My Lords, I shall support this amendment simply by reflecting on my own experience. I will be very brief. I served at a senior level, although not as commissioner, in the Metropolitan Police when there was no police authority. I also served when there was a police authority. With respect to the noble Lords who served on that police authority, some of whom are present, I did not always agree with them. However, in terms of strategic principle, to have a senior police officer—as the director-general will be—running a large, complex and controversial law enforcement organisation with no statutory advice from any outside body around him or her, is dangerous in the modern age. As the noble Baroness has just said, it is not just dangerous for the director-general; it is dangerous for the Secretary of State.
Let us assume for a moment that the investigation which came to be known as “cash for honours” had occurred at a time when no police authority existed in London. As commissioner, while my service was investigating what had or had not happened inside No. 10 Downing Street—presided over by a Labour Prime Minister—I would have been reporting direct to a Labour Home Secretary, rather than to a more variegated body. The difficulties, temptations, pressures and politics of what that would, or could, have been like are pretty obvious and unpleasant to contemplate. What this amendment is suggesting is not a police authority. I am not at all precious about the detail of some of the appointments laid out in the different clauses; I just believe there is no need to mirror the PCC arrangement so recently announced in this kind of central body.
This amendment is less vital to me than Amendment 14, about counterterrorism functions, to which we will come shortly, but my experience suggests that a board of this sort would be an advantageous addition to the NCA, the director-general and the Secretary of State, and I commend the amendment to the House.