Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I have Amendments 166, 167 and 179 in this group. The first two would allow the London Assembly to determine whether to discharge its functions under the Bill either through a committee or through the full Assembly. At the moment the Bill prescribes. In responding to a similar amendment at the previous stage, the Minister said: "““The first question to address here is why there should be a bespoke committee of the London Assembly called the police and crime panel rather than, as proposed by noble Lords, the functions being conferred on the London Assembly as a whole. The reason is one of practicality. Having a dedicated committee, representative of the wider London Assembly, will ensure that sufficient attention and scrutiny can be paid to delivering its policing responsibilities and would also allow for independent members to be brought on to the panel … This smaller group will be able to focus its attentions on the important business of scrutinising, in detail, the actions and decisions of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime””.—[Official Report, 24/5/11; col. 1800.]" I am not sure whether I can say this of the noble Baroness, but I thought, reading that, it was really rather paternalistic. The London Assembly is a grown-up body, with its current and past members and, I am sure, its future members, and ought to be able to take its own decisions as to the best way of organising itself. I remember when we were debating the GLA Bill, which became the GLA Act 1999, it originally provided for the Government to deal with, I think, the standing orders of the Assembly. I remember the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, saying from the Government Front Bench, ““This is ridiculous. It can sort itself out””. She was quite right then and I make the same point now. There seems to have been some confusion, in any event, on the Government side, because earlier the same day the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said: "““We argue that it is for the London Assembly as a democratically elected body to decide for itself how the membership of the panel should be chosen””.—[Official Report, 24/5/11; col. 1751.]" I accept that this was a slightly different context, a slightly different point, but I argue that the London Assembly as a democratically elected body should be able to decide for itself how it carries out its functions. Amendment 179 would provide for the Assembly to approve or reject the draft police and crime plan, or a variation, with the veto of a two-thirds majority—uncoordinated, but the same point as that made by my noble friend. I feel that it is appropriate for the Assembly to be able to treat the plan in the same way as it does mayoral strategies. On this point, the Minister said at the previous stage that it would not be appropriate for the panel to have a power of veto, because of the plan being statutory in nature. My short point here is that the strategies to which my noble friend has referred—she managed to say statutory strategies without tripping over the words—are statutory in nature. I do not see that there is any qualitative difference between the two. Finally, I have two questions about government Amendment 172. I welcome the clarification of the position regarding co-options, but if the Assembly is to be able to fix the number of members of the panel—reverting to my earlier point—can the Assembly create a committee which consists of all 25 members as a result of this amendment? The third subsection of the amendment states that the, "““panel functions must be exercised with a view to supporting the effective exercise of the functions of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime””." That picks up today’s theme of the constructive, collaborative and supportive nature of the relationship. I am not quite sure whether the Government might have gone too far on that because, in exercising the functions, the panel or the Assembly might support the best outcome but oppose the way in which the mayor’s office chooses to exercise them.