Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 123D, 124A, 135A, 135B, 137A, 137B and 138A to 138F in this group. Amendment 122AB sets out new proposals in relation to the composition of police and crime panels and sets out overarching functions of the panels. Amendment 123D would remove references to Schedule 6, because this is referred to in my Amendment 122AB. Amendment 124A would radically revise the current Schedule 6 to make new detailed proposals about the membership of police and crime panels. The remaining amendments in my name are consequential amendments to Part 4 of Schedule 6, which deals with general provisions about police and crime panels. In an effort to save time and not go on too long, I will not address every provision in these amendments, but I will make some key points. For me, these amendments go to the heart of making the police and crime panel or the police commission into an effective body. By that I mean a body which does not just confine its activities to scrutinising the police and crime commissioner but which collaborates with him or her and has real powers and responsibilities in terms of local policing. If we are serious in our wish to have strict checks and balances in place, these amendments will help to create them; that is their purpose. They also flesh out the police and crime panel or police commission and make them more businesslike and cohesive, as well as an essential collaborative body with the police and crime commissioner. What should the key functions of a police and crime panel be? To save time, I will not deal with every change that I propose, but some key points need to be made. A number of the new functions that I have outlined deal with the more collaborative approach between the police and crime commissioner and the panel, which is predicated on the creation of a commission. In particular, there is an obligation on the panel to co-operate with the police and crime commissioner, which mirrors a similar obligation that I have suggested should be placed on the police and crime commissioner. There is also a provision that the panel should assist the police and crime commissioner in discharging his or her functions. I have also suggested that the panel should have a particular role in monitoring police performance at divisional level and in engaging with communities at a local level. That plays to the strengths of involving local councillors in policing governance. This is absolutely essential if the panel is to provide checks and balances on the work of the police and crime commissioner and to complement their activities. In my opinion, the police and crime panel is best placed to deal with divisional and local policing and to collaborate with local councils. The panel is much better placed than a police and crime commissioner, who is responsible for the whole police area at a strategic level. It is the panel members, rather than the commissioner, who are best placed to get involved in local issues. In my view this should include not just engagement, but also an element of oversight of police performance and delivery at a local level. That would also be consistent with the more supportive approach to the relationship between the panel and the commissioner. Panel members could bring concerns about local engagement or police performance to the attention of the police and crime commissioner, to escalate if necessary. I do not understand this concept that there has to be a commissioner and that is an end to it—that anything else would dilute this revolutionary new concept. I am sorry, but if we really want effective policing, there has to be engagement at local level that is collaborative with what the commissioner is doing. I do not see why a police and crime panel cannot provide that level of input into local policing and then collaborate with the commissioner. I do not understand why that model is regarded as not valid, while the commissioner doing everything is regarded as a valid model. I hope that the Minister can perhaps explain that to me, because I do not fully understand it at the moment. On the make-up of the police and crime panel or the police commission, I am concerned that the current proposals in the Bill are not strict enough in ensuring that the political balance of the whole police area is reflected in the make-up of the panels. To address this, I have borrowed the wording that is currently used to regulate the political balance of police authorities. The effectiveness of this has been well tried and tested. Police authorities have worked effectively for 15 years and their members have operated very well across party lines because of the provision in the 1996 Act. It is important that police bodies should not operate in party-political ways. They can be political, but they should not be party-political. One reason why many of us in this Chamber can work effectively on policing issues across party lines is that we are used to doing so in police authorities and in some areas of local government as well. We do not find it surprising that we should be able to work with Members from other parties on policing issues. That has been a huge strength of police authorities in the past 15 years. This goes to the heart of the arguments about politicising policing. My amendment is an attempt to ensure that a panel—and, by extension, a police commission—cannot be entirely dominated by one political party. That is also important because if the end result of this Bill is a directly elected police commissioner, there will be a tendency in different parts of the country for one of two things to happen. The first is that, in some parts of the country, the panel could be packed with political opponents of a commissioner, which could lead to a state of constant warfare between the commissioner and the panel, making any proper governance of the force a daily struggle. The other tendency could of course be the opposite: a panel is packed with people of the same political persuasion as the police and crime commissioner. Here the temptation will be to pick panel members who are little more than cheerleaders for the commissioner, so that they do not exercise robust scrutiny of the way in which the force is governed. It is a fundamental issue that the police and crime panel must be politically balanced. I was interested to read that, in Committee in the other place, a comment was made about political balance on this issue. The Police Minister said that he agreed with political balance in principle but that it would be extremely difficult to implement it in practice because you could not tell a council that you had to send a Labour or Conservative person. I am sorry, but that has been happening for the past 15 years; the Minister may not realise that. For example, in Lancashire, to have the required political balance because of how the Lancashire electorate are politically represented, Blackburn has in the past been told to send a Labour member and Blackpool to send a Conservative member. This has happened across the country. It has not caused problems; it has enabled police authorities to work very effectively. I do not understand why this is suddenly deemed to be far too difficult. It is just turning back the clock and I do not understand it. The other way in which I have sought to moderate the political balance of the panel is by increasing the number of co-opted or independent members. Two co-opted members, as currently proposed, is nothing like adequate to improve the diversity of the membership and cover specialist skills gaps in the rest of the membership. Therefore, my amendment would increase the number of co-opted and independent members. I have also included provisions about geographical balance in relation to both local authority and co-opted members to address some current weaknesses in the system. There has to be geographical balance as well. I have suggested six independent or co-opted members, although I am not altogether convinced that that is enough. However, I am concerned to keep the size of the panel manageable and consistent with the principles of good governance. This latter point brings me to another issue: two-tier authorities and how the police and crime panel or police and crime commission should be made up. It is being suggested that district councils should be represented on police panels. I agree, having argued for it for a long time. However, there has to be a sensible proportion between the number of district councillors on a panel and the number of higher-tier representatives. I have suggested three district councillors, appointed by a joint committee of all the district councils where appropriate. This is in stark contrast to the Bill’s proposals, which would simply go on adding members to the panel until every upper-tier authority and every district council has at least one member. That could lead to large and unmanageable panels that lack focus. It also raises the spectre of the old-style police committees, which used to deal with police governance before the reforms of the noble Lord, Lord Howard, who is not in his place, which introduced police authorities. We have already discussed the weaknesses of those old police committees at some length and I shall not rehearse them. However, very large panels would be a retrograde step. The approach of one authority/one member has another effect in areas with district councils. Some areas might well have a double whammy: they might have both a district councillor and a county councillor representing quite a small area—let us say Lancaster, for example, where that would be very possible. Other much larger areas might have only one representative. That seems unfair, and doubly so if one of those areas is a large unitary authority—perhaps a city that has only one member representing a huge population. It would then see a much smaller place having not one but two members representing it. That has to be looked at. The present suggestion of having one member from every district council and every upper-tier council, with no attempt at balance by weighing populations or geographic spread, seems not at all workable. The other key feature of this amendment would remove the powers of the Secretary of State to formulate panels in relation to Wales and other areas. My hope is that, if the Bill is predicated on a commission rather than a commissioner, the Welsh Assembly might feel able to accept those arrangements and different provisions might no longer be needed. The amendment also contains provisions about how members of the panel are to be appointed and removed, and certain changes to Part 4 about how panels should conduct their business to align these to other changes that I have made to Schedule 6. Notably, this includes an amendment that provides that all decisions on issues where the panel has a veto or exercises other key functions should be made by majority vote or, I hasten to add, perhaps 50 per cent plus one. I am persuaded of that. I have given a lot of thought to this issue. I believe that my model is far more workable than the one that the Government originally put forward, although I would say that, wouldn’t I? However, I hope that the Minister, in responding, will explain why she feels that my amendment lacks coherence or is not fit for purpose and why the Government’s model is superior. I am sure that she will argue that, but I would like to know why. I beg to move.