Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Bill is about helping to build safer communities. It does this in two ways. First, the Bill makes legislative provision to enable us to take forward our programme of reform of the police service. Secondly, it helps to create a modern culture of respect by implementing key measures in the Respect Action Plan. The police service can be rightly proud of its record of achievement in recent years. The reduction in crime by 35 per cent since 1997 is, above all, testament to the professionalism and dedication of the service and its community safety partners. But more needs to be done. Levels of crime and anti-social behaviour are still too high, and public expectations around quality of service are—quite properly—rising. Continuing reform is essential to enable the police to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Measures in this Bill will contribute to this process. Part 1 of the Bill makes important changes to the national policing landscape and the governance arrangements for police forces. We have already legislated to establish the Serious Organised Crime Agency. It is important that we also work to rationalise the complex web of agencies that provide support to the police nationally. A bewildering array of organisations has developed over time to provide support of one kind or another to police forces. We have the Police Information Technology Organisation— PITO—to supply information technology systems; the Central Police Training and Development Authority, Centrex, to provide training services; the National Centre for Policing Excellence to develop best practice; and ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers. The Home Office supports the rollout of operational change programmes. This tangled web of agencies is an obstacle to promoting improvement within the police service and needs to change. That is why the Bill will establish the National Policing Improvement Agency. It will be police owned and police led. It will rationalise the national policing landscape and inject new dynamism into support for operational policing. This will drive further improvements in service delivery, particularly at the front line for the public. The NPIA will also give the police service new capacity and capability to deliver the mission’s critical priorities, as set out in the National Community Safety Plan, such as the rollout of neighbourhood policing and implementation of the recommendations of the Bichard inquiry. The existing organisations—that is, PITO and Centrex, including the National Centre for Policing Excellence—will be abolished and a number of their functions transferred to the NPIA. A number of day-to-day activities concerned with driving policing improvement will also move to the agency from the Home Office. The focus of the agency’s work will be to embed a culture of self-improvement within the service, and to identify and respond to the opportunities and challenges that the service will face over a five-year to 10-year horizon. Part 1 of the Bill also includes a number of amendments to the Police Act 1996. As noble Lords will know, faced with the professional advice of the Chief Inspector of Constabulary that the existing 43-force structure is no longer fit for purpose, we have embarked on a process of restructuring to enable forces to meet effectively the challenges of policing modern Britain. The new Home Secretary has made it clear that he endorses the strategic goals set out in HMIC’s report and that the status quo is not an option. He is, quite properly, taking a little time to consider the issues in detail before announcing how he intends to proceed. Part 1 of the Bill will help to ensure that forces can successfully reconfigure to deliver both protective services to national standards and the public’s expectations around responsive neighbourhood policing. The Bill will strengthen police authorities. The new flexible provisions governing the composition and membership of the authorities will enable us to ensure that members have the skills and experience that they need to undertake this challenging role. The role and functions of the police authorities will also be updated, particularly by conferring on them an express duty to hold the chief officer to account, and by empowering them to delegate functions to area committees where the geography and infrastructure of their force area make this appropriate. It is also important to ensure that strategic forces and authorities are effectively held to account and that the Government are able to take action where serious performance failings have been identified. Your Lordships’ House will recall the debates on these powers during our consideration of the Police Reform Bill in 2002. We have since had four years’ experience of the Police Standards Unit working with underperforming forces. We need to draw on that experience to better reflect how policing failings are identified and addressed. The provisions in the Bill are not about giving the Home Secretary new powers, but about updating the existing powers to ensure that they can operate effectively. The Bill makes two key changes. First, we are seeking to widen the sources of information that the Home Secretary may consider in deciding whether to exercise these powers. We believe that when considering utilising such significant powers the Home Secretary needs to be able to consider all the relevant information available and not only that contained in inspection reports. Secondly, we are refocusing the intervention powers so that they better reflect the reality of how best to tackle performance problems—namely, by dealing directly with those who are able to make the changes that are needed to remedy such problems. This change is not about bypassing the police authorities’ important role in holding forces to account for their performance; it is about ensuring that there is an effective means to get to the heart of the problem to remedy the failing. Finally in Part 1, we will build on the success of police community support officers—the PCSOs—by providing them with a standard set of powers. Police community support officers are now an established and valued part of the policing family. Their high visibility and accessibility to communities have led to recognition of their true worth from all sides. We want PCSOs to play a full part in the neighbourhood policing teams that are being rolled out across the country. To do this, it is essential that they have the powers necessary to tackle low-level crime and anti-social behaviour. This is not a case of mission creep. If you look back at our debates on the Police Reform Bill, you will see that this was precisely the role we envisaged for PCSOs at that time. Affording PCSOs with a standard suite of powers will also help to remove the confusion in the public’s mind about precisely what powers they have. Before I leave Part 1, I should like to offer one further comment. I know that a number of noble Lords have already expressed concerns about the impact of the provisions in Schedule 2 on the tripartite relationship. I want to assure the House that the Home Secretary and I genuinely value the tripartite framework. The strength of the relationship hinges on a proper balance between the respective powers and responsibilities of the Home Secretary, chief constables and police authorities. The Bill does not fundamentally alter that balance. The House may be assured, however, that I will, as always, reflect carefully on the concerns raised in debate and on any recommendations from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in respect of the various order-making and regulation-making powers in Schedule 2 to the Bill. We await its report later this month. Part 2 of the Bill provides the police, prosecutors and other key players with new powers to enable them to meet the challenges posed by present-day criminality. The Bill will enable police officers to attach conditions to bail before a suspect has been charged and to detain a suspect pending a prosecutor’s decision about charging. This will reduce the potential for offending while on bail, ensure that suspects spend the least amount of time necessary in a police cell and allow officers to better plan their investigations and spend more time on the front line. Police officers will also be empowered to stop and search any person in any area of an aerodrome where he reasonably suspects that criminal activity has or is about to take place. This will ensure that the police have the powers that they need to conduct anti-smuggling operations and to detect staff collusion in thefts at airports, as recommended by Sir John Wheeler in his 2002 review of airport security. We will provide powers to complement those in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 to enable the police to gain advance bulk access to information about passengers on domestic journeys. Access to such information will help the police to gain effective intelligence on the movement of known terrorists and those involved in organised crime. This part of the Bill will widen the conditions that can be attached to conditional cautions. Currently, the conditions are limited to rehabilitation or direct reparation. While these conditions have given good results for victims and offenders, as well as local communities, widening the scope of the conditions would mean that conditional cautions could be used in more cases. The Bill will enable conditional cautions to involve the offender paying a fine or undertaking up to 20 hours of unpaid work—for example, to make reparation to the community in general by clearing up litter from a park. In this way, the offenders will be giving something back to the community to repair the harm that they have caused. We will also provide police officers with the power to arrest those whom they suspect of a breach of the conditions of their caution. That will enable the police to respond quickly and effectively to suspected breaches of conditions without recourse to the more potentially bureaucratic and time-consuming court summons process. Finally in this part, the Bill will introduce an accreditation scheme to arm trading standards officers with a quick and effective means of dealing with those caught selling alcohol to under-18s. This will complement provisions in the Violent Crime Reduction Bill to tackle alcohol-related disorder.