Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

This is an extremely important issue and not one that we should rush through simply because we are fed up. I am sure that I have just as much stamina as the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, although I am not required to take the whole Bill through this House. We have to consider and debate these issues seriously because, after all, that is the function of this House. This is a problem of the Government’s own making in that, having decided that police and crime commissioners—and for that matter MOPC in London, although the issues are slightly different—have substantial, individually held powers, the question then comes: what do you do in circumstances when there is a vacancy or someone needs to act while that happens? The Government cannot have it both ways. They cannot say, ““Actually, it will be okay and we can have a member of the staff of the police and crime commissioner’s office to act in this function””, and at the same time say, ““The police and crime commissioners are so important and will be so busy that they have to work full time on these functions””. What are they working full time on? They are presumably setting direction—I am sure they are not intervening in operational matters because the Government are clear that they will not be doing that. They will be providing guidance on what is regarded as important to the electorate of that policing area. Among their duties will be setting the level of local taxation. There is no other area of British public life when something that impacts on taxation is not decided by people who are elected. If the noble Baroness wants to interrupt and tell me of one that I have not thought of, I would be delighted to receive it. There is no such area. This is one of the most important decisions and it is one that will matter very much to the public in the area concerned. The task of being an elected politician is to balance what you believe are the important aspirations that you might have for the public service concerned and how much money can readily be raised in taxation. That is an issue that this and previous Governments have struggled with, and those who are actively engaged in local government struggle with it each year. You have to make a judgment and you can make it only if you see both sides of the equation. You see the side of expenditure and you see the side of what it will mean in taxation. Only somebody who is elected will have that perspective of what the public want in terms of services delivered and what they are prepared to buy through taxation. The public are not always single-minded on these matters. We are all aware of those stresses and strains, which is all the more reason why it must be an elected politician who makes that judgment. Only an elected politician with the authority of being elected can strike that balance knowing what the electorate of the area feel. The difficulty with this is that an official will see this only from the point of view of the need to spend. Through this practice, the Government are creating a ratchet effect that will push up public spending. Officials will see this as entirely about the need to spend, about how many police officers and services they should have and about how much information technology should be purchased. Those will be the sorts of issues that they will see, because they will not be individually accountable to the public for the level of local taxation. That is why this is such a dangerous precedent. By saying that people who do not have elected authority will make those judgments, the Government are creating an effect by which only one side of the equation will be seen by those who make the judgment. That is why the principle of having an elected person carrying out this role is so important. Their idea is that a chief executive or a chief finance officer—before one even considers whether it might be a chief of staff of a police and crime commissioner—will make those judgements. Those individuals by their nature will probably never face an electorate, will never stand as a candidate and will never have to balance the need to spend against the need to tax. I turn to the other powers of the police and crime commissioner. I am not talking about day-to-day matters, where the understanding of how an electorate feel about an issue would be so valuable, but about the extreme, major powers that one hopes will not be exercised very often—for example, the power to dismiss or appoint a chief constable. Again, one would expect the person concerned to be accountable in quite a different way. It will be at the moments of highest drama—for example, when you are in the business of dismissing a chief constable—when it will be most important for the decision to be made by somebody who is seen to be personally answerable to the electorate. Personal answerability to the electorate is the cornerstone of what the Bill is supposed to be about: putting in place people who are personally accountable to the entire electorate of a policing area and giving them the responsibility. That is what is missing. I will try to predict the Minister’s arguments so that I will not have the temerity to interrupt her later when she is in her new, forceful mode. No doubt she will argue that to have a member of the police and crime panel suddenly taking on this responsibility will blur the distinction between the police and crime commissioner and the police and crime panel. That may blur a distinction, but is that a more important concern than the concern of blurring the line between elected accountability and someone who is appointed to carry out the functions of raising and setting local taxation? I have to say that it is not a significant argument. The matter could be addressed in other ways. The Government could have come forward with proposals that would have enabled a deputy to the directly elected police and crime commissioner to be elected to fulfil those functions. They chose not to do it. They could have created a clear, corporate structure around the directly elected individual that could have taken on this responsibility—but they chose not to do it. Therefore, the problem is of their making. They must not tell the House that it is not an important problem, because it is vital. I wait to see what will be the reaction in local communities the first time an acting police and crime commissioner—an appointed official—sets the precept and the level of local taxation, because there should be no taxation without representation.