Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. On the last group of amendments, I referred to the protocol. It is true that we are still working on the protocol for the ACMD but the draft protocol was placed in the House of Lords Library in April this year. The working protocol makes very clear that the ACMD will inform the Home Office what expertise it requires and that the Home Office will seek the views of the ACMD to inform any recruitment campaign. The chief scientific adviser to the Home Office will advise the Home Secretary on the balanced membership requirements appropriate to available resource and the need for effective functioning, and the chair of the ACMD will sit on interview panels. I that hope noble Lords who have not yet availed themselves of that document will obtain a copy from the Library. The Government share the concern for ensuring the quality of the ACMD’s expert advice to inform our drug policy. Therefore, I welcome this opportunity to set out our reasons for proposing this change to the ACMD’s constitution, and in particular to disabuse noble Lords of the allegations laid at the Government’s door that we are intending to remove scientists from the ACMD, which could not be further from the truth. I fully acknowledge the intention of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. It may not appear so at first consideration but we share a common interest and appear to be working to a common end, namely securing expertise to the ACMD from which it may provide high-quality advice and by which we may maintain public confidence in that advice. However, we are going about it in a different way. Our proposal is intended to place all members of the ACMD on an equal footing. It might be of interest to the House to know that similar constitutional changes were made to the advisory body under the Medicines Act 1968, the original requirements in it having been similar to requirements placed in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The statutory membership requirements were removed in 2005 and replaced by a broad understanding that members will be appointed because of their high-level scientific expertise and their ability in critical appraisal rather than, as my noble friend Lord Carlile pointed out, a rather old-fashioned and pre-prescribed set of six disciplines. We recognise that each member of the ACMD has a valuable contribution to make to the work of the council. We take the view that placing one area of expertise on a greater footing than others brings into question the need for the latter. In addition, we do not want to devalue ACMD advice where it derives from particular areas of non-statutory expertise altogether. I advise noble Lords to consider the list of expertise of which it is anticipated that the ACMD membership will be predominantly drawn up, as outlined in the working protocol. When members who have not had a chance to look at the protocol see that list, if they have issues about it or the range of disciplines suggested I would be very happy discuss those with them. The working protocol also sets out the future involvement of the ACMD in recruiting new members, and the Government and the ACMD are prepared to be held to account on the terms of the protocol. The final version will be published and placed in the Libraries of both Houses. The Government are of the view that we are giving a far more expansive commitment regarding the expert advice and independence of the ACMD than it is reasonable to doubt. It is not in anyone’s interests, including those of the public, to expose the ACMD—the advice that it gives, the actions that the Government may take in response to that advice and, as appropriate, Parliament’s endorsement of those actions—to speculation and indeed to challenge over whether at any point the ACMD has members who cover the expertise that a statute may discriminate in favour of. I am sure that it is not noble Lords’ intention to facilitate such a situation but it would be an unacceptable product of these amendments. I am aware that there is a lot of business still to conclude but this is an important subject and I hope that noble Lords will bear with me if I put on the record that we have received broad support for this change and for our intent to have a non-statutory list of expertise. Support has come from the Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the British Society of Criminology, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the British Pharmacological Society, the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Medicine. The science and technology committees of both Houses were also consulted. The committee of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, welcomed the added flexibility for the ACMD’s membership and Sir John Beddington, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser in the Government Office for Science, was also supportive. Indeed, it has the support of the ACMD. I hope that the noble Baroness will accept that tonight I am not able to go into issues relating to individual members of the ACMD. She will probably be aware that the case she referred to is subject to legal proceedings, and it would not be appropriate for me to comment on it tonight. I ask her to withdraw her amendment.