Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, Motion A3 is an amendment to Motion A. I do not pretend that our police forces are without blemish, nor that we should not always wish to enhance their accountability to the people whom they are there to serve, but we should acknowledge the dramatic fall in crime rates and improved relationships with the public and local communities in recent years. Even more important, the essential characteristic over 150 years of our police forces of political impartiality, fair play and policing by consent is a huge strength and much admired the world over. That strength is now at considerable risk through the potential politicisation of our police forces with elected police commissioners. The Bill places unprecedented concentration of policing power in the hands of one elected person with hire-and-fire powers in relation to chief constables that will almost inevitably put chief constables under pressure in operational decisions. There is also a risk that elected police chiefs will comment on sensitive operations while they are still under way. I was not enamoured of ministerial comments during the recent disturbances. I think that they have shown the problem that we will see in future. In the Bill, we have a lack of proper checks and balances which will make the problem worse. No one at local or national level can provide serious scrutiny or veto dangerous decisions. The police and crime panels will be toothless. They cannot even veto the firing of a chief constable. This model comes from the US, but in the US, powerful city halls and district attorneys provide a counterbalance. Even Bill Bratton, much admired by some members of the Government, has criticised the Government's proposals. The nearest we have in this country to an elected police chief is the London mayor, but even he faces checks and balances from the cross-party Metropolitan Police Authority and the Home Secretary, and has many other responsibilities which distract him from second-guessing police operations. Even the Mayor of London in this term of office is now on to his third commissioner. My fear is that that pattern will be repeated up and down the country. The US experience of an average tenure of police chiefs working to elected police commissioners is a little more than two years. It is easy to see why. The temptation to sack a police chief constable in the run-up to a re-election of the commissioner would become almost irresistible. Think of the instability that that would cause—a length of stay of little more than two years. I suggest that many senior officers will be reluctant to apply to be chief constables in future and that those who do so will be for ever looking over their shoulder for fear of the police commissioner’s shadow. I have no doubt that the police must be accountable to the public. They have made great strides in recent years. Unlike the Home Secretary, who has chosen to denigrate police authorities, I pay tribute to their work—none more so than mine in the West Midlands. During the recent disturbances, the chairman did not hawk himself from studio to studio or second-guess the chief constable. Instead, he played a pivotal role working with the local community, defusing tension and helping to restore order to the streets of Birmingham. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, I think that this is one of the most disastrous pieces of legislation that this House has ever seen. This country will rue the day when we destroyed—destroyed, my Lords—the essential balance, fairness and impartiality that we have enjoyed from our police forces for so long. Like the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, my Motion deals with the date of the elections for police commissioners. Once again I put to the House a proposal for a royal commission. I do not do that lightly because I am not always enamoured of the performance of royal commissions. However, I put it to the noble Baroness that currently there are two reviews or inquiries being undertaken in relation to the riots; in relation to the phone-hacking incident there are at least three inquiries. Each of those reviews or inquiries will, I am sure, have some implications for the way our police forces operate. All I am suggesting to the noble Baroness is that there is surely a case for waiting for those reviews and then establishing a royal commission. Like the 1962 Royal Commission on the Police, that would establish a basis for going forward with much greater consensus than we see at the moment. I believe the Government took all the wrong conclusions from the experience of my Government in those first two years. In fact, the legislation that they are proposing today would be so much better if they had gone through a process of proper debate, consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny. They would have been much more likely to have got the kind of consensus that I think is necessary. I hope the House will be sympathetic to my amendment, and in particular that it will support the noble Lord, Lord Condon. It is quite remarkable that the other place has dismissed the substantive concerns of this House and instead has offered as a concession the wonderful prospect of the first election taking place on 15 November next year. The media, very unkindly, seemed to suggest that this was because the Liberal Democrats feared the consequences of the elections next May and wished to remove the police commissioner elections from them. I am sure that is a very unworthy suggestion. The Minister was heroic in her explanation of why we should have these elections in November. I think the argument was that it enables the police and crime commissioner to take part in budget and planning decisions for the following financial year. This is the first time we have ever heard this argument so it is a new argument. If that is so—if it really is important to have a kind of shadow period—why not accept the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and give the PCC 12 months in which to find their way, discuss the budget and get ready for the new office? In fact, there is a very good argument for a shadow period of one year. As for the argument that if the elections take place in May party politics will intrude and the media will be much more concerned about politics than the quality of the candidates, if the noble Baroness is concerned about politicisation, as she knows I am, why on earth go down this path in the first place? If the Government really wish to encourage independent candidates, the idea that independent candidates with this huge electorate are going to traipse round the streets in October and November is unrealistic. Why did we change local elections from the autumn to May many decades ago? It is because the view was taken that the lack of daylight hours and the weather discouraged effective campaigning. The same argument now arises. I echo the remark made by the noble Lord, Lord Condon. If November is such a very good month to hold those elections and to give time for the elected commissioner to go into the issues of planning and budgets, why do we not have them every November? Why are we reverting back to May elections after the first round of elections? I think that a November election will essentially lead to extra expense. Earlier today during the first Oral Question, the noble Baroness was most concerned about expense. Here, she is flinging away millions of pounds on the extra cost of the election in November because it is a stand-alone election. However, the real risk is that there will be a low turnout. I have no doubt that if the election were held at the same time as local elections, it would slip-stream a higher turnout than will be the case when we are simply asked to vote for elected police commissioners. The noble Lord, Lord Condon, has put forward a very effective Motion and I, for one, will certainly be supporting him.