Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 187, 188, 194 and 195 to 197 in this group. They all relate to the appointment, discipline, suspension and dismissal of ACPO-rank officers—not just chief constables. The House will recall that I addressed this issue in Committee and I return to it now. I listened very carefully to what the Minister said then and mentioned that I might well return to this matter after considering the points that she made. I have fully considered them and, thinking about it, I still fundamentally disagree that the only person who should be responsible for appointing senior officers in a force, other than the chief constable, is the chief constable himself or herself. Certainly, a chief constable should have a significant say in who is appointed to senior posts. My amendment allows for this. However, the overarching responsibility for the efficiency and effectiveness of the force remains that of the governing body. The Bill specifically confirms that this function will remain with commissioners. They cannot exercise this effectively if they do not have an influence on the shape or make-up of the top team and I therefore return to this topic. Outlining what these amendments will do, Amendment 69 relates to Clause 19 on delegation and provides that the commissioner can delegate responsibility for appointing and disciplining senior officers in certain limited situations, which I set out later. Amendment 187 effectively deletes Schedule 8, as my amendments in this section return the situation to the status quo, making the new provisions in this schedule redundant. Amendments 188 and 194 give commissioners the overarching role for appointing and disciplining deputy chief constables and assistant chief constables respectively, while enabling a role for panels in these processes. That is set out through the amendments which follow. Amendments 195, 196 and 197 specify a role for the panel in appointing senior officers, in requiring senior officers to resign and in suspending them respectively. I am still at a loss to understand how the Government think it will achieve the more muscular and high-profile role they envisage for commissioners at the same time as giving them fewer powers than police authorities currently have. Dealing first with the amendments about appointing and disciplining senior officers other than the chief constable, in Committee I heard the Minister point out that Sir Paul Stephenson thought it was a really good idea for the chief officer to do this and, by inference, suggested that the Government should follow this lead. Yet I am afraid I did not hear a great deal about why she thought it was such a good idea. As I think I also mentioned at Committee, Sir Paul Stephenson and I have known each other for many years. In fact, I was the person who first appointed him as chief constable when I was chair of Lancashire police authority. He is an extremely able man and, as the current Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, he counts as the most senior serving police officer in the country. Yet I do not agree and never have agreed with him on this issue. I actually find it quite ironic that, in Lancashire, I in fact appointed him to the position of deputy chief constable. It is by no means certain that had the then chief constable held the power to appoint, he would have been appointed. We do not know that but it was certainly the police authority that appointed him to the role of deputy chief constable. I have to say, with no disrespect to Sir Paul Stephenson, that he would say he wants more say over his top team. That goes without saying and I understand the sentiment. But he is the one chief officer in the country, ironically, who will not get this to the same extent as others because the role of deputy commissioner is a Crown appointment and not in his gift. I noted in Committee that there were a number of equally senior but no longer serving police officers in this House who did not agree with Sir Paul’s position. They have, perhaps, had the benefit of considering this question away from the hothouse and everyday pressures of policing. Their view, if I can paraphrase, was that the chief constable’s position was better protected and less exposed if he or she had a role in the appointment but did not take the ultimate decision. They would have more freedom to manage their own team if they alone were responsible for the appointment of their immediate juniors. If I understand it correctly, that is the Government’s key argument. But it would have a great many downsides for that chief officer, potentially exposing them to unwelcome industrial-tribunal action without any supporting cover, as well as disciplinary action if the commissioner thought they had appointed the wrong person. All of this would detract from other perhaps more pressing matters about managing the police force on a day-to-day basis. I suspect the Government think that if the governing body appoints a senior officer there might be confusion about who manages that officer. This is emphatically not the case under current arrangements. I see no reason to think that restoring the status quo would cause any confusion. There are existing provisions which make it quite clear that this is the role of the chief officer. I know the Government are keen to achieve a clear separation of functions between the chief officer and the governing body. This is where the principle of the chief officer having the freedom to manage his or her top team comes from. This is not in dispute and would not be compromised by my proposals. The stronger role for commissioners proposed by the Government reinforces the fact that it is ultimately the governing body which should be responsible to the public for the overall shape, style and effectiveness of policing in their area. A commissioner cannot carry out this function properly if he or she does not have the final say on who is appointed to the top team. It is crucial to aligning any strategic vision for policing to the style and skills of the top team. It is not the same thing to say that the commissioner must be consulted about senior appointments, as the Bill currently does. The commissioner’s role must be decisive if he or she is to exercise a proper level of traction over the policing requirements for the area. I also mentioned in Committee a number of other good reasons why the governing body must appoint the chief officer. The most important reason was the tendency of people in senior positions to appoint people in their own image if they have a free hand. This would give rise to real concerns about improving the diversity of the police at senior levels. The Minister did not really address this matter in her response. I am aware that the whole area of senior promotion and assessment is to be revised, but the problem is that this will be in another Bill and we do not yet know what this will look like. We have had no White Paper or similar on this yet, but it is beginning to look alarmingly as if ACPO will be given full responsibility for overseeing this change and for setting the criteria once the NPIA is abolished. This is the problem with having a rushed and, frankly, rather badly thought-out Bill which covers only half of the policing landscape. We are being asked to take on trust that serious matters of this nature which affect the current Bill will be looked at, without any clear indication of what is going to be proposed. The only amendments the Government seem to have made to this section are ones which effectively specify that the chief constable must be a constable at the time of appointment. I understand why senior officers are concerned to ensure that a chief constable is an experienced police officer. This relates to issues around operational independence. While I am pleased that the Government are making some concessions, I am not convinced that this is the most important concession to make. There has been one instance already when a non-police officer was appointed to the post of chief officer in a police force, although the police force concerned was a Civil Nuclear Police Authority force and not a Home Office force. None the less, that did take place. This in itself is a comment on the perception of the skills of senior officers among appointing bodies. Although this was a few years ago, there was concern then, which still remains to some extent, that there is not enough focus in senior assessments on business and management skills among senior officers. That is why it is so important to be able to see the whole package of everything that sits behind senior promotion and assessment in this context. This goes back to my point about senior people appointing and promoting others in their own image. It is worrying that chief officers will not only be responsible for appointing individuals; they may also be made responsible for designing the whole package of leadership skills that will be fostered and assessed through the possible new role for APCO that I have mentioned. It is human nature to undervalue skills which senior managers think they themselves have never needed in deciding who to promote and appoint, and even to over-emphasise some skills which they believe to be important. In my experience in the police service, women officers suffer from this. I have seen over and over again senior officers putting huge emphasis on operational qualities and the ability to oversee certain operations but undervaluing issues of communication, the importance of relationships and the importance of emotional intelligence, which in policing is very important. I am worried that, if we are not careful, we will revert back to some of the things that we used to see happening 20 years ago. Even if the commissioner is consulted and makes some clear points, there is little the commissioner can do, short of hitting the nuclear button and firing the chief officer. If the Government do not provide some decisive traction for governing bodies over functions in which they have an overriding interest, they are merely encouraging an unstable situation where commissioners take extreme and disproportionate action over disagreements. That is not good enough and if my amendment is not accepted, the Government must at the very least get rid of these clauses until they can be clear about the shape of the whole senior appointments landscape and extend the status quo on a transitional basis until this has been done. I also made the point in Committee that the governing body should have a role in disciplinary matters, especially suspension and dismissal at senior level. These amendments also provide for this. There was widespread concern in the House at the time that giving responsibility to chief officers alone for senior officer disciplinary issues was a grave mistake and a recipe for corruption. I am disappointed that the Government have not come back with additional proposals about this. I made the point in Committee that there would be few circumstances where, if a senior officer was behaving unethically, the chief officer would not be under some suspicion, even if only of inadequate supervision of the individual concerned. The Bill’s proposals make the chief officer both judge and jury in terms of complaints against senior members of their team, while at the same time providing to chief officers a potential loophole to evade investigation where they could be implicated. This is because it is left to the discretion of chief constables whether to refer the matter to the IPCC, except in some very severe situations where referral is automatic. Clearly, a chief officer might fail to refer matters which reflect badly on him or her to the IPCC. This is entirely inconsistent with the whistle-blowing principles that are the cornerstone of any regime of good governance. While I heard what the Minister said on the first day of Report about ensuring that principles of good governance would be included within the requirements for commissioners and police forces, this is an obvious case where it seems it will not in fact apply. It is clear by any acceptable standards that the governing body must have the decisive role in dealing with complaints against senior officers. This is fundamental to the commissioner’s accountability and to being clear with the public about where they can go if they have a problem. No member of the public is going to have any confidence in a regime where the chief officer deals with complaints against his own senior team. This in no way meets expectations of independence or lack of bias. This is so obvious that I am very surprised that the Minister has not put forward any alternative proposals. I ask her to explain why she thinks the public would have any confidence at all in the arrangements currently set out in the Bill. Moving on, because I know that time is pressing and I apologise to noble Lords for that, my proposals also give a much stronger role to the panel in relation to appointments, complaints and conduct matters relating to senior officers. This is designed to address some of the concerns expressed in Committee. Again, the concerns were focused on bringing a more collaborative approach to the work between a commissioner and the panel and providing meaningful levers to the panel to address problems about putting too much power into the hands of individuals. To achieve that, I propose three new clauses, set out in Amendments 195, 196 and 197. The first deals with all senior force appointments, not just chief officer, for the reasons just discussed, although it would include the chief officer. It proposes that those appointments should be made by an appointments panel chaired by the commissioner but comprising a number of other representatives. There should be no more than five people on the appointments panel, at least two of whom should be panel members, and one a co-opted member. Where the person to be appointed is an assistant or deputy chief constable, the chief officer should also be included on the panel. All members of the panel should have a vote and the appointment would be decided by majority vote. That should enable the commissioner to play a decisive role in who is appointed to the senior team and provide a balanced approach to allow other key players to have a meaningful role in the process—in particular, to give the police and crime panel an effective voice. On dismissing senior officers, the next amendment provides a robust and credible process based on the assumption that that should be the key responsibility of the commissioner, but the panel should provide safeguards against misuse. It stipulates that a commissioner cannot dismiss a senior officer until the matter has been referred to the independent sub-committee of the panel. The sub-committee is the subject of other amendments that I will introduce later, but essentially, its role will be to exercise independent oversight of conduct and audit matters. It is designed to be a largely non-party political body, the majority of whose members would have to be independent of councils and policing. The sub-committee would make a recommendation, and, based on that, the panel and commissioner would have to agree whether to require the relevant chief officer to resign. If they could not agree, the matter could be referred to HMIC or the IPCC for a further opinion, or to the Secretary of State for a decision. The amendment also makes provision about what should happen if there was a conflict of interest in the commissioner playing a role in the matter. In those circumstances, the commissioner would have to delegate powers to dismiss the chief officer to the panel, which must make a decision after it has received the recommendations of its independent sub-committee. The final amendment on suspending senior officers provides that, except in urgent or serious cases, the commission must consult the panel before suspending a senior officer. The senior officer could be suspended only if the panel were to agree; if not, the matter should be referred to the independent sub-committee. The independent sub-committee will be asked to make a recommendation, and both the commissioner and the panel should have regard to it. I believe that the amendments set out a sensible and balanced process. Between them, they provide that the key responsibility for appointing and disciplining senior force officers must remain with the commissioner as the governing body, but balanced by a stronger role for the panels. It provides a more collaborative basis of working between the commissioner and the panel, but injects a significant element of independent judgment into disciplinary matters through the use of the independent sub-committee. That should help to guard the best interests of senior officers, prevent misuse and stop those matters becoming a political football between panels and commissioners. As I said, I apologise to the House for having gone on for so long, but I believe that these matters are really important. That is why I beg to move.