Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, Amendments 31 and 46A are also in this group. I will speak to Amendment 31 and my noble friend Lady Doocey will speak to Amendment 46A.

I need to credit Amendment 27A to my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford who, I think at Second Reading, asked the Minister—I am not sure that the idea did not come to him during Second Reading—whether there should be some sort of protocol to govern the relationships between the various agencies—I use that term in the widest sense—that will be affected by the NCA. We had a similar notion that was pursued during the passage of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act.

Clause 5 deals with relationships between the NCA and other agencies. The NCA can request or require them to undertake a task or indeed can itself be tasked, and there are those with which it has a duty to co-operate, to exchange information and to give or be given voluntary or directed assistance. All of that is easy to say and probably less easy always to implement. These relationships can be tricky. The different organisations will have different, inevitably competing, priorities. They will all have different governance structures. You cannot require people to co-operate with one another. Having said that, I think that the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act did require that and I never quite understood how you could insist on co-operation. There will be different views, not just as to what is to be done but also how it is to be done. All of this suggests that there will need to be protocols—I have referred in the amendment to matters which I know my noble friend will take up, in particular training and the interoperability of equipment—and a mechanism to bring the different agencies together.

Amendment 31 deals with consultation in the preparation of a framework document including the protocol. I thought it was appropriate to bring it in at that point as well. I am not wedded to the arrangements being as I have spelled them out but we need to understand how the Government envisage these things being put into practice rather than just being, as I say, fairly easy words on paper. I beg to move.

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I would like to say a few words about three issues. The first is training. Most of the training that is currently done with police forces tends to be computer-based training. There is a place for computer-based training but mainly to deliver knowledge or awareness. The NCA is going to be a very major body with huge responsibility, and most of the training the officers are going to require will impact on attitudes and behaviour. Therefore, I believe it needs to be done on a one-to-one basis. I urge the Government to consider putting some money into this aspect of the training. I know that one-to-one training is much more expensive than computer-based training but I believe, first, that it is absolutely essential and, secondly, that it will pay dividends because just doing computer-based training will not provide the sort of officers that will be needed for this role.

The second issue is IT. There is no doubt about the IT requirements of the NCA. The intelligence hub that will be at its centre will require major IT and the functioning of the hub will be vital to the functioning of the NCA. There have been many interoperability problems, not just within local police forces but between national police forces. I remember the fiasco when the Metropolitan Police tried to upgrade its mobile data terminal with in-car automatic number plate recognition, which resulted in huge problems. Systems collapsed and had to be rebooted every time the police got into a car. The problem was eventually resolved, but there were basically no systems for several months and there were great costs. I believe that the lessons learnt from that ought to be required reading for anyone who is going to have anything to do with IT for the NCA.

Airwave, the system whereby police radios should speak to each other, is another issue. After many upgrades and after many millions of pounds have been thrown at it—I was very involved in this—there are still problems. There are particular problems with, for example, the Met talking to forces next door. For example, where I live in Hampton, the problems with Met Police radios trying to talk to Surrey Police radios have not yet been resolved. There are going to be teething problems at the very least.

Multiple keying bothers me particularly. Most police systems are antiquated and require the input and reinput of data time and time again. I am not convinced by anything that I have read so far that the Government have looked at this in sufficient detail and given it the priority that it really deserves and needs to resolve these problems. I urge the Government to set up a small specialist group to look specifically at IT interoperability systems before they go much further and certainly before the passage of the Bill through both Houses.

Finally, I turn to Schedule 4 and the regulations about equipment. I would be very interested to understand what this means because it seems to suggest that the Secretary of State is going to determine what equipment the NCA should use. It seems at odds with the idea of setting up a very large organisation under a director-general then to prescribe and insist that it uses particular equipment. That seems to be totally against the spirit of everything else in the Bill. I would welcome some additional information on that.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, again, I have some sympathy with these amendments. I have resisted the temptation of putting forward amendments on different issues that should be included in the framework document, but the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Doocey, are right that not having the framework document and having only very limited information about what will be in it means that, at this stage, the Committee has to seek assurances about things that we consider it important should be in the document. So far I have resisted the temptation, but if we got to Report and did not have the document, that temptation may be given free rein.

The issues that have been raised are extremely important and perhaps these amendments do not go as far as we would have gone. They talk about protocol relationships, which is slightly weaker than some of the things that we would have suggested, in terms of how the relationships would work and what should be in the framework document. However, I say to noble Lords that if they do not want to accept these amendments, they have only themselves to blame. We really need to see this framework document as a matter of urgency. Debating this Bill without it means that we will be having some debates not once but two or three times, because not only will we have to debate the issues now but when we get the document we will want to debate them again. It is in the interests of good governance and good progress of business in this House that we have the framework document as soon as possible.

I am also interested in what the Minister has to say about Amendment 46A. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, I inferred from that that the fact that the Secretary of State would be making decisions and regulations on the equipment to be used seems a highly operational matter. I am not convinced—though the noble Lord may have information to the contrary that will convince me—that it is an appropriate involvement in operational details of NCA work or why the Secretary of State wants that power. I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that amendment. On the other amendments, we need to ensure that these kinds of issues are going to be determined in the framework document. Any enlightenment that he can give us would be extremely helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

With the assurance that the director-general will, where appropriate, seek to agree detailed operational protocols with the NCA’s law enforcement and other partners, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw her amendment. I do not suppose we will get to it tonight but I also hope that my noble friend Lady Doocey will not find it necessary to move Amendment 46A.

[Baroness Doocey]

I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)]

We have reached Amendment 27A. Is the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, withdrawing it?