Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Doocey]

39: Clause 7, page 6, line 40, at end insert—
“( ) if the draft plan or variation is referred back by the panel under section 34(1)(c) and (1A), ensure the plan or variation follows the reasons given in the Assembly’s resolution referring the draft plan back.”

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I shall speak also to my other amendments in this group. The purpose of Amendments 39, 168, 173, 175, 176, 177 and 178 is to make the provisions of the Bill consistent with those proposed in the Localism Bill. The Localism Bill gives the London Assembly a new power to reject the Mayor’s draft statutory strategies by a two-thirds majority vote. The Bill makes no equivalent provision. As it stands, it would not have the effect of applying the Assembly’s new power to the Mayor’s draft police and crime plan. Once these two Bills become law the London Assembly would have the power to reject any mayoral strategy with the sole exception of the draft police and crime plan. This discrepancy makes no sense. There is no substantive difference between the draft police and crime plan and other mayoral strategies, so there is no justification for the police and crime plan, which is probably the most important of the mayoral strategies, being excluded from the new arrangements. This is perhaps why the Mayor of London and every political party on the London Assembly are in favour and fully support this amendment.

Amendment 171 is designed to clarify whether the London Assembly could appoint independent members of the police and crime panel and whether the Assembly could enable independent members to vote. This has now been clarified by a government amendment, so I will not say any more about this at this stage.

My final amendment in this group, Amendment 180, is designed to give the London Assembly’s police and crime panel the power to require senior Met officers and civilian staff to attend meetings and to provide information. The Government have said that the Assembly’s police and crime panel can request senior police officers to attend. This is completely meaningless since there is no way of enforcing a request. The Government have argued that allowing the Assembly to summon senior police officers would blur the lines of responsibility. I simply cannot accept this. I believe that it is perfectly legitimate for the Assembly to be able to question the Commissioner of Police. The Government have not responded so far to the second half of my request—the part about allowing the Assembly to require senior staff to attend and produce documents. Surely their argument about blurring lines of accountability cannot possibly apply to senior police staff. Requiring either attendance or papers would allow the Assembly to have information on which to inform its assessment of the mayor’s policies, actions and decisions. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I have Amendments 166, 167 and 179 in this group. The first two would allow the London Assembly to determine whether to discharge its functions under the Bill either through a committee or through the full Assembly. At the moment the Bill prescribes. In responding to a similar amendment at the previous stage, the Minister said:

“The first question to address here is why there should be a bespoke committee of the London Assembly called the police and crime panel rather than, as proposed by noble Lords, the functions being conferred on the London Assembly as a whole. The reason is one of practicality. Having a dedicated committee, representative of the wider London Assembly, will ensure that sufficient attention and scrutiny can be paid to delivering its policing responsibilities and would also allow for independent members to be brought on to the panel … This smaller group will be able to focus its attentions on the important business of scrutinising, in detail, the actions and decisions of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime”.—[Official Report, 24/5/11; col. 1800.]

I am not sure whether I can say this of the noble Baroness, but I thought, reading that, it was really rather paternalistic. The London Assembly is a grown-up body, with its current and past members and, I am sure, its future members, and ought to be able to take its own decisions as to the best way of organising itself.

I remember when we were debating the GLA Bill, which became the GLA Act 1999, it originally provided for the Government to deal with, I think, the standing orders of the Assembly. I remember the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, saying from the Government Front Bench, “This is ridiculous. It can sort itself out”. She was quite right then and I make the same point now. There seems to have been some confusion, in any event, on the Government side, because earlier the same day the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said:

“We argue that it is for the London Assembly as a democratically elected body to decide for itself how the membership of the panel should be chosen”.—[Official Report, 24/5/11; col. 1751.]

I accept that this was a slightly different context and a slightly different point, but I argue that the London Assembly as a democratically elected body should be able to decide for itself how it carries out its functions.

Amendment 179 would provide for the Assembly to approve or reject the draft police and crime plan, or a variation, with the veto of a two-thirds majority—unco-ordinated, but the same point as that made by my noble friend. I feel that it is appropriate for the Assembly to be able to treat the plan in the same way as it does mayoral strategies. On this point, the Minister said at the previous stage that it would not be appropriate for the panel to have a power of veto because of the plan being statutory in nature. My short point here is that the strategies to which my noble friend has referred—she managed to say statutory strategies without tripping over the words—are statutory in nature. I do not see that there is any qualitative difference between the two.

Finally, I have two questions about government Amendment 172. I welcome the clarification of the position regarding co-options, but if the Assembly is to be able to fix the number of members of the panel—reverting to my earlier point—can the Assembly create a committee which consists of all 25 members as a result of this amendment?

The third subsection of the amendment states that the,

“panel functions must be exercised with a view to supporting the effective exercise of the functions of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime”.

That picks up today’s theme of the constructive, collaborative and supportive nature of the relationship. I am not quite sure whether the Government might have gone too far on that because, in exercising the functions, the panel or the Assembly might support the best outcome but oppose the way in which the mayor’s office chooses to exercise them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Browning]

I assume that if a question is asked and somebody has the answer they would have the courtesy to give it. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent them answering a question they are asked.

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I welcome government Amendment 172. I am very happy with that and will withdraw my Amendment 171. Like the noble Lord, Lord Harris, I am at a complete loss to understand the points made by my noble friend the Minister. I have listened very carefully to everything she said. Every single mayor has been elected on a manifesto basically of two things: police and transport. All of the issues to do with transport are exactly the same as those to do with policing. Nothing that has been said by my noble friend has made me understand the thinking behind the Government saying that it is okay for the Assembly to be given a new right to reject the mayor’s strategy by two-thirds in transport but it would be completely wrong for the Assembly to be given the right to reject the police and crime panel report. I simply do not understand where the Government are coming from. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 39 withdrawn.