Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am replying to the amendments but I wish to assure the House, as my noble friend Lady Browning has just said to me, that we are still in listening mode.

We all understand that whatever institutions are set up, how they will work in practice will depend on personalities, personal relations and the willingness to co-operate. I recognise that there is a great deal of experience and expertise around the House on previous workings of relations between police authorities and chief constables. I was talking to a chief constable some weeks ago and I asked him how often he spoke to the chair of his police authority. He said, “Most mornings”. That is a fair indication that it would not be total revolution if he found himself talking to a police and crime commissioner rather than to the chair of his police authority; it would be a degree of evolution. We also recognise that we are all concerned to put checks and balances in place.

Our main concern with the two amendments is with the word “shall”, as the noble Lord, Lord Dear, recognised. Our secondary concern, as with a number of probing amendments, is how much detail we need to spell out in the Bill. These amendments would compel the mayor’s office to appoint a non-executive board to ensure good governance, to provide support and to make provision for the remuneration and reimbursement of any expenses incurred by board members. We argue that the imposition of a non-executive board is unnecessary. If what is sought is effective checks and balances, that will come from a panel made up of local councillors, as we will be discussing under other amendments, and not necessarily from a board appointed by the mayor’s office. There is a risk of some duplication between the two, an issue that we all need to explore further.

The Bill already specifies that the mayor’s office must appoint a chief executive and chief finance officer to ensure propriety. They will be subject to established public authority duties, as are their equivalents in police authorities and elsewhere.

If the purpose of these amendments is to ensure adequate support, the Government are working to create a legislative framework that permits discretion for the mayor’s office and for police commissioners, however they emerge, in areas where it is right and proper for a person with a direct electoral mandate to make a decision. Our preference is for the mayor’s office or the police commissioner to decide how best to manage its support and secretariat functions. This could include a paid or unpaid non-executive board if that is what is thought best for good governance, or it perhaps might find an alternative.

I repeat that we are still in listening mode but request that for the time being the noble Lord withdraws the amendment.

[Baroness Hamwee]

Is my noble friend able to say how the Government would respond if the word “shall” was “may”? Potentially there is a debate to be had about the functions of an executive board and the police and crime panel and where they might overlap and where they might be different. Would the Government have a different response if the word was “may”?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The Government are prepared to consider a number of matters. We are about to discuss the relationship between the police commissioners, the mayor’s office and the policing and crime panels. How best one organises this and how the staff relate to those who look at the staff and check accountability—and what we mean by accountability in detail—will, I suspect, be discussed over the next night or two.