Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

I rise to speak in support of Amendment 3, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, because I can now abbreviate what was already going to be a small number of comments. I agree with what he said, and believe that the only danger the noble Lord faces is that he is likely to win the award for parliamentary understatement of the year when he says that he thinks the Government will be minded to reverse the amendment in the other place. I think we all know that they will. The position is exactly as he has said: recent events have emphasised the importance of the checks and balances. The particular word that I picked out of my noble friend’s Amendment 3 is ““impartiality””. The problem, as we have seen recently, is how a senior police officer can be impartial not only when dealing with the Government, but also when dealing with large organisations. In the recent case, of course, the organisation is News International. That is a profoundly important point. Is the Minister absolutely confident that there will not be a politicisation of the police that results in senior police officers being removed by an elected mayor? I am not entirely opposed to what Boris Johnson has done in some cases—I was opposed in the case of Ian Blair, who went because of pressure from Boris Johnson—but we have now lost another commissioner and deputy commissioner, both of whom the mayor said ought to go. The mayor might be right—I am not in a position to know—but this is a politicisation, which many of us on both sides of the House are worried about. Is the Minister confident that there are enough checks and balances to make sure that such things do not happen inappropriately? There will be times when what has happened may be appropriate, but we need to ensure that it does not happen inappropriately. For example, what happens if a chief officer attempts to be very impartial and gets into difficulties or—this is the one that has always worried me—if crime is rising for reasons that are not under the control of the police? As I have said before when I have talked about crime prevention, the assumption that the police can stop crime rising is wrong. There are many other factors involved, although the police clearly play a very important part. If we have a situation where crime is rising—maybe because of economic factors, unemployment or the lack of crime prevention policies and so on—it could be very easy for an elected mayor to point the finger at the chief police officer and say, ““The chief police officer is failing and has to go””. That is the profound danger that we are all worried about. My noble friend made a comment—which I do not quite recall—asking what support the chief constable would receive in some of the situations that have come to light in recent days. That is key, and that is why his Amendment 3 is so important. Underlying all of this is my concern that at a time of rising crime—crime will rise, under all Governments, from time to time for reasons that are not always under the control of the police—it would be very easy for a mayor to point the finger at a senior police officer and say, ““It’s their fault, and they have got to go””, when that may not in fact be the case.