Police reform and social responsibility Bill

You will be pleased to note, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this time I remembered to stand up to be called—16 months in and we are still learning how this place works. I rise to support the Government motions. I start by adding my congratulations to those of the Home Secretary and the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee to Mr Bernard Hogan-Howe on being named the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner. It is the toughest job in British policing. Following the riots, I am sure that everyone in this House would wish him well in his new job. I will briefly restate the case for the reform of police authorities and explain why it is important, before addressing some of the challenges that have been posed by Opposition Members. The first thing to remember is the simple fact that the police are a monopoly service. The public cannot choose their force. Therefore, officers must be accountable for their actions and their performance. As this Government release the grip of Whitehall by scrapping centrally imposed targets and performance measures such as the policing pledge, the stop-and-account form and some of the uses of stop and search, we need to put in place other means to ensure that police forces deliver. What we are doing with police and crime commissioners is swapping bureaucratic control of the police for democratic accountability. In my view, we are putting in place far greater, far harsher and more publicly visible accountability—the accountability of the ballot box. Anybody who does not believe me should ask any sitting MP. The second thing we must remember is that most crime is local. It is therefore far better that forces answer to local communities than to box-ticking officials in Whitehall. If local accountability is to substitute for the centralised performance regime of the past, it needs to be strong and democratic local accountability. The problem, therefore, is extremely simple: police authorities are not strong enough to exercise that alternative governance, and they are not sufficiently connected to the public whom they are supposed to serve. Consider this: only four of 22 inspected police authorities have been assessed as performing well in their most critical functions by HMIC and the Audit Commission; only 8% of wards in England and Wales are represented on a police authority; and according to a Cabinet Office survey conducted just a couple of years ago, only 7% of the public understand that they can approach their police authority if they are dissatisfied with policing in their area. Virtually no one in that survey knew who their police authority chairman was. In fact, I would be interested to know how many hon. Members can intervene and tell me who their police authority chairman is.