Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I must first declare an interest as the president of the Association of Police Authorities and as the chair of the Security Industry Authority. This is a very wide-ranging Bill and I want to confine my remarks mostly to the policing issues in Part 1. Like the previous speaker, I think that it is worth at the outset celebrating what is no longer in the Bill. Along with the Association of Police Authorities, the Local Government Association, Liberty and other noble Lords, I welcome the removal of the proposal to hold direct elections to police authorities. In my view, that would have taken us back at least 20 years to the era of highly politicised police committees rather than the focused, politically balanced and much more effective police authorities that we have now. I am very encouraged that there is cross-party support on this issue—though not, I hasten to add, on the ludicrous idea of elected police commissioners, which I believe is an American import that would politicise policing far more even than elected police authorities. Many Americans who admire the British policing system have said to me that they are amazed that the Conservatives are even advocating such a measure. The prime job of the police authority is to hold the chief constable and his senior team to account on behalf of local people, to help to formulate policing strategies for their areas and to ensure high-quality scrutiny of performance data and crime statistics on which the force bases its policing plans. Therefore, I have no problems with the Bill placing a duty on police authorities to have regard to the views of the public, except to say that every police authority that I know, which is pretty much all of them, already engages in regular and extensive consultation with its local communities about the policing precept, local policing plans and a host of other issues. I know that authorities would be happy to take on this additional duty. More important, however, we are moving to a situation where confidence in the police service that is delivered to local people is to become the key policing measure and the only numerical target to be imposed in the future by government. The police do not, and cannot, operate effectively, display a hands-on approach and can-do attitude, deliver results and generate confidence all on their own. They go a long way but, to be successful, they have to work with other delivery partners and, crucially, with local councils. It will therefore be imperative that a duty is also placed on local partners, particularly local councils, to co-operate with the police in delivering the local confidence target, just as the police and police authorities are under a duty to co-operate with local authorities in helping them to deliver local area agreement targets. While we are on the subject of local accountability, given that we all want to see continuous improvement in the performance and capacity of police authorities, which will certainly be helped very much by the inspection regime that is soon to begin, the Association of Police Authorities and the Local Government Association need to work with government to ensure that councils have regard to some key criteria in nominating councillors to police authorities. Great weight should be placed on an interest in policing, involvement in local policing consultative bodies, experience in scrutiny and performance management issues and analysis of performance data, which I see as particularly relevant skills for councillor members of police authorities to possess. I had the pleasure of representing the Association of Police Authorities on the senior appointments panel for about three years, from the time that it was established. Indeed, I am probably the only member of your Lordships’ House who has had extensive experience of the way in which this body operates. While we are told that the reason for the proposal to make it a statutory body is to give it more independence, I have been around Whitehall for too long to be fully reassured by this explanation of potential benefits. Indeed, I can rather see some dangers stemming from this proposal. The Home Secretary of the day and senior Home Office officials, through the power of appointment to the senior appointments panel, will acquire much greater powers to direct this body to do what they want, including exercising disproportionate influence over appointments at senior police level. My experience of this body was that it worked pretty well. There were issues and concerns but, in general, the balance between the Home Office, ACPO and police authority representatives was maintained. Decisions were well judged and vigorously debated but then agreed in a consensual way under the watchful eye of the inspectorate of police. The Home Secretary got involved rarely, but then decisively. My job was to ensure that police authorities had confidence in the long-listing process for senior appointments and in the order of appointments. We must never forget that chief constables are locally accountable and need to be chosen by local police authorities to suit the needs and preferences of local communities. Needs and preferences should not be imposed from the centre. The senior appointments panel ensured that balance in the face of continuing, strong Home Office pressure to gain control of the process and to move a cadre of senior officers around the country to serve a national and not a local agenda. At the moment, as it is constituted, the senior appointments panel ensures that the appropriate balance between national needs and local accountability is maintained. I want to ensure that no changes proposed in the Bill will upset this vital but delicate equilibrium between national and local that gives British policing so much of its strength and credibility. Lastly, we are told that the purpose of the collaboration clauses is to improve the co-operation of forces and authorities at regional and national level, which, of course, we must try to do. However, these clauses are trying to make the best of an unsatisfactory situation. I remind your Lordships that I was a strong supporter of the concept of larger strategic police forces two to three years ago and I still think that this is the right way to go. Everything that is happening in the world today reinforces the reality that we have too many police forces and that they lack resilience. Somehow we must make them work together and put in place coherent operational and support arrangements to deal with serious and organised crime threats, but how do you make this collaboration effective? I observe that the proposals in the Bill are framed as directions. My experience of the world is that individuals and organisations work best when they respond to incentives and the opportunity to operate flexibly, rather than to instructions delivered from the centre. In general terms I am worried that the way in which these proposals are framed will prove to be both objectionable and potentially unworkable, as the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, argued. As the Bill goes through the House, we will need to look closely at the Home Secretary’s proposed powers in relation to collaboration arrangements and to limit them more tightly so that they are capable of being exercised only by reference to efficiency and effectiveness and only following advice from HMIC. That would follow the precedent of recent police legislation, which I think should be followed in this Bill. The Secretary of State should also be able to direct chief officers in relation to collaboration arrangements through police authorities only on the advice of the inspectorate. Again, I think that this is a very important provision. These proposals on collaboration will, I think, prove to be unworkable because—as has been said—of the fundamental error of assuming that all collaboration agreements will be capable of being neatly pigeonholed into either police force or authority collaboration agreements. We know already from what is happening in this area that effective collaboration needs forces and authorities to work together. Too much rigidity and too much separating out will undermine effectiveness and make successful collaboration much more difficult to achieve. I sense that these proposals do not recognise the realities of how things work on the ground. They risk undermining a lot of good practice that is already ongoing in this area between forces and authorities. Therefore, this is a part of the Bill that I will certainly want to scrutinise much more closely as it passes through the House. I end by welcoming the proposals to reduce alcohol-related harm and to tighten controls on the sale and availability of alcohol to young people. Much has been eloquently said on this topic and I agree with the concerns that have been expressed. Again, however, we need to balance directives with incentives if we really want to achieve our objective of getting young people to drink responsibly. I am the patron of a wonderful charity, Rock Challenge UK, under whose auspices up to 40,000 teenagers every year perform dance and drama on a professional stage, having agreed in advance not to drink alcohol or to take drugs. Such young people themselves are the most effective advocates of the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. I hope that in our efforts to combat excess drinking we will work with them and with all the sensible and sober teenagers like them—there are a lot of them—and involve them as our ambassadors in developing our policies and our campaigns to reduce alcohol abuse and the disorder and medical problems that it provokes, because these young people will do as much if not more than we will to persuade their fellows to change their ways.