Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, the provisions on collaboration agreements deal with the different roles that police forces and police authorities have within the collaboration. The most straightforward way for the legislation to make these details clear is to address them separately. However, that in no way undermines the need for both authorities and forces to assume their distinct responsibilities in the arrangements for a police force collaboration. The provisions ensure that they have a duty to assume those responsibilities. When the amendment, in a slightly different form, was tabled in Committee, I reassured noble Lords—as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, mentioned—that there was no discernible difference between the present legislation and the proposed new arrangements in so far as they both supported police forces and police authorities signing up to their combined plans for collaboration. The only difference is that the new provisions make it clearer that they deal with two different sorts of agreement about their respective responsibilities, but that these may be interlinked and indeed form two parts of the same set of paperwork. I also reassured noble Lords that such an approach would be the default arrangement in the template agreements set out in the supporting guidance. I take the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, that we must make sure that this is given out soon to the House. That is indeed the basis on which the templates are being drafted. I recognise the concern behind the amendment. As has been stated, we are both after the same thing. The linkage between force and authority agreements is important and may not appear explicit under the provisions as drafted. However, there is a clear dependency between the two, and all police forces’ collaboration agreements will automatically present an opportunity to the police authorities to develop associated agreements on governance arrangements and support services by virtue of the fact that the authorities must consider them for approval. There is no legal requirement for a police authority agreement to be the same as the agreement between police forces on which it is dependent. We will be happy to provide detailed advice to police authorities and forces on this point in the statutory guidance—I have already touched on that. I give my further reassurance that the approach set out in the provisions provides a robust and legitimate platform for agreements that combine the arrangements for operational policing collaboration with the governance and resourcing arrangements needed to underpin them. On this basis, I request that the noble Baroness withdraw her amendment.