to play a full part in that process.

As you mentioned, there is local government reorganisation and regional mayors, with the role of PCC phased out and replaced by that regional mayor. Is that a good idea?
We should have a look at it. I'm not opposed to it. I think that when it comes to electoral reform and constituency boundaries, people often look at what benefits them rather than the greater good. People tend to pick electoral systems based on what suits them, not the greater good. I think all parties are guilty of that. But I think we should look at it. I think that we need to look at what is actually happening in those areas that have these powers already, the West Midlands and Manchester, and learn from their experiences. I think a lot of people think that this mayoral role that they're creating is some kind of really executive level, like the Mayor of London who could just do what they want to do. It's actually not, you have a Combined Authority that you have to work with to get your policies and your plans through. I think that's going to be a challenge, particularly in the current political climate, for someone to come in and be able to be that person who can work with people of different parties and different authorities to actually deliver for our county. I'm not opposed to the idea of the mayor.
What I will say is that I don't know what the timetable looks like now for Kent, given the government's decision not to proceed with the mayoralties here, whether or not the government will invite a next round of mayoralties to apply in 2026 for a 2027 election. But we also don't know presently what's happening with the six that they are going ahead with. I'm up for a conversation about all of these things. It's got to be a model that the residents support, that gives them proper access to democracy and one that's going to deliver for them.

Did you understand the rationale why Kent wasn't chosen for a regional mayor?
I don't think we really know the true reason why Kent was not picked. They invited a lot more applications than they actually agreed to. I think the thinking was that they were going to approve ten, but instead only went for six. I don't know whether that was because of the capacity of the government to be able to deliver that many at pace, whether they believed that different areas were ready, or if it was too big a change to do all at once. I don't think we really know the true reason for it, but we are where we are. The elections proceeded. We have Kent County Council now for at least another three years. We'll see what happens next. But local government reorganisation is happening anyway. This top-down reorganisation of councils is a positive thing in respect to that you'll have some services which have been done 13 or 14 times will now only be done three, maybe four times. Some of the strategic partnerships will be done in a different way too. That's still happening, and we'll keep an eye on what that means for policing and criminal justice, but there is still more to come for our local authorities.

When Kent was being considered for a mayor, were you considering running for the role?
I was thinking about it. I was interested. Obviously, it never came to materialise. Whilst the White Paper set out some of what the powers of a potential mayoralty could be, at that point there wasn't a decision. Yeah, of course, if it's something that they propose again in the future, I might well be interested in putting my name forward, particularly if it retains the PCC powers. But we'll see what happens next. Obviously, local government reorganisation is the priority now for Kent. We'll see whether that comes with a mayoralty in the future.

You spoke in the past about the challenges facing Kent Police, both in terms of budgets and funding per head of population and the consequences that has for police numbers. Have things improved? Are they looking like they might improve?
They were always going to be challenging, but I think if anything, they've got worse over the last 12 months. The funding settlement in December was short of what we needed. We knew that was likely to be the case. However, some of the changes that the government made around National Insurance have made things harder because again, it's another funding stream which didn't quite match what we needed. We're about £300,000 short on that, and they've moved around a few funding streams, such as neighbourhood policing in order to try and support forces. I think overall, we are slightly worse off. The pay settlement wasn't fully funded. National Insurance wasn't fully funded despite their promises. We've now got the difficult job of trying to balance the books with a slightly more difficult situation than we were already in. I think we'll be able to do that without too much of an impact on frontline services. We'll maintain our police officer numbers this year and we'll still invest in more neighbourhood policing. But there are challenges in the wider system as well. It's not just the National Insurance rises and the pay not being met, we've still got challenges in our court system and the wider justice system, which are meaning the victims could go without justice for longer.

The nature of job titles can sometimes confuse rather than clarify what happens. What powers do you have over the court system?
I chair an organisation called the Criminal Justice Board, which brings together the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the court service, probation, reducing re-offending. All of those different organisations try and work together to make the system work well. We can hold each other to account, but actually, we can challenge each other and work better together. We've used it to really focus on those areas of wider performance that could make the system work better for victims because I think with a lot of these things, agencies have a tendency just to talk about themselves and what they need. We've got to remember that everything we're doing is about victims, it's about witnesses, and it's also about suspects, who having been accused of a crime and are charged and are a suspect, deserve their day in court too, whatever the outcome. The biggest challenge we have is our Crown Court backlog. Let's be clear about that insufficient capacity. We have to do everything we can together locally in the absence of any real national action plan to try and do what we can for victims.

In the last election, you came second to Labour in Medway despite a comfortable win in the rest of Kent. Does that tell us anything about the difference between Medway and Kent?
I didn't lose by a lot in Medway.
It was close, I'll give you that.
It was close. But I think it was part of the trend. Labour had won the council elections in Medway, and also they won the parliamentary seats last year as well. There are times when you won't win everything. In the 2021 elections, I did the clean sweep everywhere. You pick up from different areas how things have changed across the county, but what we couldn't obviously foresee was I didn't have a Reform opponent at that election. It was probably harder to see quite a scale of what was coming in subsequent elections because, at that point, we didn't know they were happening. We went from a PCC election, I was having my first holiday in a long time when I got the message through saying there was going to be a General Election. There are challenges to all of that. Medway might have voted Labour, it doesn't mean I don't pay any attention to it. In fact, I'd probably spend a lot more time in Medway with the challenges that the area has. We try and strike the right balance.

The number of people in Kent who voted in 2024 was almost 50% of those who voted in 2021. Does that invalidate the role at all?
No, I don't think so. Everyone was given the opportunity to have their say, and turnouts fluctuate at different elections. We wouldn't say a councillor's role is invalid because they got the same turnout at the council by-election. Much the same as that we wouldn't say that the KCC results are invalid because they didn't achieve 50% of the turnout. Democracy is priceless. We should cherish it. We give people the opportunity to say what they want. We also give the people the opportunity to not take part. I obviously remain committed to continuing to promote the role, to make sure that people understand what it is PCCs do. But there is also an opportunity with local government. I've argued that we should have the PCC elections at the same time as other elections. It will help boost turnout, and it will help people be more engaged, and it will reduce the cost of running the elections. They chose not to do that. That's fair enough. But I think with local government reorganisation coming, they should look at having the PCC or the mayoralty, whichever one it is they take forward, on the same day as council elections. That way, you can make it more of a thing, a democracy day if you will, where you bring out all your by-elections, all your council elections, your mayoralties and PCCs all at the same time, not dissimilar to the idea of midterms in America, but that way you make a big deal of it, and more people will take part.

When we spoke before, the Inspectorate of Constabulary rated Kent Police as outstanding when it came to recording data. On the website now, it says Kent Police is not outstanding in any area. Why has Kent got worse at recording data?
Well, it technically hasn't because they didn't inspect us on it this time. They moved around the categories that they were inspecting, and they chose not to do crime data integrity this time. We technically lose our outstanding even though behind the scenes, I'm still pushing the Chief and pushing the force to make sure that what they are still doing, if it were inspected, still would have achieved that grading, and it would. The inspections, quite rightly, change every single time. They will look at a particular set of criteria every two years.
We've just had a notification of what that framework will look like next time. They'll look at different things to what they looked at last time. It's very hard to compare like with like anyway. I think the key thing is that in both inspections, the inspector said that we were not good enough at responding to crime or investigating crime. The two basics that people want the police to do. I'm confident that had we been inspected on those two criteria again, we would be much better now. I'm absolutely confident of that. That won't be the case because they'll be assessing us on different criteria again next time. I think it's right to move things around because if it becomes predictable, then forces will do what's measured, not what is needed. The HMIC reports are important. I know they frustrate PCCs and chief constables when they come out and they are negative, but actually, they're much like Ofsted reports. If you don't have that rigorous independent inspection, how do you know what quality of education your child is getting? In the same vein, with policing, how do you really know what quality of policing you're getting if you don't see that independent verification of it? I think there's still some way to go. I think our areas for improvement could be ticked off should they wish to come back and have a look at them. We'll see what happens when the next inspection happens. We're due for another one this year.

You mentioned areas for improvement. It states that Kent Police requires improvement in responding to the public and investigating crime. These seem fairly fundamental parts of the job. What is happening to improve that?
The response to crime was heavily influenced by the fact that they were not answering the phone quick enough. Our control room data for the time they did the inspection was dreadful. It really was. In some months leading up to that inspection, 55% of 101 calls in one month would not be answered. That's shocking. It's terrifying, actually. All those opportunities missed for investigation. We have improved our call handling. It's now one of the best in the country. Our 999 call handling is typically in the top three in the country. Response has improved because we've looked at how we triage our response calls and making sure that we're following up, but also in introducing things like rapid video response so we can talk to people who need an immediate response, then sending a car around if that's what they want to do. In terms of investigations, when you look at some of our performance now on rape and sexual offences, on domestic violence and on burglary, our solve rates are increasing quite a lot. Our burglary solve rate, for example, is double the national average. That doesn't just happen. That requires proactive investment in your CID and your detectives in order to deliver that. I think that we have made some really good progress in the last two years. This year we'll find out whether that has been sustained. The data says it's good. It's better, but there is still some way to go.

The Spectator has written about how the crime rate in Canterbury is nearly 50% higher than the national average. Why are things so bad in Canterbury?
I think you've got a mixture of issues with regards to Canterbury. Obviously, you have high visitors from outside of the county. You have obviously the mass tourist appeal of what happens in Canterbury city centre, and obviously what you have happening on the coast at Whitstable and at Herne Bay. But what we have got is a really good response locally. We've got a team there which is really well led, who are absolutely on top of dealing with those issues. We've had a safer streets programme there, which we ran with the city council, which invested in CCTV, street lighting, tackling violence against women and girls, and it is also one of our hotspot areas for extra patrols. It's looking at things like that. From looking from the outside in, that is quite concerning. I acknowledge that absolutely. What I would say is that the district is a safe place to live, work, and visit. We encourage tourism, we encourage business, but we've got a really good team of beat officers now providing the visible reassurance that I think people in the city and surrounding towns and villages would want.

Statistically, where is the least safe place in Kent, and what, if anything, is being done about it?
In terms of crime rates, you'd probably look to Thanet and Medway, just in terms of volume, but also the harm. Those areas benefit from greater amounts of police resources than maybe similar-sized districts. Our resource allocation is based on not just population and what taxes people pay, it's based on crime, it's based on need and other demands. We have more beat officers in those areas out on the streets. They are in our hotspot areas for extra patrols which take place in the nighttime economy. My violence reduction unit are working across the whole county, but specifically in those areas to provide diversionary activities for young people and focus deterrents in order to stop them from getting involved in crime and anti-social behaviour. Overall, across the whole county, we've seen some really good progress. Following Knife Crime Awareness Week, we've seen a 17% drop in knife crime in Kent. We were one of the top five in the country for the reduction in knife crime over the last year. That's not something that every county can say. We've had a 19% reduction in serious violence as well. The combination of all of those things means that we are making Kent safer. We are bringing down those crime rates, and over the last four years, we've seen crime fall by nearly 11%.

What do you do to unwind?
At the moment, more running. I've got back into the running again. Last year, I ran the London Marathon. I'm one of those marathon runners who tells you I've run a marathon, pretty much like all of them.

What was your time?
My time was four hours, 40 minutes. I was very happy with that. My goal was to get under five hours. I was rather foolishly perhaps doing that at the same time as trying to win a Kent Police and Crime Commissioner election, but both were successful. I got injured a couple of months after. I sprained my ankle really badly, and I've only in the last couple of months been able to get back out again. It's been that and my music, really.

Within PCCs, within your colleagues, is there an unpopular opinion that you have?
(pause) I think you’ve got me stumped there, actually.
Is there anything you disagree on, or you find yourself either ahead of the curve or behind?
In terms of PCCs, we do occasionally take slightly different policy positions. Some of us are more in favour of criminalisation and strong penalties on drugs. I actually think we need to still be tougher on it. I know that that's not the popular view in the world, in the public at the moment, but through the work that I do and the work I do with my colleagues and some of the academic research that we're seeing now, I think that decriminalisation, i.e. police looking the other way and not enforcing the law, or by legalisation, I genuinely think would be a massive public health mistake. I am very worried about the longer-term health impacts of cannabis and cocaine. We're seeing more overlaps between the use of drugs and driving, for example. A lot more of our driving prosecutions now do involve drug taking, and that's a worry.
It's not just about what your view is on cannabis or otherwise. Actually, there are bigger problems which we are seeing. A lot of our murders, for example, are linked to drugs still. A lot of cases of violence are linked to drugs and alcohol. I think if we were to move towards a place of decriminalisation, I think we would remove the disincentive for people to become involved. That isn't just the only solution, though. We do still need to extend the treatment paths, the rehabilitation paths, because there are some people who are using it occasionally. There are lots of people who are using it habitually and need to try and break that cycle in a joined-up way. We have to enforce, but we also have to rehabilitate as well.

You're now a podcaster. What led to the Rebuild podcast?
There were a few episodes in the aftermath of the PCC elections and then subsequently, the General Election. As a group of PCCs, Conservative Group PCCs, last year, in what was a very bad year for us, we were the most electorally successful group. We returned 19 PCCs nationally. We did lose some fantastic colleagues, but we think we should be learning from those lessons about how PCCs, particularly the Conservatives ones, won some very, very narrow battles. My colleague in Warwickshire and Thames Valley, Matthew Barber, who is on the podcast, won by less than a thousand votes across three counties. But we're quite a representative bunch as well. So, as someone who is a parent of young children, not only do I bring experience of policing, but I've obviously experienced the NHS, and I'm currently experiencing the schools and the childcare system. It's bringing together people with those different experiences to try and lead the policy fight back in a different way. The party has moved in certain directions. The talk about immigration, for example, stopping the boats, etc etc, is one bit. But there's an awful lot more that we need to do to understand and rebuild as a party and rebuild for our country. We lost our way, particularly on tax and our reliance on asking PCCs to increase council tax to balance the bills. We didn't do enough on the personal allowance after doing that fantastic work to get up to 12 and a half thousand pounds. We then just stopped. We want to start a positive conversation about how we would rebuild on a party on those areas where in government we made some successes, but also where we learned from our mistakes as well. We are usually weekly, mainly on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. We've had a bit of a hiatus because of the election results and looking to get back started again.

With the podcast being about the rebuild of the party, polling figures show the situation is getting worse, not better. Are there positives?
At the moment, we need to be focusing on all sorts of different things. There's lots of things that we could be focusing on at the moment, but what I think we need to understand now is to reassert our values as a party, for me, which is about freedom, about fairness, and about opportunity, that we were the party of law and order and the party of low tax. One of the criticisms of the party in recent years is that we're not anymore. I think we need to reclaim that ground because those were elements of strength. The Conservative Party historically were the ones who the public called upon to balance the books, and we need to do that again. Once we reset those principles, then we can start a policy platform which looks at having something meaningful that connects with the public.
There have already been some examples of that already. Laura Trott, the Shadow Education Secretary, like me, is a big supporter of the smartphone-free childhood movement, which seeks to delay the purchase of mobile phones, particularly internet-enabled phones, for children that restricts access to social media. We've pushed the government a number of times to introduce legal guidance for schools which banned smartphones in the classroom and Labour won't do it. There are areas where you've really good shadow ministers like Laura, like Robert Jenrick and his campaigning on justice and Chris Philp on home affairs, where we're starting to build that platform. We need those things which matter to people, but we also make a difference in the context of the economic climate that we are currently in. I think it reads badly at the moment, but I definitely think there is a way back for us if we can reassert our values that we are the party of freedom and fairness and opportunity. Of lower tax, of law and order, of justice. If we can get back to those, I'm confident we can be back.

On the podcast during the Conservative leadership elections, you spoke quite openly about that process. How are you feeling about Kemi as being the leader to take the Conservatives into the next General Election?
I'm positive about it. I was… I didn't get the choice I wanted at the election. I backed Tom Tugendhat until he was eliminated. I'd have loved to have seen James Cleverley on the final ballot, but we had Kemi and we had Robert, both of which were strong choices. I did vote for Kemi in the end. I think she needs to be given the time to build that platform rather than take a short-termist approach of just saying what people want to hear. We need to understand more about what it is we will deliver. Because the economic climate, is still challenging. Some of the things that we might want to do, like reducing tax, might take time. We need to understand that. Reform have just come out with a policy that says they'll cut income tax by making you not pay anything on the first £20,000. It's great in theory. Economically, at the moment, really difficult to deliver because the loss of revenue for public services would be massive. We've got to make sure we get the balance right. But we should be in those areas. I think she should be given time to set out what that platform looks like. To get rid of her now would be too short-termist. It's like the new manager bounce in football. When teams get rid of a manager, and they expect a new manager bounce to get a few points. If getting rid of a party leader was really a good thing, we'd be doing it every month.
Well, there was a period where…
Yeah, we did. Now, there's trust.

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Footnotes

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.