Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I particularly support the submissions and remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Although I have immense regard and sympathy for the amendments, the answer does not really lie in pilot schemes at all. I look upon it as the Government embarking on a very revolutionary experiment. Whether one agrees with it or not, one cannot deny that it breaks new ground in a massive way. Here is a machinery that has the potential to be successful but also to be extremely dangerous. How do you test that to destruction, before you bring the whole scheme into being? In other words, what is the legislative equivalent of the wave tank or wind tunnel that will give you an answer to that problem? I listened of course with total respect and regard to the remarks of the noble Lords, Lord Dear and Lord Condon, with their immense and distinctive experience in this field. Uncertainty is also a very great enemy of the morale of the police service in this matter but, nevertheless, these are massive questions. You may have a situation where perhaps 30 of the forces involved find themselves well and successfully served by a commissioner. What if you had 10, 11 or 12 situations where it did not work? The damage and the disastrous consequences would be so immense. That is the danger that we face. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, spoke of national issues, and I will speak about a Welsh national issue. The Welsh Assembly Government were conscious of the very particular situation that we have in Wales with the four police forces and the possibility of amalgamation, which raises immense constitutional questions. In Wales you now have the outline of statehood and the question of whether you should have one single police force for a country and nation—not a situation that, at the moment, we are facing in the United Kingdom. The Welsh Assembly set up a high-powered body, which reported, I think, in February this year and recommended very strongly that there should be full discussions between the Welsh Assembly and Her Majesty’s Government on this most sensitive of matters. Here we have been told by the Government—and I have no doubt that the Government are sincere in this —that this is a matter on which local views, attitudes and conditions have immense pertinence. That can be put to the test by respecting that attitude in relation to Wales. Lastly, speaking as a former family judge, I accept completely what has been said about the secrecy involved in dealing with the protection of children. These are not matters that can be laid down as huge lines of policy. They are sensitive matters where a great deal has to be done by way of trust and, if I may say so, covertly in so far as the general public are concerned. I do not for a moment believe that the role of protecting children is mainly that of the police; agencies in local government, and indeed in the health service, have that as their main concern. If I may say as an aside, I believe that the best protection that any child in danger can ever have is to have one person responsible for collecting and collating information—that, above all, is the best service that can be given to children. The police certainly have a massive and impactive role to play, but I do not think that their role can be improved in any way by the sort of structures contemplated in the proposals for police commissioners, with every respect to Her Majesty’s Government. The matter needs to be approached with great imagination and great sensitivity.