Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I put my name to Amendments 156 and 165, which deal with the panel arrangements in London. It is worth reflecting on the way in which the London arrangements will be substantially different from those in the rest of the country. The Bill replaces the panel responsibility on the London Assembly. Therefore, one will not be able to make—in the way that one will elsewhere in the country—the automatic assumption that every relevant local authority will be represented on that forum. There will be representatives from various parts of London, but it is possible that some parts of London will not be represented on the London Assembly panel. Therefore, it is worth remembering that the London arrangements for the panel are significantly different. This highlights also the importance of Amendment 156 in dealing with co-opted members. It is not designed to frustrate the Government's intention, but to tidy it up. If there are such co-opted members, they should be appointed by a resolution of the whole London Assembly, which would avoid some of the complexities that the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, highlighted. I support the points made by her and by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about who could be summoned to a panel. This is a particularly important issue, not just in London but around the country. In the past, I talked about two particular difficulties with some of the arrangements in the Bill. First, where is the visible answerability of the police service in any particular area to those who are holding it to account? I understand the Government's argument, which is that in London the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime will hold the police service to account, and that outside London it will be the police and crime commissioner—or the police and crime commission, if the House’s preferred option goes forward. However, the scrutiny process will be very strange if the only scrutiny that is possible will be of the actions of the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime—or the deputy MOPC, because the mayor will almost certainly appoint a deputy—and, in areas outside London, of the police and crime commissioner. There are a number of problems with that. It will mean that the entire focus of discussion will be about political debate. One elected politician will appear before a group of other elected politicians, possibly with one or two independents. Discussion will focus on the political decisions that the policing and crime commissioner, or the mayor’s office, have taken. That is all well and good: people may say that that is as it should be. However, I suspect that one will lose a lot of the granularity around what has happened in the police service in that area in the intervening period with which the panel is concerned. We are told that the chief officer of police—the commissioner of police in the metropolis—may attend meetings of the panel. However, they will not be obliged to attend, but may attend by their own grace and favour. The importance of Amendment 165, and parallel amendments, is that they would ensure an expectation that certain senior police officers could be required to attend. That will be critical to ensure that the discussion moves away from the political knockabout that all of us in Committee enjoy and have participated in at various times in our life, and towards scrutiny of important policing issues. The panel will have the power to call before it senior police officers who are responsible for the area of policing that is being debated. This will be critical to remove some of the political knockabout that will otherwise happen and to provide at least some, though not all, of the visible political answerability that is so necessary to policing.