Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, there is a cornucopia of interesting points concealed in this group of amendments. I shall try to confine myself to about three rather than address them all. In response to the speeches made by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester about the British Transport Police, although I have a lot of sympathy for what is being said, I say that we need to think through some of the implications. It would not be in the interests of citizens if they never knew where the tentacles of the British Transport Police had so far extended and that they might be relating to them in places considerably different from railway stations or the railway. I am conscious of that because some years ago I conducted an exercise, on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Authority, which listened to Londoners about their attitudes to counterterrorism policing. There were a huge number of comments, particularly about stop and search and Section 44. I appreciate that Section 44 is no more. It was interesting that, on analysis, a large number of those comments related to the actions of the British Transport Police. The public, particularly young people, did not make a distinction between the British Transport Police and the Metropolitan Police in that instance. We have to think about how a chief officer of police will have direction and control for policing in their area if this is blurred. But that is not to say that we would want an extraordinary sort of relay race where the baton is handed on when a pickpocket is being chased from one place to another. The position of some of the non-geographic police bodies should be regularised and it is important that they are regularised in this Bill. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Stevenson of Balmacara for putting forward and speaking to Amendment 30, which raises the issue of the Memorandum of Understanding defined in his earlier amendment. Incidentally, I think that it is a different document from that which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was talking about and which the Government published a couple of weeks back. This is intended to talk about the relationship between different forces rather than the relationship between an elected police and crime commission or a non-elected police and crime commission and a chief officer of police. Some specification of the relationship between the non-geographic forces and the mainstream Home Office forces is extremely important. I should like to illustrate that in relation to the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, which is responsible for the protection of nuclear sites and for the transportation of nuclear materials, including at sea. Because of the nature of nuclear materials and the considerable dangers that might be associated with it, it is a very heavily armed constabulary with significant amounts of weaponry, including, I think, cannons for use at sea. It is therefore very important in terms of what might or might not happen in respect of these issues. It highlights potential vulnerabilities of particular sites or when nuclear materials are being transported and the public, quite rightly, would expect those materials and sites to be properly protected. However, it is slightly anomalous that, as I understand it, the members of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary are paid on different, lower scales than other police officers. It is more than slightly anomalous that those officers are not necessarily subjected to the same levels of training. I think that as regards firearms training there now is a lot of read-across, but that was not always the case and there is no requirement for that to be the case. This is potentially of enormous public concern and we want to see that the governance and arrangements are managed properly. The relationship between the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and Home Office forces in the vicinity also worries me. As I understand it, agreements are in place between the Civil Nuclear Constabulary around particular establishments and the local police force. I think the concept—no doubt I caricature it grotesquely—is that if, for example, a particular establishment came under sustained attack from the massed ranks of al-Qaeda or whoever else it might be, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary would be able to hold off that attack for a certain period while the local constabulary would come to its aid. The problem, I suspect, is about what the local constabulary would be able to do under such circumstances. Often these are in quite rural and remote areas; the forces concerned do not have large armed presences that could be summoned at short notice—or they might have to go over mountain ranges or face other difficult circumstances. To clarify what the relationship is and should be not only would be very valuable in terms of this legislation, but also would be extremely important in terms of public safety and the security of the critical national infrastructure. I suspect—but I know less about it—that a similar arrangement might well be important in respect of the Ministry of Defence Police. I know there were some discussions—and I acknowledge that I am not sure how they turned out—about the Ministry of Defence Police taking on responsibility, in addition to its duties in respect of Ministry of Defence establishments, for keeping an eye on and protecting certain bits of the critical national infrastructure. Again, the same principles apply about the relationship between its activities and the local force’s. Getting that right is important: I think it probably would valuably be spelt out in the context of having independent-minded police and crime commissions or commissioners—whatever we end up with—or the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime in London. It may be important in terms of protecting the national interest and what we all expect to happen with respect to that collaboration if some of these things were capable of being spelt out by a proper Memorandum of Understanding which could be referred to and in which the Home Office and other agencies would want to play a significant part. That is one point I wish to make on this group of amendments. The second relates to Amendment 83A, in the name of my noble friend Lord Beecham. This deletes the reference to specific bodies listed in the definition of ““criminal justice body””. Again, it would be valuable when the Minister responds if she could spell out the direction of travel as far as the Government are concerned. What we have at the moment is an enabling clause within the Bill, designed to enable things to evolve over time. However, we also want some clarity that this is not going to damage some of the existing areas of collaboration; we need to understand what the longer-term constitutional implications of major changes in this area might be. For example, at the moment, there are plenty of very good, well worked-out examples of having Crown Prosecution Service staff collocated within police stations. This is designed to ensure a quick and rapid interchange between police officers investigating a crime and Crown Prosecution Service staff about whether sufficient evidence has been gathered as soon as arrangements have been made as to how to take things forward, were a charge to be made. That is good practice, and something which works well. Is it the Government’s intention that that should go further—that ultimately the Crown Prosecution Service should come within the ambit of the police, or within the ambit of the police and crime commissioner, the commission or the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime—whatever we end up with? I think that then raises some fundamental issues about the relationship between the police and the prosecution decision. We do not have in this country an inquisitorial system whereby a prosecutor comes in and makes all the decisions on the investigation and how things proceed. By changing that relationship—or potentially changing that relationship—we will change significantly the components of the criminal justice system and the way they relate to policing. Whether that is in the wider interests of the public, I think we need to be clear and we need to debate. I have a fairly open mind on it, but it raises some quite big constitutional issues. Similarly, I can see that considerable savings might be made were some elements of probation and policing to be brought together. Checking whether people are meeting their probation obligations might fit in usefully with local policing, but the distinction between the end point of criminal justice—the punishment end or whatever else it may be called—and ordinary policing would then be blurred. Again, I have an open mind as to whether that is good or bad, but it raises profound constitutional issues about the independence of those different functions. We should be clear about what the Government see as their direction of travel. On court administration and court services, tremendous benefits in terms of cost savings could be achieved by removing some of the extraordinary anomalies whereby police officers hang around indefinitely almost for the convenience of courts, magistrates or judges. If all those services were under the control of a single individual—the police and crime commissioner, the police and crime commission or the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime—efficiencies could be introduced in the way those systems worked. That would no doubt be good news for the public purse; it might be good news in terms of people awaiting trial and disposal by the courts, because things would happen speedily and when people expected them to happen; it would certainly be in the interests of witnesses; and it might well be in the interests of police officers who could spend their time otherwise. However, fundamental constitutional questions are raised about the relationship between the courts and the police. I am quite happy for us to have that debate but I would not want it to happen by default on the basis of a comparatively obscure clause in this Bill, as opposed to us looking at what the implications might be and whether there are serious unintended consequences of what might otherwise seem a sensible proposal. I shall make my final point briefly because I appreciate that I have spoken for quite a long time. It relates to Amendments 230A, 230B and 230C, which are on crime and disorder strategies and propose essentially to link into them the police and crime commissioner, the police and crime commission or the MOPC. The amendment ties in with the amendments that we debated last week about the relationship with local authorities. It is important to make sure that the accountability mechanism created under the Bill, whatever its final picture looks like, is seen to have a read-across at divisional level and at very local level. If a single individual ends up being in charge of all these things, the mechanism risks becoming centralised into a county-wide and force-wide process of debate and discussion, and you will lose the local dialogue which is essential to crime and disorder strategies at a local-authority level. It would also be more difficult to bring about the neighbourhood dimension. Making the strategy an explicit responsibility of the police and crime commissioner, the police and crime commission or the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime makes enormous sense.