Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister to her place and look forward to working with her on this Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, has proposed this amendment and I have to say, up front, that I do not support it. The argument that seems to underpin it is that there is nothing much wrong with the current system. I shall address that in a moment. It is an oversimplification, I know, of what she said, but that seems to be the core of the argument which supports the amendment. I was surprised to hear the noble Baroness say that we are here to prevent power going into one set of hands, or words to that effect. It seems to me that power is already in one set of hands—the hands of the chief constable. That is properly and legally constrained in ways we all understand. We are trying to find in your Lordships' House the way in which other powers, matching, mirroring and supporting that, can also be so constrained so that they work in harmony or in balance. I agree with almost everything that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, who is not now in his place. As a chief constable and a very senior officer in the Metropolitan Police for many years, I worked with police authorities of various political complexions and persuasions. One or two of those were good; most were indifferent; and at least one that I served as the chief officer was downright bad. So I can tell your Lordships in all honesty that not everything in the current situation is correct. One should also reflect on the fact that the current Chief Inspector of Constabulary found that only four police authorities out of more than 20 that were recently inspected were fit for purpose or ““up to scratch””, as I think he put it. As an inspector of constabulary for more than five years, one of the first things that I did was to respond to a request to take on an inspection of Derbyshire Constabulary. I knew little about Derbyshire except that it was a moderately sized police force of no great significance in the pantheon of policing and that it was not an innovator of policy so much as a follower. But I took myself off to Derbyshire in the very early 1990s and found the most appalling situation. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, asked us to dwell on the hypothetical case of Derek Hatton being chairman of a police authority. Derek Hatton never was chairman of a police authority, but a man called Councillor Bookbinder got his hands on the chairmanship of the Derbyshire Police Authority, with substantial party support behind him. To put it frankly, he brought the Derbyshire Constabulary to its knees. It was in the most appalling state, starved of funds, chivvied about by a thoroughly capricious chairman with a thoroughly capricious committee behind him. I discussed that with Councillor Bookbinder and his colleagues. I gave them six months to put things right and they did not. From memory, I gave them a further six months, saying ““Please get it right because an axe will fall””. They still did not and in fact tightened the screws yet more. I declared Derbyshire Constabulary inefficient. That was the first time in nearly half a century that an Inspector of Constabulary had deemed a force to be inefficient. Changes came about, one of which was the interposition into police authorities of the independent element, but an independent element in Derbyshire would have made no difference. Such was the political majority in power, they would have swept over the independence come what may. Change came and Derbyshire is now a very different place in policing compared with 15 or 20 years ago. I make that point to say that the current system can in extremis fail. The risks are still there with the current system and, of course, as many noble Lords have said today, there are risks in the system that we are invited to look at in the Bill. At this very early stage we should reflect on the fact that in the other place this Bill was passed with a substantial majority. On the back of six years’ experience in your Lordships' House, I suggest that we owe it to the parliamentary system to give this Bill fair scrutiny from start to finish. I, too, am concerned about checks and balances. I want to see what I guess most of us in this House want to see and that is two individuals—the chief officer of police and the police and crime commissioner—working together in harmony for the benefit of the population, not as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said earlier, somebody who is a boss. That may have been a loose use of that term. I do not see a boss in this relationship at all. The chemistry is important. I am concerned about a number of things. I pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, about size. He mentioned Kent. I could mention the West Midlands, where I was chief officer. It is the biggest police area in the UK outside London with a population of 4 million and more than 30 Members of Parliament. I am not sure how one individual can adequately represent an area that stretches from outside Coventry through the west virtually into Shropshire, taking in bits of the surrounding counties and seven huge cities and boroughs. That will be very difficult. That is one issue to which we should pay particular attention. On the whole, I am saying to your Lordships that I shall oppose the amendment if it is put to the House. This is such an important issue, which has already been passed in another place with a big majority, that we should look at everything in the Bill and give it a fair trial before we come to a conclusion.