Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chair of a policy authority, as a former chair of the Association of Police Authorities and as the current president of that association. The amendment is in a group of amendments, the majority of which are in my name. The substantial amendments are Amendments 15A and 31D but I shall speak also to Amendments 32G to 32R, 34B, 35A and 36ZA. The two key amendments seek to explore and fill out the new structure that has been put in place by the changes incorporated in the Bill last week. In particular they set out the key function of the new police commission and explain that, as the head of the commission, the police and crime commissioner must work with the panel to ensure that the new body works effectively and efficiently. The majority of the remaining amendments are consequential amendments to parts of Schedule 1; they essentially confer on the commission powers and protections that were previously conferred on the police and crime commissioner, particularly those for appointing staff. I shall begin by saying a little more on Amendment 15A, which focuses primarily on the theme of strengthening checks and balances by placing a duty on the police and crime commissioner to co-operate with the panel. While I am hopeful that the changes to the Bill have put in place a structure that is based more on co-operation than conflict, I am conscious that the legal structure will not in itself guarantee this. The amendment seeks to ensure that a spirit of co-operation is explicit in the way in which the commission has been established. The relationship between constituent members of the commission—that is, the police and crime commissioner and the panel—will be vital in ensuring that policing remains resilient and responsive in difficult times. It is important to strike a proper balance from the outset to ensure that we do not set up a landscape that is combative rather than collaborative. Amendment 31D sets out the core overarching function of the police commission, which has now been established. It is clear that these key functions should belong to the commission rather than to any one of its constituent parts. It is not necessarily an exhaustive list and I am sure that we will have some interesting debates later in the Bill about where some functions should properly sit, whether with the police and crime commissioner, the police and crime panel or the parent body in the form of the commission. However, it seems to me that these core functions should sit with the commission, and I look forward to the debate testing this proposition. One of those functions is new compared with the functions of their predecessor police authorities, and that is the one relating to the new crime role envisaged by the Government. It is important to explore this crime role in more detail because it is not entirely clear what it means in practice and whether it is adequately covered in the Bill at present. Apart from a short and generic section in Clause 10 about co-operative working between police commissioners, community safety bodies and criminal justice bodies, the new role seems to rely mostly on explicit powers to make grants to reduce crime and disorder. I am sceptical that making additional grants to external bodies is realistic, given the current cost-cutting pressures on the police service, unless the Government are proposing to increase central funding, but perhaps the Minister can confirm that. I am also curious as to how this will fit with the new payment-by-results approach which the Ministry of Justice is developing for criminal justice bodies generally. This must lead to concerns about the timing of the Bill, because arrangements are being put in place when the landscape of criminal justice is still being developed. If police commissions or police and crime commissioners are genuinely to be given a greater role in the criminal justice system, I am concerned that their functions are drawn too narrowly in the Bill and that the ability merely to make grants will not achieve what is intended. For instance, the Audit Commission has highlighted the limitations of grants on the basis that, "““A grant is a gift or donation—the commissioner giving it has no right to receive anything in return but may attach terms and conditions specifying how the grant is to be spent””." Hints are given in the Bill that a wider approach is intended, but this seems to be limited to specific circumstances. Changes to the Housing Associations Act in Schedule 16 give police and crime commissioners a wider power to promote and fund the Housing Association, but this is not carried through elsewhere. The Bill contains generic provisions that a police and crime commissioner may do anything calculated to facilitate the exercise of their functions, but their functions are limited through Clause 1 to securing the maintenance of the police force, securing that it is efficient and effective, and holding the chief officer to account. Clause 1 also confers the functions in Chapter 3, but these are limited to making grants and co-operating with partners. Clause 10 refers to working with criminal justice partners to secure an efficient and effective criminal justice system but only in so far as it is appropriate to do so. Perhaps the Minister can therefore explain exactly what is appropriate in this context and illustrate the kinds of things that she expects the police and crime commissioner or a police commission to be able to do in this wider crime role. For instance, would a commission or a police and crime commissioner be able to mandate other parts of the criminal justice system to take particular actions? If not, would a public, who may have elected a police and crime commissioner—that is not currently in the Bill, but the question arises—on a platform of locking up more criminals, have the right to feel cheated when he then has to admit that he does not have the power to make this happen? If on the other hand it is intended that a police and crime commissioner should have some authority over the criminal justice system, should not the Bill put the matter beyond doubt and explain the exact nature of that authority? Given the intentions set out by the Government in their paper, Policing in the 21st Century, to include a role in relation to crime, it seems sensible to make this explicit in the functions of the new commission or the police and crime commissioner. That is the intention of this part of my amendment. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views. In the proposed new clause in Amendment 31D, subsection (2)(b) makes it explicit that the police commission should, "““secure that the police force is efficient and effective””." One reason why it is important to spell this out is that the commission would, I hope, build on existing best practice in this area. I envisage the police and crime commissioner taking the lead in holding the force and its senior command team to account and exercising strategic oversight of force needs and national strategic policing needs. Individual members of the commission, however, should be assigned to the different police divisions to oversee their functioning and the crime and disorder reduction partnerships in local areas. Forces now delegate significant financial and operational powers to divisional commanders, and it is very important that divisional policing is carefully scrutinised. Local councillors on the police commission are in the best position to undertake this scrutiny, working with local councillor scrutiny panels where appropriate. I envisage a sensible division of responsibilities, with the commissioner operating at force level and dealing with collaborative agreements and regional links with other forces and the other members of the commission operating at divisional and borough level. Two additional points incorporated in this amendment are worth noting. First, proposed new subsection 3(c) in the amendment is intended to clarify the responsibility to hold to account chief officers performing their duties under all legislation. The Bill originally contained a specific provision about holding chief officers to account for functions relating to equality and diversity legislation but not to other legislation. I have incorporated wording in my amendment to change this and highlight two additional Acts on human rights and on children which I think are important. It seems to me a key principle of governance that the chief officer should be held to account for the exercise of functions imposed by any Act. I believe it is also important to reassure communities that a police chief is properly carrying out his duties under all legislation. The Human Rights Act tends to come into play in certain sensitive policing operations such as counterterrorism policing or public order policing. It often involves difficult and complex issues where mistakes are made, and if they are it can have a corrosive effect on trust in the police. The Children Act is also important because this is the legislation that imposes responsibilities for the welfare of children and sets out how children are to be safeguarded by local public bodies, including the police. High-profile deaths of vulnerable children are often linked to failures to implement these partnership obligations correctly. For these reasons it is important that communities see there is an independent reality check on how police powers are being used to ensure the public have a voice in how they are policed. At the moment, police authorities have a legal duty to do this, and it seems logical that that should pass to the commission or to the police and crime commissioner. I also draw the attention of the House to the wording I have included, which both obliges the commission to hold meetings with the public and ensures that the police and crime commissioner must attend a minimum number each year. It contains some very specific provisions about ensuring that a diverse range of the public is included in these meetings. A failure to engage minority or disenchanted communities who feel they have no say in how they are policed is likely to have a dramatic impact on public confidence in policing. The dangers of not getting engagement right have been understood ever since the Scarman report into the Brixton riots highlighted the importance of working with all communities in an area, not just some of them. I am aware that there are separate provisions about consultation, but this is about giving the public a chance to engage personally with the police and crime commissioner or other members of the commission to raise concerns and to ask questions. It is also about making sure that this opportunity is open to a wide and varied range of people to ensure that meaningful connections are made with all sectors of the community. Finally and briefly, as mentioned earlier, there are a number of consequential amendments to Schedule 1, which reflect the new structure of a police commission, in effect transferring a number of powers that previously fell to the police and crime commissioner to the new commission, which will enable the commission, rather than the police and crime commissioner, to employ and pay staff. It will also confer on it incidental powers in carrying out the overarching governance functions which the substantive part of my amendment would impose on the commission. I hope I have satisfied the House that the issues I have raised are ones that are in the Bill whether the police and crime commissioner is elected or appointed. These concerns relate to policing as a whole and we really do need to debate and discuss them in this House. I therefore beg to move my amendment. In doing so, I must tell the House that the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, had hoped to speak in support of this amendment but is suffering from laryngitis. She is very sorry but she will not be able to do so.