Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, I understand that my noble friend’s amendment has been made with the single public confidence target for the police in mind to ensure that all top-tier councils have a duty to co-operate with the police in the delivery of the target. Local authorities in England, together with the police, are already under a duty to have regard to local improvement targets when exercising their functions, and the majority of local area agreements include one of the key public confidence indicators, showing a strong commitment on the part of local government to deliver on this shared agenda. Indeed, more than 40 per cent of local area agreements include at least one of the four confidence-related national indicators. In seeking to introduce any additional duty, we would have to give due regard to the new burdens of this assessment. The comprehensive area assessment—a new joint way of assessing local public services in England—examines how well local councils are working together with other public bodies and is due to report shortly. It will assess progress on all national indicators regardless of whether they are included as a target in the local authority agreement. Where local authority performance issues are identified, a proportionate and co-ordinated response to identifying and tackling the improvement need will be delivered through a range of support options from local, regional and central government partners. However, this does not mean that there are not other ways in which local partners can contribute more to delivery of the confidence target. Given the target’s stretching nature, the Government are willing to consider what more local partners might do to contribute to its delivery. We propose to do this through a consultation with stakeholders. As to the duty of LSPs to co-operate, the comprehensive area assessments will measure all national indicators, as I have said, regardless of whether these have been chosen as a target of the local area agreement. This will therefore pick up where local areas are not making progress. Having made that response—which I thought was a good response—I was quite shocked to hear the figure of 50 out of 350, so I sent a message to the Box to ask whether it was correct. It seems to me that local partners can contribute more to improving confidence in their areas and that we need to consult on the best way to achieve this. While I do not wish to accept the amendment, I shall commit to going away and looking at this in some detail because, as I said, I was rather shocked by the issue raised by the noble Baroness. If I do that, I think that we will then have to enhance our consultation to see how we move forward. On that basis, I invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.