Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 13 and 14, the last relating to Clause 5. They follow from our discussion on this part of the Bill in Committee. I am acutely conscious of the need to improve the resilience of policing at a strategic level and, in the light of the current financial situation particularly in the public sector, significantly to improve how protective services are handled and how efficiencies can be achieved in doing so. I have carefully considered what the Minister said in Committee and taken the point that the Secretary of State is responsible to Parliament for national security. It is important for him to have some powers of direction over collaboration to ensure the strategic resilience of policing. My amendment therefore preserves this power. However, I do not entirely agree with some of the points the Minister made in Committee, hence the tabling of these amendments. However, before dealing with those individually, I shall summarise the overarching concerns that the amendment address—I hope for the last time. This section contains very draconian and wide-ranging powers of direction which, if left unmodified, could be used at some point in the future in dramatic ways which are not intended. As I have said, although I accept that the present Government do not intend to use the powers inappropriately, once they are on the statute book they will present a temptation to all future Administrations. One day, an Administration may find it convenient to use the powers in a more far-reaching way. At best, the powers confer the ability to micromanage collaboration between police forces and authorities; at worst, they could be used to direct that policing is restructured by the backdoor. It may or may not be that, one day, it will be right to restructure policing, but that should be done through the proper parliamentary process, not through another route that enables that process to be circumvented. In Committee, the Minister did not really deal with my points about the pernicious nature of the powers in this section to give central directions to police officers. He talked about powers of direction not being new but, in that context, included powers to direct police authorities. That rather misses my point. The ability to give direct orders to chief officers is the thin end of the wedge of exercising central political control over policing. We are all aware of the recent debates about the politicisation of policing, which the current, carefully crafted structure of the tripartite system is there to prevent. The Bill rides roughshod over that. Even on the Minister's words, it is intended to be used in a routine way. He stated previously that the powers were needed not as a last resort, but to develop a national consensus about consistent collaboration. I do not entirely buy that. I think that there are other ways of developing national consensus without using draconian powers. I am of course aware that the Secretary of State has similar powers of direction in the current collaboration section of the Police Act 1996, which the provisions are intended to improve but, in the 13 years since the Act was originally passed, the tripartite structure has matured. Other powers to direct or intervene that have been introduced into policing legislation since then have recognised that, and have usually been careful to preserve the appropriate balance of powers. Sections 40 to 40B and Section 53A of the Police Act are examples of that. That has not prevented the use of central powers, but has limited how they can be exercised to preserve the independence of policing. Since then, there has been an move to greater local devolution and accountability. The Green Paper supported that aim, yet here we have centralising powers, which fly in the face of that and pretend that time has stood still. I have taken on board two points that the Minister previously made. First, this section of the Bill cannot be tied to Sections 40 to 40B of the Police Act, because it deals with remedying poor performance, not with wider strategic issues, or the ability to specify what action may be needed in a collaborative context. Secondly, I noted his point that HMIC will be important in developing a proactive approach and providing advice to determine what action might be needed to improve collaboration and in scoping policing functions that could usefully be delivered in collaboration. I have brought those points together in my amendment. It would enable the Secretary of State to give directions about collaboration, but only via police authorities, which could use existing powers available to them under the Police and Justice Act 2006 to ensure that their forces collaborate. That would mean that we could avoid the prospect of the Secretary of State giving orders directly to chief officers, but achieve the same outcome in terms of traction over collaboration. It would also ensure that the Secretary of State could exercise his powers only on advice from HMIC that it was in the interests of the efficiency and effectiveness of policing. Finally, it would give the authorities and forces concerned an opportunity to make representations about the direction that HMIC would have to consider in providing advice. This represents an appropriate balance between meeting the national strategic needs of the Home Secretary and preserving important safeguards and local responsibilities. I shall be brief on my other amendments in this group. They relate to consultation before powers of direction are exercised and before statutory guidance about collaboration is issued. I heard that the Minister thought it was unnecessary to specify that this should include consultation with APA and ACPO because that would be done anyway, as they would be among other bodies that would be consulted. That struck me as a little too casual. By that yardstick, it would be unnecessary to mention anywhere in the Police Act that APA or ACPO should be consulted about anything, but they are statutory consultees to many aspects of the Police Act and other policing legislation. I wonder why the Minister thinks collaboration should be the exception. Given the problems that have accompanied attempts to collaborate, I find it particularly odd that he does not think it appropriate to mention consultation with the bodies that have experience of putting this into practice. It also, by implication, seems to place central interests first once again and pays scant regard to the rest of the tripartite structure. I do not see the problem with including this as it gives a formal say to the other legs of the governance structure in an area that will become increasingly important to policing. I beg to move.