Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, in moving this amendment, I will also speak to two other amendments in my name in this group. We come to the question of pilots on which we had a good discussion in Committee. The introduction of police commissioners alongside police and crime panels is a new departure. The House will know that we on this side of the House have many worries about the impact of unelected police commissioners in terms of the potential politicisation of the police force. We think that it would be worthwhile testing this out in a number of police force areas to see the benefits and potential pitfalls. We discussed this in Committee, as I said, and I was struck that a number of our former commissioners of the Metropolitan Police expressed some reservations about pilots. I well understand the kind of reservations that they were expressing. Essentially, they were saying that pilots create uncertainty among the other forces and chief constables. I have seen government proposals in relation to other public services where proposals are made and you have what are sometimes called pathfinders. You then implement changes in some areas over a couple of years. People in other areas are then not sure when they will come on to the tranche that will introduce changes to their particular part of the country, and clearly, there are therefore some uncertainties. But this is such a major departure from the current arrangement that some uncertainties are worth it. Overall, we do very well by our police service. There are issues and problems in some areas and there are no doubt areas where the efficiency of the force could be improved, I do not doubt that. But many advances have been made in the past 10 or 20 years, not least in the effectiveness of the forces and the strong relationships that they have built between themselves and their communities, particularly at neighbourhood level. There are considerable risks in moving away from that. Pilots would be a great chance to try this out, see what some of the problems are and see, too, some of the advantages. We could learn from that and then look to general introduction. I hope that I will find some sympathy around the House for this suggestion. After all, if one were looking for a way through the potential disagreement between this House and the other place, I would have thought that pilots might be one way in which we could find some agreement. I beg to move.