Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, these amendments would prevent the mayor holding the mayor’s office for policing and crime and would instead create an elected deputy mayor for policing and crime to hold that office. This Government’s policy is to introduce a directly elected police and crime commissioner in every force area in England and Wales outside London but, as your Lordships are only too well aware, these provisions have been removed from the Bill. It therefore seems rather odd that your Lordships should now be debating whether those self-same provisions should apply to the Metropolitan Police Service. I noted the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, about wanting to remain consistent. However, having struck out from the Bill the part that proposed elected police and crime commissioners, your Lordships now seem to be applying the same arguments to elect the deputy mayor for London. The Government had not intended to introduce a new elected person to hold the police to account in London for the very simple reason that the whole of London already elects a single person to take responsibility for strategic issues such as policing, and that of course is the Mayor of London. The mayor is in the unique position of having responsibility for a whole force area and, as such, it seems sensible for him to have overall responsibility for holding the police to account as well. The amendment would create a situation in which both the mayor and the deputy mayor had a direct democratic mandate across a whole force area, although they might have different ideas about what should happen. I do not think that that could work. It is right and fitting that the mayor should take on formal responsibility for holding the Metropolitan Police to account and, in turn, the mayor should be directly accountable to the public for how that is done. I am tempted to say to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, ““Nice try””, but I regret that I am not able to accept his amendment.