Policing and Crime Bill

This amendment would bring the Association of Chief Police Officers within the provision of the Freedom of Information Act. My reason for tabling it is that the Government are, in any case, looking at whether the FOI Act is wide enough in the organisations it covers. The Prime Minister opened a consultation in February 2008 on whether Section 5 of the FOI Act should be extended to persons who perform functions of a public nature and contractors who provide services that are functions of public authorities. On 13 May 2009, at the very interesting Information Commissioner’s conference, Justice Minister Michael Wills MP announced that there will be an expansion of the number of institutions to which the Freedom of Information Act applies. So against that background I am tabling this in hope. There seems to be no good reason why the Freedom of Information Act should not apply to ACPO. The status of ACPO is quite confusing but rather well laid out by the Minister in a Written Answer to a Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, about funding: ""As an independent organisation of chief officers from the police forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, ACPO is accountable to its members. Chief officers are in turn accountable to police authorities and the public. As it is a private company, the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to ACPO, since Schedule 1 to the Act does not include a definition which covers ACPO".—[Official Report, 2/6/09; col. WA64.]" So ACPO is public/private in terms of the FOI Act. Clearly, ACPO has very public functions and is often setting strategy, which suggests that the FOI Act should apply to it. To its credit, ACPO states on its website that it is willing to place as much information as it can in the public domain. It argues that as a small organisation it has too few members of staff to be able to conduct the necessary research and compile the responses. However, other small institutions have to deal with FOI requests—university departments, for example. The size of an organisation should not dominate a decision on whether it should be subject to FOI requests. It should be made on whether it is performing functions of a public nature. The FOI Act creates a general right of access to information held by bodies fitting into a description in Schedule 1 to that Act, which are mainly public bodies. However, my amendment makes use of the power under Section 5 of the Act to treat other bodies as public bodies for the purposes of the Act. This is appropriate because, as I have explained, the boundaries between public and private bodies are increasingly blurred. ACPO is funded by a combination of Home Office grant, contributions from the 44 police authorities, membership subscriptions and the proceeds of its annual exhibition. Given that the majority of ACPO’s funding is provided by the public in one way or another and that its leading representatives are generally serving senior police officers, it is effectively a public sector entity operating as a private company. It is responsible for leading the development and direction of police authorities in England and Wales; so its public functions are obvious. It co-ordinates strategic decisions among police forces and much of that decision-making process is opaque and unminuted. The counterargument that the Minister and others may choose to put is that if ACPO is to be subject to the FOI Act and feels sensitive about it, that will drive any decision-making process underground. But that is not in the spirit of the FOI Act and I hope that that would not happen. Perhaps I may give your Lordships an example of one area of ACPO’s work which is of crucial public interest and much debate—the police policy on tasers. ACPO’s evaluation report on taser trials has been cited by the Home Office and states that tasers are safe enough to be deployed to non-firearmed police. ACPO has received information requests for the evidence for that but has not released it. I submit that that information is in the public interest and would enable better public debate. Apart from that, the very keeping of that information as a secret creates the wrong impression. Therefore, against that background and what I have described the Government are considering, it is important that ACPO is in the forefront of bodies to which the FOI Act needs to apply. I beg to move.