Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I should begin by declaring an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and of the executive of the Association of Police Authorities. I also chair the All-Party Group on Police, which is supported by the Association of Police Authorities, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Police Federation. It is in the nature of Second Reading debates that one dwells on the issues with which one disagrees in the Bill. I want to start by making a more general point: most of the Bill is about bringing forward elements of police reform. Although there is the appearance of a series of disparate parts, the Bill is intended to achieve a convincing whole to deliver better-quality policing that is better fit for the future. Having said that, I want to focus on a number of problem areas. The concept of the National Policing Improvement Agency is extremely good; it could be a very powerful mechanism to achieve police reform. My noble friend, in introducing the Bill very thoroughly earlier this afternoon, talked about that agency creating a culture of self-improvement and enabling the police service to meet the challenges of the future, ensuring, in effect, that the police service is fit for purpose in future. Those are important and valuable objectives. I therefore welcome the creation of the National Policing Improvement Agency. However, I wonder—I want to hear from my noble friend in her reply—whether sufficient has been done to rationalise the existing structure. We will have a National Policing Improvement Agency, but we will continue to have Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary—albeit one that is subsumed into the new inspectorate. We will also continue to have the Police Standards Unit, which resides in the Home Office. If we are to take these steps towards rationalisation, I wonder whether we should not bring more of these functions together to ensure that all the levers are available for an agency that was designed to improve policing practice. The proposed arrangements for the ownership of the new agency are also deficient. If the principle of the tripartite governance of policing—I note the Minister’s warmish words in support of it—is to be maintained and applied to the agency, the agency must be unequivocally owned and supported both by the police service and chief constables and by police authorities. It is not clear to me whether the provisions in the Bill are sufficient to ensure that that will happen. Yes, one person broadly representative of police authorities will sit on the board of this new agency, but does that really amount to a proper role in the governance of police authorities? I shall say a little about the principles that should underpin any further reform of our policing structure. I believe that all your Lordships will value the principle of policing by consent—the principle that the police service, which is a civilian service and part of the civil arm of the state, is there by the consent of the communities that it serves. That very important principle underlies all UK policing. The tripartite principle of governance has evolved over a long time to achieve that policing by consent; indeed, I have already referred to that. The idea is that the chief officer of police is operationally responsible for the way in which policing is delivered in a particular area, but that he or she is accountable locally to a police authority, which has a substantial democratic element and is there to ensure that the service meets the needs of local communities and that the chief police officer is aware of the requirements and expectations of those communities. On the other hand, the Home Office is there to ensure that national priorities are being met. Keeping all those elements in balance is a very important principle. I notice that the Minister, when introducing the Bill, talked about the value that she and ministerial colleagues placed on these principles. She has talked about that proper balance not being fundamentally altered by the content of the Bill. In the next few minutes, I shall analyse the role of the Home Office and the police authorities in maintaining the tripartite principle after the Bill passes into law, if it passes in this form. First, I shall say a few words about the Home Office’s intervention powers. I respectfully say to the Minister that the Bill extends the Home Office’s powers of intervention. The Home Secretary will, in future, be able to intervene without reference to the police authority, and will merely have to be satisfied that there is a problem with a particular service. I understand the frustrations of successive Home Secretaries when they are clear that there is a problem. There may be a virtually universal view around the country that there is a problem with policing in a particular area, but we should be very wary of throwing away a proper process that takes account of that tripartite structure and recognises the importance of the local accountability arm. The Minister says that the reason for the changes is to enable the Home Secretary to take account of sources of information other than those from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. I have no problem with that, but there must be other ways of achieving it without dismantling that basic principle. I think that the Bill should require that, in intervening, the Home Secretary must involve the police authority for the area concerned and listen to the best professional advice currently available through Her Majesty’s inspectorate. Then there is the proposal that basic command units should have statutory status. I have no particular problem with this as a principle but wonder what the intention is. Giving them statutory status will make it easier for a future—or even the present—Chancellor of the Exchequer to announce, in the moments of largesse that we are used to in Budget speeches, that a specific sum of money is being passed to individual basic command units for a particular purpose. I am all for BCUs getting more resources—certainly those with which I am involved in the London area. I just wonder where it leads us on tripartite governance. The Association of Chief Police Officers sees the proposal, in an evocative phrase, as ““hollowing out”” the direction and control of chief constables. The chief constable or chief police officer is responsible for the operational delivery of the entire force. The basic command units are an essential, integral and key part of the running of the police service. Yet if some commanders of BCUs have a specific chunk of money for a specific purpose for which they are personally accountable as statutory bodies, then that will alter their relationship with the chief constables and their overall responsibility for the delivery of services. That is an important issue, and I would welcome clarification on it from my noble friend. If there is to be some change in the status of the basic command units—perhaps in recognition of the important role that they and their commanders play in local life in relation to CDRPs and so on—it would be helpful to have a requirement that, in appointing BCU commanders, the chief constable must have regard to the views of the police authority or local authority, or that the police authority should be involved in the appointment process. That is certainly something that we worked towards achieving in my Metropolitan Police area while I was chair. I am not sure that we quite got there, but that involvement is an essential part of delivery at local level. My most significant concern is the way in which the Bill takes from the responsibility of primary legislation a whole series of issues about how police authorities operate, and puts them into secondary legislation. I am conscious that this Home Secretary, like his immediate predecessors—there have been several—is a benign, even cuddly individual. We should have no doubt that this Home Secretary has no malign intent for how police authorities operate. Why then, if we have such a benign intent, is the proposal to move so much into secondary legislation? I strongly support paragraph 9(2) of Schedule 2, which creates a general duty for police authorities to hold the chief officer of police accountable to the public. I am concerned by the rest of paragraphs 9 and 10, which effectively say that the Secretary of State shall determine the other police authority functions by secondary legislation. A number of key duties should explicitly be in primary legislation. The first is the duty to ensure that communities are consulted in setting policing priorities. That involvement of communities must be a central part of governance. Secondly, police authorities should have the power to set the strategic direction and objectives of the force, within that national framework. Thirdly, there should be a duty to promote diversity and good community relations, something that now applies to other parts of local government; that should be explicit for police authorities, too. Fourthly, there should be a duty to provide information, and similarly a duty to monitor the performance of the force for its area, as well as a duty to ensure that the force co-operates with other forces and other partners where appropriate. Those duties should, I believe, form a part of primary legislation and I do not understand the rationale of the Government in trying to move them out of primary and into secondary legislation. Then there are the provisions covering best value. I differ from the right reverend Prelate in that I believe that the duty to promote best value was an important one for police authorities. I am concerned that the Bill removes the powers and levers available to police authorities in delivering best value. As the right reverend Prelate said, we all endorse the importance of best value, but to remove the levers currently available to police authorities to ensure that it is delivered would be unfortunate. The membership of police authorities is also to be taken out of primary legislation and put into secondary legislation. If the Bill is passed, questions such as how many members should make up a police authority, what is the process of appointment, what qualifications are required, what issues would lead to the disqualification of police authority members and what is their tenure will all be dealt with in secondary legislation. Similarly, the appointment of the chairs and vice-chairs of police authorities would be left to secondary legislation. We are assured, although I would be grateful to hear it again, that there is no intention to move from the present position whereby police authority chairs and vice-chairs are elected by other members of the police authority. If that is so, why put this into secondary legislation rather than making it explicit in the Bill? In my view, there is a great deal of confusion within the Home Office on the question of the number of members on a police authority. The Bill sets out a change in the definition of a ““relevant council””. Previous Home Office Ministers have said that there is to be one representative from each top-tier local authority on individual police authorities. The implication here is that the ability of people to give a strategic overview and to deliver political balance at the local level is to be sacrificed in favour of the principle of local representation. While I am all for local representation, I wonder whether other provisions such as the enhanced statutory role of crime and disorder reduction partnerships provide that already. A lot is being thrown away with this principle. Further thinking by the Home Office on the question of membership is important. I have a final point. This piece of legislation is not about the current arguments taking place on police service reorganisation, but I am concerned that our debates will be coloured entirely by that issue. There are all sorts of arguments about whether police service reorganisation is a good or a bad thing, but the provisions of this Bill are in a sense irrelevant to that. Nevertheless, the changes being proposed here would have very long-term implications for the tripartite relationship between the chief officer of police, the local police authority and the Home Office. I believe that that relationship is essential in underpinning public consent to policing, which in turn is a fundamental tenet of British policing.