Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord from the Cross Benches interestingly reminds us of the two limbs of the item in the coalition programme for government. The second, which in my view is of equal status to the first, is the strict checks and balances on the first limb. I support what has been said on Amendment 234. On Monday, I put forward an amendment which specifically addressed the monitoring of complaints to which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, has referred. It is important to look at how complaints are handled overall as well as individually. The theme of Amendment 220ZZA surfaced strongly when we debated the Localism Bill a couple of days ago. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, is right to draw our attention to this. Assuming that there will be different codes of conduct, and there should be, how such codes are to fit—when you have members of a panel who will be subject to particular standards and provisions, we hope, in their capacity as local councillors—with any separate code of conduct in this capacity and the need for a chief commissioner to be subject to some sort of arrangement requires a lot more thinking through. The noble Lord’s point about the monitoring officer, who will I assume be appointed by the commissioner or a member of the commissioner’s office—perhaps we will hear whether the Government have any different idea in mind—is important. I have seen monitoring officers a little out of their depth. It is important that they should have both the tools and the qualifications to be able to carry out what can often be a difficult and sensitive role. I have also seen monitoring officers who are absolutely splendid at the job because they are so sensitive to the huge range of issues that not every monitoring officer spots is going across her or his desk as part of the monitoring process.