Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, the purpose of my two amendments in this group, which are Amendments 25 and 59, is to place a requirement—a must requirement—on the police and crime commissioner, or in the model of Amendment 31 the police and crime commission, and in respect of Amendment 59 the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, to meet representatives of each local authority in their particular police area, "““at least twice a year to discuss the policing needs of those authorities””." The purpose of the amendment is to add to what is already envisaged on public engagement, while talking about the specific relationship with the local authority. Ever since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 was passed, and in many instances before, there has been a recognition of the importance of the police service working with local government to deliver more effective policies in the local area against crime and disorder. We are all well aware that partnership on these issues works better than one service simply operating in isolation. I have fond memories of my time as a local authority leader when I led the London Borough of Haringey, which covered Tottenham and in particular the Broadwater Farm estate. I become leader two years after the riots on that estate. I remember that there was a ritual when every summer the police commander for the local area would come and see me and say, ““We are very concerned about what is going on on the Broadwater Farm estate””. I would say, ““Well, we as the local authority are very concerned about what is going on in the Broadwater Farm estate””. Both parties—or both agencies, as this is not a party-political point—covered their backs in the event of something terrible happening in future. The police had raised it with the local authority and we had raised it with the police. What of course was necessary, which was where we got to even before the requirements of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, was to have a proper dialogue. There was collaboration between the local authority and the police to identify what needed to be done to resolve particular issues. Some crime and disorder issues can be very serious, like some of the issues around the Broadwater Farm estate, but sometimes they are much more mundane—they are about the quality of street lighting or about recognising that there is a particular issue on a particular street corner, where the local authority and the police can make a contribution to reducing the risk or fear of crime in that area. It is about partnership and working together. I know that is implicit in what this contains but we are in a slightly different environment, particularly if the Government’s preferred mode of operation goes ahead where we have a single individual. My noble friend Lady Farrington of Ribbleton talked in far more detail than I possibly could about the arrangements in Burnley, Blackburn and Blackpool and the conflicts that might arise, and how one would not necessarily assume that the interests of those communities would coincide. I simply recall, from my time as chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, instituting a process of what we called borough visits to meet with each local authority’s leader and chief executive to talk about the policing needs of those areas. That has been carried on by my successors as police authority chairs. The current incarnations are called JEMs, or joint engagement meetings, but the principle is the same. It is about the importance of meeting the local authorities, not collectively but individually, to address the policing needs of those local areas. I particularly recall the interesting experience when I attempted to do two of those borough visits on the same day. One was in a borough which was very much inner-city and faced all sorts of major inner-London problems. The other was in what I would regard as a quieter, less pressured area of London—very much a suburban area. In the morning, we spent a lot of time dealing with knife crime, gang-related violence and all the issues that were uppermost in the local authority world as well as in the policing world. In the afternoon, I was told that the biggest issue affecting that area was shed crime, with people breaking into garden sheds. I suspect that if you were in the inner-city part of London, you would be considered completely mad if you put anything of value in a shed at the base of a block of flats or even at the end of a garden, if you had such a thing. However, that was not regarded as the situation in a suburban area. You had very different approaches to what was needed from the local police service and what were considered as local priorities. Setting a single set of priorities across the whole of London—I expect this would apply in Thames Valley, Lancashire, Northumbria or wherever else you might choose to be—needs to be informed by the concerns of local communities, and in particular by the contribution that individual local authorities can make where that series of activities is concerned. One debate we have had in this House, both on Second Reading and last week, has been about how to ensure that a single, elected individual, in the Government's preferred model, pays appropriate attention to all the areas for which they are responsible. In any event, whether it is a commission or an absolute paragon elected for a large area but who nonetheless recognises the importance of listening to every part of their area, that will be facilitated by a requirement to meet regularly with representatives of the local authorities concerned. In many policing areas, I think we will find that there is a real problem of coherence. People describe London as being somewhere where everybody knows their part of it—as I understand it, there are one or two bits of London which would rather not be part of it; there are other parts which would be perfectly happy if those areas were not part of London, but I do not want to talk about that. The point is that London is enormously diverse; so is the Thames Valley. Even that strange entity, West Mercia, is a diverse area. This requirement to work with each local authority in an area is an important safeguard to ensure both that those communities are not forgotten and that whoever is in charge, whether it is an individual police and crime commissioner, a police and crime commission or, in London’s case, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, is seen to be not only listening but collaborating and co-operating with all the local authorities in their area. Only through that collaboration and co-operation will you be able to make a real difference to crime and disorder in those areas. I beg to move.