Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, first, I send from these Benches the warmest congratulations to Bernard Hogan-Howe, who has just taken up his appointment as Commissioner of the Metropolis. We wish him the best of luck in that very challenging post. The Motion insists on the amendment, previously tabled in Committee in this House, which would incorporate the police and crime commissioner and the police and crime panel within a single body corporate, a police commission. Your Lordships will recall that the House voted on, and approved, this amendment in Committee. However, during the debate in the other place on Monday night it was removed. Because this House clearly attached great importance to that amendment when it was approved, and because I believe it summarises some key matters of principle about the future of police governance, I have tabled this amendment insisting on its inclusion. The right honourable shadow Minister for Policing was quite right when he said in the other place that this House had not included this provision as the result of some inadvertent tinkering with the detail; if I recall correctly, it was preceded by a lengthy and considered debate, covering a large number of significant issues, that took up much of the first day of Committee. I will be much quicker today but shall outline briefly why I think my Motion is so important. I want to be clear that this amendment is not about retaining the status quo, as suggested by the Police Minister in the other place. It is about ensuring a mechanism for strong corporate governance and balanced accountability, which is sadly lacking in the Bill at present. In short, it is about strengthening checks and balances in a meaningful way. While I acknowledge that some moderate improvements were made to the powers of panels on Report in this House, these were modest improvements and not robust enough. The panels have only two powers: to veto the appointment of a chief officer and to veto the police precept. Both of these are nuclear options—nuclear powers, so to speak. They are likely to be little used except in extreme situations. We had debates about that. They are not much use for providing meaningful safeguards in such key areas as standards and audit—topics that have also been the subject of much debate in your Lordships’ House because the Bill provisions are defective. A corporate body is a well understood vehicle in which to hold such important safeguards in a proportionate and meaningful fashion. It would also be a structure through which the clear weakness of the corporation sole model could be addressed. I do not believe that my noble friend the Minister has yet provided a satisfactory answer to how good governance can be achieved within this rather unusual—to say the least— model. I expect she will remind me that it is not that unusual a structure and that the Secretary of State is a corporation sole. However, I would then mention that the Home Office also has a non-executive board through which to manage its governance. No such structure exists for PCCs but my amendment would give something similar. It would bring PCCs within a more self-regulating corporate governance framework with which we are all familiar. Most importantly, we know that the structures work. It is less clear whether the experimental model in the Bill would do so. This is designed to improve transparency and public accountability, not to frustrate it. It would also provide a real safeguard against one individual having too much power. Much play was made in the other place of fears of extremist PCCs having been wildly exaggerated. This misses the point. A PCC does not need to be extremist to be a problem; he needs only to be populist. To illustrate this I have thought of a brief manifesto, as follows: ““As elected PCC I would make sure that the police deal only with real offences that matter to real people, such as gangs of youths hanging around and violent crime; that courts give real punishments to real offenders; that the police will always respond to you within, say, three minutes; and that the police are put back on the street, not in their cars. I would not allow the police to be abstracted to deal with problems in other parts of the country; the police to waste time on minor offences such as speeding; the police to sit behind desks; and any police stations to close””. It sounds good, does it not? None of it is extreme, but it is populist. It is also completely unrealistic and unachievable, with the exception of a couple of points. Half of it cuts across the operational independence of the chief officer. Some of it effectively frustrates the strategic policing requirement. One section cuts across court jurisdiction. Another makes something that is not currently an offence tantamount to an offence. Other sections probably fall foul of the new code of financial practice, and so on. The point is that a corporate body provides a framework within which to moderate the capricious use of significant powers; to bring meaningful checks and balances to bear; and, in this instance, to prevent a PCC trying to implement a manifesto of this nature. I shall probably be told that this is a retrograde step because it reinstates bureaucratic accountability, instead of the brave new world of democratic accountability. This is a nonsense argument. In the first place, police authorities are not accountable to the Home Office or the Home Secretary, as the Police Minister implied in the other place. The majority of their members are already democratically elected councillors, who are accountable to local people. This is about improving checks and balances and safeguards, and instilling a collective approach and direction to police governance between the PCC and the panel. It is not a combative approach. Despite the rather optimistic views expressed by Members in the other place on Monday about the relationship between the panel and the PCC, I am afraid I do not believe that it will always be balanced and professional. I still think that this will turn out in one of two ways. If the PCC and the panel are of different political persuasions, there could be a state of constant warfare between the two, with accusations of complaints being traded and countertraded. If the panel is of a largely similar political make-up to the PCC, it risks becoming little more than, say, a cheerleader to the PCC and may be tempted to exercise scrutiny that is at best superficial. However, if the two were brought within the same body corporate, that would provide a much more cohesive and robust framework covering the totality of local police governance. It would give them the same sense of common direction in effectively holding the force to account. They would have access to the same information, allowing the panel to hold the PCC properly to account. Holding the force to account is a very big job, and I still have grave concerns that that cannot be done properly by one person, however talented and committed. I have tried to set out as briefly as possible, given time considerations, an overview of the main reasons why this amendment is important and why I believe that the other place should be asked to consider it again. I must express, in the strongest possible terms, my concerns that this is a defective and dangerous Bill. It is full of problematic structures and issues that remain unresolved. Far from giving meaning and vibrancy to devolution and local democracy, it contains more central regulation-making powers. These include areas such as the protocol, the new code of financial practice and the composition of panels, particularly in Wales. These are all areas where the primary legislation is defective. The Government are trying to address the problem through secondary legislation that is yet to be developed. In constitutional terms this is extremely questionable, and I am sure that your Lordships will keep a very close eye on developments. Fundamentally, this betrays the myth that we are swapping so-called bureaucratic accountability for democratic accountability. We are not. Let us be clear; this Bill will mean greater central powers. I hasten to add that I do not blame my noble friend the Minister. She has listened and tried to work with this House constructively. She has, however, had very poor material to work with, and has genuinely done her best in difficult circumstances, for which I thank her. However, I fear that this Bill will do lasting damage to the good reputation of British policing and that this amendment is essential to guard against this. I beg to move.