Police and Justice Bill

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate for the thoughtful way in which they have approached the issues that have been raised. That is extraordinarily helpful because we are trying to put forward a proposition in engineering the community call for action. The community call for action is designed to deal with difficult situations where members of local communities feel that they have been overlooked, that their local concerns and issues with matters such as low-level disorder are not high up the list of priorities of the local police service, and that the local authority and there is a genuine call from local community members to try to change that situation. I shall work through the amendments as best I can and then conclude by summarising where we are. My noble friend Lady Henig explained the amendments tabled in her name, which require that community safety partners involved in a community call for action are consulted at each stage of the process. I find that hard to disagree with. I can reassure her that consultation with the relevant partners is at the core of how we see the community call for action operating. Ward councillors, local authority executives and overview and scrutiny committees will be required to engage with the relevant authorities at each stage of the process. We will provide for that in the guidance on the detail of the operation of the community call for action. I hope that reassurance will satisfy her. As the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said, there is always difficulty about how prescriptive one should be in legislation. We are trying not to make the legislation overly rigid and to provide flexibility. We can best do that by detailing in guidance the way in which we see the community call for action working through consultation. Amendment No. 113 would amend the community call for action so that community safety partners would merely be required to respond to the reports and recommendations of overview and scrutiny committees and would not be required to have regard to their reports and recommendations in exercising their functions. It is not the case that having regard to recommendations will require community safety partners to give effect to them, it merely means that they must consider them when exercising their functions. I am sure that noble Lords would agree that where the local community has raised concerns which have been investigated by the ward councillor and the scrutiny committee in collaboration with the community safety partners, it is only right that the partners should at least have regard to the report and recommendations of the committee. If there are well-founded reasons for not acting on a recommendation—for example, because it would divert resources from another neighbourhood—the relevant responsible authority would be able to set aside the recommendation, but it would need to explain its reasons in front of the overview and scrutiny committee. I trust that the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, agrees that in those circumstances it would be appropriate to retain the duty to have regard to scrutiny committee recommendations. The remaining amendments, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, relate to the operation of the community call for action in relation to individuals. Before I get into the detail of the amendments, it may assist the Committee if I explain how we envisage the community call for action working in practice. Let me make one thing clear: we regard the community call for action as a backstop, a final measure. If neighbourhood policing is working as it should and if crime and disorder reduction partnerships are operating as they should, they will be responsive to the needs of local communities. They will be addressing, in their day-to-day activities, the street crime, burglaries, drug dealing, alcohol-fuelled disorder or criminal damage that are the prevalent community safety concerns of particular neighbourhoods. Where appropriate, the police will be targeting known local prolific offenders, and the local authority will be targeting problem families with the tools at their disposal, including parenting orders and contracts and anti-social behaviour orders. If there is a genuinely responsive and intelligence-led approach to tackling crime and anti-social behaviour, local communities, I am sure, will have confidence that the issues of concern to them are being properly dealt with. There will, therefore, be no need to resort to the community call for action. However, the community call for action will be available where there is a persistent local problem that the police, local authorities and perhaps some of the other members of the partnership have failed to address. Such a problem might take the form of, for example, drunken behaviour late at night in a residential area, repeated criminal damage on a housing estate, perhaps drug-related activity or continuing anti-social behaviour by a group of young people. In many cases the criminal or anti-social behaviour complained about may be committed by a person or persons unknown to the complainants. That will not exclusively be the case. If the disruption is, for example, caused by a particular problem family, the names of the alleged perpetrators may be known to local residents. But I expect that to be the exception rather than commonly the case. We should consider Amendments Nos. 106, 107, 110 and 112 against that backdrop. These rather assume that the name of the alleged offenders will be known in all cases. Perhaps that is not the case, but that seems to be the assumption behind those amendments. As I have sought to explain, that is not necessarily the case. So, a general requirement on the councillor, the local authority or the overview and scrutiny committee to notify the person or persons who are the subject of the community call for action would not be appropriate. Moreover, I am not persuaded that it is properly the responsibility of the local councillor to engage directly with a named individual or individuals who are the subject of a complaint. The councillor will have, and, I would say, should have, a responsibility to refer the issue raised by local residents to the police and perhaps also to the local authority to see whether the matter can be resolved informally—that is, without reference to the overview and scrutiny committee. I think that it would perhaps endanger the more general role of councillors if they were placed under an obligation to become directly and personally involved with an individual. In this instance that is not really an appropriate role for them. If, on consideration of the issue, the police or local authority considers that action should be taken against a known individual or well known family, it will be their responsibility in the normal way, not the councillor’s, to make contact with the person or persons concerned. If the council considers that a parenting contract is appropriate, it will clearly need to enter into a dialogue with the parents concerned. If an ASBO is the right course, the person against whom it is intended to secure it will have an opportunity to put his case before the court considering the application. The same broad approach will apply if other specific action is taken against named individuals. Their rights are adequately protected by other legislation governing ASBOs, parenting contracts and orders, or whatever other tool is used to tackle offending or anti-social behaviour. We do not need to build additional safeguards into Clause 17. To the extent that it is necessary to touch on such issues in the context of the community call for action, we can do so in the guidance issued under Clause 18. I am mindful of the comments that the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, made about ASBOs and the NAPO report on those who have had mental health problems and have been caught up in the ASBO process. I acknowledge that that is an issue. I, too, have read newspaper reports of the same calibre and nature as those mentioned by the noble Viscount. I understand the issue. That is why we think it is probably more appropriate to deal with such issues in guidance rather than in the detail of the legislation. Perhaps it is worth adding that one possible course of action is for the police to investigate the offence and arrest and charge the alleged offender. That may actually be the most appropriate way to tackle the issues. In such circumstances, informing the alleged offender, as the amendments propose, might actually inhibit any investigation. Amendment No. 105 deals with a separate point. It seeks to extend the community call for action to cover county councils as well as district councils in two-tier areas. I am sensitive to the noble Viscount’s point. I have operated in a two-tier system and I have operated in a unitary system. I concluded from my experience—the noble Viscount will not be surprised to hear me say this—that a single-tier system in local government is probably the best. However, I recognise the invaluable role that each part plays within a two-tier system. We are keen to avoid confusion and overlap, which was one of my issues with the two-tier structure. A formal role for county councillors, and certainly for county overview and scrutiny committees in the community call for action, could create considerable overlap. A situation could arise where a member of the public raises an issue at both district and county level and resources are needlessly dedicated to deal with it at both levels. That would not be a wise use of time or resource. Opening the community call for action to county level has all the potential for confusion and could create significant additional burdens on county scrutiny committee processes. I hope that noble Lords will agree that such confusion and overlap is best avoided. If the community call for action issue is indicative of a more strategic problem that is not restricted to the district crime and disorder reduction partnership, the guidance that will accompany this provision will be clear that that will need to be fed into the county scrutiny committee, which would then pick it up as part of its regular assessment of CDRP activity across the county. That is provided for in the Bill. The community call for action is concerned with local crime and disorder issues and therefore it is entirely appropriate for the local district councillor and district overview and scrutiny committees to deal with such issues. Finally, I turn to Amendment No. 108, which seeks to simplify the drafting of Clause 17(4). We have used the term, "““a member of a local authority””," rather than referring to a ““councillor”” because the phraseology needs to capture the City of London as well as other councils. The parliamentary draftsman did not consider the word ““councillor”” to be apt to describe all the members of the Common Council of the City of London, including the Lord Mayor of London and aldermen. So it was drafted in that way for that reason. I hope that my explanations will satisfy my noble friend Lady Henig, the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, and the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, acting in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw the amendment.