Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 141 in this group, which would provide that outside London the panel should be able to call senior police officers to answer questions as well as the commissioner and members of the commissioner’s staff. As I shall spell out, this amendment complements the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I very much agree with the sentiments that she expressed with regard to her amendments. It is very important for panels to be able to call in senior police officers. The panels must be able to triangulate evidence if they are to carry out their role of effectively scrutinising the commissioner. It is true that they will be able to gather information from the commissioner under the provisions in the Bill, but they will also need to analyse and test that information. The most effective way of challenging and testing information is to ask questions about it. Certainly, the panel can ask questions of the commissioner under the provisions already in the Bill, but this may tell it only what the commissioner wants it to hear, particularly if the commissioner has been responsible for providing that information in the first place. All my experience in local government and policing tells me that it is extremely important for the panel to be able to reality check what it hears from the commissioner against the views of senior members of the police force. I acknowledge and welcome the fact that government Amendment 145 enables the panel to call the chief constable to attend, but the fact that that is only if the commissioner is also in attendance concerns me. First, the chief constable may feel constrained about what he or she can say in front of the commissioner. Secondly, the chief constable may not be the most knowledgeable about the aspect of policing on which he is being questioned and it might be more appropriate for another senior officer to attend. If we accept that the panel has a particularly important role in providing the link between force level and local policing—and I hope that we are shifting in that direction—the most appropriate person to answer questions about a particular local area might be the divisional commander rather than the chief constable. In my view, as the crime part of the commissioner’s role grows, there is a good argument for saying that the panel should be able to call a range of other people from the local criminal justice and community safety partnerships. Indeed, it is hard to see how a panel could fulfil its scrutiny role without being able to triangulate evidence from these bodies as well. However, for now, I am concentrating in this amendment on getting the policing part right, given all the other uncertainties and concerns about balancing the role of commissioners in this context. Without wishing to second-guess the Minister—and far be it from me to anticipate what she might say in response—she will probably tell me that my proposal is not possible because it compromises the accountability of senior police officers. However, let me explain why I do not think that it does. In effect, my amendment simply says that senior police officers should appear before the panel to answer questions to assist it in carrying out its functions. Answering questions does not in itself make someone accountable to the person asking the questions. It certainly does not make anyone automatically accountable when it is made clear that the purpose of answering the questions is to help someone else to do their job properly. I therefore do not accept that my amendment compromises the accountability of police officers, particularly when so much else in the Bill is very specific about this. I may not agree with it all, but we are all very clear about how accountability is intended to work in the Bill. For the reasons that I discussed a few minutes ago, not being able to call senior officers to give information would severely compromise the ability of the panel to triangulate and test evidence about how the commissioner is carrying out his or her responsibilities. This would be asking the panel to do a job with one hand tied behind its back and so, as I say, the purpose of my amendment is to enable the panel to conduct its scrutiny more effectively. It is for that reason that I put forward the amendment.