Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

I shall speak to a number of amendments. I will try to be as brief as I can be in view of the time, but it will be very difficult because this is an important set of amendments made up of Amendments 123AB, 139A, 147A, 148C, 148D and 149C. I am sorry about this, but this is a very large group of amendments and I hope I will not be testing the patience of the Committee too strongly. These are important amendments and although I do not want to speak at inordinate length, their implications and significance need to be spelled out. My first six amendments in this group make new provisions about conduct and complaint matters in relation to the police and crime commissioner and the police and crime panel. Amendment 139A inserts a new schedule to the Bill requiring panels to establish arm’s-length conduct committees to deal with ethical standards for all members of the police commission. I shall briefly outline the effect of these amendments and say why I think they are necessary. Amendment 123AB proposes specific new functions for panels in relation to conduct and complaint matters. Amendment 147A replaces the criteria about criminal offences in relation to suspending a police and crime commissioner with a more generic standard about reaching required standards, and Amendment 148C reflects parallel wording in the event that a police and crime commissioner ceases to be suspended. Amendment 148D makes new provisions about when and how a commissioner could be removed from office by the panel, and Amendment 149C provides that the Committee for Standards in Public Life will devise a code of conduct for all members of the police commission, which would include police and crime commissioners, setting out the required standards of behaviour. My next four amendments deal with ensuring that the police and crime commissioner appoints, disciplines, suspends and dismisses all officers of ACPO rank within the relevant force. That is currently done by police authorities, and I am suggesting that it should also be done by police and crime commissioners. Amendments 178EA to 178EC deal with strengthening the role of the panel in the appointment, suspension and dismissal of all ACPO-rank officers within the relevant force. Amendments 214ZA and 216ZA make some changes to the disqualification provisions. The first suggests that it is not appropriate for a serving police officer or someone who has served as a police officer in the previous five years to be a commissioner. The second would allow people who are currently members of police authorities to stand as police and crime commissioners. My final amendment, Amendment 216B, ties a strengthened standards regime for police commission members to the disqualification provisions, and stipulates that any police commission member who does not sign the code of conduct within a month of taking office is disqualified. I have a problem with the whole way the conduct regime is drawn in the Bill at present because it basically predicates all meaningful action that can be taken against a police and crime commissioner on the yardstick of criminal or corrupt behaviour. In my view, this is a woefully inadequate standard for a person who is charged with overseeing the police. If public confidence in the police is to be maintained, communities need to be reassured that the standards expected of them are beyond reproach, not merely slightly better than criminal. The people who scrutinise the police and crime commissioners should also be expected to observe similar high standards. I remain unconvinced that the IPCC is the best organisation to oversee serious police and crime commissioner complaints because its expertise lies in regulating the professional standards of forces, and I am not sure that it is well equipped to deal with the often more politically motivated complaints that police and crime commissioners will attract. I am most concerned about what happens with lower level complaints and with conduct where behaviour cannot be proved to be criminal or corrupt. At the moment, the Bill suggests that these should be matters for informal resolution between the commissioner and the panel, subject to regulations by the Secretary of State, but I find this hopelessly vague. It gives the panel no obvious sanctions over an errant police and crime commissioner. It also fails to deal with the conduct to be expected of members of the panel. Low-level complaints could be about things such as conflicts of interests, a community’s perception of poor engagement or being ignored or inappropriate behaviour. None of these is criminal, but they can all be corrosive and can all impact on and undermine public confidence. I keep being told that the public can vote out a police and crime commissioner who has become a laughing stock or an object of distrust after four years and that it is all about accountability, but much more urgent action may need to be taken to ensure that policing is not put at risk. It assumes that a police and crime commissioner will stand after four years. They may choose not to stand after four years, in which case they will not be accountable at all. In that situation, they could cause enormous problems over a four-year period and then stand down. It is that sort of situation that I find very alarming. I am conscious that dealing with standards of behaviour in a political environment can be difficult because many complaints are likely to be motivated by political point-scoring. Equally, they could be legitimate complaints from members of the public and others. My amendment suggests that expected standards of behaviour should be set out in a code of conduct drawn up by the Committee on Standards in Public Life and should apply to commissioners and panel members. A later amendment suggests that a commissioner or a panel member must sign this code of conduct and agree to abide by it within a month of taking up office. Failure to do so would mean disqualification. Therefore, the code would have real force. Amendment 123AB would strengthen the role of panels in complaints but provides that panels must establish a sub-committee to deal with complaints and conduct. The amendment would also revise the role of the panel in dealing with complaints and conduct issues against the commissioner, give it authority to deal with complaints against panel members and include an oversight role of the commissioner’s activity in relation to force complaints. Complaints and conduct matters would be entrusted to a committee within the panel but at arm’s-length from it. Again, I cannot see that this should be contentious. The conduct committee should be chaired by a person who is not a member of the police commission and should comprise a number of additional independent people who are not members of the police commission. That seems to me to make very good sense. Some members of the police and crime panel would be able to sit on the committee to provide a link to the open knowledge and expertise on the panel, but panel members would not be in the majority on the committee. This is designed to overcome concerns about politically motivated complaints and to provide reassurance that complaints are dealt with fairly. It also builds on existing good practice. The conduct committee should be able to make a range of recommendations to the panel about action that can be taken. That could range from an apology or exposing an interest where there is conflict to dismissing a member, including the commissioner, from their position in more serious cases. I have already of course heard the Minister’s reaction to this part but none the less I will continue. The decision about what action to take would be for the panel, but the panel would not be able to apply sanctions without an appropriate recommendation from the conduct committee. The amendment also includes a number of other safeguards, such as the need for a majority vote to agree action against a commissioner. As already noted, my next few amendments would ensure that the commissioner appoints, disciplines, suspends and dismisses all ACPO-rank officers and not just chief constables. The House will have gathered that I do not in any way agree with the Government’s assertion that police authorities are weak and ineffective. However, having taken note of their determination to create more powerful individuals to play a more muscular role in governing the police, I was astonished to see that they are giving the power to appoint deputy assistant chief constables to chief officers. I find that hard to go along with. Apart from the inconsistency of this position, it gives me serious concerns for other reasons. It is important for the governing body to exercise a decisive role in selecting the entire top team. My amendments would remove the proposals in Schedule 8 and replace them with alternative proposals, giving a stronger role to the commissioner and the panel. I believe that ultimately it is the lay governors who are responsible to the public for the overall shape and style of policing and for the effectiveness of policing in their area. They cannot do this properly if they do not have the final say over the senior team in the force, although I think that it is appropriate to involve the chief officer in who is selected as a deputy or assistant chief constable. My amendment allows for this. There will always be a tendency for senior people to promote and select others in their own image. Police authorities fought long and hard to get more diversity into the top jobs in the force. I am speaking now as the person responsible for appointing the first female chief constable in the country, with—I have to say this—the considerable assistance of our HMI at the time, the noble Lord, Lord Dear. I am sure that he would agree that the appointment of the first female chief constable in this country was no automatic appointment. It was very difficult and hotly contested, particularly by the outgoing chief constable. It is bad for the image of the service, bad for the retention of able officers who do not fit into a particular mould and bad for community confidence if senior appointments become little more than a closed shop. I am not saying that they would, but we have to guard against it. My experience suggests that lay governors should be involved in appointments at the top level and that their involvement is extremely important. While on the subject of ACPO-rank appointments, I see that the Bill has taken out the role of the senior appointments panel in overseeing potential candidates for ACPO-rank positions. Perhaps the Minister can tell me what would be put in its place. I served on the senior appointments panel for a number of years. I thought that it played a valuable role in assessing the career path of ACPO-rank officers and in monitoring appointments by police authorities. I am not sure how this role will be carried out in the future, how suitable candidates for promotion will be selected or how they will be developed and put forward for particular posts. Nor am I clear how commissioners will know who is available. We do not seem to have much clarity in this area and I would be interested to know what will succeed the senior appointments panel and all the work that it did. I am very conscious of time, for which again I apologise to the House. The most alarming aspect of this section is the suggestion that chief officers should be responsible for disciplining their immediate juniors. This is a recipe for corruption. I can think of few circumstances where a chief officer would not be to some extent tainted by the inappropriate action of an immediate junior. I do not want to go into them, but there have been situations recently around the country where this could have been an enormous problem. I can think of few circumstances where a chief officer would not be tainted. If nothing else, there would be a suggestion that a chief officer had inadequately supervised that person and had been complicit by omission, if not commission. That is unacceptable and needs to be changed. This outlines a compelling summary of the reasons why responsibility for ACPO-rank appointments and standards should remain with police governors. I will not speak on it further. Conscious of concerns about putting too much power in the hands of a single commissioner, my amendments also suggest a much stronger role for the panel in ACPO-rank appointments and related matters. I believe that members of the panel should sit on the interview panel for ACPO-rank officers and have a vote on who is appointed. The conduct committee should have a role in overseeing the commissioner’s actions in relation to force disciplinary action and complaints. The police and crime panel must approve decisions by the commissioner to suspend or dismiss senior officers after referring the matter to the conduct committee where appropriate. There is also a mechanism to refer the matter to the Secretary of State if there is deadlock between the panel and the commissioner about dismissing a senior officer. That seems to be a much more balanced approach to dealing with senior officer appointments and complaints than currently in the Bill. It overcomes the arguments about giving too much power to one person while making sure that the governing body of the force has meaningful traction over the senior force team on behalf of the public. However, if my suggested amendments about an entirely new approach to ACPO-rank appointments are rejected, there is an additional amendment that stipulates that at the very least the panel’s existing powers of veto should be subject to a majority vote and not a vote of three-quarters of the panel. Two amendments deal with revising the disqualification provisions. The first suggests that a serving police officer or a person who has been a police officer within the past five years cannot be a commissioner. I am astonished that there does not seem to be any general provision in the legislation that a serving police officer cannot be a commissioner. Bizarrely, there is a provision preventing officers of the British Transport Police and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary from being commissioners but nothing preventing a member of another police force from taking up this post. I can only assume that this is an oversight, but perhaps the Minister will confirm this. I also think that it is inappropriate for a former police officer to be a commissioner at least until there is some space and distance between them and their former role. I suggest that this should be at least five years, otherwise we risk either a very insular mentality in the relationship between the chief officer and the commissioner or a swathe of disgruntled police officers seeking to exact revenge on former colleagues—far be it from me to mention anywhere in the country, but I say that in passing. To me it makes little difference whether someone stands as a commissioner in an area that was their former force or not. The principle is the same and there should be a prohibition at least for five years. Finally, the disqualification clauses currently contain provisions that a police authority member cannot stand for commissioner. Again, I am surprised by this. I should have thought that a police authority member would have the relevant expertise needed to be a commissioner. It seems to me unfair that a local councillor can stand as a commissioner but he cannot stand if he is also a member of the police authority. He could of course resign as a member of the police authority, but then we risk a number of police authority members resigning so that they can stand. Who would then serve in the mean time? If that happens, has the Minister considered what can be done to overcome significant disengagement of members from authorities before commissioners are put in place? In short, that seems to be an unnecessary provision, which should be removed. I am sorry that this has taken me such a length of time but I believe that I have covered some important issues. I beg to move.