Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I apologise for the inconvenience caused to the House. I will address the amendments that we have debated. There may be a sense of déjà vu because I have read out a bit of this already. I will begin at the beginning. I will set out how the amendments would affect the Bill, and the Government's position. The overarching effect of the majority of the amendments would be to change the relationship between police and crime commissioners and the police and crime panel, as well as the composition and powers of the panel. This would include provision for the police and crime commissioner to be drawn from the panel membership. The Government's intention remains that police and crime commissioners will be elected by the public to hold chief constables and their forces to account. They will be elected on a mandate that will give the reform the democratic accountability so necessary in policing today. I stress again that this is subject to the Bill returning to your Lordships’ House in a different form to that which we are debating tonight. The arrangements for the panel set out in the amendments would place a much greater level of prescription on their composition and how they arrive at their membership. Local areas can decide for themselves how to appoint the police and crime panel members in a fair and balanced way. I referred earlier to the importance of balance; we should look at that and I hope that we can make progress. I also fully recognise the importance of ensuring that members of the panel can represent geographically large and diverse communities. It is an important part of the police and crime commissioner’s role to reach out to their communities in order properly to consider and reflect their views in policing and community safety arrangements. The commissioner has a responsibility to understand and represent the electorate in all its diversity. The panel’s main role is to provide a check and balance for the commissioner by ensuring that each local authority is able to nominate a representative to the panel for its force area and ensure that there is a clear, fair and proportionate process in place that reflects local political structures. Although I appreciate the purpose of all these amendments, I believe that we have created arrangements that are sufficiently flexible to meet local needs while ensuring that police and crime panels are the right size to avoid becoming an expensive and bureaucratic burden. Amendment 123B would require the police and crime panels to appoint an audit committee. Several Members of the Committee were concerned about this. Police and crime panels are free to establish sub-committees that would help to carry out their functions most effectively. It is up to individual panels to decide which areas of business should be covered by such sub-committees, but we would not want to prescribe that in legislation. On Amendments 125, 125A, 126, 128 and 138F, I also recognise the need to ensure that the Secretary of State’s powers to appoint panel members are necessary and effective. The Secretary of State’s power to appoint police and crime panels will be applicable in England as a backstop power, should all the local authorities in a police area be unable or unwilling to appoint. These are in extremis situations, but that power is there. This backstop power is considered necessary, as police and crime panels will be a vital part of the new landscape. I have already mentioned Wales, which is the subject of Amendments 132A, 132B and 132C.