Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, for that immensely helpful intervention; I think that we can all recognise where that came from. Perhaps I should also, with this and the next group in mind, congratulate a number of noble Lords, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee, on the immense care they have taken in going through the Bill in great detail. I have been thinking that I might have spent too much time on my allotments and should really have been looking more at the detail of Schedules 7, 8 and 11. In this group of amendments we are discussing in detail the question of how far we should loosen central controls on the operations of the police and the forms of local accountability for the police. The coalition Government’s general approach is that, in the relationship between central and local government, we have wandered too far in the direction of allowing Secretaries of State or, in their name, departments to require a great deal of information and a great deal of detailed controls, which should, where possible, be loosened. However, we all recognise that some back-stop powers are necessary for central government to retain.