Policing and Crime Bill

As with previous amendments, this one aims to bring greater clarity to collaboration agreements. The first paragraph would make it explicit that police authorities and their police forces could enter agreements jointly. I am not convinced that this is currently clear in the Bill. On the contrary, the way in which the Bill is drafted makes an absolute distinction between operational agreements—to be entered into by police forces—and agreements relating to support services, which are to be entered into by police authorities. This distinction also implies an absolute separation of the two functions, which is much more sharply drawn than in the current legislation governing collaboration. It is true that this allows for separate force and authority agreements, but it is less precise about the exact nature of these agreements. Because existing legislation is, in some senses, more permissive than the replacement now being proposed, it has been customary to enter into many collaboration agreements jointly, as between force and authority. This makes sense where an essentially operational agreement requires support services to make it effective. In fact, it is hard to think of any area of collaboration that is so operationally focused that it would not require some element of administrative back-up. Perhaps, to a lesser extent, the argument also holds the other way around, when collaboration might focus on administrative support but impact on some element of operational policing. The point of this section of the Bill is to improve on existing legislation to better enable collaboration and bring greater clarity to the respective roles of the authority and the force. This is to be supported, but I fear that, unless the Bill explicitly permits joint arrangements, it will have the opposite effect. I know the Minister will argue that this is unnecessary because there is nothing in the legislation that says joint agreements cannot be entered into, but I am not convinced that it is so straightforward. The existing wording at least implies that joint agreements are not possible because of the absolute separation of functions. If this is so, it would render most existing collaboration agreements unworkable and prevent, rather than encourage, a significant proportion of new agreements. The second paragraph ensures that any police force collaboration agreement that commits a police authority to a financial or legal liability must include that police authority as a party to that agreement. This refers largely to the position of police authorities as both employers to the police and budget holders for their force, with a duty of care to their employees and a financial stewardship for the budget. The amendment acknowledges this position and puts in place arrangements that prevent an authority’s legal liabilities being compromised through agreements that might otherwise be outside their control. In moving this amendment, I reiterate that it is designed to be helpful and bring greater clarity to the impetus to encourage more widespread and effective collaboration. I beg to move.