Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment No. 29, to which the noble Lord has already responded, unfortunately. First, I welcome the spirit of the amendments put forward on behalf of the Government. The ability of police authorities to determine and issue local policing plans has now been put back into the Bill. That represents real progress, but it does not go quite far enough. Two key elements of what is currently in the law have been omitted from the government amendment. Our amendment aims to put those back into the Bill. I acknowledge my debt to the Front Benches, as I have borrowed heavily from their wording in this amendment, except in the elements they have omitted. The first is the ability of an authority to establish performance targets for its force. The second is the ability to include in the plan a statement setting out the resources available and the proposed allocation of those resources against policing priorities. I am sure the Minister will agree that these are important functions of police authorities, but will tell me that it is more satisfactory that they should be placed in secondary legislation—which he has already intimated—to keep things simple and to increase flexibility. I shall see whether I can convince him and the House that these two elements are important enough to be in primary legislation. First, on setting targets, the government amendment acknowledges that it is the job of an authority to set objectives for policing its area. But how does an authority know whether those objectives are being met unless it sets targets to measure them? Police authorities have duties under primary legislation to report back to local people on how well their local police force is performing. How can a police authority reassure the public that issues of concern to them are being addressed if it is not setting targets to measure that? Given that the duty of authorities to report on meeting performance targets is in primary legislation, it is inconsistent that the ability to set those targets is not. Secondly, including a statement of resources available and the way in which they will be allocated to priorities is key because it impacts on funding and that goes to the heart of accountability. Police authorities hold the budgets for police forces and receive funds from central government towards those budgets, but some elements of the budgets come from local taxation. It is the duty of police authorities to raise those funds through the police element of council tax. Police authorities are accountable to local communities for how that money is spent, so is it not right that they should be able to ensure that policing funds are allocated appropriately in line with priorities? After all, those priorities are set after consulting the public—who fund police forces—to find out what most concerns them. This is not a matter of constraining the operational independence of chief officers but of accounting to the public for money that is collected from them and demonstrating that their money is being spent on addressing issues that concern them. This is a significant and important responsibility that should be in primary legislation. It has been for many years, and I see no reason to change that.