Police and Justice Bill

Even Staffordshire, whose chief constable is leading the Home Secretary’s amalgamation ““hit squad””, said no. Every regional opinion poll conducted on this issue has said no. Yet just one week later, the Home Secretary announced that he would proceed with compulsory amalgamations, regardless. The report of Her Majesty’s inspector of constabulary, Denis O’Connor, on which the Government are relying, said:"““The constitutional implications . . . are significant.””" Yet this crucial decision was announced by way of a written statement, slipped into the Library of the House at 2.24 pm last Friday, just before the House rose. Now, we are being asked to agree that similar order-making powers be given to the Home Secretary through this Bill, to allow him to alter police authorities’ structure and functions. It is hardly surprising that the Association of Police Authorities has expressed alarm at the provisions. Its chairman, Bob Jones, said:"““The Home Secretary is now proposing to give himself power to change the role and membership of local authorities . . . and the bodies which represent them. Only Parliament, not the Home Secretary, should be able to do this””." The Home Secretary claims that he has rejected the idea of a national police force, but the Government’s reorganisations are moving us steadily toward this model. Twelve police chiefs, rather than 43, will effectively answer to the Home Secretary, not their local communities. As Professor Tom Williamson observed in Jane’s Police Review,"““Legislation has concentrated power in the Home Secretary, who sets the National Policing Plan and specifies outcomes. In this new public management paradigm, chief constables have an executive function only which is to deliver the plan . . . Following force amalgamations, a few chief constables, reporting to a senior Home Office official in regional Government offices, will be even more centrally influenced and controlled.””" The new national policing improvement agency, introduced by clause 1, will not answer to police forces or to authorities; indeed, the Government have flatly rejected a proposal from police authorities that they should even part-fund the agency. The paymaster will call the tune and the paymaster is the Home Secretary. According to the Home Office, the agency will"““assist police forces to deliver . . . national . . . priorities””" and"““support national implementation of the Home Secretary’s key priorities for the police, as set out in the annual National Community Safety Plan””." In other words, the agency will effectively be the Home Secretary’s enforcement arm, used to get the policing that he wants. There is already a police standards unit in the Home Office—a development that the 2004 White Paper admitted"““represents a departure in terms of how the centre does business with the police service””." How will the national policing improvement agency work with the police standards unit? How will both work with the new inspectorate for justice, community safety and custody? Police forces are besieged with agencies seeking to direct them. Such central direction has hardly been a success story in public services. The Government have introduced the Education and Inspections Bill to give schools more autonomy, and they introduced foundation hospitals for the same reason; yet, ironically, less autonomy for chief constables and instead, ever-closer direction by Ministers and their officials, is now the backbone of their approach to policing. Only a fig leaf of local accountability is to be maintained. The Government claim that proposals in the Bill to align basic command unit and crime and disorder reduction partnership boundaries will strengthen local accountability, but the number of BCUs has reduced from around 400 when the Government came to power to 225 today. The Government are pressing CDRPs, which are currently based on district council areas, to merge. A Home Office report, slipped out in January, gave the game away. It stated that the Home Office"““will be working closely with ODPM as well as with regional and local partners to ensure that we do not end up with merged CDRP boundaries which are out of step with the likely future structure of local government.””" What ““likely future structure”” of councils is this, exactly? Has Parliament been informed? Of course it has not. So far the Government’s plans have been announced, in the usual manner, by leaks to the press. The Government cannot credibly claim that police accountability will be achieved through local government scrutiny when the partnerships are being altered to make them more remote from the people. In West Sussex, for instance, the aim is to reduce the number of crime and disorder reduction partnerships from seven to just one. The real decisions will be taken not in the partnerships but in Whitehall and by chief officers in regional headquarters hundreds of miles from local communities. Inevitably, they will be less answerable to local people. The Government’s proposals for local police accountability are a mess. What happened to the Home Secretary’s suggestion, repeated as recently as January, for local"““policing boards . . . to hold the BCU commander to account””?" If the much-vaunted ““community call to action”” in clause 15 gives residents a direct means of drawing issues to the attention of the police, where does that leave police authorities? What happens if the police simply ignore the community’s view? The Government do not appear to understand the difference between accountability and public relations. The Home Secretary enthusiastically tells us that the public will shortly have the email addresses or telephone numbers of their local police officers. Good. But what matters is that the public actually get the response they want. Bournemouth police recently informed local shopkeepers that they were unable and unwilling to respond to the shoplifting of goods to less than the value of £75. Having the email address of local police officers in Bournemouth will plainly be of little use to small shop owners there. The Government claim that they remain faithful to the traditional tripartite arrangement under which the Home Secretary, police authorities and chief constables have balanced powers. The Home Office website claims that"““this three-way system prevents political interference in policing and avoids giving any single organisation power over the entire police service.””" The previous Home Secretary put an end to that. He insisted on firing a chief constable against the will of the local police authority. He even threatened to take direct control of policing in London if the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner failed to comply with his demands. This Bill will confer significant new powers on the Home Secretary to interfere with police forces and authorities. Clause 2 will give him wide powers to prescribe the membership of police authorities, and new powers to intervene in police forces. It will scrap the statutory duty on police authorities to determine local policing objectives, replacing it with additional powers for the Home Secretary. It will put basic command units on a statutory footing—an apparently unnecessary provision, but one that the Association of Police Authorities believes may be the precursor to more direct Home Office control. The association has warned:"““These provisions represent a fundamental constitutional change, and a significant shift in the balance of power within the tripartite relationship””." It is time to restore the balance and introduce proper local accountability to policing. First, where there are major reorganisations of a local force, there should be formal mechanisms to consult the public, including referendums where appropriate—something that the Government are signally failing to do.