THE new shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, last night launched an outspoken attack on the “politicised” senior police officers who have become too close to Labour.

In his first newspaper interview since his promotion last week, Grayling said that he would end the privileged role that chief constables enjoy in helping to decide law and order policy.

“Individual officers have been too politically close to the government,” he said. “That is not the job of the police.”

His remarks follow the recent resignation of Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, who was criticised for supporting Gordon Brown’s divisive plans to detain terrorist suspects for up to 42 days without trial.

The Conservatives believe that Blair is just the best known of a generation of senior officers who have gained promotion by backing new Labour.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) has long been part of a formal “tripartite system” that also includes elected police authorities and Home Office ministers.

Grayling indicated that he would scrap this structure, which has given chief constables a guaranteed place in decision making. He also made it clear that they would have to work hard to earn his trust if he became home secretary.

“No particular representative organisation should have a privileged position,” said Grayling. “You talk to everybody but you listen with a sceptical ear.”

Grayling was one of the winners of David Cameron’s shadow cabinet reshuffle last Monday, which also brought Kenneth Clarke, the former chancellor, back to the front bench.

Grayling, 46, MP for Epsom and Ewell, succeeded Dominic Grieve, a criminal lawyer who was criticised for lacking the hard edge needed for the home affairs job. Grieve had landed the post after David Davis resigned to fight a by-election to “defend the freedoms of the British people”.

Grayling signalled a change of direction for the Tories, saying “abstract” civil liberties issues would be lower on the party’s campaigning agenda.

“My priority is going to be crime as it affects individual people,” he said. “It is about antisocial behaviour in communities. It is about crime on the streets.”

Grayling built his political reputation as Cameron’s “attack dog”, relentlessly highlighting Labour sleaze and hypocrisy. His mild, polite manner has, say his allies, made his assaults on Brown’s government all the more effective.

Married with two children, Grayling has a background that is squeaky clean. He worked in television and public relations before entering the Commons, but cannot recall ever being offered illegal drugs and certainly has never taken them.

“Maybe I have led a very sheltered life but the opportunities have been very rare,” he said. “I have always liked a jar or two at the end of the day but not the stuff you smoke or sniff.”

Grayling did, however, “fess” up to two minor brushes with the law. “I have on a couple of occasions transgressed speed limits,” he said. “One of them was for doing 61mph on an empty motorway and one for doing 47mph on an empty country road.”

He is passionate about ending the “madness” where too often the victim of a crime can become the police suspect.

“If a householder goes out and challenges a group of unruly teenagers, very often it is the householder who ends up in the police cell,” he said.

Grayling may talk tough but he also shares Cameron’s “one nation” interest in the social causes of criminal behaviour.

“We have moved on from the hang ’em, flog ’em era to one where we understand that crime has deep-rooted causes, but you have still got to be tough on it when it appears.

“I look at Jacqui Smith and think she is just a ‘do nothing’ home secretary” he added, mischievously seeking to hijack Brown’s favourite attack on the Tories.

“There have been 60 criminal justice acts over the past decade. The law is so darned complicated. We have createda ‘paradise for lawyers’. Surely we can come up with a system that is simple to understand, simple to implement, where there are clear consequences for stepping outside it?”

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