Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, in moving Amendment 7, I shall also speak to Amendments 99 and 100, which are grouped with it. My original amendment in Committee sought to remove this part of the Bill altogether because of my concerns about the wide-ranging powers that it confers on the Secretary of State, yet again, to make orders about senior appointments and related matters. I reluctantly accept that the Government are determined to go ahead with the clause because they believe that it supports the previous clause on the senior appointments panel. By this logic, if the senior appointments panel is to be statutory, this clause needs to be, too. I accept that this is at least consistent, even if I am still sceptical about it being entirely necessary. Amendment 7 therefore seeks to improve the clause rather than to dispense with it altogether. I remain concerned about the wide and rather unspecific nature of the powers which the clause gives to the Home Secretary. Having heeded what the Minister said about the important role of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary in advising the senior appointments panel, and conscious that the clause is intended to support the panel’s work, I have linked the two together. Amendment 7 suggests that the powers of the Secretary of State should be exercisable, subject to the advice of the HMCIC, and that any proposed regulations are in the best interests of appointments to, or departures from, senior posts. The amendment also suggests that the Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Chief Police Officers must be consulted before regulations are made. This reflects their important role in senior appointments. Let us not forget, as this Bill seems to, that the authorities are the ones that appoint senior officers. The tripartite structure should not be overlooked when developing regulations that will affect them in a very important area of their business, as we have already heard this evening. These changes would provide appropriate and proportionate safeguards in the Secretary of State’s exercise of these otherwise very wide and vague powers, which, as with many other parts of the Bill, are entirely inconsistent with the stated government aim of greater devolution. Amendments 99 and 100, again, address the order-making powers, although I am grateful to the Minister for responding to some of my concerns about specific order-making powers by referring to the Secretary of State’s responsibilities for national security and to the need to have powers to ensure that this function can be discharged effectively. However, I hope he recognises the delicate balance of the constitutional arrangements for policing, which reflect that. In this country, we have long cherished policing by the people for the people, not policing by the state. The amendments would ensure that no one is above the law and that policing is by consent and not coercion. To achieve this, police officers must have operational independence, at least in theory free from political and other unwarranted interference by the state or by anyone else for that matter. Chief police officers must be able to exercise their professional judgment in any given situation and be free to act without fear or favour. This does not mean that they cannot be held to account for their actions after the event, but their decisions should not be interfered with before and during the event. The police authorities are local bodies made up of local people, so to some extent they are the "people" element in the equation. It is their job to set the strategic direction of the local force while bearing in mind the balance of national and local needs. I feel bound to keep stating this, because for some reason the Home Office does not seem to understand it. The police authorities hold the chief police officer to account on behalf of local people, which again reinforces the principle that policing is not conducted by the state. This tripartite balance is created very carefully. It is, however, delicate and easily upset, and since the original Police Act was passed in 1996 the Government have made progressive attempts over the years to chip away at the edges in the search for ever more power. Of the innumerable policing Bills that have been passed since then—I have been party to most of them—none has seriously tried to give powers back to local forces or authorities. Despite many government papers of various hues—green and white—that have claimed to do the opposite and to support greater devolution, it happens all the time. The Government just do not seem able to help themselves. This is not assisted by the general malaise of law by knee-jerk reaction, which usually but not always stems from the latest media frenzy. This makes for incoherent legislation that is rarely thought through or tied to other longer-term strategies and developments. This, in turn, leads to an addiction to regulation-making powers. Since the latest law, let alone its practical impact, has not been thought through in the first place, a safety valve is always needed to tweak it and get it running half right. I fear that we have another example of this kind of thinking in the Bill. By the Minister’s own admission, he is not clear exactly what regulations might be needed under Clause 3 because the Government are waiting for the senior appointments panel to tell them. To my mind, it is depressing and unacceptable that we should have so many open-ended regulation-making powers. It is bound to affect the tripartite balance, tipping it even further to the centre, and I remain unconvinced that some of the regulations are necessary at all. Many could and should be left to local discretion. Where this is not possible, the sort of measures that they will contain should be better described and more tightly defined before they are put into legislation. At the very least, they should be made subject to positive procedures to ensure that Parliament has a chance to scrutinise what is being proposed and whether it is necessary. This is what these amendments propose. Some of these powers could be very far-reaching and significant—I have in mind particularly those that relate to collaboration—but they all have an impact on the balance between the central and the local in policing. Given that this has been severely eroded already, we need to be mindful of the aggregate impact and ensure that constraints are put into place. I beg to move.