House of Lords
EU: Electronic Communications Framework
Baroness Wilkins
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they will ensure the implementation of the European Union electronic communications framework.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government have worked closely with the regulators, Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office, as well as all the people concerned, to identify the legislative changes to implement the EU electronic communications framework. These are being implemented through a negative statutory instrument which was laid before Parliament on 5 May, ahead of the deadline of 25 May 2011.
Baroness Wilkins
I thank the Minister. Would she agree that the use of the telephone is essential if you are to be treated equally in today’s society, and that the 50,000 deaf people who rely on British Sign Language do not have that same access to telecommunications as hearing people? The technology exists in the video relay service, which has been universally available in the United States for the past nine years. What action will the Government take to ensure that the telecommunications market meets deaf consumers’ needs now that this EU framework places a duty on them to do so?
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, makes reference to a very important part of the European framework whose use is essential especially for the deaf. We are of course sympathetic to the challenges faced by deaf users when accessing telephone and other services. However, the framework makes it clear that decisions regarding such services, including the provision of video relay services, can only be made by Ofcom, the regulator, after a process of review, consultation, cost-benefit analysis and a proportionality test. Ofcom is currently conducting a review of relay services and the Minister, Ed Vaizey, met recently with members of the UK Council on Deafness.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, the Government will be aware of the largest ever demonstration by disabled people, taking place today outside these walls, against the loss of their rights to equal citizenship. Can the Minister please send out a positive message today that she will ensure the implementation of the European Union electronic communications framework for deaf users of BSL, so that they can have equal citizenship?
Baroness Rawlings
I thank the noble Baroness for that question; we have heard the people outside. The framework for disabled consumers also clarifies that the national regulators are given the responsibility to impose obligations on all operators for the provision to disabled users of equivalent access to certain electronic communication services where appropriate, and Her Majesty’s Government support that.
Lord Swinfen
My Lords, can my noble friend give an estimate of the number of British Sign Language users who could be gainfully employed and come off benefit with the introduction of this new system?
Baroness Rawlings
I am afraid that I will have to write to the noble Lord; I do not have the details in my brief.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, does the Minister share my concern that the 50,000 UK BSL users cannot use the telephone in the same way as ordinary hearing people can do? They cannot contact their doctor, MP, bank or even just order a takeaway. What plans do the Government have to introduce VRS to the UK in the same way as it has been introduced in the US over the past nine years, to address the shocking disadvantage faced by this group of disabled people?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I am aware of the use of VRS in the United States but, as I said earlier, the matter comes under the Ofcom legislation. However, the Minister, Ed Vaizey, is doing all that he can to support this.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, given that Ofcom has had oversight of this problem since 2004, is there anything further that the Government can do to encourage rather faster action? As we have heard, there is a tremendous number of people who are disadvantaged in a way that should have been made parallel, shall we say, in about two or three days’ time. It would be helpful, knowing that this number of people is likely to grow over the years, if rather faster action could be taken by Ofcom.
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, is right: more and more people will use this system. The implementation of the framework will mean that the regulator, Ofcom, and the Information Commissioner will have the tools that they need and will be able to take effective action to deal with this growing number.
Lord Cavendish of Furness
My Lords, can my noble friend tell me the key benefits of framework implementation?
Baroness Rawlings
The key benefits to consumers with the revised framework include the strengthening of consumer protection through new provisions intended to make certain that consumers are better informed about supply conditions and tariffs and can switch providers more easily. That is just one of the many benefits. There are many others.
Baroness Wilkins
Does the Minister agree that Ofcom has been dragging its feet for nine years? It has done nine reviews on this and still nothing has happened. We need government intervention to force Ofcom to get on with it.
Baroness Rawlings
As I mentioned before, I know that this has been quite a long process with regard to Ofcom. That is why the Minister, Ed Vaizey, is looking into this and trying to push it further. We are fully aware of the noble Baroness’s concerns.
General Social Care Council
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have received about their proposal to abolish the General Social Care Council.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, a small number of representations has been received regarding the abolition of the General Social Care Council from the council itself, the British Association of Social Workers, the Social Care Association, Unison and individuals. Most of the comments focus on ensuring the effective regulation of social workers by the health and care professions council under the proposed new arrangements.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. She will be aware that yesterday the Munro review was published, containing a number of recommendations for enhancing the quality and status of social workers, particularly in relation to child protection. How does the Minister square that with the abolition of the General Social Care Council and the placing of the regulation of social workers under a health body that has absolutely no experience of social work?
Baroness Northover
The noble Lord—who I believe was the Minister responsible for setting up the General Social Care Council—is, not surprisingly, challenging us on this. As he will know, in 2009 there was a review of the council which concluded that it lacked focus. In essence, there was a muddling together of the regulatory function and the professionalisation of this area. One of the things that the review strongly recommended was that the profession of social workers should be regulated in the same way as the independent Health Professions Council has done. This change introduces that. The noble Lord expresses concern about whether it will reduce the effectiveness of that regulation. I do not think that it will; I think that it will make it clearer. It is very important that other bodies which, as he knows, currently exist, take forward the separate professionalisation and strengthening of the profession of social work.
Lord Laming
The noble Baroness will recall that some years ago a former distinguished Member of the Benches opposite chaired a royal commission on social work. One of its aims was to create a separate identity for social work. I am sure the noble Baroness will agree that since then a great deal of time and effort have been devoted to helping social workers become both more competent and more confident. Is she aware that if this arrangement proceeds, all of that good work will be placed in jeopardy?
Baroness Northover
I thank the noble Lord for those comments. Although he is right about his first point, he is not right about the second. It is by separating these areas that we will better promote the professionalisation of social work. In medicine, for example, the GMC regulates the medical profession while the royal colleges and the BMA make sure that they promote the profession as such. The noble Lord himself has contributed so much to the development of the social work profession. It is extremely important that those two elements are kept separate so that professionalisation can be concentrated on more effectively.
Baroness Jolly
My Lords, at present social workers are able to take an appeal against any finding against them to the Care Standards Tribunal, whereas with the new registration body such cases are taken to the High Court. This is a much more costly option. Will the Minister please tell the House whether the Government will maintain the Care Standards Tribunal—a smaller- scale, equally effective and lower-cost procedure?
Baroness Northover
One of the changes recommended by the review was that this procedure should be followed. The new arrangements give greater scope when there is a problem. For example, one of the things that the HPC can do is suggest further training for somebody who has run into problems. That was not possible under the tribunals system. Therefore, there is a wider range of devices at the disposal of the council under the new arrangement than would have been the case in the past. Although taking a case to the High Court is clearly a more serious option than a tribunal, it is extremely important that we remember that this is the regulation of a body of professionals, and that we are seeking to protect the public.
Baroness Meacher
Last year the Education Select Committee recommended that there should be more robust and more specific regulation of social work training providers. When social workers are responsible for life and death decisions every day—totally different from physiotherapists—why are the Government handing regulation to a light-touch, hands-off regulator? Are we not in danger of repeating the mistakes that were made in relation to the banking industry?
Baroness Northover
Again, I have to disagree with the noble Baroness. The new structures that have evolved since 2009 rather belie what she has indicated. It is extremely important that you have a strong regulator, and that is what we have. It regulates 15 professions—not just this one—including nursing. It is extremely important that it understands social work. Measures are in place to try to ensure that that is what happens. There are also the new bodies, which the noble Baroness will know about, which are obliged to develop the social work profession. It is clear that in many ways a lot of what is emerging from the Munro report is going in the same direction.
Baroness Sherlock
My Lords, is the Minister’s vision that regulation will in future be set at a more minimal level? If so, where will the development of the social work profession which was originally envisaged in the GSCC be taken on? I declare an interest in having worked for SCIE in the development of the College of Social Work.
Baroness Northover
As I say, other bodies have already been set up. The College of Social Work is being established and will help take this forward, as will the social work task force and various other organisations. In the light of what the Munro report and other reports have said, it is extremely important that the profession takes forward how best to protect the most vulnerable in our society. Separately, we have to make sure that the regulation of the fitness to practise of those who are working in this area is carried out properly.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, the Department of Health has admitted that the abolition of the General Social Care Council is not down to its performance, and I hope that the Minister will confirm that that is the case. As my noble friend has said, the Health Professions Council has no experience of social care. Therefore, is it not the case that this is driven by an ideological need to abolish arm’s-length bodies that is so overwhelming that the Government are prepared to put at risk such important work?
Baroness Northover
I must say that I disagree. It is as though the noble Baroness were to set in aspic. I can see why the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, thought that this was the best way to go forward in 2000, but we are now 11 years on from when that process was set up. The profession of social work has, fortunately, progressed and developed, and it must progress further. At the same time, we must make sure that the regulation is fit for purpose. Our proposal does this far better. I am sure that the noble Baroness would expect the Government to scrutinise and to work out the best way of taking the matter forward, and to propose a better way of regulating. There has been tremendous support for that decision.
Disabled People: Disability Living Allowance
(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Boswell of Aynho
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the loss of passported benefits to disabled people when the number of those entitled to receive disability living allowance is reduced by 20 per cent.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, we are committed to ensuring that the budget for DLA is kept under control. Reducing expenditure in 2015-16 by 20 per cent means bringing working-age expenditure back to 2009-10 levels and makes it sustainable for the future. As we are still designing the assessment for the personal independence payment, it is not yet possible to comment on its impact on future passporting arrangements. We therefore cannot currently reflect that in our impact assessments, but I can, and do, commit to us doing so when we are able.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for his response and for his assurance. Will he bear in mind that, on our calculation, there are more than 40 passported benefits spanning a wide range of government departments? Will he do his utmost in the assessment process to ensure that there are no cliff edges or unintended consequences which could affect significant groups of rather vulnerable people?
Lord Freud
My Lords, this is a key matter. There are a large number of benefits attached to DLA. I suspect that at least six government departments are involved. No one knows exactly where all of them are because local authorities use them in different ways. We are going to make a very close assessment of this. Indeed, we suspect that some of the attached benefits will be looked at again to see how they can best be directed at the people who need that support.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that on Monday the Government published draft assessment regulations for the new personal independence payment. It appears that assessments will seek to distinguish between those who have not adapted to their disability and those who have and who will be at risk of having their benefit reduced or losing it altogether. Does the Minister not agree that people may have adapted to their disability by reason of the very help that they have received from disability living allowance, which supports their independence and fuller inclusion in the community, and that reduction of benefit for those who have so adapted may, in fact, be self-defeating and undermine the integration into the community of the very people the benefit was designed to help?
Lord Freud
My Lords, this is clearly a quite nuanced issue, because there are people who are climbing Mount Kenya on prosthetic limbs who are, I suspect, less challenged in doing that than many of us would be. It does not make sense to go on treating them as disabled in any way, although they may need ongoing support to keep that particular disability support going. We need to get this right. We are consulting on it, and we are determined that we do not create a disincentive for people to use all the supports that they need.
Lord Morris of Manchester
My Lords, we were told that the Government’s policy would be to make the broadest backs bear the biggest burden. How do we reconcile that with cuts in disability benefits that sharply reduce the incomes of severely disabled people?
Lord Freud
My Lords, let me take this opportunity to make absolutely clear what is happening, in particular to DLA funding. The funding for all DLA, in real terms on 2011-12 figures, was £12.1 billion in 2009-10—the last year. At the end of this Parliament in 2015-16, the funding will be slightly higher—£12.3 billion. The talk of cuts relates to the projections on a benefit that was rising very sharply. What we are doing is bringing it under control. As I say, in absolute terms—in real terms—it is not being reduced; it is roughly the same. There is a slight decline in the working-age DLA from £6.7 billion to £6.5 billion. I am talking real terms.
Lord German
My Lords, I welcome the news that the budget will not be reduced over the lifetime of this Parliament, but I am sure that my noble friend understands that many recipients of DLA are very worried about the proposed changes before them. Further to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Low, what words of comfort does the Minister have for those who are about to be reassessed, to ensure that the assessment process treats them fairly and honestly, and that those who are in need of help will get it?
Lord Freud
My Lords, we are going through a very complex and thorough process this summer to examine what is the right test for receiving the personal independence payment. A lot of things are coming out of the early research, and one of those is that people who have done less well out of DLA are those who have various mental conditions and learning disabilities, and we are trying to recast it so that those people who need support will get it. There will be some changes; it is not going to be the same as DLA; but it is going to be a far more transparent, clear and consistent test.
Lord Wigley
My Lords, assuming that there are some who will not get the DLA but are, at present, entitled to passported benefits, can the Minister give an assurance that if they are to lose their DLA, an analysis of alternative criteria will be made available to them and that they will all be contacted to enable them to claim such benefits?
Lord Freud
My Lords, it is probably premature to say how we are going to deal with this in detail. What we are going to do is publish an impact assessment—I am committed to doing that—on exactly what happens to passporting. We shall look at these issues, which are thoroughly complicated. DLA is not the only passport into many of these other benefits—there are other ways into them. We need to look at the issue in a very wide context.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the Welfare Reform Bill proposes to extend the qualifying period before claimants can receive the personal independence payment from the current three months under DLA to six months under the PIP. Is it not the case that making people wait longer for financial support will place further burdens on those adjusting to sudden onset conditions such as stroke, and people who experience the immediate debilitating effects of treatments for diseases such as cancer, as well as penalising those whose impairment or condition has gradually worsened over time? How can the Government possibly justify that?
Lord Freud
My Lords, the intention behind the change is that we are directing the PIP to people with long-term disabilities. Therefore, we want to make sure that we get the right assessment and take time to do that, which is common with other benefits.
Electoral System: Alternative Vote Referendum
(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord McAvoy
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what was the involvement of the Electoral Reform Society or of Electoral Reform Services in the procedure used to send out postal ballot papers in the alternative vote referendum in the Glasgow division.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Electoral Commission will be reporting on the administration of the May 2011 referendum and elections, as required under Section 5 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and will be considering the role of suppliers and other delivery partners as part of its review process.
Lord McAvoy
I thank the Minister for his useful Answer. Glasgow City Council sent out the AV ballot paper to postal voters separately from the other ballot papers. The council did that on the advice of a company called Electoral Services Limited, which the council uses to run its elections. That company in the recent past gave its parent company, the Electoral Reform Society, £1 million in advance, which was promptly handed over to the yes campaign for the referendum. Will the Minister bring forward legislation to ensure that that organisation, or any organisation involved in the running of elections, is not allowed to participate when clearly there is a vested interest?
Lord McNally
My goodness. What is that saying—in victory magnanimity? The decision to engage that company was the decision of Glasgow council. The chief counting officer, Jenny Watson, said:
“We have put in place detailed and comprehensive arrangements for monitoring the performance of Counting Officers and their suppliers, and I have no reason to believe that there is any risk to the integrity of the administration of the postal voting process”.
Lord Rennard
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that issues such as the supply of envelopes for postal vote mailings should be made on an entirely commercial basis, based on value for money and reliability of service, and that if there were ever any issues of either impropriety in the ballot or failure to deliver, it would be a matter for the Electoral Commission to report which, as he said, will happen shortly?
Lord McNally
My Lords, I can well understand the reason for this Question. It was probably to do with the inquest that went on in the Glasgow Labour Party about the reason that Glasgow Kelvin voted so overwhelmingly yes. As we know, what Kelvin does today, the world does tomorrow. My noble friend’s point is absolutely right.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, this is a serious matter. The Minister, like me, is a football supporter. How would he feel if the manager of the other team was also appointed as the referee—because that is effectively what happened? Will he ensure that neither the Electoral Reform Society nor any of its subsidiaries are involved in monitoring such elections in future?
Lord McNally
It is a serious matter, and the systems for monitoring whether those elections have gone through properly are in place. As I said in my reply, we will be getting a full report and I have every confidence that the election will have been carried out with the utmost integrity. One interesting thing about the recent elections is the lack of criticisms about conduct compared with the many criticisms that came about during the general election. Therefore, we are making progress and I really do not think that the issue that the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, has raised is sustainable.
Lord Ryder of Wensum
My Lords, does not my noble friend miss the point? He was asked specifically about the conflict of interest, not misconduct. Can he now address the question that the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, asked about conflict of interest?
Lord McNally
My Lords, I do not believe that there is a conflict of interest. It is a separate organisation. The Electoral Reform Society has over many years had a reputation for integrity, which has resulted in it being used by trade unions, non-governmental organisations and a wide range of other bodies, including the House of Lords, and it is pretty cheap to try to make this linkage. We have machinery that the party opposite put in place. Let us see what the electoral body says in its report and we will then look into the matter further. However, I do not believe that there is a conflict of interest and I have great confidence in the integrity of the Electoral Reform Society and its separate subsidiaries.
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale
The Clock was showing 29 minutes when I stood up. Does the Minister agree that there is a world of difference between looking after the election of office-bearers in a trade union or any other organisation and being involved in a referendum which is about the electoral system and being connected with something called the Electoral Reform Society? Does that not strike the Minister as something different from the norm?
Lord McNally
No, it does not. I know that the noble Baroness comes from Kelvin and so must be particularly bitter about the election but such a suggestion really does not stand up. Even by the standards of the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, this is unworthy of the party opposite.
Hereditary Peers By-Election
Water Industry (Schemes for Adoption of Private Sewers) Regulations 2011
(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That the Water Industry (Schemes for Adoption of Private Sewers) Regulations 2011 be referred to a Grand Committee.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, this is one of the more important Motions that I will be moving today. I beg to move.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
(13 years, 6 months ago)
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18:57 - Division on Amendment 1 - Ayes: 188 / Noes: 176 - Amendment 1 agreed.
Baroness Harris of Richmond
My Lords, before moving the amendment, I will take the opportunity to welcome my noble friend the Minister to her new post. I am sure that I speak for all noble Lords when I say that we are looking forward to having a constructive and amicable working relationship with her.
Amendment 1 would remove the elected police and crime commissioner—the PCC—for each police area. Amendment 10 in the group refers to the PCC being a “corporation sole”. This would be replaced by the corporate body envisaged in Amendment 31. Amendment 11 and 12, also in the group, relate to the PCC being directly elected and would become obsolete if the PCC is appointed by the police and crime panel, the PCP, as envisaged in my proposed new clause put forward by Amendment 31, which would create a police commission. I hope it will be helpful if I indicate that I believe that all the amendments are consequential.
First, I declare an interest as a former police authority chair and a former vice-chair of the Association of Police Authorities. I am currently vice-president of that association. In the past, I have also been a member of the regional crime squad in my area and of the Service Authority for the National Crime Squad, and I have served on a number of policing bodies such as the PNB and the PAB.
The amendments ask a number of important questions. First, they provide a chance before we move on to the detail of the Bill to pause and ask ourselves whether we really understand what we are changing and why; and, above all, whether we fully appreciate what the consequences of that change will or could be. I am not against change, but if it is to be positive it needs at the very least to do more good than harm, and preferably it needs to demonstrate that what it creates is better than what came before. I am very concerned that the evidence base for making this change is incredibly thin, and that the consequences of implementing it have not been thoroughly researched or properly thought through.
The Bill changes a very precious thing. The British police service is the envy of the world. We should all pay tribute to the dedicated and professional officers and staff who contribute daily to making it so. However, part of the success story concerns how it is structured and how it is governed. Since the first British police force was set up by Peel, it has been faithful to the principles that the police are the people and the people are the police; that the police are absolutely impartial and serve only the law; and that the police service is not and never has been an organ of the state. Neither does it serve political or partial interests. It has always comprised local forces governed by local people and free from political interference.
These principles are reflected in the doctrine of operational responsibility for chief officers, and in the way in which police governance has evolved into a tripartite structure comprising chief officers, police authorities and the Home Secretary. In theory, each balances and keeps in check the powers of the others. The Home Secretary sets the national framework within which policing operates. Police authorities are responsible for local governance, set local direction and have substantial local democratic, independent and judicial elements. Then there are chief officers who are responsible for local delivery and operational direction. This is a very delicate balance, which has evolved over time, but it has broadly stayed true to the basic principles of localism and impartiality. It may not have always been perfect, but where problems have arisen, they have been corrected, most recently by the creation of police authorities in their current form in 1995. This reform introduced independent members to police authorities to overcome concerns about local political interference in policing in some areas.
The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)
I have to inform the Committee that if Amendment 1 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 2 to 8A by reason of pre-emption.
Baroness Henig
I support the points made so forcefully and eloquently by my noble colleague Lady Harris of Richmond. First, I must declare my interests; I chaired Lancashire Police Authority for 16 years up to 2005, and I chaired the Association of Police Authorities for eight years and am currently its president. I begin by joining those who have welcomed the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, to her new role. I am sure that the whole House will look forward to working with her. In the short time since her appointment was announced on Monday, I have talked to many people who worked with her. They told me that she had considerable abilities and many accomplishments—too many for me to mention here today. I was not told specifically, but I am sure that one of those will be the ability to learn very rapidly on the job, which will be a great asset to her in this new role.
I am quite sure that she has been extremely well briefed by the Home Office, but she will this afternoon have the opportunity to hear at first hand the views of those with first-hand experience of local policing and its governance and those who understand how their local communities work across England and Wales. This will, I hope, give the noble Baroness a different perspective on this proposed legislation and help her to understand the serious nature and extent of our concerns.
My greatest concern is that the major changes outlined in Part 1 of the Bill are not based on very much tangible evidence, as far as I can see. I have listened carefully to all the arguments that have been put forward to justify the changes, but I find a lot of the arguments pitifully thin and some of them are out of date. The first argument was put forward at Second Reading; it was necessary to reconnect people to policing. That assumes that in some way the public are not presently involved at all. That is patently not the case. Neighbourhood policing is doing an excellent job working with local people at ward level to address their concerns and to work with them in their localities to address complaints and problems. The police usually do that by way of monthly meetings, and this is happening all over the country. That is what the public want.
What the public do not want is one individual elected to cover the 23 parliamentary constituencies of West Yorkshire or a massive police area such as Thames Valley, which does not actually exist in local government terms. In a recent survey in Lancashire, over 70 per cent of the more than 1,000 people surveyed said that one person could not possibly represent the diverse communities of Lancashire. Of more concern, the figure was much higher among those from ethnic communities, who believe that their concerns would be marginalised under the new arrangements. The Lancashire Police Authority has always had direct representation on it from its ethnic communities since its inception in 1995. That, together with other policies, has considerably boosted confidence in policies across the ethnic minority communities in Lancashire. To lose that direct link would be a serious step backwards. That worries me greatly.
The second argument for change was put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Howard, at Second Reading. He said that local people did not know the name of the chair of their local police authority. He said that that had apparently helped to change his view that direct elections to police authorities would be dangerous because they would politicise policing, which was certainly the view that he held in the 1990s. I am willing to say to the House that I believe that that is probably true because, in the recent audit of political engagement carried out by the Hansard Society, more than half the people surveyed said that they knew nothing or not very much about how things worked in their local areas.
As a result, police authorities have been innovative in combating that problem. For example, Lancashire police have held 14 roadshows since last April, meeting more than 5,000 residents and gaining the views of more than 10,000 people in surveys. Similarly, in south Wales, roadshows are held in each of the seven local authority areas every year, and in the past year there have been more than 18,000 visitors to the police website. South Yorkshire Police are in regular e-mail contact with 4,000 people. The Minister may be interested in the fact that Devon and Cornwall, part of which she represented in the other place, held 37 public meetings in the past year, engaging up to 1,000 people.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
My Lords, I hope that I will be forgiven the discourtesy of absence from some parts of this debate because of a commitment in a Committee Room upstairs. I join others in welcoming my noble friend the new Minister. I learnt the other day—indeed, I am bound to say that she told me herself—that she is an extremely good cook. In this Bill, she has as ingredients the meat of police commissioners, the wine of the licensing provisions and the hot spice of universal jurisdiction, but it may be difficult for her to produce a dish that is up to her usual culinary standard at the end of our discussions. Having been a Member in the other place with her, I can confirm her reputation for being doughty, determined and, above all, dangerously disarming.
I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Harris for the way in which she moved the amendment. She was very persuasive, but I am bound to say that, with great respect, I disagree with her profoundly. I would like to remind the House of one or two things that have happened. Before the coalition, the Liberal Democrats were solidly in favour of democratic accountability for the police service through elected police authorities, to which we will return later today. The Conservative Party, the larger partner in the coalition, has been consistently in favour of the election of police commissioners. Both parts of the coalition have been solidly in favour of democratic accountability for the police through some kind of elected person or body through which the police service for a police area should be accountable. The amendments proposed by my noble friend Lady Harris would destroy that determination. I do not think that we have reached the point in coalition politics at which we should distance ourselves from the strongly held views of both parties because we are wedded to some old practices, which, in my view, do not stand the tests of scrutiny that have been relied upon by my noble friend. Indeed, what we should be discussing, if we are to discuss this at all, is the form of democratic accountability rather than whether there should be democratic accountability. These amendments would wreck the first Part of the Bill completely, for which reason I am opposed to them.
On police authorities, we will have a debate later about Welsh police authorities. With great respect to my very distinguished colleagues in this House who will speak in favour of basically no change in Welsh police authorities, I do not think that they could be more wrong, and I do not think that anybody could be more wrong than to say that what we have at present is a democratically accountable system that does the business really well. If one were just to stray into Wales for a moment and walk down the streets of Llanfair Caereinion, Llanfyllin or Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant and ask people on those streets to name a single member of the police authority for their police area, unless one had happened to bump into a member or one of his or her nearest or dearest, they probably would not have a clue that a police authority existed, let alone who those members were.
In a professional capacity as a barrister, I have worked for and with police authorities and I have seen them in operation—I have seen very good and I have seen much less good. As a Member of the other place for a constituency in rural Powys, I had dealings with the police force and the police authority for those 14 years, and I can say very clearly that if anybody was concerned about the police they did not go to the police authority or any member of it, because they had no idea where to go. By and large, they went to their local Member of Parliament, who then processed the issue or complaint for them.
If one looks at some police authorities—it would be invidious to name names or issues, particularly as some of my experience is shrouded in professional confidentiality—one can be far from confident that every issue has been dealt with in a way that the public would regard as properly accountable and transparent. Indeed, there has been an issue involving a chief officer this week which has been well publicised and which raises many issues about the performance of that police authority and the relationship between that police officer and the public that he supposedly serves as the paragon of policing.
This amendment is going far too far. We should carry out the examination of police authorities that the Bill predicates and should not waver one bit from a form of democratic accountability, whatever that form be.
Baroness O'Loan
My Lords, first, I welcome the Minister to her onerous new responsibilities. She has a particularly difficult Bill to deal with.
Policing operates only with the consent of the people, and it has long been the experience in the United Kingdom that that consent depends very largely on the extent to which the people can trust in the independence and impartiality of the policing service which is delivered to them.
I want for a moment to refer to the situation in Northern Ireland in which policing became very seriously politicised and the consequences of that politicisation. In the first instance, there was a loss of community confidence in the police, which over the period of the Troubles crossed from the nationalist republican community into the loyalist community. It is important to acknowledge that the loss of confidence was right across the community. That led to a lack of support for the police in critical moments. I am thinking in particular about things like demonstrations, which are becoming more prevalent on the streets of the United Kingdom. It led to the loss of the flow of active information to the police, and the extent to which people were prepared to come forward and tell the police things. They very often told me as Police Ombudsman that the decisions that they made were based on whether they thought they might be listened to anyway. So people stopped providing information—sometimes information relating to the commission of crimes—and that led to the necessity for greater use of other mechanisms for collecting information, with the additional costs attached to those, all the complexities of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the potential for the increase in corruption. Ultimately, the loss of confidence in policing led to a lack of proper accountability in Northern Ireland, and we saw what happened, and we saw the necessity for the commission headed by the noble Lord, Lord Patten, and all the consequences which derived from that. Members of the House will now have gathered that I stand in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris.
I want to consider what it is that we are contemplating in this election of a police commissioner. The noble Baroness, Lady Harris, has identified the deficiencies in what a police commissioner could deliver which is not currently delivered by a police authority. I speak as a former member of the Police Authority for Northern Ireland, and I know the extent to which authorities go in extending their reach and bringing people in. When you combine that with the district and community policing partnerships that exist across the country, there is very significant outreach between the police, the police authority and those who are served by policing. The imposition of a single elected person would almost inevitably result in the election of someone who was politically affiliated. Political affiliation could be very damaging to policing and could lead to decisions in the allocation of resources which may well not reflect the needs of the marginalised, the poor, the vulnerable, the disabled and many other constituents of our community.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, because when I had the great fortune to be chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee I saw at first hand what she had achieved. She speaks with a quiet authority—as, indeed, do the noble Baronesses, Lady Harris and Lady Henig.
Like other noble Lords, I congratulate and welcome my noble friend Lady Browning. I served with her in the other place and I know her to be a woman of calm judgment and true determination. Above all—and I saw this when she had high office in the Conservative Party—she is someone who truly listens. I hope the House will give her the opportunity of its views today and I know that she will reflect upon what she hears in this Chamber. For that reason, I appeal at the outset to some of those who I believe are considering breaching a convention of this House and calling a vote today. I would beg them not to do so, out of courtesy to the new Minister. I have learned in my brief time in this House—although I observed it for 40 years from another place—that the hallmark of this place is courtesy.
Lord Cormack
What I have learned in my time here is that the convention is that issues are thoroughly discussed in Committee and that when we come to Report, Ministers having had the chance to go away, think and come back with answers, we decide whether we will vote—as we did last night, when I found myself, for the first time in my time in this House, in the Content Lobby. I give way to the noble Lord.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, the noble Lord comes to this House with great experience and we have all enjoyed his interventions. I would gently point out to him that there is no such convention. Votes do take place in Committee and any such vote would not be a matter of discourtesy to the Minister, whom we all welcome to her place today.
Lord Cormack
I am glad for that assurance but I still hope that there will be no vote today, because there will be proper opportunity both for my noble friend the Minister to reflect and for noble Lords in all parts of the House to put their points of view.
I have always been extremely sceptical about this policy. This is no new attitude; I remember having a vigorous discussion with Mr Dominic Grieve, when he was the shadow Home Secretary, telling him that I very much hoped that this would not form part of official Conservative policy. Although it has been rightly said that it is the official policy, many members of the Conservative Party are truly concerned about the implications, as I know well from my private conversations in this place and elsewhere. We are seeking to elect on a party ticket—it would be in almost any case on a party ticket—a man or a woman who we expect to have the pastoral wisdom of a bishop, while we give him or her the powers of a commissar. That is not a very good combination.
I speak as others speak, because we all talk from our own experience. For 40 years, I represented a Staffordshire constituency and have worked with six chief constables. I had the great benefit of a long discussion a couple of weeks ago with one of those, John Giffard, who said that I could mention his name in this House. I know that John Giffard was an exemplary chief constable, not at all afraid of accountability or of talking to a police authority and recognising its remit. Yet he is very wary of having an elected party politician as an immediate boss.
This policy is a very brave step indeed and if we are to take that step, we ought at the very least to have some pilot projects to see how it works and just how it reacts. There are other amendments on the Order Paper to this effect. I know that my noble friend Lady Browning will consider what is being said and I hope that she will discuss with the Home Secretary and others that to have pilot projects is in no sense to wreck the Bill. It is, rather, to make haste slowly, which is often the best way of moving forward.
If party politicians were elected, imagine a Derek Hatton being in charge of the police on Merseyside. One does not need to elaborate to realise that implicit in any election is a danger that that sort of thing can happen, particularly if it is a mid-term period when the Government of the day are excessively unpopular. We all know, from last week and other examples, that when people vote in elections other than a general election they are not always entirely motivated by the local issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, talked—I think I remember the number right—about 23 constituencies in West Yorkshire.
Lord Cormack
I am sorry, North Yorkshire. In Staffordshire, including the city of Stoke-on-Trent, there are a dozen constituencies, but it is a fairly populated county, particularly in Stoke. The interests, concerns and priorities of those who live in that city are very different from those of the people who live in the rural area of the south of the county, which I represented, or in the Staffordshire moorlands. Is it really possible for one person adequately and properly to understand people’s conflicting priorities and interests in such a diverse area?
Lord Blencathra
If it is not possible for an elected police commissioner to know the different conflicting views and opinions throughout Staffordshire or North Yorkshire, how then can a chief constable manage to do it at the moment?
Lord Cormack
My noble friend, for whom I have real affection, as he knows, has been a champion of this policy, very honourably. He knows that I take a different view. We respect each other and will continue to do so.
In this case, the situations are different. An operational chief—after all, we are so keen on operational independence that it is written into the Bill—with a series of assistants and deputies under him, with this as his sole and absolute duty and having done it all his life, because a chief constable by definition is someone who has risen through the police service, is in a far better position to know this professionally. I cast no aspersions on those who would aspire to stand as a commissioner, of course, but for the most part they would be party politicians with party priorities, to a degree.
Lord Hurd of Westwell
My noble friend constantly reverts to the point that they would almost certainly be party nominees. Might it not turn out otherwise, as it quite often has in the elections for directly elected mayors? Does he not conceive it possible that in fact independents have a certain appeal, particularly in that position, and that they might put themselves forward quite successfully and that people might vote for them on an individual basis, as has been happening to some extent in the elections for directly elected mayors?
Lord Cormack
My noble friend moderated his own comment by saying “to some extent”, having said “very often” at the beginning of his intervention. The fact is that it does not happen very often that independents are elected. If there were a clause in the Bill to say that only those who were not affiliated to a political party were eligible to stand, many of my objections would be answered. However, I am concerned.
Because I know about Staffordshire, I would like to relate my remarks to my own county. In future, with Stoke included, it will be what is called a swing county; it will go Labour, then Conservative and then Labour again. This could have a very odd effect on the relationship between the commissioner and the chief constable. For four years you could have a Conservative commissioner. He appoints a chief constable. He begins an entirely proper but very constructive relationship for four years, and then he is out, replaced by someone from the other side who will not necessarily readily and immediately be able to establish a similar relationship.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in extending a warm welcome to the Minister. I share entirely their confidence that she will listen very carefully to the views of all sides of the House on this extremely important matter.
I confess that I have what can be described only, in appropriate terms, as form in the reorganisation of policing. As vice-chairman of the Local Government Association and leader of its Labour group, I led an ultimately successful campaign within my own party and against the policies of the party in government when it sought to introduce the least bad of three bad propositions for the reorganisation of policing. The Labour Government’s proposal was that the majority of members of police authorities should be directly elected. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, pointed out, the Liberal Democrat policy was for the entire police authority to be directly elected. The present Government’s proposition is that all of that should be replaced by the election of a single person. The campaign was against the least bad of the three. It succeeded because the Government were persuaded that it was wrong to vest separate powers in the hands of bodies elected from other parts of local government.
It is instructive to look at the protocol, which has somewhat belatedly been circulated. I refer to the introduction to this document, in which the following words appear:
“The election of Police and Crime Commissioners is at the heart of the Government’s plan to cut crime”.
There is, as has already been pointed out, little evidence that such an appointment would have that effect but let that stand. It goes on:
“They will reconnect the public and the police, and allow us to replace bureaucratic accountability to Whitehall with democratic accountability to local communities”.
That is as classic a piece of gilding the lily as I have come across in a long time. I need hardly remind your Lordships that lilies are poisonous plants. The first part of the sentence is surprising: it implies that the police and public have been disconnected. As I have previously had occasion to point out to the House, I have served for 44 years as a councillor in Newcastle upon Tyne in quite a deprived community in which crime has always been an issue, although it has been reducing in recent years. The past few years have seen a much greater connection between the public and the police than at any time previously, certainly during my period of service. The police regularly attend meetings, communicate with the local community and report back on crime statistics. They are more accessible than most other public services, if truth be told.
As I said on Second Reading, the interest of the local community is very much focused on the immediate locality. In all the meetings that I have attended with the police and public present, never has anybody raised force level matters or even, frankly, matters concerning another part of the city in which they live, let alone Berwick, which is 56 miles to the north, or Sunderland, which is 15 miles to the south, all of which would be included in the area to be governed in this respect by the police commissioner. Therefore, there is already a connection between the public and the police. Having said that, accountability needs to be reinforced and there are ways in which the Bill could be improved to secure that, with or without the imposition of an elected police commissioner.
However, the second part of the relevant sentence in the protocol is a non-sequitur. I agree that the previous Government overdid the provision of targets and laying down what should be done in this and other areas. Occasionally, I used to say that the Government of the day had established more targets than the Pentagon had during the whole of the Cold War. Their setting of targets was excessive, including in this area of public policy. When I was chairing a review of local public services in Wales, I well recall a very charismatic, if somewhat idiosyncratic, chief constable of north Wales saying that he was not minded to follow the Home Office advice about giving priority to knife crime—I think that was the crime in question—because in his part of the world that was not a serious issue. I cannot remember whether sheep rustling was his preferred priority, but at all events he made a perfectly valid point which certainly needs to be borne in mind. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, pointed out, that does not require, nor does it necessarily flow from, the proposition to establish a directly elected police commissioner. The Home Office could relax its grip and its tendency to dictate priorities under the current system or, indeed, any other system for that matter. It is a question of a self-denying ordinance on the part of the Home Secretary and the Home Office of the day, and certainly that should be welcome, but the two issues are not connected in principle or in practice.
The protocol goes on to say in a further paragraph:
“The Police and Crime Panel within each force area is empowered to maintain a regular check and balance on the performance of the PCC”—
that is, the police and crime commissioner. If one looks at the proposals for the police and crime panels in the Bill, it is very difficult to see the substantial checks and balances that the protocol suggests are present; they are few and far between. For example, they would require a three-quarters vote to veto—they cannot amend—the budget of the police and crime commissioner or his crime plan. There is no provision for the police and crime panel to call in decisions of the commissioner before they are implemented, as can a scrutiny panel, for example, in an authority with an elected mayor or any other form of executive It seems to me that very few checks and balances are present, despite what the protocol claims.
Another part of the protocol states:
“The PCC has the legal power and duty to … provide the local link between the police and the public, working to translate the legitimate desires and aspirations of the public into action on the part of the Chief Constable to cut crime and antisocial behaviour”.
That raises a number of questions. To begin with, who determines the,
“legitimate desires and aspirations of the public”?
Apparently it will be the single person who is the elected police and crime commissioner. That suggests the very kind of populist flavour that is likely to characterise the campaigning for an election to that position, which many of us—I suspect on all sides of the House—fear will actually aggravate problems, rather than resolve them. It will lead to an increase in the fear of crime, and that in turn makes the job of the police more difficult.
The protocol also implies something very close to interference in the operational performance of the chief constable. I repeat:
“to translate the … aspirations of the public into action on the part of the Chief Constable”.
It might be argued that that is to be confined to the plan, rather than operational detail, but the terminology is suggestive of a rather greater role than many of your Lordships would like.
There are further responsibilities referred to in the protocol and in the Bill, one of which will again concern many of your Lordships. The protocol states:
“A PCC has wider responsibilities than those relating solely to the police force”,
including,
“a wider responsibility for the enhancement of the delivery of criminal justice in their area”.
The Bill refers to collaboration between the commissioner and a range of organisations, including the courts, the Prison Service, the probation service and youth offending teams. I would be concerned if anyone holding the position of a police commissioner or, indeed, the chair of a police authority under the present structure, engaged with the courts or any of those bodies. The police function in that sense is separate. Again, the notion that a single individual should have that responsibility strikes me as being inherently undesirable, and perhaps even dangerous. The powers of the commissioner are virtually untrammelled in the Bill, and that is a serious objection to the proposal as it stands.
The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, who is not now in his place, prefers the model of democratically elected police bodies. There are a number of arguments against that, one of which is that the existing police authorities, and even the Bill, propose the retention of some independent element within the police and crime panels. Police authorities at the moment have a significant number of independent members. That has contributed significantly to ensuring that there is geographical balance and a balance of gender and ethnicity in the composition of police authorities. The Bill provides for only two such members, and their number should be somewhat greater—perhaps a third of the total number—in whatever structure we end up with. However, as I understand it, the formulation of the noble Lord is that all members should be democratically elected, and one would thereby lose that important dimension.
However, councillor members of police authorities are democratically elected. Although they are not specifically elected to the police authority, they are accountable to their electorate in their ward or authority, and are accessible to the wider community. It is perfectly true that they may not be household names in every street or town in a country area, but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, pointed out, authorities have done a great deal to extend information on and access to those who serve.
There is a further objection to the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. His formulation implies the creation of a separate elected body with a separate mandate. This represents a fragmentation of local governance, beyond what we already have. Of course, some police authorities are based on existing counties—there is effectively a county force. Thames Valley is not an example, because it links several counties, but Hampshire, for example, has its own police authority, which is effectively part of the county council with additional members.
The noble Lord's argument could be extended. If we are to have separate bodies separately elected with their own mandate—and, incidentally, responsible for a significant portion of council tax; 11 per cent in England and 15.5 per cent in Wales—why not have a separately elected body for passenger transport? Why not go back to the 19th century and have elected school boards? Why have local government at all? It is an infraction of that principle that the noble Lord appears to support. I do not think that his arguments are well founded. All of us want more accountability; all of us want a democratic element; the Bill as currently set up does not achieve those objectives. I hope that it can be substantially revised, and I certainly support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness.
Lord Condon
My Lords, I declare my registered interest as a former commissioner and chief constable. I, too, welcome the new Minister to her place and wish her well in dealing with the Bill. I support the sentiment, tone and mood of the suggestions made by the noble Baroness, Lady Harris. I do so with some hesitation. I do not want to undermine the ambition of the Government in the Bill, because I believe that there is ample scope for improving the democratic accountability and performance of local policing. Nor am I in principle against the notion of elected local police and crime commissioners. My anxiety concerns whether the provisions as drafted do as they are intended. Will the new elected police and crime commissioners have the infrastructure to deliver? The noble Baroness, Lady Harris, has served the House well by giving us the opportunity to pause and think again today by her amendments. Have we got the right infrastructure in the Bill which will, as we all hope, improve the democratic accountability and performance of policing locally?
We are all prisoners of our experience, and I refer back to my time as chief constable of Kent, a county I know well, still live in and serve in a number of ways. If in two to three years’ time we had an elected police commissioner for Kent, he or she would be expected to connect in some way directly with over 1.5 million people in Kent. He or she would have to connect directly in some way with 17 parliamentary constituencies, a very large county council and 12 very big local authorities. The current proposal, with an elected police and crime commissioner floating free, is a mission impossible when it comes to connecting in a meaningful way with local people on their fears and aspirations concerning crime and related issues.
My second anxiety relates to the drafting concerning the police and crime panels. We will have a transition from the old police authorities. Some of the checks and balances will be carried forward into the police and crime panels, but in other ways, they will be given a different role. My concern there is that we will have 10 to 15 or more people, many of them locally elected through the democratic process, not engaging directly with the public or the police service to improve policing but all facing narrowly towards the new elected police and crime commissioners and all their energies going into what could be, as others have said, a very adversarial, party-political driven contest between the police and crime panel and the elected police and crime commissioner, who may not necessarily be from the same political persuasion. There is a real danger that that will dilute and dissipate a lot of local energy and expertise which should be used in a more collaborative way.
Therefore, I hope that, as we move forward with this debate in your Lordships’ House, we will move towards a position where, if we are to have directly elected police and crime commissioners, they will be located within a more supportive and collaborative framework locally and will not float freely, as is currently envisaged. I am relaxed about whether they become a chair of the police and crime panel, whose role is redrafted and represented, or the chair of a police commission or a police board, or something that locates them in a more collaborative endeavour which gives them a much stronger chance of genuinely tapping into local feelings, moods and concerns, and gives them a much stronger feeling for how they are going to interact with the chief constable and local policing. My hope is that we will somehow find an agreed way of moving towards this more collaborative framework, which genuinely has a much stronger chance of enhancing local accountability and improving police performance.
For the purpose of today’s debate, I am not going to rehearse all the anxieties that I expressed at Second Reading. However, in addition to all the things that we have spoken about so far, there are still a lot of unknowns concerning national structures and how we are going to deal with terrorism, organised crime, police leadership reforms and police pay and conditions reforms. These new proposals involve a massive act of faith and experimentation in moving away from over 180 years of legacy and performance.
Therefore, I am not against elected police and crime commissioners and I am certainly not against improving local democratic accountability in relation to policing but, as we move forward and change more than 180 years of history and legacy, let us make sure that we take our time to get this right.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Browning on being appointed as a Minister. It is a first-class appointment. Having known her well, like many others, in another place, I know that she will be a doughty fighter and very fair with all of us. We are very lucky to have her.
I very much support the Bill because I do not really take the view that has been expressed in this House this afternoon that, in the words of my noble friend Lady Harris, the British police force is the envy of the world. There may have been a time when the British police were the envy of the world but I am not at all sure that that is still true today. One problem that the police have is that they have succeeded in roughing up the middle classes, who traditionally have always supported them, and there is also a perception that they are doing less and less for the poorest in our society, who of course really are the victims of crime. My noble friend Lady Harris said that these were the people who did not vote, but then of course they probably do not vote for the few councillors on the police authority either, so I am not sure that the concept of accountability works here. I think that a larger number of people would probably vote for elected police commissioners than for councillors, and therefore there could only be an improvement on that front.
I am afraid that this is an issue on which I do not agree with my noble friend Lord Cormack. He and I see life in very much the same way on issues of the constitution but on this matter I think that we have to differ. He seemed to be very concerned that the police commissioners would be party-political animals, but I am sure that people must have deployed the same argument in relation to mayors, as did my noble friend Lord Hurd, who is not with us. Clearly, they are party political creatures: but does that mean that they are not able to serve their community? I do not think that there is any evidence for that. If one does not believe in elected police commissioners, presumably one is in favour of getting rid of elected mayors, because I do not see that there is any great difference between the two. I see that my noble friend Lord Cormack wants to get rid of elected mayors as well. I take the view that the ratchet is operating here and that on the whole London has been better represented by elected mayors than it has been without them. Certainly an elected police commissioner will be known and, as has been established very satisfactorily in the debate so far, nobody has the first idea who runs the police authority or who is a member.
We have a serious disconnect between the police and the people whom they are supposed to serve. Introducing elected commissioners would do something to start reconnecting the British people with their police. This is very important and we cannot do anything but benefit from it. I very much support the Bill and oppose the amendment.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, I first declare an interest as a member and former chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, and also as a vice-president of the Association of Police Authorities. The noble Baroness, Lady Harris, has given good service to the House today by moving her amendment, if for no other reason than that it will enable us to have a free-ranging debate in Committee. I hope that it will be a useful introduction to the Minister in her new role; it will enable us to rehearse the arguments for her benefit as well.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is worried that we might pass the amendment, which would be discourteous. However, it would provide an opportunity for—in the current jargon of the coalition—a pause. Apparently pauses are a good thing because they allow the coalition partners to consider whether they are departing on precisely the right track. This would be useful in the context of the Bill. The central objective that the Government have put before us of improving the democratic accountability of the police service is right. I hope that no one in the House would disagree with the principle. The question is whether the mechanism that has been put forward will achieve that objective, or whether it will have unintended consequences. The work of this Committee over the next few weeks or months may be to look in some detail at how this will work in practice, and whether there could be unintended consequences.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, I have no problem with the principle of direct election. I work on the basis that elections are a rather good way of determining who should have ultimate responsibility for things. However, what distinguishes this proposal is that we are talking about the direct election of an individual who will be given tremendous responsibilities, but without a suitable governance structure to prevent a situation in which the individual might make capricious judgments or seek to trespass on the operational independence that chief constables hold so dear. The Bill would give an individual tremendous authority, but without the governance structures, checks and balances that would be necessary given the importance of the role.
When I chaired the police authority in London, I would have welcomed the additional authority that would have been given to me had I been directly elected to fulfil the role. I was a directly elected member of the London Assembly, but that was slightly different from being directly elected to be in charge of the police service for London. I would have welcomed that additional authority. No doubt it would have been helpful to my relationship with the commissioner of police for the metropolis, the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, who has just left us. It would have been particularly important for my relationship with other elected colleagues such as other members of the London Assembly, local council leaders and so forth. I would have been able to say, “This gives me the authority on behalf of the people of London to say what is necessary”, but I would have been operating in the context of checks and balances on what I could and could not do. I would have had other authority members and the scrutiny processes that were in place with the London Assembly. Therefore, it would not have been untrammelled power. I would have had that responsibility and extra authority, but there would have been these mechanisms around.
What is so striking about this Bill is that those mechanisms are virtually absent. We will be told that the policing and crime panels offer that substitute governance structure, but they are essentially scrutiny bodies after the event. They are not part of the decision-taking structure and are not there, except in extremis, to say that a decision has been taken inappropriately. The spirit of partnership with other colleagues is so crucial in this area.
Lord Dear
My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister to her place and look forward to working with her on this Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, has proposed this amendment and I have to say, up front, that I do not support it. The argument that seems to underpin it is that there is nothing much wrong with the current system. I shall address that in a moment. It is an oversimplification, I know, of what she said, but that seems to be the core of the argument which supports the amendment.
I was surprised to hear the noble Baroness say that we are here to prevent power going into one set of hands, or words to that effect. It seems to me that power is already in one set of hands—the hands of the chief constable. That is properly and legally constrained in ways we all understand. We are trying to find in your Lordships' House the way in which other powers, matching, mirroring and supporting that, can also be so constrained so that they work in harmony or in balance.
I agree with almost everything that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, who is not now in his place. As a chief constable and a very senior officer in the Metropolitan Police for many years, I worked with police authorities of various political complexions and persuasions. One or two of those were good; most were indifferent; and at least one that I served as the chief officer was downright bad. So I can tell your Lordships in all honesty that not everything in the current situation is correct.
One should also reflect on the fact that the current Chief Inspector of Constabulary found that only four police authorities out of more than 20 that were recently inspected were fit for purpose or “up to scratch”, as I think he put it. As an inspector of constabulary for more than five years, one of the first things that I did was to respond to a request to take on an inspection of Derbyshire Constabulary. I knew little about Derbyshire except that it was a moderately sized police force of no great significance in the pantheon of policing and that it was not an innovator of policy so much as a follower. But I took myself off to Derbyshire in the very early 1990s and found the most appalling situation. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, asked us to dwell on the hypothetical case of Derek Hatton being chairman of a police authority. Derek Hatton never was chairman of a police authority, but a man called Councillor Bookbinder got his hands on the chairmanship of the Derbyshire Police Authority, with substantial party support behind him. To put it frankly, he brought the Derbyshire Constabulary to its knees. It was in the most appalling state, starved of funds, chivvied about by a thoroughly capricious chairman with a thoroughly capricious committee behind him.
I discussed that with Councillor Bookbinder and his colleagues. I gave them six months to put things right and they did not. From memory, I gave them a further six months, saying “Please get it right because an axe will fall”. They still did not and in fact tightened the screws yet more. I declared Derbyshire Constabulary inefficient. That was the first time in nearly half a century that an Inspector of Constabulary had deemed a force to be inefficient.
Changes came about, one of which was the interposition into police authorities of the independent element, but an independent element in Derbyshire would have made no difference. Such was the political majority in power, they would have swept over the independence come what may. Change came and Derbyshire is now a very different place in policing compared with 15 or 20 years ago. I make that point to say that the current system can in extremis fail. The risks are still there with the current system and, of course, as many noble Lords have said today, there are risks in the system that we are invited to look at in the Bill.
At this very early stage we should reflect on the fact that in the other place this Bill was passed with a substantial majority. On the back of six years’ experience in your Lordships' House, I suggest that we owe it to the parliamentary system to give this Bill fair scrutiny from start to finish. I, too, am concerned about checks and balances. I want to see what I guess most of us in this House want to see and that is two individuals—the chief officer of police and the police and crime commissioner—working together in harmony for the benefit of the population, not as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said earlier, somebody who is a boss. That may have been a loose use of that term. I do not see a boss in this relationship at all. The chemistry is important.
I am concerned about a number of things. I pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, about size. He mentioned Kent. I could mention the West Midlands, where I was chief officer. It is the biggest police area in the UK outside London with a population of 4 million and more than 30 Members of Parliament. I am not sure how one individual can adequately represent an area that stretches from outside Coventry through the west virtually into Shropshire, taking in bits of the surrounding counties and seven huge cities and boroughs. That will be very difficult. That is one issue to which we should pay particular attention.
On the whole, I am saying to your Lordships that I shall oppose the amendment if it is put to the House. This is such an important issue, which has already been passed in another place with a big majority, that we should look at everything in the Bill and give it a fair trial before we come to a conclusion.
The Lord Bishop of Hereford
My Lords, I support the amendment. Notwithstanding the comments that we have just heard from the noble Lord, I see his arguments as supporting the amendment rather than opposing it. He asked how one person can know the whole of the West Midlands area. I totally concur. How can they? Of course they cannot. That underlines the need to ensure that there is as broad a base of involvement with our chief constables as possible, with either a panel, a committee or some other grouping. The wider the grouping, the better it will be. If we accept the argument that no one person can possibly be representative, as is obviously the case, then surely this is an instance where we need to be as collaborative as possible. To put the PCC there, as the Bill does, as yet another focus on an individual, seems to undermine the very point that the noble Lord was just making.
We therefore support this amendment, because putting the power in the hands of another individual is to move it yet further away from being representative. As the PCC can be only one person he or she will not have the broad constituency that exists for panels or committees. I also wonder whether the noble Lord who has just spoken heard the same speech as I did at the beginning. I did not hear the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, say that the present system works perfectly; rather I heard her say that she is ready for amendments and changes but questions, as I do, whether these are the right changes. I am not saying that any system is perfect—none of us would make such a claim as clearly is would not be true. However, that is all the more reason for us to have such safeguards in place as we can.
If we go for the path which the Bill suggests of locating the authority in just one person, I would have strong concerns, which I am sure many other noble Lords will share, about the processes for appointing our chief constables and about what would happen in situations—which we all hope never arise, but which occasionally will—where there are suspensions or disciplinary issues. Nothing in the Bill addresses these issues, and putting the power in one person’s hands seems an unnecessary and unjustified risk. If we are to walk this path, and I hope that we do not, then surely this path, at the very least, needs to be piloted, tested and tried so that there is an evidential base showing it will improve a system which we all agree could be improved but we do not agree is broken. In that sense, it does not need fixing at any price. I hope that others will want to support the amendment and allow us to have as broad a base of representation and support as possible.
If we locate authority over our chief constables in one person, the police and crime commissioner, how will that individual spend his or her time? Locating the role in an individual without the clarity of processes for appointments and other things is a recipe for interfering with the role of the chief constable. If we are to have PCCs, we want these posts to be filled by people who are hugely able and talented, with energy and ability. Where is that energy and ability to be focused? How are PCCs to use their energy and time? Is there not a great risk that they will use it in a way that not only does not work collaboratively with the chief constable but threatens to interfere? The boundaries are not neatly drawn and we do not know exactly how the role would work out. We would want it to be a good working relationship, but, as we know, that level of power and authority risks being lived out and acted upon in a multitude of different ways. I fear that some of those ways would not be to the benefit of policing within our nation. I therefore ask noble Lords to support the noble Baroness’s amendment.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
We have been discussing this for some time but I want to add a few points. The first one is that Mr Bookbinder, whom many of us will remember, was of course elected from an area where one would wonder what sort of police commissioner would have been elected at that time.
I very much support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, for the reasons that have been given by so many Members of this House, but I should like to add one or two points. First, I also was very impressed by Ms de Grazia, in particular because she pointed out that, in the United States, the FBI monitors the elected police authorities. There is no body such as the FBI to monitor the new police and crime commissioners. Secondly, I have put my name to the first of the amendments proposing pilot schemes. I have done that very much as a second option, as I much prefer the option proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Harris.
It is suggested that the police commissioner would reconnect with the people. I live in the Devon and Cornwall Police Authority area, which the Minister knows very well because she was my MP, and I very much welcome her in her new capacity as a Minister in this House. She will know that the Devon and Cornwall Police Authority has 19 members, who represent areas ranging from the Isles of Scilly—for those of you who know what the south-west is like—right the way through to east Devon. In their way, they represent all corners of this part of the country where I live.
I suggest that we really ought to consider, with this pause that I would very much like to see, whether the police panel should not be elected. In electing the police panel, we would be creating an organisation very much like the police authority but which would have teeth and which would, under Amendment 31, appoint the police and crime commissioner. We would then have the connection with the public and we would have democratic elections, but we would not be putting all the power in one person.
I urge that we support the amendment and have a pause. I am very concerned that we should not plunge into very deep water without buoyant life jackets.
Lord Blencathra
My Lords, I, too, welcome my noble friend Lady Browning to her new responsibilities. She was a superb Minister in another place, and I am sure that she will be equally good in this House. I say to my noble friends that she is a listener and she has tremendous experience of policing. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, said in her remarks in her excellent speech, which I much enjoyed listening to, that the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, would hear some examples today of practical policing. The Minister may now be hearing those examples from a different perspective, but if one has been a constituency Member of Parliament in the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary area, I think that one gets practical examples of policing from constituents both happy and unhappy. I welcome her to her new responsibilities.
It was a privilege to listen to the speech of my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond, who introduced her amendment with a very passionate and well intended speech, but like my noble friend Lord Carlile I think that she is profoundly wrong. I say so to your Lordships as someone who must also declare some form, not from any past responsibilities as Police Minister but from the sabotage that I successfully performed two or three years ago when Cumbria Constabulary decided to amalgamate with Lancashire Constabulary. I am not sure who decided that or who was in the driving seat, but both police authorities—unelected police authorities—were fanatically keen that the amalgamation should happen. I urged the Cumbria Police Authority not to do it, as I think did most other Members of Parliament in Cumbria from all political parties, but the unelected police authority, paying no attention to our views or to the views of the vast majority of the public in Cumbria, proceeded hell for leather with amalgamation talks. I decided that I would do my utmost to stop it because I thought that it was wrong and not what the people wanted. After I challenged the suggested savings of £20 million, they came down a few months later to £10 million and a couple of months later to being cost-neutral. Once they got to minus £10 million, the authority began to think again. When they became a cost of plus £21 million, the unelected police authority finally abandoned all effort at amalgamation. At that point I concluded that there has to be something better than an unelected police authority driving this process forward and not caring what the local people want. Therefore, I do support the main thrust of this Bill and, with all due respect, must disagree with my noble friend on her amendment, which would stop this Bill in its tracks.
Your Lordships will be pleased to hear that I can be mercifully brief, because I entirely agree with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dear. I had the great honour of him following me when I made my maiden speech, and he was so generous in his remarks as to be almost bordering on the untruthful. Of course, he was not—but today I can assert with all authority that he has not exaggerated his case in any iota. If we were to remove this element of the Bill today, we would do a great disservice to the agreement made between the coalition parties and to the electorate, because of the manifesto commitments of the major parties.
The only other little point that I shall pick up is one from the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. She said that she was worried that crime might go up with an elected commissioner, but I profoundly disagree, for a reason advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who was afraid that an elected commissioner might be a bit populist. Well, I hope so; if populist means doing what the people or the electorate want, then bring on populism. If the commissioner is to be populist, he will be bearing down on crime day in and day out, because that is what the electorate will want. They want that in the rural areas, the city areas, the Tory areas and the Labour areas, as well as in the areas where people do not vote or apparently care a fig about politics. They want the police to bear down on crime, as it affects them.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
Does the noble Lord also agree that an elected commissioner might well cut down on the form-filling and paperwork that seems to take place under police forces these days and put the police back on the street where they can cut the crime?
Lord Blencathra
I would like to hope that that would be the case, but I suspect that the only means of cutting down on form-filling rests with the Home Office. I shall put down some more amendments to remove some more of the form-filling, if I may.
I remember in my time at the Home Office that every time we asked the police to fill in a new form it was in response to our need to answer a parliamentary Question. When a colleague wanted to know the number of helmets lost in Herefordshire we would ask the police to supply that information, and inevitably the Home Office would then invent the form for every police force to fill in the number of helmets lost. So the responsibility for cutting down on the form-filling rests on us as parliamentarians not wanting to know the minutiae of policing in local areas, but leaving that to the local people.
I have pushed noble Lords’ kindness and generosity too far and will conclude my remarks. I visited Commissioner Bratton in 1996, when I was passing back through New York, and I was impressed by what he was doing. I thought, yes, that is almost as good as what they are doing in the Met already and in most of our county forces. This thing about the broken window syndrome—yes, it was wonderful. Commissioner Bratton overnight got his hands on 7,000 extra police officers, who were not very well trained because they were from the New York Transit Police and Housing Police. But overnight he put 7,000 extra bobbies on the streets, and New Yorkers saw a difference. That was one of his main successes.
The problem we have here is that the term commissioner for an elected commissioner is the same as the term commissioner in New York, but the job is totally different. Commissioner Bratton was a hands-on police officer; he had direction and control and operational policing charge, just like Met commissioners and just like the commissioner in the City of London. The commissioners envisaged in this Bill are political appointees with no direction and control over the police force—that will be the chief constable. Perhaps not today but at Second Reading there was some confusion among some of us that we were electing commissioners who would have hands-on responsibility. They will not.
There is something in what the noble Lord, Lord Condon, has said about having more resources for the commissioner so that he or she can connect with the local people. I disagree with my noble friend Lord Cormack that it would be impossible for an elected commissioner to know the views of the people in Thames Valley. If the chief constable can do it, surely a politician can as well.
I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Condon, who, interestingly, is not in disagreement with the principle of the Bill. I would be very worried if someone of his experience and responsibilities in the past was opposed to the principle, but he is not. He is worried that the elected commissioner may not have enough back up to carry out his role of assessing what the people in, say, Thames Valley, North Yorkshire or other large-spread police areas want. I hope the Government will address that issue and reassure him.
On the basis of what the noble Lords, Lord Condon and Lord Dear, have said, I, too, urge that the amendment not be pushed to a vote. If it is, with all due respect to the noble Baroness, I hope that she will be defeated.
Lord Soley
My Lords, I shall try to be brief; a lot of arguments have been made and I shall try not to repeat them. However, I will repeat the congratulations that have been given to the Minister—although I will change it to commiserations because being dropped into a contentious Bill of this complexity and which has constitutional implications is a big challenge. However, I know she will listen and that is very important.
My reason for offering support to this group of amendments is because we are engaged in something very serious and a pause for thought is right. The trial period might be referred to in a more important group of amendments than this one but it involves the same principle that we need to pause and think about this.
One of the most important statements in the report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee, quite rightly, is:
“From a constitutional perspective, the chief risk with Part 1 is that of politicising operational decision-making”.
That, and what follows from it, is profoundly important. I ask the Minister, when she considers all of these arguments, to take that statement by the Constitution Committee into account more than anything else; it is particularly important.
I shall refer now to the optimism of people who believe that elected police commissioners will address a democratic deficit of some type. I am a strong believer in democracy and in voting generally, but there are times when you need to step back and think about whether it is the best system. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile—who is in a committee at the moment and will not hear my comments—is convinced that it is very important to have the senior officer of the police committee elected in the way described in the Bill. I say to him that one of the things that we all underestimate at times is that the British public as a whole put such great store on their constituency MP that they tend to go to their MP before they think of going to anyone else. Any ex-MP will know that despite the fact that you might say 100 times to an individual, “The local councillor can sort out your problem quicker and better than I can”, they will still go to the MP. That there are people who think that by setting up elected police committees covering large areas they will have people going to them, is a triumph of hope over experience.
The other fear I have was put clearly by my noble friend Lord Beecham and I do not need to repeat it in too much detail. There is a problem about people being elected on the basis of a fear of crime. I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, but the problem with populism in an area such as crime is that it is based on fear. One of the difficulties in dealing with crime prevention is lowering the fear of crime. The greater the fear of crime, the more people retreat indoors, the more communities get cut off and the greater the risk of crime becomes. There is very strong evidence for that.
One of my objections to, particularly, the tabloid press in the 1970s and 1980s was that it played on the fear of crime to the extent that it drove the crime level up. I shall give a simple example; I shall not delay the House on it. I remember chairing a meeting in my then constituency of Shepherds Bush, with two police officers sitting alongside me, because there had been a murder at the base of a block of flats. The public meeting was very angry and the residents wanted large, 20-foot high gates erected to stop people coming in. They kept referring to three murders and I kept saying, “I know of only one murder”. I asked the police about this and they said, “No, there has been only one murder”. When I talked afterwards to the people, who were, importantly, mainly elderly, they kept referring to three murders. “There were three murders here, Mr Soley. You don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re not listening”, they said. So we went away and researched carefully the papers for the area. There had been three headlines in the paper: one when the murder was committed, one when the guy was caught and one when he was sentenced. The more I think about it, that was a classic example of the fear of crime because people had read it as, “Murder in this block of flats”, and it became three whereas in fact it was one. The fear of crime produces a higher crime level.
I will not go into this now because it is for a future debate on the Bill but I have reservations, too, about confusing crime prevention measures with policing. Police have a critical part in detecting and preventing crime but crime prevention is infinitely more than just policing. In fact, if you try to deal with crime just by dealing with the police you are unlikely to succeed. Those are my reservations about going down the election route without testing it pretty thoroughly first.
A couple of examples have been given, of Derek Hatton and the Bookbinder case. I knew about the latter, incidentally, but not its details. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, might well agree that if it was the first time we had to do it in 50 years—I think his term was “half a century”—that is a pretty impressive success ratio for a system. Any governmental system that lasts for 50 years without a major intervention of that type is one you have to look at carefully and think about copying, because you do not normally get that level of success. You do not need to look just at the Bookbinder case and Hatton examples: as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, pointed out, Hatton was not a case but could have been. You need to look only at the recent case of Boris Johnson and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Leaving aside whether the mayor or the commissioner was right, we should bear in mind that we appear to be creating a structure which will make such conflict much more common. Can the Minister keep that very much in mind? It is profoundly important. If we really want to see battles between an elected official and a chief constable, the danger in the Bill is that that will be a high risk.
My other point is one that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, made carefully with her great experience of Northern Ireland. I remember from my own time dealing with Northern Ireland, both on the Front Bench in the House of Commons and as chair of the Select Committee, that the problem of policing there was extreme. That was because the divisions in the community were based on both national and religious identities, while we had a police force which primarily, and almost entirely, represented one section of the community. The method of control had been by one section of the community. I think my noble friend Lady Henig made the point that if you have large areas in mainland Britain, as opposed to the United Kingdom including Northern Ireland, there will be patches in them where the people are not similar to the whole area. You do not need to take your example from Northern Ireland; you can simply look back to London in the 1970s and 1980s.
When the riots broke out in 1981 and the Scarman report came out, Lord Scarman powerfully made the important point that racism within the police had to be tackled. Racism in the London police force at that time was very serious; we all knew that. Despite noble efforts by police at all levels to deal with it, the problem was severe. I say again to the Minister, who I am sure is in her listening mode, that if she is looking at large areas of this country she will find that some of them contain large minority populations who already feel, in some cases, that the policing does not represent them. If we are to go down the road that we are heading down with this Bill without checking it out pretty carefully first, one thing I ask of the Government is to look very carefully at how on earth they make sure that ethnic minorities in those large areas feel represented within that system. London was a classic case of the explosion of anger about policing, when a large and growing section of the community was left out.
I am the first to congratulate the police in the metropolis on all that they have done in recent years; they have worked wonders, and things are infinitely better than they were. As any senior police officer will tell you, though, there is still a problem—in other words, it is not easy to deal with. As the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, pointed out, although we have made enormous strides in this area in Northern Ireland, the idea that somehow we cracked this problem is a triumph of hope over experience.
I said that I would keep my words brief. My single message, picking up on the point made by the Select Committee on the constitution of the House of Lords as well as the points that have been made by myself and others, is that the Government are embarking down a road that has an awful lot of elephant traps in it. When policing is such an important part of our constitution, as the Constitution Committee makes out, the case for making sure that we get the detail right is profoundly important. We will come to this in a later group of amendments, but there is a case for piloting or a pause of some type.
Lord Blair of Boughton
My Lords, I declare an interest as the commissioner to whom the noble Lord, Lord Soley, just referred. I am afraid that I will spoil the party of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, by saying that yes, there is someone here who was a Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and opposes the Bill in root and principle. The reason why I do so is the nature of the beast, in terms of who these police commissioners will be and how they will behave.
I support the amendment because I do not support pilots. We do not need pilots because we can see how the system works. The gentleman who has been mentioned a great deal, Bill Bratton, a good friend of mine, the greatest commissioner and probably the greatest police officer that I have ever met, was fired after 28 months, after reducing crime across the board in New York, including homicide, to limits that had never been seen before. He did that but he crossed Mayor Giuliani by appearing on the front of Time magazine, and was fired instantly. Giuliani of course appointed a man who ended up in prison later on in his undistinguished career. That, I am afraid, is how the beasts behave.
Another example of my worries about the Bill goes back to what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said about the protocol. Much was made about the protocol at Second Reading. I have read the protocol and it is not worth the paper that it is written on. It has no statutory basis, and when it comes to the point of hiring and firing the chief constable, there is nothing in that protocol that will stop an individual police and crime commissioner simply announcing that he has got rid of or wishes to get rid of the chief constable, or that he has no confidence in the chief constable. Once that has been announced, the chief constable is almost finished—without any help, because there is no panel there that would be able to support him.
If noble Lords do not think that British politicians would behave like that, I shall give the example—I will not name him, but your Lordships will all know him—of the Home Secretary who tried to have the chief constable of Sussex and the chief constable of Humberside fired, without the power so to do, and he did that effectively on the front pages of the national newspapers. This is for your Lordships’ House to consider: unless someone does something that puts limits around the power of these commissioners, who may well go into office with wonderful ideas and deep integrity but may also see their chances of re-election fall through the floor, and unless their power is constrained in some way, the only answer is for this House to support the amendment put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Harris.
The Lord Bishop of Chichester
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for making the first point that I wanted to make about the danger of populism. You have only to look at the way in which reactions to particular high-profile cases have led to some very dangerous situations on our streets in recent years to recognise that although democratic accountability is highly important, populism can have a very nasty face as well.
The other point that I wanted to make, picking up something that the noble Lord said, was about the diversity of the communities that will be served by these commissioners. My own county of Sussex is a leafy, largely prosperous place, but with huge pockets of both rural and urban deprivation—precisely the places that are likely to feel themselves excluded because our community as a whole feels itself to be prosperous and settled. It seems extremely difficult to deliver policing, as it is to deliver the services that the church tries to offer, in a community as diverse as that. Great sensitivity is needed to the nature of the communities that are being served.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I also welcome the new Minister to her role. I hope that today she will listen carefully to the views expressed in the House on the detail of the Bill. I have previously talked about the problems of elected police commissioners twice in debates in this Chamber. I will not reiterate what I have said on previous occasions. Suffice it to say that we must not, through our debate on the Bill, end up polarising power in the hands of one individual. We should not politicise the police or produce conflict in electoral mandates between councils, their leaders and elected mayors and a police and crime commissioner. We should maintain impartial allocation of resources, preserve the neutrality of the police service and balance operational command with accountability.
Reference has been made to the coalition agreement. I shall quote precisely what it says:
“We will introduce measures to make the police more accountable through oversight by a directly elected individual, who will be subject to strict checks and balances by locally elected representatives”.
The issue is that the checks and balances are not strong enough and they are certainly not strict. They are very weak indeed. As we have heard, the commissioners will have the power of appointment and dismissal of a chief constable. They will have the power to set a precept, which must then be charged by the local authorities. They will have the power to set a budget and agree the heads of expenditure for a whole police area. They will also have the power to issue a detailed police and crime plan.
There are some checks in place. As the Bill makes clear, 75 per cent of the panel voting can veto the appointment of a chief constable, and 75 per cent of a panel can veto the level of the precept. However, as currently stated in the Bill, a panel has no power to veto the police and crime plan. It has no power to veto the budget and no power to veto the dismissal of the chief constable. The panel will be consulted on the plan and the proposal to dismiss a chief constable will have to go to it for consultation, but it does not have the powers to veto either of those areas.
Further, the commissioners will have the right to appoint their own staff directly. Crucially, the commissioners will have no legislature underneath them, unlike London, where there is one. Therefore, there is no structure underneath the commissioners which provides them with the advice, guidance and support that is absolutely required. As set out in the Bill, enhanced powers are needed for the panels in relation to the plan, the budget and the dismissal of the chief constable. The panels need to be bigger; 10 is too small. Geography, diversity, and urban and rural areas all need to be reflected in the panel. The veto should not sit at 75 per cent. Amendments have been tabled calling for two-thirds. The more I think about this, the more I believe that 50 per cent plus one is probably the right level. The panel must have power to scrutinise the police directly, as police authorities currently do. Under the Bill, they will be able to scrutinise only the commissioner, not the police. I do not regard that as acceptable.
The panel should be able to appoint one of its own members as a temporary replacement when the commissioner is incapacitated. As stated in the Bill, it will be required to appoint a member of the commissioner’s staff who has been appointed to that post by the commissioner and who will, by the very nature of the appointment, not be elected. I simply do not see how that is a strict check and balance on the power of the commissioner.
We shall need to debate many questions in relation to the Bill. I raise a further matter which has not been raised today but comes from the Constitution Select Committee and concerns the voting system. Your Lordships may have had quite enough of discussing voting systems, but a major constitutional issue is involved here. The committee states at paragraph 17 of its 14th report:
“The Government should explain clearly the rationale for adopting the supplementary vote system for the election of police and crime commissioners. In particular, the Government should explain why they have seen fit to recommend a different system to either of those put to the vote in the 5 May referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons”.
The point is extremely important because the supplementary vote does not require 50 per cent support. We simply do not know how many candidates there might be, but as people will have only two votes you could end up with a police and crime commissioner being appointed on a very low percentage of votes. I hope that in our debates in Committee we will look very carefully at how people get elected, because in my view the person who is elected a commissioner—should we have one—must have the support of 50 per cent plus one of those who are voting.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon
My Lords, I too speak in support of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, and the important principle that the police service should remain politically neutral. The current system provides for a spread of political allegiances and representation of many sections of a force area. I cannot see that a single person can fulfil this role or that having the power to set the budget and sack the chief constable will not inevitably interfere with police operational actions.
On Second Reading I talked about my experiences as a chief superintendant and serving police officer at Chiswick, and of the distortions that can occur when policing is influenced by politics. In particular, I spoke about Chiswick and Brentford, where most of the problems of crime and disorder were located on the Brentford half of the ground, but all the public pressure came from the articulate, organised middle classes of Chiswick.
The role of the police service in this country for nearly 200 years has been to be politically neutral. The oath that we all took on joining the police service was that we would act “without fear or favour”. Indeed, in my view, the main role of the police service is to act as a buffer between the strong in society and the weak. This may be to protect specific citizens from attack by violent criminals, but it is also to protect minorities from the overbearing power of the majority, and allow them the space to demonstrate and to represent their points of view. Where this goes horribly wrong has been recently demonstrated in places such as Syria and Libya.
In contrast to the role of the police service, the role of politicians is to represent the interests of those who elected them and to favour policies that will ensure their re-election—not to have regard to the problems of disfranchised minorities. If the Bill becomes law, we will end up with police forces that are almost permanently influenced by one party or another. We will have Tory police forces, Labour police forces and, increasingly, different styles of policing.
My second problem with the provisions of the Bill is the title, “police and crime commissioner”. The introduction of “crime” into the title strikes me as cheap populism. The police service has many other responsibilities, in particular those relating to public order. One of the primary objects of Peel’s police was the preservation of peace and tranquillity. That holds true today. If we are to have these commissioners—which I very much hope we do not—then “crime” should be dropped from their titles.
My final problem with this proposed duopoly of power is that either the relationship will become too close, or there will be a clash of personalities. During my police service, there was a series of scandals in places such as Blackpool and Southend, where chief constables became too close to the local politicians and did them favours, or interfered with prosecutions—often on traffic offences. Alternatively, political differences may lead to, for example, the recent difficulties between the Mayor of London and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. We have just heard cited the Bookbinder case. The most notorious example of this problem took place some time ago with the chief constable of Nottingham—the gloriously named Captain Athelstan Popkess—who saw his Labour councillors as Soviet sympathisers and had them investigated by his Special Branch. He was subsequently sacked by the Home Office.
The Bill, as it pertains to policing, is wrong in principle. We have a police service in this country that is admired very much throughout the world, despite some reservations elsewhere, for its impartiality and reluctance to act as a tool of politicians. To jeopardise that political neutrality is, I believe, extremely dangerous.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, I shall be brief to the extent of telegraphy, even if it costs me welcoming my noble friend, which of course I do. I did not speak at Second Reading. As this is, therefore, my first speech during the passage of the Bill, I hope your Lordships' House will excuse my momentary pomposity if I say that I must declare an interest, which I shall declare only once. When the Police Act 1964 passed into law, my late noble kinsman was the Home Secretary who took it through. Given the heat that seems to surround the present reform, it might be said that that Act has stood the test of time well over those 47 years, but it does not mean that my late noble kinsman would necessarily have regarded its reform as inappropriate. His first nine years in politics were in the fledgling Conservative Research Department, whose historian, my noble friend Lord Lexden, now sits in your Lordships’ House and who would, I suspect, say that my late noble kinsman was an indefatigable producer of detailed policy documents at the drop of a hat.
I am profoundly fond of my noble friend Lady Harris. We have shared many British-Irish occasions, as well as police ones. However, my remarks are composed on the flyleaf of the Bill, and flyleaves are often passed through like small station halts by an express train. To remind your Lordships' House, the flyleaf, after the title and the word “Contents” reads, Part 1, Police Reform, Chapter 1, Police Areas Outside London. Clause 1 is entitled “Police and crime commissioners”. Those words recur on page 1, before recording Clause 1(1), which my noble friend’s amendment would strike from the Bill. It would be difficult for Clause 1(1) to have more of the quality of a foundation stone or a greater centrality in the Bill so my noble friend has chosen a target worthy of her mettle, but it is no surprise that the speeches that the amendment has occasioned have had largely the smack of Second Reading speeches, which are normally frowned on in Committee. As, conventionally, we do not vote at Second Reading, I hope that my noble friend will remember the spirit of that convention when we come to her final speech on the amendment.
Viscount Brookeborough
My Lords, I support the amendment and will make two brief points. The first concerns democratic accountability and community involvement with the police; and the other concerns whether a single commissioner can do the job. On accountability and community involvement, at the moment we are looking to a senior tier to link the police and the people. However, that accountability relies on their being connected at the very lowest level of the community. The panel we have for such a large area, dealing with more than 1 million people in many cases, simply cannot connect. Under the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, the Government and the then Opposition enforced on us much more democratic accountability down the line than we ever wanted. That is why it worked. The point was that there is a level below the panel which we are discussing. We should not expect people, in open meetings with the panel, to travel 60 or 70 miles to say that their gated community is not working or that crime on the street last night is not happening. That will not happen.
There has to be some other form of panel at the divisional level of policing involving the local community. It is no good calling for it to be entirely elected. That may be democratic, but as far as I am aware, elections never favour minorities. Therefore, you have to appoint people who come forward from the minorities. That includes the obvious minorities, but it also includes those with disabilities and those from disadvantaged areas. We must encourage participation. Democratic accountability and involvement is one thing, but when you get to a certain level, you have to ensure something else. Noble Lords may remember that we had reverse discrimination, if you like, with the 50:50 in the police force. What happened? It worked.
Secondly, regardless of the sort of person who will be elected to be a police and crime commissioner, if he is utterly brilliant, middle of the road, not political and can keep all other things out of his mind, he may be a good person for that; but he will be out of this world if he can do the job. He is holding to account a police force with many different departments. There is not just the chief constable. The chief constable has his finance department, his estates department, his operational department and his crime department. Those are all run by different people in his organisation. How can one person possibly bring forward those people in succession to monitor them and hold them to account?
In our policing board, which was the same as a policing authority, we had committees which mirrored the departments within the police force. That is the only way that you can hold a department to account. In your Lordships' House, we have an EU Committee. The chairman of the committee is chairman of several sub-committees. If we had no sub-committees, he would be a very hard-worked man and could not mirror all the committees on Europe. He could not do the job. If we elect the chairman of the police panel, and he is able to use the police panel to carry out the functions, that is a different matter, but from our experience in Northern Ireland, it would be impossible for an individual to do that.
Baroness Randerson
This amendment is a useful opportunity to draw your Lordships’ attention to something of a constitutional stand-off between the Government and the Welsh Assembly Government. This is an entirely different point from those that have been raised this afternoon. The problem exists because the Welsh Assembly declined to support a legislative consent motion, which was required to allow Parliament to legislate on behalf of the Assembly on a devolved issue. The Bill involves a devolved issue in an aspect which I shall explain in a moment. The issue in question is the establishment and make-up of the police and crime panels in Wales. Because those panels will involve elected councillors, the Bill will intrude on devolved powers. I urge a breathing space for the UK Government to discuss fully and constructively with the newly formed Welsh Assembly Government—so new it was formed only this afternoon—to find a satisfactory compromise on how the panels will be constituted in Wales.
As your Lordships will be aware, there has been something of a hiatus in government in Wales lately because of the Welsh general election, which was held last week. It would not have been reasonable to expect either the Government or the Welsh Assembly Government to have made progress on the issue since the vote in the Welsh Assembly at the very end of the previous Assembly in March. There has been no opportunity to make progress; but it is important that progress is made now.
It is important that your Lordships note that the Welsh Assembly has never before rejected a legislative consent motion. It is not its practice to do so, so that needs to be taken seriously—all the more so because the Home Secretary had agreed to a small role for the Welsh Assembly Government in the appointment of a panel member nominated by the Welsh Assembly Government. That was a compromise negotiated between the two Governments but rejected by the Assembly in a vote.
In response to that, the UK Government appear to have decided that the Home Secretary is to be responsible for bringing together locally elected representatives, but I believe that it is against the spirit of devolution to ignore the Welsh Assembly Government in the panel appointment process. So much of what the police do in Wales involves close joint working with local authorities. That joint working involves significant funding directly from the Welsh Assembly Government and the devolved budget. I give some examples: community safety, highways and transport, youth services, and substance misuse policy. All those and many more are devolved policy areas and the policy is funded by the Welsh Assembly Government. There is therefore a direct impact on policing from Welsh Assembly funding. It is important that that is respected. I give your Lordships another example, a stunning example of success in South Wales: the 101 non-emergency number, jointly funded and jointly operated by local authorities and the Home Office. The two work together in the same building; they funded it together. It is important that that success is built on.
Lord De Mauley
I hope that my noble friend will forgive me for intervening. Another group is coming up which deals with Wales in great detail. I hope that she is not getting ahead of herself.
Baroness Randerson
I take the point. I conclude by saying that the Welsh Assembly’s Communities and Culture Committee reported on this Bill. Its headline recommendation was that the Welsh Government should have a dialogue with the UK Government to persuade them to defer the introduction of those aspects of the Bill that relate to the abolition of police authorities and the establishment of police commissioners and police and crime panels in Wales, at least until the effectiveness of their impact in England had been assessed.
Later, we shall come to amendments that relate specifically to Wales. They go further than I am asking the Government to do. I simply ask them to take account of the issues, and I urge them to give this proposal a test drive before imposing it on Wales and on the Welsh Assembly Government and the Assembly.
Viscount Bridgeman
My Lords, I shall be very brief. Perhaps I may respectfully say that the protocol has been given a very bad press by both the noble Lord, Lord Blair, who is not in his place at the moment, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester. I draw your Lordships’ attention to what I think is one nugget in the protocol. It says that the police and crime panel has:
“The power to ask HMIC for a professional view when the PCC intends to dismiss a Chief Constable”.
So far as I am aware, there has been little or no mention of the role of the HMIC in the relations between the commissioner and the chief constable, and I suggest that this is a very important link.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister to her appointment. I welcome her because of her experience, her willingness to listen and the manner in which she has behaved since she came into this House. I, too, thought of something that I will, if she will forgive me, offer her as a word of advice. It came to mind when I was listening to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and particularly the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough. Sometimes this end of the telescope is slightly more difficult than the other end. On occasions, the difficulty is in convincing colleagues in the other place of the strength of feeling in your Lordships’ House. During the passing of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act, the then Secretary of State stood in the Corridor trying to negotiate through me, as the Whip, in order to get things through. Therefore, I welcome the noble Baroness’s experience and I am sure that she will adapt to this end of the Corridor.
I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Dear. With respect, I think that he proved the point that I am about to make rather more than the one that he made. Had there been the direct election of an individual, I fear that at that time and in those circumstances the person to whom he referred, David Bookbinder, would have been elected because the political climate then was even less fettered. However, the most important point is that, as a result of some difficult experiences, modifications and improvements were made to the composition and role of police authorities, but they were incremental. One noble Lord after another has spoken about the need for incremental change in a service that we all hold dear.
My second point is equally important. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, referred to our police service—to me, it is a service, not a force—roughing up the middle classes and failing to look to the interests of deprived communities. I am sorry: I live in the police authority area where I served as a member of the authority for 20 years and I do not recognise that description. What I do recognise, however, is that the middle classes are more vocal. They want a police officer in a car to appear at their door if they have a burglary and they also want police officers walking the streets, but I am afraid that, however populist the campaign, the concerns of that community will not be met by anyone. To my mind, my noble friend Lady Henig was, as leader of the County Councils Association, one of the best chairs of a police authority in the country. However, she could not provide what those vocal people wanted, because they wanted it and they wanted it now, and they were not prepared to talk through how much money it would cost.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
The noble Baroness has given way to me. Does she accept that there are some very deprived areas in our inner cities where the police do not patrol at all?
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
That is not my experience of Lancashire or of the other authorities that I know well. I know that there are areas where the police service is stretched to breaking point by the circumstances that they face on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, but my experience in Lancashire is that the service is provided without fear or favour to all the communities there.
Lord Dear
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way so quickly for a second time. For the avoidance of doubt, when I referred to Derbyshire and Councillor Bookbinder, I was making the obvious point that things go wrong under the present system, or something approximating very closely to the present system. The main thrust of what I said, as I am sure she will agree, was that, if we are to have police and crime commissioners, we must work very hard indeed to make sure that the checks and balances are sufficient so that we get an exact balance between the chief officer and the PCC.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
I think that we can agree to a degree that the conclusion the noble Lord reaches is not the same as the one that I reach. My main point is the importance of incremental change, taking the police service and the communities with us.
My other point is a very strong one and concerns the importance of the relationship between the police service and other services in local authority areas. In my experience, we had one difficulty during my first period on Lancashire County Council when the chief constable left, not totally willingly. However, beyond that, our chief constables wanted to talk to and be part of the community that was discussing social services problems and education problems, in which they had an interest. To argue for separately elected police authorities and police panels ignores the importance of that relevant link.
Noble Lords have asked why this should be party political. Has anyone sat down and thought about the cost of an election covering a huge police authority area? Has anyone thought about the fact that, if someone is well known in one town or city in Lancashire or in one part of one police authority—I refer to Sir Peter Soulsby, who was elected very recently as mayor of Leicester—they will not be known across the whole area? Therefore, one will need total back-up to run an election campaign in those circumstances.
My final point is that I fear, even more than political bias or political clash, community disaffection as a result of one person from a small area of a police authority being in charge. Communities want to feel that they have a representative. Noble Lords have said that some people do not know the names of members of their police authority. In my experience, if they had a big problem they found them out pretty quickly and came to us. I suspect that quite a lot of people cannot remember the name of—please forgive me—the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister or the Home Secretary. People find out when they feel strongly. We must ensure that when people look to change our police service, they build in an evolutionary way on experience and judgment.
Baroness Hamwee
Perhaps I will be not quite the last noble Lord to give a very warm welcome to the noble Baroness. I am not sure whether she expected a rerun of Second Reading. I hope that she has found it helpful, because there have been some very perceptive, interesting and thoughtful speeches. I cannot resist saying that she will have noticed that we are right behind her.
In view of the time, I will edit my remarks as I go, and I hope that they are not too disjointed. The longer the debate goes on, the more I wonder whether it will be possible to have sufficiently strict checks and balances on an individual, and the more we expose the nature of the position of an individual with so much power, with all the characteristics that are often intrinsic to an individual in a powerful position, some of which—but not all—need to be guarded against. I am in no position to comment on whether bishops may sometimes operate as commissars. However, I can see that the commissioner would be in a very distinct position from that of a chief constable, who has the eyes and ears of a police force on the ground.
Chief among my fears is that of moving towards the politicisation of the police. I fear that this will be difficult to avoid, not just because of the likelihood of candidates having a campaigning infrastructure of political parties behind them—as elected mayors have, with whom they may well be confused. That is perhaps an issue for another debate. The very nature of a democratic mandate involves policy, and one cannot separate policy from a budget because the money facilitates the implementation of the policy. Like other noble Lords, I fear that what is populist may sometimes be dangerous, and may not reflect the needs of those who can shout less loudly.
However careful and detailed the protocol—it seems to be a useful summary of the Bill which I wish I had had when I started reading the Bill—it is not a great deal more than that, and cannot change the statutory structural framework. Nor can it apply the governance. I was chair of the London Assembly budget committee when the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, was chairing the Metropolitan Police Authority. Who was the check and balance on whom, history may tell.
I wonder whether, ironically, this is a move against localism. I have a question for my noble friend. I very much welcome the fact that she has enabled the House to have a debate at this stage of the Bill. Democracy has rightly been mentioned often. Her proposed structure involves panels. Perhaps she can tell us how she envisages democracy being used in connection with the panels.
Lastly, I will be wary throughout the Bill of appearing to be either promoting or opposing the interests of a number of sectors, but particularly the police. I, too, would like to see us achieve the production of a collaborative framework. Most importantly, my noble friends and I are on the side of citizens.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, first, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, to her position. She will already have got the message from the House that we very much welcome her appointment. She comes from the other place with an excellent reputation and we very much look forward to working with her. Four years ago, I was appointed Minister for Health, and three or four days later I found myself on the first day of Committee in your Lordships' House, so I know a little of the challenge that she faces. I am grateful also to the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, for allowing us to have this very important debate.
I do not stand here pretending that our police forces are without blemish, or that there are no areas of performance that could be improved. I agree with the final point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I, too, have read the report of HMIC assessing police authorities' performance that was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dear. However, in the past 15 years we in this country have seen both a dramatic fall in crime and an improved relationship with the public and local communities. My noble friend Lady Henig gave many examples of this. More than that, there is in our police, with their political impartiality, tolerance and philosophy of policing by consent, something precious that we undermine at our peril.
Why is this being put in peril? The Government argue that police reform is needed because the current governance arrangements are not working, and because police forces look too much upwards to the Home Office. However, as far as concerns policing and crime, I do not think that the public really worry about police authorities or the name of the chairman. They are concerned about the performance of the chief constable and of the force. Surely it is right that that is where their focus is concentrated. I see no appetite among the public for this change, and certainly not for the perverse consequences that could come about. My noble friend Lord Harris described some of them. Perversely, accountability may be reduced and police forces in future may come with a political label. The noble Lord, Lord Hurd, said that there was a possibility of non-political people being elected police commissioners. Of course, that is entirely possible. However, the electoral areas are so large that it is almost inevitable that only those on party tickets, with the support of a party machine, will be successful. One should consider the cost of the elections. I suspect that it is only political parties which will be able to support candidates.
On the question of the Home Office and targets, I confess that I was once Minister for targets in the Department of Health. I once asked officials to add up how many targets we had set. By the time we got to 435, we thought we had better stop. However, some targets are important. We have drastically reduced waiting times because of targets, and I have no doubt that Home Office targets in relation to reducing crime have had a dramatic effect for the better on our communities.
Surely the role of the Home Secretary is balanced against the work of the police authority and that of the chief constable. We call it the tripartite relationship between operational independence, local accountability and national strategic direction. I have not yet heard any convincing argument that suggests that we should upset that relationship. The problem is that the Bill risks the politicisation of our police forces; conflict and confusion between the role of the police commissioner and that of the chief constable; the marginalisation of local government, and a loss of public confidence. I really regret that these proposals have not been subject to a Green Paper, a White Paper, pre-legislative scrutiny or even an assessment by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Browning)
My Lords, I thank your Lordships for such a warm welcome from across the Committee. I would appreciate it in any circumstances, but I have been in this post for only 48 hours, and the very last thing I was told was, “Oh, by the way, there is a Committee stage to take on Wednesday”, so I have particularly appreciated your kindness and generosity this afternoon.
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond and to the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, for tabling this amendment as they have given us an opportunity to discuss other models of accountability. Indeed, our debate today has been wide ranging, so wide ranging that I believe it would be a great pity if we were denied through a vote any chance of discussing what are clearly matters that many noble Lords consider to be very important that will follow from the first group of amendments.
In winding up this debate, I will not be able to cover every point that has been made. Not only have they been wide ranging, but there is clearly common cause in many areas of policy. I cannot go out on a limb as a new Minister and say, “Okay, I’ll go along with that”, but I will take away from this debate and subsequent debates where I feel we might improve the Bill with the contributions of noble Lords. I stand in great awe of the vast experience in this House, whether noble Lords are in favour of the Bill or not. This is your Lordships' House at its best. This is what this House is about. It is where that experience and expertise come together. I may not always appreciate it, but I am sure I am going to be very grateful for the opportunity to hear first-hand.
I am new to the role, and I have had to ask myself some searching questions in taking on these new responsibilities, but I hope to set that out. I shall begin by dealing with one or two areas that your Lordships have raised that perhaps have common cause and where it might be helpful if I respond specifically to points raised.
The first was raised by my noble friend Lady Harris who was very concerned that commissioners will have fewer powers than police authorities. Police and crime commissioners will not have fewer powers than the authority. However, they will be subject to checks and balances. I hope we can go into more detail on that because it is clearly a matter that we have to get right. They have got to be there. The police and crime panels have been mentioned, and we will come on to them later in the Bill. They will have the power of veto over the proposed precept, and there will be other measures that we will perhaps want to discuss in more detail.
The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, who has put her name to this amendment, spoke about how PCCs will work with local partnerships, which is very important. They will be able to bring community partnerships at force level better to tackle areas of concern. They will also be able to make grants to partnerships to respond to local needs, rather than responding to centrally imposed initiatives. Getting this right and targeted at local level is extremely important.
Many noble Lords referred to the protocol which was published yesterday and which I hope your Lordships have been able to access in the Printed Paper Office. I clarify that it has “final draft” printed on it. In other words, the draft is final, but it is still a work in progress. Some noble Lords have expressed concern about the protocol and others were perhaps not aware that a lot of work has gone into it. The work in it has been contributed to by many bodies, including the Association of Police Authorities, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Local Authority Chief Executives.
When we see the final version of the protocol, which people will now have an opportunity to contribute to, it is important that it gets right the balance between the commissioner and the chief constable. We all recognise the sensitivity of this, and I was very encouraged, for example, that on publication today the Metropolitan Police put out a statement which welcomed the publication of the protocol. It said that it provides clear direction on the roles of chief constables, PCCs and the Home Secretary, ensuring the balance between operational independence and appropriate public accountability. I emphasise that this is not the final version of the protocol but the final draft, so there will be an opportunity for a lot more input on this. The MPS specifically welcomes the inclusion of the fact that the PCC must set the strategic direction and objectives of the force and decide the budget of the force while the chief constable will remain operationally independent. That is something that has been focused on by all sides of the Committee during today’s debate.
Many people have raised issues that come up in later amendments. If your Lordships will forgive me, I shall not go into them in too much detail, although I have copious notes. I hope that you will instead indulge me while I share with the Committee my personal view on the amendments in this group. I am pleased to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that I quite take the point that she raised about Wales, but there will be a meeting on Friday between Home Office officials and the Assembly. We recognise that that matter needs to be addressed rapidly.
The noble Lord, Lord Dear, who made a compelling contribution today, wrote in the Times last week that he has seen this reform evolve into the Bill and that he firmly believed that the introduction of police and crime commissioners will lead to better policing in our country and a better, more responsive public service, something that any public service reform should aim to achieve. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for that, and for his contribution today. Many people have spoken in support of the principle, and it is to the principle of the amendments that I want to address my remarks rather than drill down to the detail, which I hope we will do in later amendments.
I have no doubt that your Lordships will want to continue in the true spirit of this House and seek to review, revise and improve the Bill in the days ahead. However, I am clear that, once the case for reform is considered and a model is set out in its entirety, review and improvement are precisely the tasks in hand here, rather than dismissal or fundamental alteration of the PCC model.
Perhaps I may share with your Lordships the reason why I agree with the principle of the Bill. This was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss and my noble friend Lord Hamilton—my noble friend used the term the “middle classes”; I think that I know what he means by that. I was a Member of Parliament for nearly 20 years in rural Devonshire. As my noble friend said, I had a lot of dealings with police authorities and the excellent Devon and Cornwall force. I think that any of us who have observed, worked and had ongoing communication at close quarters with both police authorities and police forces, including chief constables, recognise that they are excellent people who achieve a lot and work very hard.
However, I have in recent years expressed to police authorities and chief constables my worry that a serious disconnect has grown up between them and the public. I shall not call them the middle classes, but what I will call them is that great body of the British people who live their lives by the law, who seek to keep the law, who respect the law and who bring up their children to respect the law. When that group of people—label them however you will—starts to believe that the police are not on their side nor are there for them, we should regard it as a dangerous slippery slope.
That was my experience as a Member of Parliament. It is no reflection on the Devon and Cornwall force, which I regard very highly; my concern came about because of the way policing changed, because of directives that came from on high, and because we did not look at how we might keep that connection with the public.
Baroness Harris of Richmond
My Lords, the time is late. We have had nearly three and a quarter hours of debate on one amendment. First, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her thoughtful and sensitive summing up of what has been a very important debate and the way that she has responded to the concerns that your Lordships have eloquently and strongly put this afternoon.
It has never been my practice in the 12 years that I have been a Member of your Lordships' House to vote against my Government—I am proud to say that this is my Government—so today I find this very difficult. This Bill has brought forward something that I consider a true principle. It is an appalling Bill. I simply cannot believe that having directly elected police commissioners will improve the policing of this country, which is what we want. That is what we all want. I have heard all the arguments about how different police authorities have not been very good: I know that. But they have been a jolly sight better than they ever were before and we can improve on them. We should improve on them. My biggest concern, therefore, remains about putting so much power into the hands of one person in the form of police and crime commissioners.
I do not want to waste your Lordships' time any more. The debate has gone backwards and forwards and I have to say that I simply do not believe that these proposals will be beneficial in any way to improving policing in this country. I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resume. In moving this Motion, I suggest that the Committee stage begin again not before 8.30 pm.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 7.30 pm.
Arrangement of Business
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, if I may indulge the House, for the convenience of the House I would like just to remind noble Lords about speaking times in what is a very tight debate of only one hour. Other than for the opening speaker and the closing speaker, speaking time is limited to two minutes each—when the clock shows two minutes, you are over your time. If noble Lords could bear that in mind, we will not have to interrupt anyone’s speech or prevent a later speaker from making a contribution.
The Big Society
(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they propose to encourage people to participate in the Big Society.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, in view of what I may find time to say later on, I should remind the House that I am a member of Pendle Borough Council. I originally put down this Question for Short Debate what seems quite a long time ago in order to probe the Government and to ask them about community organisers and how those would work, and I will do that in the later part of my speech.
What is the big society and what does it mean? A lot of people ask that question, but not many people seem to know. Is the big society about residents looking after a little park at the end of their street or taking over a swimming pool, or is it about transferring the running of a Jobcentre to a private company? What is it?
I turned to what I thought was perhaps the definitive book on the matter, The Big Society, written by Jesse Norman MP, in the hope that it would be a manual that would tell me what the big society is. The book is an interesting, discursive popular survey of philosophy, economics and sociology that ranges over Plato, Socrates, Adam Smith, Keynes, Edmund Burke, Amartya Sen and, it seems, hundreds of others—a huge kaleidoscope of ideas picked from here, there and everywhere. At one stage, the book asks, “What exactly is the big society?”, but it does not seem to me to answer that question, although I enjoyed reading it. The book is certainly not about the big society as people think about it, which involves local volunteering, perhaps replacing state provision with community provision, competition in public services and so on. Rather, in setting out to deconstruct conventional market economics and centralised systems of state provision, the book arrives at a new sort of postmodern conservatism. At that stage, I realised that, although an interesting book, The Big Society would not be terribly helpful for me as someone who is not particularly interested in redefining conservatism—although, thinking about the Members of the Conservative Party in your Lordships’ House, I wondered just how many of them would give time of day to Jesse Norman’s book. He talks about institutions, competition and enterprise as being at the heart of the big society; I believe that the book is rather confused, but it is an interesting read.
Then I thought that I had better read the other standard tome, which is Phillip Blond’s book Red Tory. His book makes no mention of the phrase “big society”, I think because it was written early last year before the big society became an important term. Again, he has deep insights into the dehumanising consequences both of traditional capitalist structures and of centralised bureaucratic state provision. He comes up with the solution of co-ownership of quite small-scale public sector organisations so as to include both employees and citizens in the control of them. However, again, it is really about trying to redefine the Tory party and what it stands for, which is not really what I am about. I am looking for the big society as put forward by this coalition Government.
I come back to what most people think the big society means: community and neighbourhood empowerment, involving changes in the system to devolve power from the centre to communities and to local government; involving people in what happens in their area, which very often can be done through informal changes to the way in which things work—I certainly have a lot of experience, over my life, of trying to help to achieve that; and opening up public services to competition, charities, social enterprises and the private sector, which gives some of us very serious concerns that the result may be major disruptive changes to the way in which services are provided. What I really want to do is to come back to how the Government propose to stimulate local involvement in local communities, with perhaps local people running local facilities and local services.
That really comes down to the community organisers, which the Government said would be employed, or provided, in different communities in the country. David Cameron talked about a “neighbourhood army” of 500 full-time community organisers—which, at one per constituency, is not a lot; as those of us who have been involved in community work and development and politics over the years will know, that is very thin indeed—who would be backed up by 4,500 part-time volunteers.
Having done some research for this Question for Short Debate, I find that this work has now been put in the hands of an organisation called Locality—which I now know rather more about than I did—which is a sort of third sector quango-type body that does various work and is a federation of about 600 different organisations. In addition, an “Institute of Community Organising”—the ICO—is being set up to oversee the work after 2015. Indeed, there is quite a lot of stuff explaining what that is all about.
An organisation called Urban Forum—of which I had not previously heard—is also involved in this work. A community organisers briefing on the Urban Forum website sets out that:
“According to the Coalition Government community organisers will play an important role in delivering the Big Society by building community spirit, encouraging local community action, increasing the effectiveness of existing community groups, creating new groups and social enterprises and generally empowering communities to tackle the issues that matter to them. The Office of Civil Society has stated that the policy is based on the principles of Saul Alinsky and Paulo Friere”.
So far, so good. Alinksy, of course, is the man behind a lot of similar work in the United States.
Looking further on the Locality website to find out what was happening, I found that I had to go to something called “Jess Steele’s blog”. There is a lot on her blog. Indeed, the Locality website says:
“Jess is the director of innovation at Locality and leads on the Community Organisers project”.
It seems to me a bit odd that most of the information about what is going on is on someone’s blog. I have a huge printout of the blog, with which I will not detain your Lordships. It is quite entertaining, and a lot of it is arguing with other people in the community development and community organisation sphere about exactly how things should work.
A number of projects that have already been decided include 11 so-called kick-starters, which are based on existing respected community organisations. The interesting thing is how far it will be possible to extend that through existing respected organisations and how far in some areas there might be trouble because there are not suitable organisations to take on the work.
The Government are setting up a new system. Clearly, they are keen on generating new community involvement in the areas concerned, yet I find it strange that the same Government have just closed down, or are in the process of closing down, a system of generating community involvement that was set up and funded by the previous Government. I refer to the systems of neighbourhood management. There was previously a series of neighbourhood management pilots in different parts of the country, mainly in disadvantaged communities, and a separate series of neighbourhood management schemes funded under the housing market renewal scheme. Some of those were good, some were bad and some were very good, but there was a lot of experience there and a lot of involvement by residents, which has simply been discarded.
One Government came in and set up schemes to try to involve residents in their communities and did a lot of good work; another Government have come along and have withdrawn the funding from that. I speak from the experience in my own area of east Lancashire, where most of the neighbourhood management schemes have been completely closed down, although in Pendle we are trying to keep some of them going on a skeleton basis. Nevertheless, systems that exist and which have involved and enthused residents have been closed down. Perhaps in a year’s time one of these community organisers will come along and try to set it all up again. Yet if you have been involved with something and it has closed down, and somebody else comes along and says that they have a different sort of scheme, that is not how to generate enthusiasm and permanent support from residents.
I shall finish with some questions that I want to ask the Minister about community organisers. If she cannot answer them all today, that is fine. I am sure that she will write to me. Are all the areas that will have community organisers what Alinsky in America called poor communities, or will they be spread about everywhere? Can we have the terms of reference of the appointment of the community organisers, particularly the ones who have been appointed already? What do their terms of reference say that they will do and how will they do it? There is a real fear that they are top-down people telling other people what to do. To what extent will they build on existing initiatives and practices where they exist, like the ones that I have been talking about? How are they to be chosen and how are they being chosen? Are the posts being advertised and are people being appointed in a proper manner? What is the relationship between elected councillors going to be? What is the funding going to be? What monitoring evaluation and spread of good practice will there be? If the Minister cannot answer all those questions, that is fine, but I am sure she will write and answer them in due course.
Lord Wei
I thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for tabling today’s excellent debate. There are in my view many measures that government can undertake to encourage participation in the big society, so that people can feel more in control over their lives and solve problems they care about closer to home.
First, government can create and signal opportunities for citizens to act. There are many ways to do this, from opening up public services to more flexible and citizen-centric providers, providing rights for citizens to take control over services locally, and making it easier to publicise opportunities to give time, money, and other resources. There is in fact a huge amount of information out there, but it is not always in a form that is tailored to the lives of busy citizens where they live. Technology here can help, as I have been documenting on my blog, and elsewhere.
Secondly, government can remove barriers that get in the way. Sometimes the barriers are simply ones of inertia and a lack of incentives. More can be done, I am sure, to honour and reward citizens, particularly the young and those who are getting involved for the first time, to encourage enduring participation. I also welcome the imminent report from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on the bureaucratic barriers that prevent citizens and the voluntary sector from getting involved, many of which need paring back to more reasonable levels.
Thirdly, government can also build the underutilised capacity of individuals and organisations to get involved, which it will do through, for example, the big society bank, the growing social investment sector, community organisers, and the Community First endowment scheme. But we cannot assume people will get involved just because government encourages them to do so. Indeed, there is evidence that the more politicised a topic like this becomes, the less people may want to engage with it. With this, I must urge the Opposition in particular to be more responsible. Just as Labour's love of spin-doctoring has eroded at times public trust in politics, the danger of bashing the big society may be that people end up wanting to get involved less, and focus on themselves and not on helping others around them just at the time when as a country we need to pull together. Does the Minister agree that the Opposition at times risk undermining their own ideals for participation in society, whether good or big or blue, and are in reality advocating a selfish society to protect special interests rather than those of the country at large for the longer term?
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. In my brief time, I want to make two points. First, the big society has not just been invented. While I understand the thrust of the argument that we must get as many new people to participate as possible, let us not forget that it is just as important to recognise and value those who have been participating in what we now call the big society for many years. I always think, for example, of the 6 million family carers who it seems to me are the absolute epitome of the big society, providing care willingly and with love to their relatives and friends, care which is valued at £87 billion a year—and I understand that figure is about to be reviewed and will come out massively more. Their contribution to the big society is immense and vital and we neglect support for them at our peril. It is good to see that the Law Society report today calls for more recognition of their rights.
We must also continue to recognise the contribution of volunteers. Again, I remind your Lordships that volunteering is a long established fact in the UK. It is worth in excess of £20 billion to the economy every year, has a huge breadth of activity and builds social capital, binding people together in a two-way relationship which benefits the individual and society. But we must beware of thinking of volunteers as cheap labour or that they are cost free. That is my second point. Spending cuts are having a considerable effect on volunteering, at both local and national level, because of not just the fact of the cuts themselves but also the speed at which the cuts are being made. The infrastructure organisations which support volunteers and their contribution to the big society are prepared to change their business models and do things differently, but they cannot do this overnight. Some transition money has been provided by the Government, but nothing like enough, and the danger is that once the support networks for volunteering have disappeared—and many of them are disappearing; we hear horror stories every day—how long will it take to re-establish them, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said? We have to think about the effects of cuts on a community transport scheme, for example. Older people cannot get out to the day centre or to their hospital appointments, which in itself is sad; but think of the longer-term effects on the health and mental well-being of those older people and their carers and the consequent higher costs which will be incurred down the line if we cut things now.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
I am delighted to join in this short debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Greaves. I like to think of the big society as an open society, a generous society and a liberal society—a society in which all people have an opportunity to be involved. Often I wonder, especially perhaps in Wales, but also in England, whether we politicise some of our small community and parish councils. Do we need party politics at that first level of government? Could not we encourage people from various local community organisations such as the Scouts, the churches, the young farmers, the Women’s Institute and so on to themselves seek election to community and parish councils? They are the people who know the needs of their own particular localities. “The Vicar of Dibley” may be an ideal situation; we should let Owen, Letitia and Geraldine be round the table at every local parish council.
Secondly, I was sad that the referendum last week decided that people who voted would still be able—just 30 per cent of them—to elect a Member of Parliament, without having that larger involvement that the alternative vote would have given us, when most of the time they would have needed at least 50 per cent of the vote. But I am not worried too much—no, no, no—because people are saying that the reason they are against AV is because they want a more proportional method of election. They want STV. So I look forward to the time when the single transferable vote is presented to this House and the masses of people who said that AV did not give proportionality will join me in the Lobby for a fairer and more representative electoral system.
Finally, we have always been a country that welcomes people to our shores—the most vulnerable and needy, wherever they are from. I hope that the big society will be big not only within the United Kingdom but big, welcoming and compassionate for all who are in need.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, you cannot make people more altruistic by telling them to be so, and you cannot make them more neighbourly by instructing them to be better neighbours. We tend to learn these things by participation in intermediate institutions, larger than the family, of which churches are a good example but far from the only example. Not long ago, I commissioned 24 street pastors in the city of Norwich, who joined an already large body of volunteers. They are on the streets late at night, well into the early hours, particularly at weekends when many young people are often at risk and some are in danger. They simply offer friendship. They have been appreciated by the police, who value the assistance that they give to the distraught and the disorientated, the lost and the scared.
I use the street pastors to illustrate two important things about participation in the big society. The first is that they already have experience of being part of a body of people seeking both to care for each other and to serve the common good—in their case, of course, within a church. Secondly, they work in teams and with others; they do not operate as atomised individuals.
We learn to value ourselves and others in our families, of course, but we know too many families are broken and unloving. You cannot love your neighbour, as we were told a very long time ago, if you do not love yourself. So we need broadening communities where we learn to value ourselves and others—not only churches, but voluntary groups and societies, uniformed organisations and, indeed, any group not focused simply on itself. Do we do enough to nurture these intermediate institutions? Have we sought to liberate them from unnecessary bureaucracy? Do we truly invest in them? I guess that most of us in this House are inspired to service within such institutions—churches, trade unions, local political parties—and that is where participation in the big society is fed.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for initiating this debate. I believe the coalition Government have made it quite clear that they see a transition away from a bureaucratic interfering state to involving, engaging and encouraging the active participation of all communities in all spheres of public life—a move away, if you will, from big government to big society. This involves active volunteering —or AV, perhaps, as it should now be known so that it lives on for the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. It is about recognising the crucial role of social enterprise—the voluntary sector, charities and community groups among others—to actively take charge of delivering services, creating opportunities and stimulating economic activity, not by sitting on the periphery but as active participants and, indeed, as leaders of initiatives and projects.
I ask my noble friend the Minister whether she recognises that it is not only about paying lip service to the big society but about empowering individuals, groups and communities through both logistical support and financial empowerment. We are often asked the question: what is the big society? As has been said before, it is not a new concept. It is about recognising and becoming more innovative in supporting the fundamentals of civic participation and, as society evolves, the replacement of technology where manual processes previously existed.
Ultimately when we are asked the question “What is the big society?”, the answer is simply put: it is about you, me and all of us playing our part in active volunteering—AV—be it at a local, regional, national or global level, to demonstrate that we are part of a global community.
Lord Jones
My Lords, the Prime Minister’s declaration could lead to an enhancement of British civic society but I hope that his inspiration is neither cavalier nor formulaic; a hopeful declaration is insufficient.
Our society today is shot through with an almost universal materialism and with a veneration of celebrity—for example, with television studio high priests and priestesses such as Messrs Norton and Ross and the ubiquitous Cheryl Cole. However, the positive is that the big society is already in part on the way. Britain has a great army of volunteers who serve others willingly; they seek to give, to help, to serve, to lead, to encourage, to teach, to reassure and to inspire.
We speak as we find. I pay my own tribute as a Flintshire president of our hospital’s League of Friends, of the branch Alzheimer’s Society, of the Neighbourhood Watch, of our arthritis care group and of the history group. It is humbling to see these brilliant volunteers at work. They are wonderful people who are selfless, loyal, able and courteous; they are exemplary, unselfish citizens who put others first. I hope that the Prime Minister’s big society already acknowledges and praises them. This army of voluntarism keeps our complicated civic society show on the road.
Perhaps the Prime Minister’s big society might acknowledge the excellence of the well led voluntary service councils; might engage the undoubted experience of town and community councils; might consult the Salvation Army as well as chapel and church; might interest sixth forms and FE colleges; and might involve Rotary, Lions, golf and cricket clubs, for example. The expertise and idealism are there and ready to be enhanced.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. In the limited time available I shall focus my remarks, first, on why the reaction to the big society by some in the voluntary sector has been rather lukewarm; and, secondly, to call on the Government to show a more sophisticated understanding about the realities of running a charity, big or small, in modern day Britain, particularly the costs associated with volunteering, as has already been mentioned.
In common with many others in the sector, reaction from some of my own colleagues in Relate, where I have a declared interest as chief executive, has often been to say, “Well, we have been part of the big society since 1938, so what is really new here?”. Like so many other charities, volunteering, be it as a fully trained counsellor, a volunteer receptionist or a local trustee, has underpinned much of what we do.
When I knew that I would be speaking in this debate I conducted a quick straw poll of some charity chief executive colleagues in the children and families sector to get their views on what both encourages and hinders volunteering. Many of these charities employ co-ordinators to recruit and train volunteers to ensure that they are properly equipped to work with vulnerable families and children. A number of key points emerged but I shall mention only one today. It costs money to use volunteers effectively; the more volunteers there are, the more supervision and training is required to ensure good and safe outcomes for beneficiaries. A ratio of one paid worker to 10 or 15 volunteers would be quite typical. Other costs include insurance, producing materials, computers and meeting health and safety regulations.
Expenses need to be reimbursed if volunteering is to be socially inclusive. If this is not recognised, we are in danger of turning the clock back to the 1950s when virtually all volunteers were middle-aged, middle-class women not participating in paid employment. That is not in any way to denigrate their enormous contribution; it is simply to say that in this year we need people who are prepared to volunteer from all walks of life if the services provided by charities are to look and feel representative of the communities they serve.
Lord Sheikh
My Lords, I am an enthusiastic supporter of the big society concept. I would like, in the limited time available to me, to talk about the role of the charitable sector, which is dear to my heart. In my contribution to the Second Reading of the Charities Bill last week, I was keen to stress how charities are a useful barometer of the degree of social cohesion. The Bill will make a contribution to the big society by making charity law simpler to understand and navigate, which will reduce the existing complexities that serve to discourage participation. I await with eager anticipation the publication tomorrow of the Giving White Paper, which promises to focus on supporting the giving of time and money.
We should all work towards providing adequate recognition of the contribution of many civil society organisations. They do not exist to seek awards, but we should all be pleased that the big society awards are highlighting the achievements of those undertaking important work and, by raising the profile, encouraging wider participation.
Most charities appeal to people’s good nature and generosity by asking for donations of money and time. There needs to be an alternative to government provision in addressing problems in our society. The Government are correct in prioritising the big society as a means of providing that alternative. The British people are famous for their generosity and our record on charitable giving is impressive when compared internationally. People need to be enabled to use the vehicle of the charitable sector to volunteer their time, energy and resources for the good of all. We should all think about taking responsibility for everyone else's welfare interests: that is the big society. The success of this initiative will not rest entirely on the activities of the Government but requires participation from everyone. We must enable the big society to flourish. This is about empowerment and enabling charities to make a bigger contribution. It is about individuals answering that human instinct to work together.
Lord Haskel
The noble Lord, Lord Wei, may be surprised that some of us in this Opposition have, over the years, tried to welcome ideas that bring a little hope—wherever they come from—and the big society has the potential to do this. Yet hope for better things needs reason while exaggerated expectations bring only disappointment. Encouraging the big society should reflect this balance.
Is it just a matter of competition in delivering good public services, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and other noble Lords have suggested? No: we are beginning to see competition between two or three large providers squeezing out the small charity or the local provider, which acts as a discouragement to the big society idea. In practice, measures will have to be devised on a sector-by-sector basis. The altruism that was mentioned by the right reverend Prelate has worked in health, where the NHS, the charities and the research organisations have all worked together because health does not differentiate between people. It has not worked in education because so much depends on the background of the individual student; all the longitudinal studies indicate that. On drug treatment, competition between the public and the private sector has shown that both do well, so each sector has to be considered separately.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that to encourage people to participate a range of financial instruments is needed that meets the needs and ideals of the big society. Perhaps some of the ingenuity of the City could be directed towards harnessing this. The idea of the big society may end up like the third way or stakeholder engagement or it may just end up with volunteers running public libraries, but it is worth a try.
Baroness Benjamin
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for securing this debate. There is no better feeling than going to sleep at night knowing that you have done something unconditionally to make life better for your fellow human beings. While volunteering is lacking in many communities the concept of the big society, implemented inclusively, is a way to encourage those who perhaps had never thought about social action.
I believe it is young people who will play a vital role in building a better society because of their energy, instinctive optimism and compassion. I visit schools to speak to children and young people about caring for each other and about the philosophy of contentment and real happiness. It never ceases to amaze me how, through their schools and clubs, they do tremendous fundraising and charitable work. It is clear to see that they get a huge amount of pride and satisfaction out of it. Once given the opportunity to do something constructive, they instinctively embrace the concept of the big society. This therefore needs to be encouraged so that society does not lose out on this rich resource.
Many adults who want to play their part by volunteering their time and expertise to inspire and motivate children and young people are often hampered by the cumbersome and expensive system of CRB checking. However, there are those who fear that if the CRB checks are relaxed it will endanger vulnerable children. Abusers are within the school gates as well as outside. How is the Minister proposing to improve the CRB checking system while making it more robust, effective and less costly? I am an advocate of extended learning, teaching youngsters basic life skills as well as how society works. What measures are being put in place in the national curriculum to ensure that young people are fully aware of their responsibility to society?
Also, what is being done for the many young people from minority communities who feel alienated and excluded from society, and do not feel the incentive or desire to participate in the national citizen services? Meanwhile, those from disadvantaged backgrounds, where the benefit culture is generational and the concept of contributing to society is difficult for them to grasp, need positive role models to give them inspiration and aspiration. Once again, what is being done to encourage more social action in deprived areas among those who have taken to a life reliant on the state and a drug and gang culture?
The Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, making the big society happen is all about effecting a behavioural and cultural shift for individuals within communities. It is about extending the concept and values of volunteering and self-help from societies and geographical areas where they are working to those where they are not. It is a movement or bandwagon—a shift in societal thinking based not on being dictated to by government, local or national, but on being persuaded that an ethos to help in our neighbourhood, naturally ingrained in most of us, should come alive where it is dormant. Communication is the answer. A recent survey highlighted the fact that half the adult population currently volunteer but as many as 11 million people would do so if only they were asked. How best to knock on the door of the Englishman's castle?
The efforts of 5,000 selected local community organisers or champions over the next four years will build and galvanise teams and ignite a sense of belonging in the community. It is encouraging that, last year, 76 per cent of people felt that they belonged to a society, compared to 70 per cent in 2003. Individuals can be persuaded by example. The nature and number of successfully burgeoning projects must be broadcast regularly and nationally to create interest, develop momentum, increase the energy and encourage copycat activities. Is there such a plan?
Finally, healthy competition within and between communities can be a powerfully persuasive tool for volunteering. The Government’s awards, notably for new and creative local projects, increase teamwork and pride resulting from local activity. The recent royal wedding street parties are a prime example of how people have lowered their drawbridges and come out to meet, talk and engage in their communities—in some cases, for the first time. Let such social interaction and communication be developed into community action by locally designated leaders.
Baroness Sherlock
My Lords, I am pleased to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Wei, that I and many others on this side are passionate believers in civil society. Whatever the big society is, at the very least it must depend upon people giving voluntarily of their own time. We can agree on that much. I believe in civil society because I believe that the ties that bind our country and our people together are not in fact big threads woven by the state but are made up of lots of tiny, overlapping threads. Those are woven out of the individual encounters we have with people around us, especially people unlike us.
I spent a number of years in the voluntary sector, most recently running the British Refugee Council. When I arrived there, we had 400 paid staff but even more volunteers. Yet people do not volunteer by accident. As the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, pointed out so eloquently, the support required to get volunteers in more than pays itself back. I watched people arriving in this country who had been welcomed in, having been traumatised and in many cases tortured by their own states. They were moved almost to tears by the fact that individual British people would give of their time to come in to teach them English, to mentor them, to help them take up a career and to integrate. So moved were they that they would almost always go on to volunteer in turn, passing that down the generations. What we are doing there is not only reaching out to each other but creating and reinforcing a set of values which make our country what it is. We also create the next generation of volunteers.
I am delighted to hear that the Government want to invest in community organisers. Four thousand sounds a wonderfully impressive number. Yet what is the point in investing solely in new ones if we are, in practice, taking funding away from the hundreds of thousands of people out there who are involved in charities and who got there through the support of the Government? I am trying really hard not to make a cheap political point out of this but I have spoken to so many people in charities, as I know other noble Lords have, who are seeing the programmes that they have built up over years falling apart. It took so long to develop those volunteers and pull them together that it would take them years, if not generations, to rebuild them.
I urge the Minister to think carefully and to reassure people on all sides of this House, who I think share those worries in one way or another. How can we make sure that the values of the big society and of civil society are embraced not only by new people coming in? We should show how grateful we are, and how much we care and are thankful, to all those who have been doing this for generations.
Lord Patel of Bradford
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for securing this debate. I agree with much that has been said and shall be brief in my own contribution.
My great fear about this big society idea is that the support will not be there in sufficient scale or purpose to alleviate problems or to help people to participate. That is why the previous Labour Administration made supporting the voluntary sector a key priority, including doubling funding to the sector over 13 years. We did not have some Victorian notion of philanthropy or think that village fetes would resolve the challenging problems faced by communities today.
We have only to look at the stark differences between our regions to see how the big society idea is already unravelling as the unfair distribution of government cuts hits those areas where the needs are greater, such as in the north-east of England, where 62 per cent of voluntary organisations have already seen a decrease in their funding. In my own region of Yorkshire, 26,000 voluntary sector jobs are threatened. Does the Minister agree with me that public sector investment is vital to the health of voluntary organisations, and that without it there cannot be meaningful participation in the big society?
People in the voluntary sector are trying to deal with budget cuts, of course they are, but organisations in the north cannot turn to big corporate or high-value donors to make up the gap as London-based organisations can. For example, over £40 million-worth of donations were made in London in 2009-10 compared with only £6 million in the north-east.
Participating in the big society is clearly not for the many but for those few who are fortunate enough to live in affluent areas. I argue that it is not so much a big society as the “less society”—fewer voluntary organisations to carry out vital work, less government interest in supporting local communities, less funding for community activists and, yes, less participation.
The Government have stated that fairness is at the heart of their policy. However, they are creating a policy that is not only unfair but runs the risk of deepening social inequalities, particularly in the north of the country. Therefore, while I agree that the big society objectives are positive, I believe that an overreliance on philanthropy to provide resources for social action will result in unfairness in the long term. I look forward to hearing how the Minister will address these and the other many important issues, particularly regarding volunteering, that have been raised in this important debate.
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for contributing to this debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for initiating the debate and providing an opportunity for an interesting, wide-ranging and at times challenging discussion.
The big society is about a volunteering, social action, philanthropic approach to life, but it is also about the opening up of public services to local control and the devolution of power from Whitehall to local communities. Listening to the contributions today, I have found that it is clear that the principles and ideas behind the big society have been alive and kicking in the House for many years. Almost everyone in this Chamber has been involved in some form of charitable and voluntary work, and in many cases noble Lords have been driving the social action debate.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, makes an important point, and I acknowledge the work already being done. My noble friend Lord Wei stressed earlier that the big society should go beyond party lines, and I support that. I welcome the comments made by my noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno in support of that. I hope that he forgives me for not engaging with him again on all the debates around AV.
I visited an excellent example of the big society in action in east London: the Bromley by Bow Centre, created by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, back in 1984. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich is right to highlight the work of street pastors, whom I have had the privilege of hearing first-hand in three separate cities.
The noble Lord, Lord Jones, paid tribute to the volunteers at the League of Friends at Deeside Community Hospital, to Flintshire Neighbourhood Watch, to Flintshire Alzheimer’s Society and to the Flintshire arthritis care group. He paid tribute to those volunteers, and I pay tribute to him as president of all those organisations and a trustee of many others.
Today many noble Lords have raised the issue of funding. My noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon is right to say that financial support must be alongside empowerment. As I have said before in this House, it is undoubtedly unfortunate that we have to deliver the big society against the backdrop of the financial circumstances that we find ourselves in.
I do not treat the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, as a cheap political point. I accept what she says, but I hope she accepts that my comment that the coalition Government inherited the worst peacetime deficit ever is also not a political statement but a fact.
I assure noble Lords that the big society is not a cover for cuts. Rather, it is a positive agenda, developed long before the financial crisis. It was, as David Cameron said in his Hugo Young lecture in 2009, an answer to why the growth of public spending had failed to bring about the kind of social progress that we all wanted to see. I do not accept the idea that the big society depends only on more and more public spending. It is simply a way of making things better where state intervention and increased public spending have failed.
The big society can be realised only when people, organisations and community groups get involved. Without participation, there is no big society. It is therefore essential that the Government work to both encourage and enable participation. We are doing this by encouraging social action, providing the right funds to support community work, making it easier to volunteer and shifting powers from Whitehall to local people. I shall take each of those in turn.
First, we are encouraging people to take part in social action by putting in place a number of key programmes. Some 11,000 16 and 17 year-old school leavers will participate this summer in the national citizen service. I am sure that my noble friend Lady Benjamin will welcome that. They will gain a unique experience, learning about community action in a supportive and engaging environment. Some 5,000 community organisers will also catalyse and support community action in local neighbourhoods.
My noble friend Lord Greaves has asked a number of questions. I hope that I can answer some of them. He asked about remuneration for community organisers. The 500 senior organisers that he referred to will receive a bursary of £20,000 for the first year. He raised a number of other questions regarding terms of reference, how they will build on work done before and what relationship they will have with councillors. I hope that he will bear with me; I will try to answer some of those questions in correspondence to him.
The Giving Green Paper that was published in December, which has been referred to again in this debate, sought feedback on new and innovative ideas to further encourage social action. It resulted in some highly positive feedback. For example, the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action, the national charity that provides a voice for over 160,000 small charities and community groups, said:
“We find much to commend in the Green Paper, in particular in its emphasis on creating an environment for social action, giving and volunteering. We recognise that the government’s role in social action is limited, but believe that there is a vitally significant role for government in helping to create this environment”.
This feedback is supporting the development of a White Paper that will provide a framework for work to develop social action.
Secondly, the Government are introducing new funds to encourage participation. The community first fund will encourage more social action in neighbourhoods with significant deprivation and low social capital. The fund will include a £30 million neighbourhood match fund and a £50 million endowment match challenge to create sustainable sources of funding for neighbourhood projects. The big society bank will help to grow a market in social investment, bringing new funding into the sector and help people access capital to fund their projects. The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, is right to say that the ingenuity of the City should also be harnessed, and I am optimistic that the big society bank could be a vehicle to do just that.
Thirdly, the Government are encouraging people to take part in their local communities by making it easier to volunteer, and I welcome the perceptive points made by my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield. My noble friend Lord Hodgson has been leading a red tape task force, looking at how to remove barriers to those wishing to become actively involved in their communities. He will publish his report next week.
We have also reviewed the criminal records, vetting and barring regimes. The Protection of Freedoms Bill proposes changes that will reduce unnecessary bureaucratic burden for organisations working with volunteers. My noble friend Lady Benjamin raises an important issue on protection. I will make sure that I write to her with more details on the specific points that have been raised.
In preparation for the royal wedding, the Government reduced bureaucracy to enable people across Britain to celebrate together. It was a moment when the nation came together. We scrapped central guidance on road closures and replaced the complicated bureaucracy of forms and risk assessments with a simple checklist. We estimate that well over 5,000 street parties took place around the UK that weekend, including the one that I attended, which the Prime Minister hosted in Downing Street.
The Government are leading by example and encouraging civil servants to volunteer more. We are turning the Civil Service into the civic service by giving special leave for volunteering. One civil servant who took up this opportunity at a local cemetery said, “These days are all about giving back to the community. I am over the moon to chip in where I am needed”.
It is also essential that inspirational examples of good practice are highlighted. My noble friend Lord Younger made the very important point that we should encourage copycat behavioural change. I refer to one statistic that was given in evidence at one of the big society seminars by J Mohan, who said that a civic core exists in Britain, which is currently responsible for the majority of giving and volunteering. Thirty-one per cent of the adult population provides 90 per cent of volunteer hours, 80 per cent of charitable giving and 70 per cent of civic participation. We must increase that percentage from 31 per cent.
We have also created the big society awards. Later this week I will attend a reception hosted by the Prime Minister in Downing Street to celebrate the winners, and to encourage and highlight those who are doing good work. We also continue to support the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. It is essential that we empower communities so that those inspired to do more have the ability to make a real difference. New powers contained in the Localism Bill will give local communities the tools to grow the big society. These include the introduction of powers to allow communities to take over the running of local facilities and give them the right to bid to take over local state-run services.
In conclusion, I say that this debate was just not long enough. So much more could have been added by all noble Lords around the House. I hope I have highlighted in response some of the key measures that the Government are putting in place to encourage people to participate in the big society. Through this we can create a country in which people are able to take an active part in their communities, play their part in solving the social issues that their communities face and improve the quality of life for all. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, being, like me, from Yorkshire, will accept this phrase; in Yorkshire we define it simply as doing your bit or mucking in. I thank all noble Lords again for their contributions to this extremely important debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for initiating it this evening.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
(13 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn)
My Lords, as Amendment 1 has been agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 2 to 8A inclusive because of pre-emption. I now call Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
My Lords, this may be an appropriate moment for me to raise an important point. The Committee has just voted against the principle of elected police and crime commissioners, which is a key pillar of the Bill. From our perspective, everything that flows from that is part of that important principle. It makes a mockery of the discussion and debate on this part of the Bill if we continue as though this has not happened. It is our view on this side of the Committee that it would be prudent to adjourn so that the Government and Members of the Committee can reflect on what has happened to the Bill so that we can proceed in a sensible and orderly way. Having ripped the guts out of a piece of legislation, I cannot see how we can intelligently proceed as though nothing has happened.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the process is clear. The House of Lords tonight made a decision to remove elected commissioners. That does not prevent the House of Lords doing its normal duty of properly scrutinising this legislation. The Opposition Chief Whip seeks to prevent the House of Lords scrutinising other parts of the Bill tonight. In asking the Committee to suspend proceedings, he is asking it to do just that.
The decision that was taken by the Committee a short while ago means that consequential amendments have not yet been agreed to, Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, being one. The noble Baroness is not in her seat but others are present who may move it. The Committee has decided that it does not wish to discuss piloting schemes because it has removed the elected commissioners from the Bill, but it has left in place police authorities with a different system of operating, so it is in order for the Committee to proceed in the normal way—that is, to consider accepting the consequential amendments to Amendment 1 and then to consider the other amendments beginning with Amendment 10. The noble Lord who is on the Woolsack will guide the Committee on which amendments may be further pre-empted.
I know that every Member of this Committee who voted to defeat the Government in the Division will have considered very carefully all the consequences of what they were doing before they took that action. Therefore, I am sure that they would not wish to suspend the Committee and deny it any further opportunity to consider amendments. I think it is appropriate that we should proceed. If the Committee has decided that it does not wish to do its job of scrutiny, that would, of course, be a different matter.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
My Lords, having heard what the Chief Whip has said, I accept, of course, that we should proceed to consider the important parts of the Bill. I will not move that the Committee should adjourn, but the Government need to come back to the Dispatch Box, if not today then certainly when the Bill goes into the second day in Committee, to explain exactly how they intend to deal with this issue because the Committee has made its voice very clear on this matter. I would have thought that a period of mature reflection on the implications of the previous amendment being passed would greatly benefit our further consideration of the Bill.
The noble Baroness is right to say that we should deal with consequential amendments. My advice to the Committee would be rather different from her own, but we are the Opposition and the noble Baroness represents the Government.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, perhaps I can help the noble Lord further. This Government, like any other, would wish to engage in discussions with all those who are interested in the Bill between Committee and further stages. That is the normal way of doing things. However, the difficulty is that the Committee has taken a decision that it does not wish to consider all these matters again until another place has had the opportunity to consider them. That does not, of course, stop discussions with those who moved the initial amendment and those who supported it. That is the normal way we proceed; it is just that the Committee has prevented us doing it on the Floor of this Chamber. Although the fact that Amendment 1 was carried must necessarily still the voices of those who would have liked to speak to Amendments 2, 3, 4 and so on, there is much else of importance in the Bill.
I am grateful to the noble Lord for agreeing that it is right for this House to do its job—a job it does with some distinction. The results of that do not always bring the Government Chief Whip joy but we will all work together, now and in the future, to work our way through this legislation. The Deputy Chairman has called Amendment 9. It might be for the benefit of those who were keen that Amendment 1 should be carried that Amendment 9 should be put to the Committee so that it can be agreed as a consequential amendment.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, I ask for clarification on what the Chief Whip told us, because I feel that I am again a novice in this House, after a mere 12 years, or whatever, as a Member. I am completely confused as to where we are. I am sure that the Committee would welcome further clarity from the noble Baroness the Chief Whip. Am I to understand that because we have effectively deleted the first line of the Bill, which states that there shall be in each area outside London an elected policing and crime commissioner, we have pre-empted not just the amendments that the Lord Speaker told us at the beginning were pre-empted, but all amendments to all bits of the Bill that relate to policing and crime commissioners? In that case, we might, I suppose, debate Clause 2 that deals with chief constables; and we might deal with those bits of the Bill that deal with London, licensing, universal jurisdiction and Parliament Square. Are we being told essentially that those clauses—which are, of course, interspersed with other clauses dealing with policing and crime commissioners—are effectively pre-emptive? I simply want to know and understand, because people will spend time preparing for debates that might otherwise not take place?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who is an experienced performer, both in this Chamber and in another Assembly, and therefore knows how to obfuscate to his advantage what is clear, that the position is clear. Consequential amendments from Amendment 9 will naturally be accepted and not be opposed by the Government. Amendments from Amendment 10, where they have not been pre-empted by Amendment 1, are to be debated. The noble Lord will of course look carefully, at Amendment 31 and others that follow. There are amendments on which we will continue discussions. I suggest that it is time to do just that.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am sorry to intervene, but I do so also for the purpose of clarity. The debate that resulted in the vote was on the basis, of course, of the deletion of the provision for police commissioners and for the insertion of a police commission, consisting of two parts. That provides a similar basis for debating many of the amendments that we will come to, because it will allow a number of points to be raised similar to those relating to a sole commissioner. I was assuming, for instance, that although we will not, I suspect, consider a group of amendments on piloting the new arrangements, nevertheless there will be new arrangements which, in due course I will seek to argue should be piloted.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. I was trying to say, but less succinctly, that debate continues. Of course the Committee has decided to silence debate on those issues that were within Amendments 1 to 8. I suggest that we continue the debate and allow the Chairman of Committees to call Amendment 9, so that we can agree to something.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I repeat that I may not call Amendments 2 to 8A because of pre-emption.
Amendment 9
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, as Amendment 9 has been agreed, I may not call Amendment 10, again by reason of pre-emption.
Baroness Hamwee
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 23, 28, 149 and 237. This group of amendments proposes the shadow operation of the new arrangement. It is as well that for the purposes of this argument I do not need to spell out which arrangement that might be. However, it seems that there will be some sort of new arrangement—whether it be a single commissioner or a commission, as my noble friend has proposed.
I tabled these amendments thinking of recent experience at local government level. When new authorities were formed—most recently some new unitary authorities —it was the normal arrangement that there should be a transitional period involving shadow working of the new authorities. The most recent involvement related to the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 that provided for implementation arrangements by way of orders dealing with transition. I accept that local government is more complicated—or I did, at any rate, until about 7 pm—but it seems sensible to allow for a transition from the current police authorities to the new structure on an authority-by-authority basis. This is not an argument for staging the transfer at different times.
Lord Harris of Haringey
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness in mid-flow, but as I understand it, if her amendment were accepted we would, after the phrase,
“A police and crime commissioner has”,
insert the words in her amendment. If police and crime commissioners have just been removed from the Bill, what are the words that her amendment follows?
Baroness Hamwee
The police and crime commissioner has not been removed from the Bill, in that Amendment 31, which was in the first group, provides for a commission consisting of, first, a police and crime commissioner. I am sorry if the noble Lord feels that we should disrupt debate about something which I think it is appropriate for us to discuss in principle. As the Government have decided tonight that we should go on, it seems a pity to forfeit the opportunity to talk about how any new arrangement might come into being. I would like to continue. Clearly, several noble Lords would not like me to continue.
Lord Harris of Haringey
I would be delighted to hear the noble Baroness expand the argument—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
I must put the Question before the debate starts. I would be grateful if the noble Baroness could continue her introduction.
Baroness Hamwee
I thank the noble Lord. I have explained why I think it is still appropriate to debate the amendment.
At local government level, there was a format. For each new authority’s structural change order, there was an implementation executive which was adapted to local circumstances and literally shadowed the executive. There was preparation of an implementation plan, which included,
“such plans and timetables as the Implementation Executive considers necessary to secure effective, efficient and timely discharge of”,
the functions, in that case, and such budgets and plans as it considers necessary or desirable to facilitate the economic, effective, efficient and timely discharge of the functions after the relevant date. As I said, this is not the same as a local authority, but the noble Lord will recall, as I do, that when the Greater London Authority was formed, there was a period of shadow working—probably insufficient; it was a month or so.
Whatever arrangement we end up with—after the debate this evening, we are not without a proposed new structure—I am concerned that it should work as well as possible. Schedule 15 provides for transitional provisions. I am sure that the Government believe that everything has been covered in the schedule. Experience might suggest to many of your Lordships that it is hard to anticipate precisely everything that needs to be covered and that there is a risk in such a big bang approach. It is better, in my view, to allow time to consider the detail, because things always seem different once you are in the thick of things, when issues may be thrown up, than when you are anticipating them.
However much thought has been given to both the schedule and the transition board, which I understand the Home Office has formed—chaired, I think, by the police Minister—it would be wise to provide some arrangement which will allow for what may not have been anticipated in the legislation. I do not think that my drafting is of the finest order, but there is an issue here. I beg to move.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
I am puzzled, even in the context of this place, by the procedure being followed at present. Were we debating the amendment in the normal circumstances that many of us, at least, anticipated on the government side, I would oppose it because, as I said earlier, I support the view that we should have democratic accountability for police forces, although my preference is for elected police authorities. I am very disappointed that we cannot debate that issue as a result of pre-emption. That might have been an intelligent debate on a subject with some empirical evidence on which the House could have offered some wisdom to the Government. Indeed, I was beginning to feel a little like Baldrick, because I thought that I had come up with a cunning plan and, rather like Baldrick, had not anticipated that it might be effective on the odd occasion.
This debate reminds me of the childhood poem that starts, “I met a man upon the stair”. The man is the elected police commissioner but he is not there because, in reality, he has just been removed from the Bill by the vote. To put it another way, it is like the Mad Hatter’s tea party without either the Mad Hatter or the tea. I urge my noble friend Lady Hamwee to draw stumps in some way on this group of amendments so that we can in due course have a proper debate on the proper predicate. The predicate for the whole series of amendments that follows is that Clause 1(1) has been agreed.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
The noble Lord will remember that the final line of the poem is, “I wish that man would go away”.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
Touché! I, too, wish that the man would go away—and I am grateful for the reminder—albeit to be recreated in the form that I wanted to discuss on my amendment. I take the opportunity to repeat that that amendment may well command quite a lot of support after what happened earlier this evening and it may provide some kind of solution.
As I have just said, this is all predicated on something that has been defeated. I very respectfully say to my noble friends on the government Front Bench, who know that I broadly support them in this context, that it is not acceptable for your Lordships’ House to have this kind of artificial debate in what seems like fairyland. I simply ask for the position to be reconsidered. Many substantive issues in the Bill can be debated. For example, I know that my noble friend Lady Doocey has some very important matters to raise in relation to London, and I hope that we can have a really good debate on those. There are substantial matters relating to licensing, and we can have real debates on those issues, too. I am proposing a new clause about war crimes and the universal jurisdiction, which I shall debate with anyone at any time. I shall do that off the top of my head right now if that is desired. However, those are examples and I do not wish to catch the Minister unawares, but I think that we could proceed with a number of serious issues without indulging in this artificial exercise.
Therefore, in the spirit of a government supporter, like my noble friend Lord Blencathra, I ask the Government to think again and to bring us back to some form of order. I know that we cannot raise points of order as such in your Lordships’ House but there is a question of order of great substance here which I invite the Chair to consider.
Viscount Eccles
Is not the matter in the hands of the mover of the amendment? If that person simply says “Not moved”, we proceed to the next amendment. Therefore, the decision as to whether any particular amendment is debated is in the hands of the mover.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
That may well be technically right but it may require an expression from the government Front Bench that, if my noble friend decides not to press these amendments, the Government will be willing to return to them in a proper sequence in the correct context in due course and not use any procedural matters to prevent her continuing with this debate on the proper predicate.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, it is my understanding that we are now operating on the assumption that Amendment 31 has been consequential on what happened with Amendment 1. I draw the Committee’s attention to Amendment 31, which says:
“Insert the following new Clause—“Police Commission … There shall be a body corporate for each police area listed in Schedule 1”,
and that it,
“shall consist of … a police and crime commissioner, and … a police and crime panel”.
That provides the basis for discussing a number of amendments that concern the role of people who will now not be directly elected police and crime commissioners, but who will continue to have a number of functions to which the amendments, which include some tabled by noble Lords whom I see on the opposition Benches, apply. It seems entirely appropriate that we should continue to do that. A number of amendments in Part 1 also apply to the mayor's office for crime and policing, so there is useful, detailed business to discuss.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, this is ridiculous. Noble Lords know that the Government should have made a business statement at 8.30 pm to adjourn the House and allow the consequences of this to be fully considered by the Government and Opposition, and through the usual channels. It would have been helpful to have known earlier from the Chief Whip that Amendment 31 had been accepted as consequential. Clearly that is an important factor.
This is nonsensical. I am tempted to move the adjournment of the House. I plead with the Government at least to let us adjourn for 10 minutes to allow the usual channels to have a further discussion. I can see that I would win a vote on a show of hands. Surely the Government have the good sense to see this. Why are we going to waste an hour debating a theoretical amendment? It is ludicrous.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
My Lords, there are a number of problems with Amendment 31. The first is that we have not debated it yet. We have not agreed it. Logically, if we are to have a structured debate, it should start with Amendment 31. The problem is that we would be debating Amendment 1 all over again.
Lord De Mauley
Following the advice of the noble Lord opposite, I beg to move that the Committee do now adjourn during pleasure until 9.10 pm.
Lord De Mauley
I am going to have to crave your Lordships’ indulgence and ask if we can have a further adjournment during pleasure until 9.20 pm.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
Before my noble friend Lady Hamwee continues speaking to her amendment, perhaps I may explain that there has been a short Adjournment of the Committee’s proceedings so that discussion could take place as to whether we should continue. The Government’s position is utterly straightforward. Earlier today, a defeat took place. It is not the first time that a defeat has taken place on a government Bill. There is no reason why we should not continue; in fact, it is the Government’s wish that we should. I understand that some noble Lords who have put down amendments would prefer not to continue. It is entirely their right—and we would not complain—not to move their amendments this evening, but good order and precedent should continue and we should carry on with the Committee stage. I hope that my noble friend Lady Hamwee can continue with her amendment.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
I accept what the Leader has said. However, the advice given to us earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to perhaps take time to reflect on where we are on the Bill and the implications of today’s vote for the remaining amendments, was cogent and very sensible. When the House was adjourned a brief 12 minutes ago, it was agreed that it would be adjourned in order for discussions to take place. I point out to the Chief Whip that that is what was said. No discussions have taken place with the Opposition. I do not complain; I merely point that out as a matter for the record. I am perfectly happy to continue as the noble Lord desires, but I do not think that it is a sensible way forward. It would be far more appropriate for us to take time to reflect. However, the noble Lord is the Leader of the House and it is for him to decide.
Lord Soley
I am not very confident of my knowledge of the procedures when we get into a situation like this. I simply say to the Government—and I recognise that I probably would not be their first choice as a political adviser—that there are aspects of the Bill which we could deal with very effectively and get through; for example, on drugs and alcohol. I am at a loss to understand why the Government do not proceed with that, leaving aside the policing bit for the moment while they decide a policy. The provisions on drugs and alcohol will get a lot of support. The Government could be well advised, politically, to split off the policing aspect so that they can take their time on it, and they would get a very good Bill on drugs and alcohol which I think we would all welcome.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
My Lords, having heard the Leader of the House speaking earlier, I can see no reason why we should not start to debate Clause 2 of the Bill and everything that follows. It is merely Clause 1 that causes the difficulties. I urge the Government Front Bench, whom, I repeat, I broadly support on this Bill, to consider whether we might move to Clause 2 and invite those who wish to move amendments to Clause 1 not to move them at this stage.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is trying to be helpful to the Committee. His analysis that it is difficult for us to debate anything in the Bill that relates to police and crime commissioners until a way forward has been determined is helpful. Clearly, Clause 2 does not contain anything at the moment about police and crime commissioners and there are a number of other clauses in the first part of the Bill, including Clauses 3 and 4, that do not relate to police and crime commissioners. So we could with due determination proceed with the Bill with those bits that are not affected by the decision that the Committee took earlier on.
However, there is one further difficulty and I would be grateful for the Leader of the House’s guidance on this point. We were told that the target for tonight was the group beginning Amendment 15. I suspect that a number of noble Lords worked on the basis that government targets on such matters are rarely achieved let alone surpassed. They might have wished to speak about amendments or issues subsequent to Amendment 15 but have left and would not be particularly happy if we were to proceed beyond that point without notice. Speaking for myself, I am always happy to talk on those matters that I have put down. However, it is unfair on those Members of the Committee who may have left on the assumption that the Government’s target—they are, as I said, rarely exceeded—was to reach the group beginning Amendment 15.
This process is enormously unhelpful, although I am sure that she can speak for herself, to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. She has an amendment about transitional arrangements. There is a useful debate to be had about transitional arrangements—whether it should be for a year, which I think is the substance of her argument, or whether it should be for a shorter period and how it operates. But it is difficult to understand how we can debate a transitional arrangement when we do not know what transition we are making and from what state to what state. If, for example, a very simple matter were being proposed, a transitional arrangement of a year might seem excessive. However, if a more complicated change were proposed, a transitional arrangement of a year might seem appropriate.
We are in a difficult position and the Government Front Bench has put the noble Baroness in a very difficult position by encouraging her to move her amendment when we do not know what that transition will be. If, for example, the Committee were to decide that this is all getting silly and that we should stop, I would be sorry that the substance of debating transitional arrangements should then be lost. But I do not see how the Committee can debate transitional arrangements when we are not even in a position to judge what state we are in transition from and to what future state we are aiming.
The government Front Bench must help the House and find a way out of this terribly difficult impasse. I appreciate that they might have one or two slightly bigger consequences of today's vote on their minds, but we are in a difficult situation tonight. It would be better for us to have some proper time for reflection and for the Government to have time for reflection so that they can let us know how to proceed.
Baroness O'Loan
My Lords, I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, just said. With my limited experience of the House, I think that we are debating a police and crime panel which is defined in the legislation, which has now become part of the police and crime commission, with much greater powers than it had originally. The police and crime panel will also be the police commission. It will have powers to hire and fire police chiefs and all sorts of other powers as a consequence of this change. But we do not know what we are talking about. We do not know whether it is an elephant, a tiger or what it is. We should think again.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, I support that idea. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, for whom I have immense regard—I respect his very great experience in these matters—was not quite right when he said that Clause 2 has no reference to a police commissioner. Clause 2(5) reads:
“A chief constable must exercise the power of direction and control conferred by subsection (3) in such a way as is reasonable to assist the relevant police and crime commissioner to exercise the commissioner’s functions”.
Am I right—
Lord Elton
As I understand it, under our Standing Orders, we can only speak to a Motion. The Motion before the Committee is Amendment 13. My noble friend the Leader of the House has proposed the way that we should go forward and the Leader of the Opposition has said she agrees that we should go forward. If we go forward now, we have decent time to do at least one amendment and we might get on with this Bill.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
I am speaking to the amendment to this extent—that I believe that the amendment is an utter unreality and that every other amendment in relation to Part 1 is similarly tainted and coloured. My argument in favour of that, and I speak from the neutrality of the Cross Benches—
Lord Elystan-Morgan
I do not wish any evil whatever upon this House, for which I have immense respect. The situation, surely, is that there are these categories of provision—first, as regards any provision dealing directly with the police commissioner, it would be utterly impossible and absurd to debate it; secondly, as regards any reference to a police commissioner, again, it would be impossible to debate it; thirdly, as regards any implied relevance of a police commissioner, again, it would be wrong to debate it. It seems that no real, genuine and substantial debate can properly occur in relation to Part 1. I do not say that with any sense of pleasure whatever.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, as a veteran of many amendments and many losses, I am slightly baffled by this debate. The Government have presented a Bill to this House and it is the property of this House. The House has decided, in its wisdom, to vote on an amendment that has removed an important aspect of the Bill. Noble Lords have spoken and have agonised over the implications of that decision. The time to think about the implications of that decision is before you vote, not after.
Lord Strathclyde
It is a good point. However, noble Lords have done so, without thinking over the implications. We have an amendment before us. Noble Lords have said it is difficult—
Lord Strathclyde
I am going to finish my point. Noble Lords have said it is difficult to continue. Moving amendments in this House is not compulsory. If noble Lords do not wish to move their amendments at this Committee stage, they do not have to. They can reconsider them in the light of the debate. We will of course be returning to this Bill on Report. We have spent a great deal of time discussing the implications of a vote that took place some hours ago. I assert that we should have discussed the implications of that in that very long debate and not now. If noble Lords wish to down tools and go home early, that is their decision. I think we should continue with the Bill.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, the noble Lord the Leader of the House is being slightly unfair on the House. Noble Lords were very clear what they were voting for. They realised that if the amendment was passed, they were kicking a very large hole in this Bill. That was the decision of the House. What people are querying is the strange “band played on” mentality of the government Front Bench. You have hit the iceberg but the band carries on playing. No doubt, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, wishes to remain at the wheel until such time as the “Titanic” sinks below the waves—you can see where the metaphor is going. My point is that I do not think it is fair of the noble Lord the Leader of the House to suggest that people were not aware of what they were doing. What we cannot understand is what the Government think they are doing.
Baroness O'Loan
My Lords, if I may speak again, perhaps the Leader of the House could help me by telling me exactly what it is that I am now discussing. I think that I am discussing a police commission comprising a police and crime panel that will elect one of its number to be a police commissioner that has no powers in the Bill, as all the powers in the Bill belong to other organisations. I am mystified as to what I am supposed to be thinking about.
Lord Strathclyde
The noble Baroness is generous in giving me powers, which I do not have, of knowing what it is that she is talking about. I dare say that what the noble Baroness is supposed to be talking about is the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Hamwee. If my noble friend Lady Hamwee wishes to proceed with her amendment, she may and she can explain what noble Lords are supposed to be discussing. If she does not wish to carry on with her amendment and subsequent noble Lords do not wish to carry on with their amendments, the rules of the House are utterly clear: you say, “Not moved” when your name is called. We would then carry on to the stage that the noble Lords, Lord Soley, Lord Harris and others, wish to get to. This really is not complicated.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, could I seek one point of information? Given that, as was suggested by one of my noble friends earlier, we had a target of reaching the group starting with Amendment 15, if noble Lords did not wish to move their amendments in the groups preceding that group, would the Leader agree that we should finish at Amendment 15 for the sake of those people who are not present this evening and who did not expect to have their amendments debated this evening? Would the House then adjourn?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the target is a sort of rough target in order to help the House. From other discussions that have taken place, I understand that the Opposition are fully briefed up to Amendment 18, but I do not know whether that is true. I would rather dispose of Amendment 13, which is the amendment that we are on, and see where we get to. It is nearly 20 minutes to 10.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, will the noble Lord the Leader give an assurance that he will give the Government’s position in relation to the earlier decision of your Lordships’ House on anything that we discuss from now? We need to know what the Government are arguing in the light of the earlier decision. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, was asking that question. As the Government have suffered a defeat and the Bill has now changed, an amendment that we discuss ought to be discussed in the light of the Government’s position now. Therefore, we need the Government’s position to be spelled out even before we debate amendments.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the Government’s Minister will respond to the questions posed by those who propose amendments. That is what happens when we deal with Bills at Committee stage. Nothing has changed. Let us get on with it.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, can we just have some clarity from the noble Lord the Leader? I am sorry to prolong this—I promise not to do so, or I give an assurance in the same sense that targets for amendments are given to the House—but can the noble Lord the Leader explain to the House why the government Front Bench has permitted us to debate an amendment that potentially no one in this House understands? We are talking about transitional arrangements, which are a perfectly valid area of debate, but we do not know what we are transitioning from or to. Under those circumstances, why has the government Front Bench allowed the debate? We are a self-regulating House. If the powers were invested in the Lord Speaker, no doubt we would have a ruling, which we would all of course at once obey. Under these circumstances, the noble Lord has to tell the House how he has reached his decision, and we have to understand it.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, first of all, this will not be the first time that the House has debated an issue that it does not know anything about. Secondly, it is up to the noble Baroness—this is not a government amendment—who owns the amendment to explain what it is for. Again, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, that this is really simple. If the noble Baroness does not explain it sufficiently well, the amendment will either be withdrawn, or voted on, or whatever. That is what happens. The Government will respond to questions that are put to them. I cannot be clearer to the noble Lord. I invite the noble Baroness to carry on from where she left off.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
My Lords, it would help the House if we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I hesitate to say it but the House did hear from me some time ago, and I had actually got to the point when I had moved the amendment. However, as it is Committee stage, perhaps I can say another word about it, although it will be by way of repetition and the House is rather fuller than when I was last speaking.
I am not embarrassed at moving the amendment. I understand that there are difficulties relating to many other amendments, but clearly we know what we would be transitioning from—if “transitioning” is a word. What we are transitioning to appears at the moment to be a model that was not the model in our minds at the start of this afternoon as the likely outcome—
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
Would the noble Baroness care to pose the question that the Leader of the House said could only be asked by her? What do the Government now believe we are transitioning to?
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, if I was not interrupted in the middle of the sentence, I would have tried to get to the end. As I said to the House about an hour ago, Amendment 31, which was in the group of amendments with Amendment 1 agreed by the House earlier, provides for a model of a police commission consisting of a commissioner and a panel. Amendment 31 is not my amendment, but I am reading what it says. Whatever model there is a transition to, it is perfectly proper and indeed required that there should be robust arrangements to ensure that the new model comes into being in a way that works. The point that I was making was that Schedule 15 provides for transition arrangements, but I suspect that although many of the implications of the transition will have been anticipated, it is unlikely that every single one will have been anticipated. That is not intended to be pejorative about the Government or the Home Office, as I would say it of any organisation dealing with a change of this kind. I take it from what the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, is saying that he agrees that some sort of transition period is not a bad idea.
That is all that I am suggesting that the House should consider. I have now said it twice, so I beg the House’s indulgence on that. The brief point is that we know the point and that, whatever the end game, it is not going to be that straightforward, so let us put in arrangements that we have learnt are needed from local authority experience, and use that experience to make that transition more smoothly than I believe the Bill provides for.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I would like to speak to the generality of the noble Baroness’s amendment. I will not comment on exactly where we are; a period of reflection would be very helpful. She has raised a very important point. Assuming that the outcome of the Bill is that we move to a new system—we are not entirely sure what system it will be—the substantive question in the noble Baroness’s amendment is that there ought to be a shadow period of operation. I agree with that.
On the question of whether it should last for a year I am not at all sure. One has had experience of reorganisations and when new appointments are made when people think it is a good idea to have two people or organisations working in tandem. Often it leads to conflict because no one is entirely sure about who is in charge or not. From the Opposition’s side, I hope we will be able to pursue this, although I think that the Government’s Bill is rather dead in the water as regards elected police commissioners. On the general principle, I am sure that a certain shadow period is right, but I suspect a year is too long. We can have further discussions on this very helpful matter.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Browning)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hamwee because this has been a fragmented debate and she has held it together well. If I have followed the various sections of her case, it is not unreasonable to say that there is a need for transition and, despite what happened to the structure of the Bill earlier tonight, when you move from one system to another—I am speaking in the generality—it is always good to have a plan that outlines the handover.
Where I have a little concern with the amendment is that I am not quite sure that the cost involved would not be prohibitive. My noble friend mentioned a year but we have not heard many details of what that would amount to in financial terms. It would have been helpful to the House—and perhaps to my noble friend—if we had had something more detailed for the House to consider and look at. However, Clause 99 and Schedule 15 cover transition and therefore there will be a further opportunity at later stages of the Committee for the House to consider this issue in more detail.
I hope my noble friend will feel able to withdraw the amendment. Clearly this is a matter of concern to her but she will be able to enlarge upon her views when we get to Clause 99 and Schedule 15 later in the proceedings of the Committee.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I take the point about the year and the reality of such arrangements to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, alluded. It is a very fair point. It is also fair to say that I have not costed these arrangements.
My underlying concern is that as Clause 99 and Schedule 15 stand at the moment—although they may be open to amendment—they do not allow for any handover period at all. As I read them, they provide for a cut-off point and life changes at midnight, as it were. That is my real concern.
I was obviously not expecting to debate the amendment in quite the way that we have and it may be that, because of the circumstances, the Minister is not able to give more detail than she has. However, she is right. We will come back to the topic on Schedule 15. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.