Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group but I will first comment on the Government’s amendments. The Minister described Amendments 35 and 41 as allowing flexibility. Indeed they do, but I asked myself when I saw them whether it was necessary to put the words down on paper. Amendments 35 and 41 merely provide for sending the responsible authorities copies of the plan. That is not a very onerous obligation and, more importantly, it is not one which amounts to a consultation. It is something which hardly needs saying. I am entirely with her on the points she has made which we will come to in later amendments about the supportive and collaborative arrangement which we want to see between the two arms of the new model, but I do not think this amounts to much. I hope that is not too unkind. Amendments 43 and 50 talk about observing priorities and I could not find where the priorities were. I am grateful to the Bill team for explaining to me by email that the Government intend to amend regulations to impose a requirement on the statutory group to send their strategic assessment and partnership plan to the commissioner so that he or she will know what the priorities are. That is helpful. It is sometimes difficult to anticipate precisely what will go into regulations. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, has tabled Amendment 47 about membership of community safety partnerships and crime reduction partnerships. Like her, I still feel that relationships between the panel and local authorities have not yet been bottomed out, if I may put it that way. My amendments largely repeat amendments to which I spoke in Committee. I have tabled them again because they came up in some of the enormous groups we had, which made it very difficult for Ministers at the Dispatch Box to ensure that they covered everything. There were one or two in the group on which my noble friend Lord Wallace, I think, said that he would write; I have not yet had the letter. I am sure that the Minister will understand that, as this is the last opportunity, essentially, the amendments are here again. Amendments 40, 45 and 46, 54A, 55 and 56, 56A and 57 are about the contribution to be made by both victims and witnesses. I have tabled some of those amendments after contact with Victim Support. I am grateful for its contribution. It makes the point that in obtaining the views of the community on policing, witnesses—interestingly, Victim Support has been dealing with me on witnesses—should also be included. They, too, fundamentally depend on an effective and responsive police force. They are key participants in the justice system, whether or not they are also victims. It is often owing only to witnesses that the criminal justice becomes aware of an offence in the first place. Victim Support states—I think, rightly—that our justice system requires witnesses to feel confident in the service they will receive from the police and that they will be the subject of sensitive handling throughout the progress of a case, not only, but including adequate protection if their status as a witness means that their safety or that of their family may be in danger. It made the point to me that particularly relevant is the apparent lack of adequate training given to officers about the reality of the court process. It commented to me about witnesses frequently being the victims of basic police misunderstanding about whether their identity will be protected, whether there will be a screen around the witness box, a video link, and that sort of thing. In fact, that is subject to the discretion of the court, and not something about which the police can give blanket assurances. In order that witnesses should not feel overused and underserved, some of my amendments suggest that they should have a role in the way that I have proposed. A point I made at the previous stage is that victims have suffered a huge range of crimes, some very distressing, some very damaging, and some unimaginable. They or their representatives should have an opportunity to make an input to the police and crime plan and there should be arrangements to obtain their views on policing as part of the community. Amendment 42 would alter Clause 8 regarding the means by which a, "““chief officer of police’s performance in providing policing will be measured””." My amendment would change that to the, "““attainment of the police and crime objectives””." That concentrates on the outcome rather than on the output and seeks to link this part of the Bill not to what the chief officer does but to whether the police and crime commissioners’ objectives, as set out in the police and crime plan, are attained. Amendment 53 would enable the police and crime panel to request in advance that certain information should go into the commissioner's annual report. Although this is a small amendment, when I chaired the London Assembly I found that similar provision in the GLA legislation was very useful. It merely enables the panel, and the Assembly in London, to say in good time what subjects it thinks the commissioner should cover in the annual report. In this legislation, the annual report seems to have some status. Amendment 59 would require the commissioner to have regard not only to the panel's report and its recommendations on the annual report but to any other reports and recommendations that it may make. This is not just an annual exercise. If there is to be this supportive and collaborative relationship then the panel will need to work year round. I am sure that it will have plenty of things it wants to say and that it will want to do so not just on an annual basis. This is a mild amendment as I use the words ““have regard to””. Amendment 58 relates to clauses on obtaining the views of the community on policing, and I suggest that local authorities should be included in the process. There should be consultation not just with people in the area but with those who have been elected in our system of representative democracy, who have views about the priorities for spending and whose own expenditure may cover allied or parallel ground.