Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I thank all who have participated in the debate. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, in saying that we have had a comprehensive, well ordered and well informed discourse on these matters. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, that of course we accept that legislation is not the panacea for all ills, which is probably why we have had 52 different Bills since coming into government. However, it provides us with an important tool or series of tools which we can use judiciously to provide the appropriate framework to help to deliver productive and lasting change—something on which my noble friend Lady Henig alighted. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, for the compliments he pays me, and I hope he finds that when I answer, I tend to put matters in an accurate, precise and proportionate way—something that is not always true of the way in which others depict the Home Office in the press. Therefore, I hope he and the House gain a little comfort in knowing that the Home Office has a vision which is being implemented in an appropriate way. The fact that we expect and anticipate change does not mean that that change cannot be productive. In devising the changes that we put forward in the Bill—as we have in the 52 others that have delighted your Lordships’ House—we have tried to rely on empirical data to help us to shape them so that they will provide safety and confidence for the people of this country, as they demand. We understand the need to ensure that intelligence-led policing is properly embedded in the needs of the community and local accountability. Over the past nine years, we have understood that working in partnership is the main means of delivering just and effective change. The silo-based working that characterised the previous 18 years was not a recipe for success and is not a model that anyone now wishes to adopt. The noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Waddington, know that partnership can and often does entail listening to good advice from wherever it may come. That good advice is, and has been, incorporated into our legislation. The changes that the Bill brings have to be viewed against the background of all the other changes that have emanated from the work done by Lord Justice Auld in Justice for All, including the development of CJIT—the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, highlighted our use of IT and ensuring there is synergy. There is also the work that we have done through the National Criminal Justice Board, the local criminal justice boards, the local strategic partnerships, the local area agreements and the crime and disorder reduction partnerships. All those things working together to bring about change have enabled us to do what we needed to do. I am delighted that many of the measures in the Bill have been welcomed and seen as improvements. Part 1, for example, includes the improvement agency and the work of the CSOs. I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich that they have been shown to be a real success. Many who were sceptical about the work of the CSOs have put that scepticism to one side because of the good work that has been done. There is a need for a greater spread of good practice and to ensure that those who engage in that work have a fair and clear remit in which to do that. We believe that the procedures in the Bill will enable us to do just that. I can reassure noble Lords—I agree with my noble friend Lord Borrie—that the number of special constables has increased and that CSOs have not been replaced in that sense. My noble friends Lord Borrie and Lady Henig and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, all touched on training. Noble Lords will know that training was specifically referred to in the Police Reform Act 2002; it already provides for training for PCSOs, and this Bill will do nothing to change that. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, that housing departments will be included. We had a very interesting debate. I am sure noble Lords will remember the last time we spoke about anti-social behaviour orders and how they should apply to housing authorities. I am sure we shall read all those debates again, but I remind the House that they can be very judiciously and successfully used by those helping families to rehabilitate themselves in a housing setting. We would obviously wish to preserve that. The noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, was right to divide our debates into three areas: first, the changes to police authorities; secondly, the merging of the five inspectorates; and, thirdly, the way in which the Extradition Act will work, which was touched on lightly but importantly. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich referred to the figure of 30,000 conditional cautions. That comes, in part, from Patrick Carter’s review, in which he suggested that up to 25,000 offenders could be dealt with by the use of conditional cautions. We shall debate that issue and see how far it goes, particularly when we consider the conditions. The meat of the debate relates to the matters raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia: the process of restructuring and the way in which we have dealt with it. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, that this has not been rushed; it is not a case of restructuring happening overnight. We began a national debate on the future of the existing 43 forces’ structure in November 2003 in the Green Paper Policing: Building Safer Communities Together. Moreover, as required by the Police Act 1996, we are in the middle of a four-month period during which police and local authorities may submit objections to the Home Secretary’s proposals for force mergers. Naturally, we shall consider any objections very carefully before inviting this House and another place to agree the amalgamation orders. I can assure noble Lords that restructuring will not undermine neighbourhood policing; forces need the capacity and resilience to provide protective services to safeguard neighbourhood policing teams from the repeated extraction of police officers, for example, when they have to man a huge murder inquiry which just sucks people from the frontline into that activity. The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, raised an issue that was echoed by a number of noble Lords: the role of primary legislation and what would be in it. Primary legislation will continue to provide that police authorities comprise a majority of councillor members and a minority of other independent members. Similarly, the core functions of police authorities will continue to be set in primary legislation. The duty to maintain an effective and efficient force, the power to appoint and remove chief officers, the duty to hold the chief constable to account and the power to set the budget and policing precepts will be contained in primary legislation. I wish to reassure the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, that we, too, value the contribution of magistrates to the work of police authorities, but guaranteed seats for magistrates necessarily limits the skills and experience base of police authority members, and we have to draw from as wide a pool of candidates as possible. It will still be open to magistrates to apply to be appointed as independent members and I remind noble Lords that magistrates come from a wide spectrum of professions and bring with them a huge amount of skills and ability—and many magistrates will find that they wear a number of hats, like the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby. Therefore, they will be more than able to fulfil their duties in appropriate posts on a police authority. My noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey raised a number of telling issues with which we will have to deal in this debate. We are placing basic command units on a statutory footing for one reason only: to mandate coterminosity with local authority boundaries. Common boundaries are essential to ensure that partnerships work effectively between the police and local authorities, and we have no plans directly to fund BCUs. Much of our past success has been by joint partnership working, and coterminosity has been of benefit. My noble friend also mentioned elections of police authority chairs. I confirm that outside London the chairmen of police authorities will continue to be appointed by the members of the authority. We have consulted on alternative arrangements for the Metropolitan Police Authority that would provide a stronger role for the Mayor and we are considering the responses to that consultation. I hope that that reassures my noble friend. Our starting point regarding the inclusion of the PSUs and the inspectorate in the NPIA is recognising that policing is and must remain a locally delivered service. For policing, as is the case for any other public service, some key responsibilities must either be laid down by government or organised on a nationwide basis. We envisage grouping those national responsibilities in three main areas, and this legislation is intended to reinforce and clarify those. The first is the Home Secretary’s responsibilities for strategic direction and arm’s-length performance monitoring; the second is the NPIA’s role in supporting and improving operational policing; and the third is the inspectorate’s role for independent policing assessments. The noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, asked me who had brought proceedings in relation to the Home Office’s actions. Cleveland and West Mercia police authorities have commenced judicial review proceedings. They seek to challenge the Home Secretary’s notice to merge forces in the north-east and West Midlands. We believe that the judicial reviews are premature, as no final decisions have been taken, and the four chief constables in Wales continue to support in principle an all-Wales police force. I now turn to the issue that has much concerned noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Hurd, Lord Dholakia and Lord Ramsbotham, the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, my noble friend Lord Borrie, the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford—who is looking absolutely delightful now in his appropriate attire and is still with us—and the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby. That issue is the characteristics of the independence of the inspectorate. We have debated that on a number of occasions and have repeatedly said that it must be preserved in any new inspectorate. In relation to the Seebohm committee, I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, that we do learn from our lessons. It is interesting that Seebohm got rid of the specialist and replaced it with the generalist. That is not what we intend to do. We intend not to let the sort of specialisation that disappeared under Seebohm go in this amalgamation, but to preserve it. If I may respectfully say so, the trick that was not used during that amalgamation was understanding that which the departments had—the childcare officers, the specialisations in relation to families—therefore they amalgamated and merged without keeping those specialisations within the system to enable them to work together in partnership. We have learned that lesson, so in this new inspectorate we intend to preserve what we have and build upon it. I shall explain more specifically why that is so. We have repeatedly given assurances that neither the power of direction, nor anything else in the Bill, can be used to set the inspection criteria. The wording of the power of direction was agreed in detail with the prison inspectorate to make sure that that cannot be done; nor can it be used to prevent the chief inspector criticising government policy. I repeat the assurance given by my colleagues in the other place: the chief inspector will be free to criticise government policy where that provides the wrong outcomes for prisoners, detainees or other service users. Perhaps I may deal with questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, and particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. We agree that prisons inspection is different and have preserved that distinction in the statute. We will continue also to preserve it in the work to develop the practicalities of the business strategy of the new inspectorate. The new chief inspector will, like the inspector of prisons, be an independent statutory office holder appointed by the Queen—so there will be absolutely no diminution in the independence of the office. There will be unannounced inspections. Those and the ability to undertake them and to set the inspection criteria will be totally in the purview of the chief inspector, and that will continue as now. Furthermore, the procedure of independent reporting by the chief inspector to the Home Secretary has been made more robust and more independent. Not only will the chief inspector continue to report on prisons to the Home Secretary, but he or she will be required to publish all reports and will be able to require the Home Secretary to lay any report before Parliament. Those are new provisions that even the existing Chief Inspector of Prisons does not enjoy in statute.