Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, let me at the very outset, in the presence of the noble Lords, Lord Stevens, Lord Condon and Lord Imbert, put my hands up and say, ““It’s a fair cop Guv, I’ve got form as long as your arm on police accountability””, because I have. I have had the pleasure of working with all three of those noble Lords in different capacities over the years as a civil liberties lawyer campaigning for the reform of the police, as chair of the GLC’s police committee campaigning for the political accountability of the police in London, and as Minister of State for Police in the Home Office. In all those various capacities, I have supported and campaigned for directly elected political oversight—I stress ““oversight”” as opposed to ““control””—of the police. Therefore, I am bound to say that I cannot oppose as a matter of principle the proposal that is put forward in the Bill—and I do not. However, I am also bound to say that I share the very real concerns that have been expressed in the debate about the proposal that the Bill envisages and the way in which it is being introduced. I cannot but recollect the vehement opposition of the then Home Secretary to the very modest proposals that were put forward by my colleagues in the Labour Party in 1994 when we proposed directly elected police authorities. That modest proposal—modest in comparison with this reform—was met with the following words of the then Home Secretary. He said: "““I reject entirely the view long held by members of the Labour party that there should be directly elected police authorities. That would be a recipe for politicising the police service. It would also mean removing all magistrates from the work of police authorities. I believe that that would be a retrograde step””.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/4/94; cols. 112-13.]" The noble Lord is in his place. He knows whose words those were. They were the words of the then Home Secretary.