Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. As ever, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, highlighted what he called the thin end of the wedge. There is a choice and it goes to the heart of the Minister’s response to this. One can either envisage that the deputy mayor for policing and crime is elected by all Londoners on the same day and in the same manner as the Mayor of London, in which case the logic is that the 8,000 electors in the City of London should cast a vote for the deputy mayor of London as they vote for the Mayor of London. Alternatively, if the noble Lord preferred it and would be happy to support it on a later occasion, we could exclude the 8,000 electors from the Corporation of London area and have a deputy mayor elected on a slightly different franchise from that of the Mayor of London. That would, of course, completely undermine the Minister’s argument about how difficult it would be if these two individuals were elected on the same basis. The Government cannot have it both ways—I am trying to—by saying that we should not include the City of London in this. If you do not include the City of London, you therefore require that the franchise for the deputy mayor of London should be different from that for the Mayor of London and the argument about having the same franchise, being elected on the same basis and possible conflict, disappears. The reason for including it was to try to achieve some consistency with the arrangements for the election of the Mayor of London. If it makes the Minister happier I am sure that we can construct the amendments in a way that excluded the City of London. That would then mean that she had achieved her objectives in terms of my previous amendment as well as this one. I am not clear that even had we altered the franchise slightly the Minister would have been happy with the amendment. I have to say that there is a difficulty. I do not believe through very close observation that it is possible for the Mayor of London to fulfil the full range of activities of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. I was certainly clear when I chaired the police authority about the amount of time that that took up. The role of being responsible for the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime will take up more time than that, and it would be impossible to combine that with the other responsibilities of the Mayor of London. The present Mayor of London, who no doubt is the role model for which the MOPC is being created, tried for a period, having made a manifesto pledge, to chair the police authority as well as being Mayor of London. After a comparatively short period, he decided that it was impracticable and not possible. We now have the situation that the Mayor of London appoints the chair of the police authority. The difficulty is arguing that the arrangements will somehow be an improvement in transparency with current arrangements. Essentially, you are saying that the Mayor of London will appoint a person to fulfil the responsibilities in respect of holding the police service to account. That is the arrangement that we have at the moment. The Mayor of London appoints the chair of the police authority and that person, who is called the deputy mayor, although it is not a statutory title, fulfils those functions. That dilutes the principle of direct accountability. People might feel that the Mayor of London was doing a wonderful job on transport arrangements, introducing bicycle schemes, representing London on an international stage in such a way that all Londoners feel that the cockles of their hearts are warmed by seeing him perform. They might feel that or they might not, but they might have very different views about the conduct of the role on policing. Under these arrangements being proposed by the Government, people cannot differentiate between them. All of it is subsumed in the responsibilities of the single elected mayor and the mayor can distance him or herself from what happens in policing by the fact that they appoint somebody else to do it. That is a weakness. If the Government are intent on restoring the principle of direct election to the rest of the Bill they need to think again about restoring the principle of direct election to the position in the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. If they are worried about duplication, they could take policing out of the Mayor of London’s area of responsibility. That is not something that I would personally advocate. The proposals are intended to balance those different responsibilities. I will think carefully about what the Minister has said. When we know the Government’s intent it will be clear whether something like this needs to be put into the Bill at a later stage. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 50 withdrawn. Amendment 51 Moved by