Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, in moving Amendment 117 I shall speak also to Amendments 144, 148, 149, 150, 154, 156, 232 and 232A. Amendment 117 confers specific functions for complaints, conduct and audit matters on panels and obliges each panel to establish an independent sub-committee to discharge these functions. It also makes provision about the composition of the independent sub-committee so that it is chaired by an independent person and has a majority of other members independent of the police and of local authorities. The people appointed to that committee must have relevant skills to contribute to its functions and must not have a conflict of interest. The independent sub-committee can make recommendations in relation to conduct or audit matters to the police and crime panel, the commissioner or the chief constable, who must have regard to those recommendations. Amendment 144 enables panels to require information from chief constables or commissioners about complaints, conduct and audit matters to support this function. Amendments 148 to 150 include provisions about breaching codes of conduct within the proposed new clause that deals with suspending commissioners. At present the standard for suspension is a criminal one and does not include conduct matters. Amendment 154 effectively removes Schedule 7 because this is replaced by the other provisions in my amendments. Amendment 156 provides that a code of conduct will be formulated independently, which will apply to commissioners and panel members. Finally, Amendments 232 and 232A disqualify panel members and commissioners if they fail to sign the code of conduct within a month of assuming office. I would like to say at the start of this group of amendments that, given the strength of feeling expressed about the Bill’s utterly inadequate provisions relating to the conduct of police and crime commissioners and police and crime panels, I am quite alarmed and dismayed that the Government have not put forward far more far-reaching proposals about this at Report. I appreciate that the Minister has put forward some amendments to include the newly created deputy commissioners within the conduct proposals applying to commissioners and also seems to have an amendment specifying that the MOPC or Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime should be covered by the conduct provisions applicable to local government. I may have missed something but I do not think the same provisions have been applied to commissioners or deputy commissioners outside London—perhaps the Minister can clarify. Even if they have been, these are in the process of being changed and I fear they may not prove robust enough for people charged with police governance. Police governance requires even higher standards of personal integrity than would be expected in other areas of local government because of the nature of the role, and my amendments set out how this might be done. The other issue that my amendments address is the matter of audit. This relates back to a number of concerns addressed at Committee and on the first day of Report about the creation of two corporations sole in each police area both for the commissioner and for the chief officer of police. Doubts were expressed then, and have not been fully addressed by Government, that it was not clear how this structure was consistent with good financial governance; in particular it was not clear how the need to have two separate strands of audit would work for one police fund. The Minister also supplied some assurances on the first day of Report that the Government were serious about applying principles of good governance to the new structures they envisaged for policing. My amendment, like all my amendments, is an attempt to help the Government in this respect. In relation to good governance of financial issues a key requirement is an effective audit committee. My noble friend Lord Harris brought forward some proposals about how this might be done within a non-executive board linked to the office of the commissioner. However, the House rejected this so I am proposing an alternative method of ensuring sound financial and ethical governance. My amendment proposes that an independent sub-committee should be formed within the police and crime panel which would have responsibility for audit and conduct matters. In relation to financial governance it would have responsibility for audit matters in relation to both the chief officer’s remit and the commissioner’s office. It would be able to link the audit requirement for one police fund to the two bodies that will manage it. I am not aware of any other accepted method of carrying out financial responsibilities in the corporate context except through an audit committee. The virtue of my proposal is that this will become a function which is to all intents and purposes carried out by independent people, thus avoiding the dangers of politicisation. An independent sub-committee would also have responsibility for complaints and conduct matters. Incidentally, there is nothing in my amendment to prevent a panel from setting up more than one independent sub-committee, but equally audit and conduct functions could be undertaken by the same committee, if that was appropriate to local circumstances. Either way, my key point is that these independent committees should be comprised largely of independent people; it is essential for good governance and public confidence that this should be the case so there are no doubts about bias or vested interests. It would also help to guard against politically motivated complaints and countercomplaints being traded between the commissioner and the panel if the panel is not alone responsible for this but is required to undertake this at arm’s length through more independent arrangements. In relation to both the commissioner and the panel, the suggestion is that the independent sub-committee should handle any complaints against individuals. If there is reason to believe that a complaint involves a serious matter or criminal behaviour, there is nothing to stop the panel referring this to the IPCC, the police, the CPS, HMIC or another appropriate body. It implies, however, that the first port of call for all complaints matters against commissioners and panel members should normally be the independent sub-committee. It should decide how best to handle the complaint and if it is a relatively routine conduct matter it should be able to deal with it. I believe that this rebalances the proposals in the Bill, which effectively suggests that the IPCC should be the first port of call in relation to commissioner complaints and does not address complaints against members of the panel at all. Because this amendment reverses the proposals in the Bill about the role of the IPCC, which incidentally is likely to be swamped with complaints when it first takes this role on, I have removed Schedule 7 which proposes the opposite. There could still be a role for the IPCC under my amendment, but it is one that I believe should first be filtered at local level by independent committees which could decide whether to escalate the matter. I also want to mention that, in relation to force conduct matters, my amendment suggests that the independent sub-committee should have a role in monitoring how the commissioner is carrying out his or her functions in this regard to provide public reassurance. Earlier amendments I put forward also suggested that the independent sub-committee should have a role in dealing with disciplinary matters for senior officers to ensure that a commissioner or chief officer is using disciplinary powers appropriately. In order to carry out functions in relation to complaint and audit matters which have an impact on both the commissioner and the force, it is very necessary for the panel to receive the information to enable them to do this, so there is also provision in my amendments that the panels may require information from both commissioners and chief officers in relation to their responsibilities for audit and conduct matters. The amendment would also remove the current standard by which conduct matters are judged, which is effectively a criminal standard. In Committee I spoke about my concern that this was a ludicrous criterion to use in the context of police governance. Noble Lords will not be surprised to learn that I have not changed my mind. On the basis of zero tolerance, if I may borrow an Americanism, one would address issues of concern at the lowest level. One should not wait for them to become a major problem before taking action. The conduct criteria need to be rebalanced around the standard of acceptable behaviour. Criminal behaviour should be the extreme end of the scale, not the starting point. For this reason I propose a code of conduct, which I shall shortly explain, but first I want to mention that part of the rebalancing exercise should be the inclusion of a clause on the suspension of commissioners setting out provisions that would enable them to be suspended for breaches of the code of conduct as well as criminal behaviour. Incidentally, the amendment would also remove the current proposal that the commissioner can be suspended only if he is charged with an offence that carries a maximum sentence of more than two years. Not only is that inconsistent with the general disqualification provisions for a commissioner that are invoked by any criminal offence, which my amendment reaffirms, it is an absurdly high bar for an individual in an office which requires a high level of public trust and confidence. A lot of offences carry a sentence of less than two years, but I do not think the public would want a commissioner to carry on if charged with most of them. I appreciate that we are only talking about charges, but that does not mean the position of the commissioner would be any more tenable or that the public would have any confidence whatever in that person. Moving on to the code of conduct itself, which I intend should set the framework to describe what unacceptable behaviour is, I believe that it is important that it should be formulated independently. In Committee I suggested that that should be done by the Committee on Standards in Public Life because I cannot think of any body better suited to the role. However, I am happy to listen to alternative suggestions for the appropriate body to carry out this function. The amendment provides that the code of conduct should set out criteria for appropriate standards of behaviour for police commission members, which would include both the commissioner and the panel, and suggests specifically that a commitment to diversity is set out. This would help guard against extremist commissioners or panel members. The code should set out the key criteria about what constitutes a conflict of interest for police commission members. Solutions around handling conflicts of interest are lacking in the Bill, but in reality this will become the key issue when complaints start being raised against commissioners and panel members. For instance, a ripe area of concern would be if a commissioner was signing contracts involving large amounts of public money with companies in which he might have an interest. The Bill is silent on this possibility, but it would be a real issue for local people. The final amendment in this group provides that police and crime panel members would be disqualified if they did not sign the code of conduct within one month of taking office. This is obviously an important amendment to make the code of conduct enforceable. In summary, I believe that the proposals for complaints and conduct issues in relation to police and crime panel members and commissioners currently in the Bill are woefully inadequate. My amendments seek to address this by providing constructive solutions. I hope that the Minister will take these concerns seriously, and particularly will consider my suggestion that complaints should be dealt with at the lowest level. We hear a lot in the Bill about devolution to the lowest level and enabling local people to carry things out. What I am suggesting here is a good example of that. Local committees should deal with complaints at the first level before escalating them upwards if that proves to be the right thing to do. Likewise, I have concerns that good financial governance has not been adequately considered. It is essential that audit committees are created to undertake this function. If the Government are intent on splitting audit arrangements into two separate policing bodies for each area—for both the force and the commissioner—the audit committee needs to have oversight of both bodies in order to join up the dots. It will need to make sure that public money is being spent wisely and lawfully, and among other things it must ensure that the same money is not being spent twice, since under the Government’s proposals there will be two bodies and one police fund. My amendment suggests how the audit arrangements can be made suitably independent but still coherent with the other proposals about police governance. My other amendments also bring rigour and independence to complaints and conduct matters which I believe are essential to public confidence. As I have already pointed out, I am seeking to enable the panel and the commissioner to work effectively and ethically as they conduct their business, and I am trying to build on such governance structures as are in the Bill, but I think we are already agreed that what is there is woefully inadequate. I can understand that one of the parties opposite might want the panel to be weak. As I recall, it was after all an afterthought to the original muscular proposal of party political commissioners, but I cannot understand why the Liberal Democrats are unable to go beyond generalities and actually try to put in place tangible and practical ““checks and balances””. Clearly, what they understand by that phrase is different from my interpretation. What I am trying to do in the area of standards and complaints is prevent us going back 20 years. We are going to go back 20 years in terms of party-political policing, but please do not let us go back 20 years in terms of complaints, audit committees and standards. A lot has been learnt over the past 20 years, and we should take that on board. I beg to move.