Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I preface my remarks with an apology to the Minister and to the House if, in the very limited time that has been available to us to try to understand and assimilate the thrust of the amendments tabled yesterday, I have been unable fully to appreciate what the drafting has led us to in terms of the substantive changes that the amendments seek to make. I entirely concur with the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in relation to Amendment 63—particularly in new subsection (2A) of that amendment—which allows the deputy police and crime commissioner to arrange for any other person, without any qualification, to exercise any function of the police and crime commissioner which, in turn, the deputy police and crime commissioner could carry out. That seems to be an extraordinarily wide power to delegate to whomever the deputy pleases, bearing in mind that under Amendment 72 the deputy police and crime commissioner is to be a member of the police and crime commissioner's staff. We have an appointed staff member with a capacity to appoint anyone else to exercise functions which he would delegate to or select for that person. That seems to go very wide indeed and much wider than one would normally anticipate in the context of an organisation of this kind. Furthermore, the effect of paragraph (c) of Amendment 63, which amends Clause 19, seems to me to allow the deputy commissioner to determine police and crime objectives—Clause 19(4)(b)—or to prepare an annual report to a police and crime panel, although admittedly it does not allow him to make decisions relating to issuing a police and crime plan, nor the appointment of a chief constable—hardly surprisingly—nor calculating the budget requirement. That seems to be a very wide power to confer on a deputy. As I understand it, these are not provisions that would apply only in the absence of a police and crime commissioner for any reason—suspension, incapacity or something of that kind—but these are powers at large. I do not understand why such sweeping powers should be conferred on anyone, particularly someone who does not have any kind of electoral mandate, either by virtue of direct election, as in the case of a commissioner, or by virtue of being an elected council member who serves as a member of the panel. It seems to me to be much too broad a power to offer to someone occupying the kind of position that presumably would be encompassed by these amendments. Like the matters to which my noble friend Lord Harris and others have referred, I wonder whether these should not be re-examined with a good deal more care and perhaps more time so that we can get this right. It seems to me that we are conferring very wide powers without qualification on people whom we have no idea will be able to fulfil the jobs and with a very wide discretion available to them.