Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Nobody has said that the existing system is absolutely flawless or does not need improving. I said to the hon. Member for Cambridge that it is important for police authorities to improve their visibility, but I suggest to the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood that we are discussing the Government's proposals for the future. If ACPO tells us that the Bill's checks and balances are simply too weak, should we not then say, ““We need to look at this, think about it and try to understand what we should do to further improve the system that we want””? The Minister gets very upset when I say this, but I am going to say it again. The police and crime panels are one way in which the police and crime commissioner is supposed to be held to account, but the panel is a completely toothless watchdog with no real power. It has two vetoes: one on appointments, as the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood knows, but only with a three-quarters majority; and the other on the precept, in respect of which the hon. Gentleman has tabled an amendment, but again with a three-quarters majority. That is it. The Minister will say, ““The panel has to be consulted, referred to and involved,”” but how can it be right that there will be a police and crime commissioner, without anybody able to do anything about what he does, providing obviously that what he does is within the law? Then we come to the huge number of representations about the size of the area that that one person will have to cover. Again, the Government do not think this is a problem. They say, ““Oh, there's no problem with this; it's fine,”” but there is no evidence to support that, and that is why the House should adopt the new clause so that we may have an inquiry and the HMIC can look into the matter. The Welsh Local Government Association points out that the system in Wales works very well, and it does not believe that replacing between 17 and 19 members of the individual police authorities in Wales"““with a single elected commissioner will…improve public accountability of the police””." The association does not believe that one individual can properly reflect all"““the divergent communities that exist in police force areas””," and it cites the huge area of Dyfed Powys, where one individual will cover the whole area. We can cite other examples. The Avon and Somerset area covers 1,855 square miles, from Thornbury to Yeovil to Minehead. It has a population of 1.6 million and large rural areas such as Exmoor, major urban areas such as Bristol and Bath and significant market towns. One individual will represent all those areas. That police authority area and one or two others that I will mention across the country all point out the difficulty, and we should listen to them.