Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

I shall speak to Amendment 116ZA and, briefly, Amendment 122A. We have heard a lot about checks and balances in the debate thus far and this is my attempt to provide some of them in relation to police budgets. Again, while we have heard that people want checks and balances, every time one suggests some, one is given a whole sheaf of reasons why they are not appropriate in that case. I hope that there might be some sympathetic view, at least on police budgets, that checks and balances are required here and that what is being put forward has some sense to it. Amendment 116ZA proposes that the panel must consider not only the bald, simple figure of the proposed precept but, in a timely manner, an appropriate level of detail about the proposed budget—what the precept is to be spent on. Put simply—this relates to a point that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, made on the previous group of amendments—how can the panel fulfil its duty to scrutinise and shape the precept, drawing on its own local public consultations and knowledge, and to make sure that it will meet local expectations if the panel is not told how it is to be spent? In other words, you need information to be able to carry out that scrutiny role. When it comes to life's fundamentals or even the simplest purchasing, do we not all start out by identifying the very basics of what we need before working out how much we shall spend? Yet the Bill proposes that the panel should consider only the overall amount to be spent, rather than what is needed and what it should be spent on. Frankly, this seems a not very sensible way to conduct the scrutiny of budgets of many millions of pounds within a total national policing spend of something over £12 billion a year. Let us be clear: the panel is there to provide scrutiny in some detail. It is not there to provide a rubber stamp for generalisations or headline figures. While the level of precept is of course of enormous influence and importance, and will rightly command significant space in the local press, what is as important in policing terms is the detail of what that money is to be spent on. If the panel is not equipped to engage with this level of detail, it is in danger of being consigned to being little more than a forum for the exchange of generalities and political knockabout. I hope that the Minister will forgive me for saying that police authorities and recent surveys have demonstrated that the public want not a single commissioner dictating a budget according to his or her preferences but a broadly based range of local people, with the skills and experience of a range of communities across the force area, who can shape the police budget and priorities according to the needs of the public—particularly in local terms. We have spoken many times about the near impossibility of a single politician providing an effective funnel for the needs of vast and differing communities across the widest police force areas. That is why the panel is so important, being drawn from each district or subsection of the force area. The panel members will bring their local perspective to bear on strategic decisions and there are no more strategic decisions than on the budget and the precept, matching resources to evidenced needs. Incidentally, noble Lords here will attest from personal experience that, far from the London experience providing a test bed for the single-commissioner model where, it is claimed, one mayor provides an exemplar for the proposed solo police and crime commissioner, London’s 23-member police authority seems in fact to be an excellent example of how a panel can complement the strategic force-wide view of the commissioner, providing a golden-thread link from the cul-de-sac to City Hall. That is an example that we already have. It is crucial that a diverse multi-member body engages with the detail of the proposed budget. Let us be clear: right now, every subdivision within the force area has a local link member on the police authority who can constructively influence the force budget with knowledge of the public’s policing priorities for their local area. Authority members can ensure—and, under my amendment, so could panel members—that the budget is fit to address local objectives within the police and crime plan. If the Bill is not amended by your Lordships, this meaningful local influence will be lost because the panel will have no say over the detail of the budget—how it is divided and spent—but will have influence only over the overall size of the public purse. In these days of austerity we know only too well that how the contents of the public purse are spent is just as important as the overall size of the budget. Subsection (4) of my amendment makes explicit reference to the need for the draft budget to explain how the commissioner proposes to ensure that the budget is effective and efficient. Efficiency and effectiveness are two requirements currently at the heart of police authority oversight of budgets—to considerable success, it should be said. Authorities have delivered on every efficiency target set by central government and, while there is much more to do, they continue to drive innovation in collaboration and procurement, which fosters efficiency. I am puzzled about why now, of all times, amid unprecedented budget cuts in peacetime, the Government should consider dispensing with the simple, highly efficient and effective maxim that budgets must be efficient and effective, which is why I suggest putting it back in again. In Amendment 122A, I am proposing a majority vote rather than a vote of two-thirds. That is what I am used to in local government. The only reason for two-thirds, or, originally, three-quarters, was the model that the Government set up. I have already indicated that I think that is a very poor model; it is not very workable and will not be effective. A half—or a half plus one; I could be pushed to that—is a much more normal majority in terms of local government. It is what I am used to, it is how local government works and I see no reason why we should depart from it.