Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I have nothing but respect for the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and for the certain merit that is involved in this amendment. However, I respectfully disagree with him in so far as it can be regarded as a full and complete solution. For many years England and Wales have been blessed with a system in which there is a generally accepted tripartite balance between the Home Office, on the one hand, and the chief constable and the police authority on the other. So far as I am aware, I do not believe that that tripartite balance, or indeed the system, has ever been spelt out in statute, and in many respects it may well be that that is its strength. One might find that, over the decades, certain segments of that balance have grown more substantial and influential than others, but the balance remains. That balance imposes a duty to consider something that is central to the role of the chief constable, which is that it is the chief constable who is responsible for direction and control. Direction and control is already a well established statutory principle and will not in any way be materially affected by the Bill. It will remain exactly as it is at this moment, and a former Home Secretary in his place to my left is nodding in agreement. But what does direction and control mean? Too often over the past few weeks we in this House have equated direction and control with operational control, but it means much more than that. It means that a chief constable is entitled, in a professional way, to the independence to run the strategy of a particular police force unaffected by and untrammelled by any unprofessional interference, political or otherwise. As I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, will remember, the rules are set out clearly in Lord Denning’s judgment in 1968 in R v Blackburn. Those principles have stood the test of time. Therefore, although the amendment proposed by the noble Lord is probably an improvement on what was originally set out in the Bill, I still believe that both are misconceived. I am prepared to accept that the misconception in both cases, by the Government and by the noble Lord, comes from the best of motives, which is to try to strengthen the segment of public control that relates to the tripartite balance. However, I still think that this is the wrong way.