Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(13 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group but I will first comment on the Government’s amendments. The Minister described Amendments 35 and 41 as allowing flexibility. Indeed they do, but I asked myself when I saw them whether it was necessary to put the words down on paper. Amendments 35 and 41 merely provide for sending the responsible authorities copies of the plan. That is not a very onerous obligation and, more importantly, it is not one which amounts to a consultation. It is something which hardly needs saying. I am entirely with her on the points she has made which we will come to in later amendments about the supportive and collaborative arrangement which we want to see between the two arms of the new model, but I do not think this amounts to much. I hope that is not too unkind.
Amendments 43 and 50 talk about observing priorities and I could not find where the priorities were. I am grateful to the Bill team for explaining to me by email that the Government intend to amend regulations to impose a requirement on the statutory group to send their strategic assessment and partnership plan to the commissioner so that he or she will know what the priorities are. That is helpful. It is sometimes difficult to anticipate precisely what will go into regulations.
The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, has tabled Amendment 47 about membership of community safety partnerships and crime reduction partnerships. Like her, I still feel that relationships between the panel and local authorities have not yet been bottomed out, if I may put it that way.
My amendments largely repeat amendments to which I spoke in Committee. I have tabled them again because they came up in some of the enormous groups we had, which made it very difficult for Ministers at the Dispatch Box to ensure that they covered everything. There were one or two in the group on which my noble friend Lord Wallace, I think, said that he would write; I have not yet had the letter. I am sure that the Minister will understand that, as this is the last opportunity, essentially, the amendments are here again.
Amendments 40, 45 and 46, 54A, 55 and 56, 56A and 57 are about the contribution to be made by both victims and witnesses. I have tabled some of those amendments after contact with Victim Support. I am grateful for its contribution. It makes the point that in obtaining the views of the community on policing, witnesses—interestingly, Victim Support has been dealing with me on witnesses—should also be included. They, too, fundamentally depend on an effective and responsive police force. They are key participants in the justice system, whether or not they are also victims. It is often owing only to witnesses that the criminal justice becomes aware of an offence in the first place.
Victim Support states—I think, rightly—that our justice system requires witnesses to feel confident in the service they will receive from the police and that they will be the subject of sensitive handling throughout the progress of a case, not only, but including adequate protection if their status as a witness means that their safety or that of their family may be in danger. It made the point to me that particularly relevant is the apparent lack of adequate training given to officers about the reality of the court process. It commented to me about witnesses frequently being the victims of basic police misunderstanding about whether their identity will be protected, whether there will be a screen around the witness box, a video link, and that sort of thing. In fact, that is subject to the discretion of the court, and not something about which the police can give blanket assurances. In order that witnesses should not feel overused and underserved, some of my amendments suggest that they should have a role in the way that I have proposed.
A point I made at the previous stage is that victims have suffered a huge range of crimes, some very distressing, some very damaging, and some unimaginable. They or their representatives should have an opportunity to make an input to the police and crime plan and there should be arrangements to obtain their views on policing as part of the community.
Amendment 42 would alter Clause 8 regarding the means by which a,
“chief officer of police’s performance in providing policing will be measured”.
My amendment would change that to the,
“attainment of the police and crime objectives”.
That concentrates on the outcome rather than on the output and seeks to link this part of the Bill not to what the chief officer does but to whether the police and crime commissioners’ objectives, as set out in the police and crime plan, are attained.
Amendment 53 would enable the police and crime panel to request in advance that certain information should go into the commissioner's annual report. Although this is a small amendment, when I chaired the London Assembly I found that similar provision in the GLA legislation was very useful. It merely enables the panel, and the Assembly in London, to say in good time what subjects it thinks the commissioner should cover in the annual report. In this legislation, the annual report seems to have some status.
Amendment 59 would require the commissioner to have regard not only to the panel's report and its recommendations on the annual report but to any other reports and recommendations that it may make. This is not just an annual exercise. If there is to be this supportive and collaborative relationship then the panel will need to work year round. I am sure that it will have plenty of things it wants to say and that it will want to do so not just on an annual basis. This is a mild amendment as I use the words “have regard to”.
Amendment 58 relates to clauses on obtaining the views of the community on policing, and I suggest that local authorities should be included in the process. There should be consultation not just with people in the area but with those who have been elected in our system of representative democracy, who have views about the priorities for spending and whose own expenditure may cover allied or parallel ground.
Baroness Hamwee
If the noble Lord is teasing me about a previous amendment, he can probably read my answer in the fact that I have stayed put. I am not averse to being teased.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I was merely trying to liven up the debate.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Far from it. I was just trying to follow in the noble Baroness’s footsteps with lively engagement.
Baroness Hamwee
Let us go on to the Local Government Association. That seems to follow, as Amendment 239A would add police and crime commissioners as statutory partners on community safety partnerships. Under the Bill, commissioners do not replace police authorities as members of CSPs; they simply have a duty to co-operate. The Local Government Association, making the point that this is an all-party view, says that it is concerned about fracturing current local community safety governance arrangements and that placing commissioners as statutory members on CSPs would help to ensure that all bodies involved in local community safety work together through a collaborative approach in the best interest of local communities and that the commissioner does not undertake contradictory efforts to those of the other CSP members.
I apologise to your Lordships for the length of time it has taken me to introduce all those amendments. It is a medium-sized group in the context of the Bill.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, pursuing my usual course of local government recidivism, I will comment briefly on Amendment 49A, which will include local authorities in the rather wide category of criminal justice bodies set out in Clause 11(4). On Second Reading, I rather questioned the extent of that list and wondered whether it is appropriate to regard the police commissioner in the same category as, for example, the Crown Prosecution Service or youth offending teams. However, be that as it may, if there are to be bodies such as those listed here—including, for example, youth offending teams, which are regarded as criminal justice bodies—surely it is logical that local government should be included as well, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, seems to acknowledge at least on this occasion. I hope that the Minister will accept that modest amendment. However, I will endorse the noble Baroness’s amendments that refer to the need for local government to be included, particularly, for example, in relation to the annual reports in Clause 13. It would be strange if the elected local policing body—effectively the commissioner—were not to give a local authority a response to a report or recommendations that such an authority might make to the commissioner. Again I hope—possibly vainly—that the Minister will see the logic of that and accept the amendment to that effect which the noble Baroness has moved.
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.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, this is an important group of amendments on which a number of issues are raised. The amendments highlight how serious the Government are, or are not, about these scrutiny bodies—in London it is the London Assembly structure—in terms of what they can and cannot do. The amendments would enable some opportunities for the London Assembly to propose amendments and changes to the policing plan.
At the moment, the London Assembly is charged with consideration of a whole series of statutory plans; for example, the Spatial Development Strategy and the transport strategy. I think that there are about seven or eight of these strategies, but that figure may have increased since I was a member of the London Assembly. In addition, there is the biodiversity action plan, which is specifically referred to in the Greater London Authority Act. The Government, or one arm of them, are busy changing the statute so as to give the London Assembly the power for which I have often argued in the past; namely, the ability to amend those plans by a suitable majority. Why is that not part of the Government’s vision for policing? It is absent and I do not understand why. I could suggest that the Home Office does not talk to the Department for Communities and Local Government, which is unthinkable, or that there is a reason why the policing strategy is seen in a different light from the other plans and strategies that the mayor is required to put before the London Assembly.
I suppose I am pleased to see that the Government have responded to the concerns expressed by many Members of your Lordships’ House about the need to ensure that, in the case of the PCPs, the chief officer of police should be able to appear before them or, in the case of the London Assembly, that the London Assembly should be able to see the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. But it is a very weak and watery power that the Government have put forward in the amendment. It is simply the power to invite, which does not need to be written into statute because it already exists. The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis appears several times a year before the full London Assembly on the basis of the current implicit right to invite. Therefore, the Government have made no concession at all.
By the abolition of police authorities, the Government are removing the place where the public know there will be visible answerability by senior police officers. The right to invite is not a significant new right. Under most circumstances, any sensible chief officer of police and any Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis will accept such an invitation. When there are difficult circumstances, it is important to the public that senior police officers are seen to be required to appear before a public body in that way. I have spoken in this Chamber previously—I will not repeat all the points I have made—about the value of visible answerability and the important opportunities that that gives for the public to see that the police are being held accountable.
It is no substitute that under the new arrangements London will have the deputy MOPC who will not, unfortunately, have the benefit of being directly elected but will hold the commissioner of police to account, while outside London the PCC will hold the chief officer of police to account. That process inevitably will happen in private. A one-to-one meeting cannot be held in public. That will not be a system of visible answerability, so there has to be that visible answerability somewhere else—in the case of London, that should be the London Assembly. The right to invite is not sufficient. On limited occasions, there must be the right for the London Assembly to summons. It is very sad that that has not been the case. In passing, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked whether the London Assembly could decide that all 25 members should sit and carry out this scrutiny function. At present, the full London Assembly on occasions meets as a whole to ask questions about policing. Will that now be precluded by the Bill and the way in which it has been structured? That is the implication. You end up with less visible answerability and less visible accountability, and the arrangements that already exist are diminishing. Surely, that is not the Government’s intention, which is why this group of amendments is so important.
Baroness Hamwee
Before my noble friend sits down, I am aware that this is Report stage although it has not always been treated quite that way. My noble friend has been dealt an almost impossible hand but may I tempt her to respond to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, on whether there is to be a change in how the Assembly operates? May it no longer in plenary session ask questions of the mayor in his capacity as MOPC? I cannot believe that either of the mayors, of whom London has so far had experience, would themselves be constrained, nor can I think that any chair of the Assembly would say, “I have to stop you there. This is outside the legislation”. I never succeeded in stopping the first Mayor of London when he strayed, as he did rather widely. This seems unbelievable but there is a serious question. In a plenary session when an individual who holds the two offices is answering questions, can he or she not answer them in a holistic fashion, moving between strict policing matters and non-policing matters?
Baroness Browning
My Lords, I understand that there is absolutely no change. There is no reason why they cannot ask those questions.
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 Hamwee
Baroness Hamwee
In moving Amendment 51, I will also speak to my Amendments 52, 54, 142 and 143, with which it is grouped. I again apologise to the House that my amendments repeat, or are similar to, amendments to which I spoke in Committee. The large groups in Committee meant that we had what I might describe as composite responses from the Dispatch Box.
Amendments 51 and 53 continue the theme of checks and balances in the shape of tools to enable the panel to do its job. Clause 12 is headed “Information for public etc”. Under Clause 12(3), the commissioner must publish information which he or she “considers to be necessary” to enable local people to assess the matters that are set out: that is, information that he—some may be “she”, but I guess they will mostly be “he”—considers necessary. No doubt that consideration has to be done in good faith, but it strikes me that it would be almost impossible to enforce. I do not know who would enforce it. My amendment would insert, as additional matters to be included, those,
“which are required by the relevant police and crime panel”.
As I say, these tools would enable the job to be done and would interpose the strict checks and balances required to check and balance the commissioner.
I have already alluded to the provision that I seek to add to Clause 13. It is not an onerous or difficult obligation but would allow the panel before the beginning of the relevant year to tell the commissioner what it thinks ought to be included in the annual report. This was applied in London under the GLA Act when I chaired the Assembly. After the Assembly had had a preliminary discussion about the items that it thought should be included in the mayor’s annual report, there was a negotiation with the mayor. It was a perfectly civilised but productive process.
Amendment 52 is designed to draw attention to the position of victims of crime and to ensure that “performance” includes,
“the treatment of victims of crime”.
I have brought this up again because I do not think it was answered in the group in which it was contained previously.
Amendments 142 and 143 are a repetition of amendments concerned with the attendance of senior officers and the production of documents and information. I heard what the Minister had to say in our debate on the previous group about allowing the attendance of the most senior officer. You do not need to put into legislation that someone may attend a meeting; the legislation should not set out a narrative of what might happen but provide rules if people are not minded to do the sensible thing. Surely the point of a law of the land is to require attendance—in this case of someone who is not particularly willing to attend. If we think that attendance is a good and productive thing, the role of the legislation is to ensure that it is required.
My noble friend Lord Wallace did not state specifically which amendments he was speaking to—he said that the Government were right about some of them—but he said that the balance was wrong and that he was concerned to protect the commissioner from,
“being inundated with requests for information”.—[Official Report, 24/5/11; col. 1750.]
However, the panel’s role is to advise and scrutinise the police and crime commissioner, especially in respect of the annual police and crime plan. To advise and to scrutinise in the broadest sense, the panel needs information, and not only the information that the commissioner determines that it should have. This applies to every piece of information because everything is relevant to the plan. I fully appreciate where accountability lies—with the chief constable to the police and crime commissioner and with the commissioner to the electorate—but there are dotted lines in there to enable the panel to be brought in. Sometimes it is appropriate and practical for someone a bit less senior than the chief constable to attend, but at other times it is necessary to insist on his attendance and to insist that documents and information are provided.
The Government have tabled amendments in this group. Some of them are about the request to which I have referred; others change the relevant term from “reports” to “information”. They are a minor improvement but still do not seem to my mind adequately to recognise the role of the panel. I beg to move.
Baroness Henig
My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 141 in this group, which would provide that outside London the panel should be able to call senior police officers to answer questions as well as the commissioner and members of the commissioner’s staff. As I shall spell out, this amendment complements the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I very much agree with the sentiments that she expressed with regard to her amendments.
It is very important for panels to be able to call in senior police officers. The panels must be able to triangulate evidence if they are to carry out their role of effectively scrutinising the commissioner. It is true that they will be able to gather information from the commissioner under the provisions in the Bill, but they will also need to analyse and test that information. The most effective way of challenging and testing information is to ask questions about it. Certainly, the panel can ask questions of the commissioner under the provisions already in the Bill, but this may tell it only what the commissioner wants it to hear, particularly if the commissioner has been responsible for providing that information in the first place. All my experience in local government and policing tells me that it is extremely important for the panel to be able to reality check what it hears from the commissioner against the views of senior members of the police force.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, perhaps I may come back to that point and, for the moment, move on.
Amendment 143 would make the panel’s ability to request information more explicit. As discussed, it is important that panels can carry out their functions. However, panels already have powers appropriate for the scrutiny role they will perform. They can require the attendance of the police and crime commissioner or members of the PCC's staff to answer questions that they deem necessary. They can also require information from the commissioner and their staff, except where this would compromise security, so I hope that I can persuade noble Lords in due course to withdraw these amendments.
We are proposing in this group a number of government amendments which will address many of the issues raised by your Lordships during Committee. Amendments 145 and 181 would allow the police and crime panel to request the attendance of the chief constable in the exercise of their duties. We have noted your Lordships’ comments and we thank my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lord Shipley in particular for their contribution. It is still one of the fundamental principles of this reform that it is the police and crime commissioner who holds the chief constable to account. As has been said, we believe that such dual accountability would lead to a confusing landscape, with the chief constable being pulled in two different directions and the public unclear as to who they were holding to account for their policing service.
However, it is recognised that in order for the police and crime panel to fulfil its role in holding the police and crime commissioner to account, there might be times when the chief constable’s attendance is desirable, so it is proposed to give the panel the ability to request their attendance. That stops short of it being able to compel him or her to attend and it will be for the chief constable, in consultation with the police and crime commissioner, to decide. As I said, the principle is that the PCP’s function is to scrutinise the PCC rather than the chief constable but we acknowledge that there may be occasions when it is desirable for the PCP to meet the chief constable.
I turn to information provided to PCCs and to government Amendments 182 and 186. Noble Lords will be aware that, as originally drafted, the Bill provided that a chief constable could be required to provide a police and crime commissioner with any report that he or she saw fit. That matched the existing provisions for police authorities and one may well ask what these government amendments add to that. It is arguable that a report is a document containing or consisting of information—we certainly take this view—so that a power to require reports necessarily encompasses a power to require information. While this was not discussed in your Lordships’ House, a number of parties have raised with us concerns about the existing provisions.
Those concerns were, essentially, that by requiring a report rather than information, the PCC might only be able to obtain the chief constable's interpretation of data rather than being able to analyse that data themselves. I am confident that chief constables would not in any way seek to misrepresent data or use them selectively. However, in order for the PCC to be able properly to hold the chief constable to account, they will need to be able to see raw data for themselves so that they can give their own thought and analysis of them. This amendment will ensure that happens and that there can be adequate and appropriate flows of information between the chief constable and the PCC. It will also achieve consistency throughout the Bill, since similar provisions such as Clauses 14 and 94 are couched in terms of information rather than reports. Comment, opinion or analysis are kinds of information, so a PCC will still be able to use this clause to require the chief constable to give an account or explanation of any matter of concern. As such, I hope that noble Lords will support these government amendments.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I have learnt one new thing today: the use of the term triangulation. I feel that any response would simply risk going round the circuit again, although I note that the noble Lord has just given some assurances on interpretation of terms, which will be useful, and I must acknowledge them. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 51.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(13 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Hamwee
That was only four minutes—it really is not good enough. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, the first part of the test is about the budget and I have amendments on that as well. Amendments 112, 113 and 114 are my amendments in this group. I tabled them, and I think that my noble friend Lord Shipley’s name would have been added to them had he known I was doing this, as he agreed the wording. I associate him with them.
After a discussion instigated by the Minister at the all-party meeting which she held to discuss the protocol—where she talked about the role of the panel as being supportive as well as destructive, or, at any rate, as carrying on the scrutiny function—we had a discussion about what scrutiny meant. I decided to write my amendments to that effect and these three are the result. “Constructive”, “collegiate”, “collaborative” and so on are words that we have been tossing around in debate over the past few days. We have been talking about checks and balances and, to my mind, this is the balance. The words that I have added in as part of the balance are:
“keep under review the exercise by the … commissioner of the statutory functions”;
“undertake investigations”; and,
“support the … commissioner with regard to”,
not just the functions, but specifically:
“the development of his or her police and crime plan and its implementation and the development of his or her budget”.
That is quite deliberate because we need to recognise the budget as the facilitator, the implementer of the police and crime plan. They are so connected as to be inseparable.
I am afraid that I will repeat what I have said before, but the panel cannot be supportive without a major role in both the plan and the budget. You have to start with the panel’s role in the plan and the panel cannot do its supportive job without the tools to undertake it. The Minister has her version in Amendment 107. Although I welcome the warm words here, I think that the panel needs the specific powers. I realise that we are unlikely at this stage to persuade the Government of this, but my mind is unchanged. We are each a product of our own background, and the baggage that I carry is of spending some years in a scrutiny role. Knowing that I have, as it were, the tools in my back pocket, rarely having to be used but always there, is a very important part of the tool-kit, as the jargon goes.
My earlier amendments in this group, Amendments 94, 96, 97, 98 and 100, again are to make the point—which, I suspect, has not been understood—that you cannot just look at the precept, a point that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made as well. The precept is the last stage in the development of a budget. There may be a fundamental political difference—I do not want to say fault line—between different politicians as to whether one starts by looking at the precept as taxation, and therefore bad, or as the result of a budget and how you spend the money, and therefore good.
My amendments are not just about the precept but about the heads of expenditure that go to make up the budget and the important tool that the commissioner will have, which is virement between the different heads.
Amendment 146 deals with the need for approval of the budget and spells this out in some detail. It includes the veto of the budget, as distinct from the veto of the precept. In response to a debate on these issues, the Minister said:
“Our intention would be for a series of discussions to be held, not just one blanket meeting at which, for example, the precept or the budget was discussed and a decision taken without the panel having a lot of background information”—[Official Report, 6/6/11; col. 34]—
and so on. Of course that must be right, but stating the intention is a very long way short of giving the mechanisms to the panel to do the job that I have described.
Baroness Henig
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 108 and 111 in this group. As my noble friend Lord Beecham said, this is a very diverse group of amendments. The two amendments in my name relate to the functions of the police and crime panel. Amendment 108 revises and rationalises the functions of the panel and Amendment 111 simply removes an existing clause relating to panel functions to reincorporate it in a more rationalised fashion within Amendment 108.
In briefly outlining the effect of these amendments—not too briefly, since we seem to be racing through them, so perhaps I will try to slow down a little—I would say that they are designed to set out a more collaborative approach to the panel working with the commissioner. This includes an essential role in engagement with the public at local level and with police performance at divisional level. My aim is to exploit the strength of local councillors in a way that enables them to contribute constructively to police governance. I emphasise that there is no great gulf between what I, my noble friend Lord Beecham and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, are trying to do in these amendments, and what the Minister is trying to do. She talks about the panel having a supportive role. Others of us see that role as being collaborative and constructive. There is not much difference between “supportive” and “collaborative and constructive”. If I could nudge the Minister just a little further, that would be helpful. It is not a big change, but being constructive and being able to collaborate would help the panel to operate in a more tangible way that I will come on to describe.
I want to give specific functions to the panel in relation to working with the commissioner to develop a detailed police and crime plan, budget and precepting proposals. Again, this is designed to encourage a corporate approach rather than, as might otherwise happen in some areas, a confrontational approach to police governance. My amendments also provide that a panel must hold public meetings, which is ultimately a cornerstone of securing true public accountability. The driving concern behind this group of amendments is the attempt to describe a more co-operative approach to overcome the dangers of polarised political differences or overfamiliar political relationships between the commissioner and the panel that would render governance ineffective.
I appreciate that there is a government amendment in this group that attempts to specify a more co-operative and supportive approach for the panel and the commissioner. It is very welcome, but rather unspecific. This is true of a lot of government amendments; they go in the right direction and their spirit is right, but they are very general. My amendments attempt to put more flesh on the bones, to nudge the Government a little further and to describe in more detail how the panel and the commissioner should work together. I draw noble Lords’ attention specifically to the part of the amendment that covers the policing plan, the budget and the precept. These are key areas in which the panel should be involved not just in scrutinising the commissioner but in contributing to developing the shape of these things. That is what it should be doing and that is what I hope my amendment would achieve.
It echoes some amendments put forward by others which specify a more detailed role for the panel in, for example, scrutinising the detail of the budget. Again, my amendment goes a little further and suggests that the panel should contribute constructively to shaping the budget. As I said earlier, it also provides a key role for the panel in providing a link between local areas and the wider police area. We discussed in earlier debates the need for this more local link, which is consistent with what councillors do and puts members of the police and crime panel in a good position to play a more active role at local level. In this context, two elements are particularly important. First, it will enable panel members to complement the role of the commissioner in engaging and consulting with communities. Panel members can bring views from areas and communities that might otherwise not be heard into the wider policing family. Secondly, it will enable panel members to keep an eye on police performance at a more local level, so that they will be in a position to bring emerging problems to the attention of the panel and the commissioner before they become major.
In practice, a lot of this will happen anyway in areas where the commissioner is good at forming relationships. Where there are good commissioners, good relationships will be formed and the commissioner will want to work with the panel in this way. This will all happen as a matter of course. My concern is about areas where the commissioner will not be good at forming relationships and working with others. Of course, it will be in precisely those areas that prescription will be most necessary. In a sense, we are all looking to the areas where things will not necessarily work well, where problems will arise and where the Government will be forced to say, two or three years down the line: “What a shame we did not put this or that in place”. I am trying to envisage how this will work in practice, how it might best be played out and what we can put in the Bill to make it happen.
I will also mention voting. My amendment specifies that all decisions of the police and crime panel should be taken by majority vote. I am sorry about that: I heard what was said about two-thirds, but I am a great majority-vote person. It is what I am used to and it is consistent with other amendments that I will put forward in relation to veto powers, which suggest that these, too, should operate by a simple majority of the members present.
For me, that has the virtue of bringing consistency to the majority required for all panel votes and will avoid confusion that might otherwise arise by having different voting limits for different things. In later amendments I will discuss why I think veto powers should be exercised through a simple majority. Suffice to say for now that I believe it is entirely consistent with strengthening the role of the panel.
As I mentioned, these amendments put some flesh on the bones and set out how greater co-operation between the panel and commission might be achieved in relation to key functions. While they set out some practical ways in which the role of the panel can be strengthened, to perhaps guard against some of the worst problems that could arise, they cannot entirely cure what I still think is a fundamentally flawed model. None the less, I hope they will be regarded as—and they really are meant to be—constructive suggestions about giving a stronger and more balanced role to the panel.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(13 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am sorry to strike a slightly different note on this matter but I should like to ask the Minister a question or two. The list in the Bill to which she referred as “unamended” is a list of procedural matters relating to how the chief constable is to undertake his or her duties, rather than the subject of those duties. We debated this on a different amendment at the previous stage. I do not for an instant suggest that the matters to which the Minister and the noble Lord have referred are unimportant—they are of huge importance—but my concern is about singling them out. I used the example of trafficking adults as well as children—a matter which I think is appropriate for the strategic policing requirement, dealt with later in the Bill. My concern and my question to the Minister is whether singling out this subject in some way diminishes the responsibility that the chief constable has to exercise every other duty imposed on him or her by legislation. It seems to raise issues when one part of the very wide and varied responsibilities of the chief constable is included in a list which is qualitatively different. As I said, that is not for a moment to suggest that child protection is not important—of course it is —but I merely question how it is dealt with in legislation.
Lord Laming
My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that many, many crime Bills have been taken through this House? Over the years, the Home Office has been remarkably good at producing Bills of this kind. However, Parliament has also produced a range of very important children Acts, and those Acts need to be enshrined in developing legislation.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, Parliament has indeed produced a lot of Acts and, in my view, one of the problems is repeating bits of legislation time and again. A piece of legislation should be good enough to stand on its own and not require repetition or reference in other legislation.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I was very interested in the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. She will know that lists are often proposed in amendments, not least from her own Benches. If you list certain duties and responsibilities, there is always the problem that you might detract from other important duties and responsibilities. One has to use one's judgment. We certainly support the government amendments and I am sure that the noble Baroness will be able to confirm that, by listing the Children Act matters in the way that the Government propose, that does not exclude many other important matters from the chief constable's responsibilities.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Laming, on his success in persuading the Government today to bring forward this amendment. This is a significant day for him as he has been elected Convenor of the Cross Benches. I wish him future success in bringing forward further amendments to which the Government will no doubt respond.
I have one question for the noble Baroness. When we debated this matter in Committee under a number of amendments, at col. 1428, the debate concerned the Children Act and the Human Rights Act. I wondered whether there was a reason why the Government have brought forward an amendment in relation to the Children Act but not in relation to the Human Rights Act. Referring to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, does focusing on the Children Act detract from responsibilities under the Human Rights Act?
Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington
Certainly not. The two most successful Home Secretaries that I know of in history is the one who is sitting opposite, the noble Lord, Lord Howard, and the second—you would never get the name out of me if you tricked me—was Jack Straw. He of course would be represented in Labour. How about that for an apolitical comment?
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I was going to go back to the Roman Empire. With all this talk about Roman emperors, I wondered whether I should claim for myself the role of Caesar’s wife, but I think I ought to leave that for the Minister.
I have two amendments in this group and was very persuaded by arguments made at the previous stage by noble Lords who spoke in support of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Harris. When the Government objected to the term “shall”, I asked whether “may” would be more acceptable. It was almost before the words were out of my mouth that I knew that I was going to be challenged by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, who quite rightly made the point that police and crime commissioners who do not understand the need for robust governance arrangements are the ones who most need them.
My Amendments 4 and 18 break my own rules about providing for more regulation-making powers for the Secretary of State, but I have worded them in that way because I am not quite convinced that Amendments 3 and 20 quite capture everything. I have added to my list, in what would be new subsection (4B),
“provision for arrangements to ensure probity”.
Financial matters are within that, but probity covers a wider area.
I spotted what some might regard as a flaw in my amendment by providing for consultation with police and crime commissioners, or their union as it might be, before their coming into being, but I have assumed, for the purposes of this argument at any rate, that the transitional arrangements might give time for this as well as consultation with local authority representatives. That is because of the important role of panels, police authorities and local authorities in this area.
My noble friend Lord Wallace spoke in Committee of the importance of personalities and personal relationships, and a willingness to co-operate. He was quite right, but I would say, “Yes, but”, or maybe, “Yes, therefore”.
There was also concern about how much detail should be in the Bill. Well, there is quite a lot of detail in it, so I would like to see some that I would be comfortable supporting. My noble friend also talked about the roles undertaken by the chief executive and the chief finance officer. He said that they would ensure that propriety and that:
“They will be subject to established public authority duties, as are their equivalents in police authorities and elsewhere”.—[Official Report, 18/5/11; col. 1466.]
They do have those duties, but that is not the same as governance in the round. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Howard, that the police and crime panels, with their limited checks, are not governance. Most of their duties are to be carried out in arrear. They do not have a contemporary role and that is what governance is about. If it is to be their function, the Bill needs a lot of amendment and I for one would be very happy to see that, but the check, balance and scrutiny role in police and crime panels is a different role from governance.
There have been major developments in governance in public life recently. Many of your Lordships will be involved in charities where hugely different arrangements have had to be put in place over recent years. It is proper that there are such standards in public life. This is another such position. I am not convinced that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, is spot on and I am sure that he and the Minister will say that mine is not either, but something needs to be provided that surrounds, supports and controls this new office.
Lord Condon
My Lords, the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, gives us some comfort and takes us in the direction of more reassuring corporate governance than the Government's current proposals. Like the noble Lord, Lord Harris, I accept that the Government will probably be successful in reinstating their provisions for elected police and crime commissioners, but there remains an element of the doctrinaire in their proposals. There is a feeling that the election by the public of a single person who is then unencumbered by advice, support or challenge is the only way forward. I fear that the only people around the elected police commissioner offering expert advice could well be sycophantic staff whose very livelihood relies on the elected police and crime commissioner.
The dilemma is that we are in an either/or situation. Either police and crime panels with an independent element must be given greater strength and authority than is currently proposed—and I was reassured by the Minister that we are moving a little way that direction—or we should have the model offered by the noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Stevens, of a board of non-executive directors.
I have spent 10 years in the private sector as a deputy chairman and non-executive director of one of the biggest companies in the world and I know the value of non-executive directors. The Government also know their value, because under their proposals this week for reform of the defence of our country the individual service chiefs will be removed from the Defence Board and replaced by non-executive directors. The Government know in their heart of hearts the value of non-executive directors.
I hope that the Minister will give us some comfort that we are moving away from this doctrinaire notion about the purity of the electorate electing the police and crime commissioner and the commissioner not being encumbered by any advice other than that which they choose to hire themselves. I am not sure that I could wholly support the amendment put forward by the noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Stevens, but we need either that or stronger police and crime panels, and words of comfort from the Minister.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(13 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, I have some concerns. I apologise for my colleague and noble friend Lord Condon not being here. I speak on his behalf as well as my own. Some of the concerns about how this will affect the police service have already been discussed. They have been described in a way that we would follow.
My noble friend Lord Condon and I worry about the fact that a pilot scheme of certain forces will not show what happens to the rest of the more than 40 forces, which will not get a real feel for it. The other issue that we raise is that the interaction with the national and international strategy must see the whole panoply of this new scheme and strategy there, in terms of the PCCs and PCPs. Unless you have that, our feeling is that there are uncertainties around it. To take a biting issue in terms of taking out certain things, but then not dealing with the whole issue at one time, would be counterproductive.
As has already been said, we have discussed the uncertainty around what is happening with the police service at other stages in your Lordships’ House. In the next six-to-12 months to two years, the police service will go through a massive period of change. There is no doubt, as my colleague and noble friend Lord Dear said, that the police service is best when it knows that it is acting with certainty. This will lead to uncertainty. My noble friend Lord Dear is also absolutely right that if you tell certain police forces that this is a pilot scheme, some will decide that it will work and some may decide that it will not. For that reason, we do not really support this particular amendment. We have reservations about it.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I have made it clear throughout that I want to see the model that is in the coalition’s programme for government implemented in full. My noble friend Lord Shipley quoted the relevant section from the agreement earlier, including the reference to the “strict checks and balances”. I fear that that term is losing its potency with repetition, but I say again that checks and balances are essential because of the dangers of the concentration of power in the hands of an individual.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said that he hoped to find some sympathy around the Chamber. He certainly finds that from me, but he also finds a little surprise. I do not know whether this was due to relaxing over supper, but he made a very low-key introduction to the issue. Perhaps this debate has come upon us at an unexpected point.
Now that we have seen the Government’s proposals in response to the very thoughtful and powerful points made in Committee, we have seen that the Government have moved, and I am happy to acknowledge that. It is always gratifying, and sometimes disconcerting, to see one’s own name linked with that of the Minister on an amendment, but there has been a good deal of movement. However, there has not been movement on the range of issues about which concerns have been raised, nor in many cases do the government amendments go far enough.
I am speaking personally for myself and for my noble friend Lord Shipley, rather than for the I know not how many who are ranged behind me at the moment—attendance is not bad, actually, for 8.50 pm —but this is, I stress, very much a personal viewpoint. Many of the checks and balances that are needed centre around the police and crime panel’s scrutiny role, on which our amendments at this stage of the Bill, as at the previous stage, would spell out what we believe that scrutiny should comprise.
As for checks, I think that a body needs the ability not just to say politely, “We don’t agree”, nor to say, “and we require your reasons”, but sometimes to say, “No”, if it is to act as a check. When any model is working well, there is no need to use the whole armoury, but I do not believe that it is possible to legislate for harmony and co-operation. One tries to set up the model to encourage such co-operation, but one cannot require it. Mechanisms are needed to provide that no.
Of course, it would be impertinent to suggest that we have identified all the necessary, or even desirable, checks and balances, but I must say that I would feel more comfortable if more were proposed in the Bill. Therefore, as an alternative, I think that we need to look to experience. The noble Lord, Lord Howard, said that we cannot draw general conclusions because of the diversity across the country, but it seems to me that, unless the framework is robust enough to cater for these matters—
Lord Howard of Lympne
With great respect, my noble friend misunderstands me. It is not because of the diversity around the country but because of the nature of democracy, and the diversity that democracy inherently produces, that I do not believe that general lessons can be learnt. That is an important distinction.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I would accept that: democracy is quite untidy. Liberal Democrats have often said that it is not a bad thing to have a patchwork, with different arrangements for the delivery of service in different places and to different communities, which may be geographic or may have other characteristics. For instance, with regard to Wales, we have heard that it is important to have similarity because the provision of the service crosses the border. I think that we need to be reassured that the underlying framework, which may then grow different bits, is robust enough to serve the whole of England and Wales.
I tabled an amendment on pilots at Committee, and I acknowledged that the proposals could be approved. For instance, to have an independent review and report would be a good thing, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, rightly suggested. He also made the point—this is a question to him—that, if the experience from the pilots was to be utilised, there would have to be a mechanism whereby the Secretary of State, probably, could tweak the arrangements within the Bill. I am not sure that I have found that in his amendment, but he may be relying on the arrangements around commencement; I do not know.
At the previous stage, I asked the Minister whether there was any other mechanism that the Government might suggest for—to use the words that I used then—assessing and evaluating the model, but she did not answer the question. I am not sure whether she was unable to answer it, but for me that question still remains. I understand that there is a concern about certainty, but I do not understand that there is a concern to achieve certainty about a model over which there still hang so many anxieties. Speaking for my noble friend Lord Shipley and myself, we support the amendment.
Lord Beecham
I confess to being in two minds, having heard my noble friend’s argument for the case, supported by the noble Baroness, but also the objections to the proposed course from the noble Lords, Lord Howard, Lord Dear and Lord Stevens. I can see the force of the objection to the prospect of a limited number of pilots stretching over a number of years, but it is not so much a question of democratic principle being at risk from such an exercise. The concern is around precisely the issue of checks and balances. If it goes through and we have an elected police commissioner, that is relatively straightforward; it is what happens in that context over time that will tell whether the checks and balances that some of us feel are inadequate are sufficient to meet the case. Actually, a limited number of pilot examples might not demonstrate that. The noble Lord has a point in that respect.
To develop a theme that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, advanced, I wonder whether the practice of what is a major constitutional change in the way in which the police service in this country is run could be reviewed after a period of three years. I do not mean on the basis of a number of pilots, but we could take a considered view after three years, say, and look at whether the expectations are being fulfilled. I accept that the Government are genuine in their belief that they have got it right or are getting it right on checks and balances. Without a formal sunset clause, perhaps we could have an indication that that situation would be reviewed and adjustments made, if necessary, around the areas of concern that many noble Lords have voiced about the practice of this new structure, with its implications for accountability and effectiveness, both at local level and in connection with the other concerns about national strategies and the like.
It is less of a formal legislative process that I am suggesting might be considered and more one in which it would be possible to revisit these concerns, taking a broad look across however many authorities will be involved in any new structure and with a view to fine tuning, as it may be, or making perhaps more substantial changes in the light of what will by then be a general experience, which might tell us whether the hopes of Ministers in proposing these changes are being fulfilled. Would the Minister care to consider whether such a process might be acceptable to the Government without necessarily changing the terms of the Bill?
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, if the analysis of the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, regarding a change in government policy is correct, I welcome it. It is what the public want and, although some in the business sector will be unhappy about it, I think that overall this set of amendments would undermine the Government’s attempt to respond to the clamour which has increasingly grown up among the public at large and has been reflected in some of the work done in the consultation. Therefore, I hope that the Government will not backtrack and that they will dig in firmly and hold to their course on this. The public will certainly support them in that.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend—to the extent of New Year’s Eve, at any rate. I have Amendment 240V in this group, to which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has added his name. It would provide for permitted exemption categories and exempted days, and is part of a continued conversation about how far local variances should be reflected and the extent to which they should be centrally prescribed. Noble Lords will not be surprised that I always find myself at the local end of the spectrum.
This matter was brought to us by the Local Government Association. It seems that licensing authorities should be able to determine the categories of premises to be exempted from EMROs in their local area. This would not be novel, even in the context of the Bill, as it would mirror the late-night levy exemptions that licensing authorities can decide locally. There seems to be no logic for having different systems, particularly as I understand from the LGA that the Home Office has proposed to use the same definitions for categories of possible exempted premises for EMROs as for the late-night levy. The broader point, as I said, is local determination.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, perhaps I may make a very brief gloss on the speech of my namesake, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe. Reflecting back to the debates on the Licensing Bill in 2003, I think it would be fair to say—and I hope that those who were in the Chamber at that time would agree—that the arguments against the then Bill were led very much by those who had a lot of London experience. People who have a lot of London experience endeavour to mobilise opinion through the civic trust across the country, but it took quite a long time for that communication to take place during the passage of the Bill. It would be fair to say that those away from London were disagreeably surprised by some of the consequences of the Bill when they arrived in practice. I cannot sense totally from the speeches of my noble friends Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Astor how far they are centring on London experience in their observations but I think it is necessary to realise that we are dealing with a national issue.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, before that happens—and I dare say that it will—perhaps I may ask about exemptions. The Minister talked about working parties: that is all to the good. However, I am not sure that she addressed Amendment 240V, which would allow local authorities to categorise their own exemptions—but I may have missed that.
Baroness Browning
My Lords, local authorities will be allowed to have their own exemptions, but that will be part of the consultation that is taking place.
Baroness Hamwee
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, this takes us to the clause on fees and non-payment. I shall speak also to Amendments 240XB, 240XC, 240XD, 240XE and 240XG. These amendments are anti central prescription and pro local discretion. In many places, the Bill seems not only very prescriptive but unnecessarily prescriptive. For instance, it mandates the issuing of a receipt in a specific format in a set timescale. Is that really necessary? The word “nanny” was used, and rightly denied, but at this point, it would be an appropriate accusation. Other fee-paying regimes work out how to deal with these peripheral matters. We have a lot of legislation. This alone is a big Bill, but did it need to contain all this? At the most, it could be a matter for guidance, although I do not think that that should be required either. The Government are seeking to reduce regulatory burdens. This seems to be adding to them.
I shall be very brief on the detail of the amendments. Amendment 240Z would take out the provision for written acknowledgement of receipt of the fee—I cannot believe that that will not be done because people paying money require receipts—and the time periods to which I referred. Amendments 240XC and 240XD increase the grace period. Again, is this prescription absolutely necessary? The grace period is 21 days in the Bill, but I have suggested eight weeks. It is fairly obvious that I oppose my noble friend’s amendment in this group, Amendment 240XH. That follows from what I have just said. I support Amendment 241ZB, to which I think the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, will speak. I am very glad that the Local Government Association spotted what, coming up to Wimbledon, I can perhaps describe as an unforced error in the legislation. I beg to move.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, I welcome what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said and support her amendments. The provisions in the Bill are very detailed and our amendments, taken together, are an attempt to try to tidy up some of that and to reflect on the regulatory burden that is being imposed.
I shall speak to Amendment 241ZB, which has been mentioned. Someone spotted what appears to be a simple error: at present, it does not look as though the costs incurred by some parts of the licensing system can be recovered, particularly in two-tier areas. As is well known, when a licensing application is made, copies of the licence are sent to those parts of the council classified as responsible authorities under the Licensing Act. In unitary authorities, including London boroughs, metropolitan councils and Welsh councils, all those bodies exist within the same council, which is also the licensing authority. Therefore, the costs would be recoverable under Clause 122 as presently drafted. However, in two-tier areas, the licensing authority sits within the district council, whereas social services and trading standards sit at the county level. As a result, in two-tier areas, the costs incurred by social services and trading standards would not be recoverable should the clause remain unchanged. Our amendment is therefore imperative to ensure that all costs are recoverable, regardless of the local government structure in the area, thus fulfilling the commendable approach which has been taken in the Bill to allow full cost recovery through licence fees.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am glad to hear that the Government will reflect on Amendment 241ZB. I am grateful to my noble friend for responding to a couple of amendments that I failed to explain. I have been a little distracted by a domestic crisis. One should not use a BlackBerry too much in the Chamber, but it has been jolly useful this morning.
If the receipt is intended as an acknowledgement that the suspension has ended, it seems rather a confusing mechanism. Simply providing that the authority must acknowledge that the suspension has ended would be a great deal clearer.
I shall say just a word about the general costs. There is a reference to a cap. I am puzzled by how a cap can be consistent when the fees must reflect actual costs. Perhaps we can pursue that outside the Chamber.
I shall also put one thought into the Government’s mind. The references to general costs seem very wide. I am not surprised that they have attracted amendments. They are justifiable if they are a proper proportion of overheads. I wonder whether some wording such as “directly or indirectly related to the particular application” might be more reassuring and appropriate. Although some of us are approaching this from different points of view, we might be able to share some thoughts before the next stage. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 240Z.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I have Amendments 241DA, 241H, 241J, 241K, 241N, 241R and 241S in this group. There is a concern that the late-night levy will not be used very much because of the bureaucracy and costs involved in the scheme, and because only a few local authorities have enough late-night venues to make it worth them running the scheme. We wait to see but, again, my concern is about central prescription.
I understand that the Government regard the levy as a tax and so say that it must be prescribed centrally. I wonder whether that is a bit circular. Can you be a bit circular? You either are or you are not—perhaps it is elliptical. If a local authority had discretion regarding the amount of the levy to reflect the costs, would that make it a charge rather than a tax? Therefore, to mix my metaphors, I am not sure which is egg and which is chicken in all this, but I firmly believe that the levy should be locally determined on the basis of full cost recovery.
I asked the Local Government Association about the costs associated with late-night operation, and your Lordships will not be surprised to learn that the list includes things such as street cleansing, taxi marshals and clearing up in the widest way after the large amount of activity late at night.
The consultation with local authorities on the regulations that relate to all this will be very important but there is a big cost. Because of that, I have transposed the 70:30 split so that in my amendment 70 per cent goes to local authorities to deal with things such as community safety initiatives, regulatory costs and other matters which I have already mentioned. After all, although I know that the police, too, could do with lots more money, they are already funded for areas of high-priority policing. The LGA has commented to me that police commissioners will be attracted to the idea of acquiring 70 per cent of the levy and may place significant pressure on their local authority to bring in the scheme. However, how the police’s 70 per cent should be spent or, perhaps more importantly, where, is not specified. The money could be raised in one area of the police force but used in another.
Amendment 241D reflects the concern of my noble friend in his amendment that local authority areas are not homogenous. If this new power is to be brought in it would be sensible for it to be focused and directed. Amendment 241H would take out the prescription of the amount of the levy. It is fair enough for it to be calculated by way of the formula, which is what Clause 129(1)(b) provides, but not the amount—Clause 129(1)(a) refers to that. I mentioned the 30:70 split which is referred to in Amendment 241N. Amendments 241R and 241S are about prescription and Amendment 241K is a proposed new clauseto provide a power for each licensing authority toset the levy for the reasons to which I have already alluded.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, we seem to be running into a little more difficulty with this group of amendments in terms of what the Bill is trying to achieve, and I look forward to the Minister’s response. Although, you can see where this idea has come from in the sense of the additional costs and other burdens on those with responsibilities in licensing areas, it seems to be a rather overbureaucratic approach. The overlap with the EMRO is not clear to understand—that point has already been made by other noble Lords. The reason why some aspects of this form of imposition are centrally determined and run by the Home Office and some are left to local areas is not at all clear. There is a problem about the scale and extent to which in any authority it would be sufficiently worth while for the licensing authority to introduce a local levy of this type. The case has yet to be made for a late-night levy.
Alongside that runs the argument that businesses already contribute to the community through their business rates. A proportion of revenue from business rates goes to fund local police and fire services—indeed all services—that will be drawn on in the sense that the Bill addresses this point. It seems to us that the late-night levy unfairly penalises responsible retailers by applying a levy to all licence holders and not just those who are trading irresponsibly. Funds raised in out-of-town centre premises will finance additional policing and other measures targeted at the late-night disorder in town centres because that is where it happens. Is it really fair for a village shopkeeper to pay for reducing disorder that they could not possibly have caused?
Businesses that sell alcohol and put on live music contribute to the community through their licence fees. Licence fees for selling alcohol and for regulated entertainment reflect the costs to the licensing authority of administration and enforcement of the licence. The point has been argued before and we think that it is fair. The proposed late-night levy would be a third tax—an additional cost and a stealth tax on the ability to operate at odd times of the day and night. It would affect small music venues that operate past midnight with entirely disproportionate consequences.
I wonder whether the Minister is aware that the CBI said recently that the late-night levy proposal contradicts the Government’s ambition for the creative industries to provide a key pillar of growth in the economic recovery and seems to be undoing some of the Government’s good work in supporting small live music venues.
Baroness Hamwee
I shall make two points on the Minister’s comments. First, she said that the standard level of the levy needs to be set nationally to ensure that there is a proportionate contribution from business. Is it not the case that there will be different costs in different areas? That is in the nature of the diversity of the country and of local authorities. Therefore, to set a standard levy may not reflect that diversity.
My second point is about Part 1—that seems so long ago that I wrote down the title of the Bill and then realised that we are still on it. We talked a lot about the need for police forces and local authorities to work in collaboration and co-operation, and I hope we will come back to this on report. In proposing that more resources go to local authorities, perhaps the Government will see that in the context of local authorities working with their police forces to deal with the impact of some of the difficulties arising from the late-night economy.
Baroness Browning
I hope I can reassure my noble friend that this levy has been designed to raise money for the police, who bear the brunt of late-night enforcement costs. As such, we believe they should receive the majority of the levy revenue after administrative expenses have been deducted. The local authority now works with the police and in future will work with the police and crime commissioner, so there will be a very close working relationship between the two to identify whether a licensing authority wishes to apply the levy.
My noble friend mentioned disproportionality in the levy charges. They have yet to be set. We have published only indicative figures. We currently plan to structure the levy charges on the existing licence fee bands, which, as my noble friend will know, are predicated upon the rateable value, so although this will be nationally set, it will be indicative of regional differences in bandings. In that way, we hope to have fairness and proportionality in the way in which the charges are structured.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Hamwee
Baroness Hamwee
This amendment takes us to the issues relating to Parliament Square. I start with an apology. Like many other noble Lords, I had thought that we would be a little further advanced by this time and I am committed to a speaking engagement, fortunately as near as Portcullis House. However, it means that I will not be here for the whole of the debate on this part of the Bill, about which I am extremely sad. The future of Parliament Square is an issue dear to my heart. However, I am delighted to see the repeal of what I have always thought of as offensive provisions in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.
I have no need to rehearse at length why it is so important that demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament should not be blocked. Indeed, I think that they should be facilitated. I was heartened, too, by a discussion that I had with the Hansard Society recently about the work that it is doing to promote better co-ordination of the various institutions around Parliament Square that are part of our democracy. That includes not just Parliament but the Supreme Court and Westminster Abbey. We could all operate better together for the benefit of tourists, of course, but more particularly for our own citizens. I do not want to see the re-enactment in the Bill of what I have described as offensive provisions for a narrower area—in other words, not to halfway up Whitehall and so on, but for Parliament Square itself.
Maybe it is important to rehearse the importance of the rights to peaceful protest and assembly, which are integral to our democracy. Any interference in them must be proportionate as it is a matter of human rights. The Government are held to account through a number of mechanisms. Making views clear to both government and Parliament, whose job is partly to hold government to account, is integral to that. This is all wrapped up with the right of free speech. I have said to your Lordships before that it does us as parliamentarians no harm to be confronted, in a physically non-confrontational way, with other people’s views. Sometimes those views are expressed vocally, though we may not hear so much of that at this end of the building. We tend to hear more noise from Old Palace Yard, which I think is outside the area covered by these provisions. The loudest is often the hymn-singing that is sometimes organised there by religious groups. As I said, it is not appropriate to re-enact the provisions for a narrower area, nor to give aesthetic considerations —tidying up the square—more weight than considerations based on democracy.
What is there about Parliament Square that needs more protection than is available through the Public Order Act 1986? That is at the heart of the questions in this group and on this part of the Bill. The Joint Committee on Human Rights report said that,
“the right to protest is clearly not an absolute right”.
It can legitimately be regulated but,
“the regulation of protest should not represent a hidden obstacle to the freedom of assembly”.
At paragraph 1.16, the committee said:
“the proposed offences must be justified by the Government as necessary to meet a legitimate aim and as proportionate to the proposed interference with the rights protected by Articles 10 and 11 ECHR, the right to freedom of expression and assembly”.
It said, I thought rather generously, that,
“the Explanatory Notes explain in very broad terms the Government’s view that these provisions are proportionate”.
I found it harder to detect justification in the Explanatory Notes. That is why I am opposing the question that these other clauses, beside Clause 142, should stand part of the Bill. That will save others from perhaps wondering in my absence why I am opposing that the clauses stand part. I know that my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, who will move the amendments that I cannot, and who has a much longer track record of standing up for these matters than I do, will speak to them. I will therefore also be opposing that some of the other clauses stand part.
On Clause 142, I am troubled by subsection (2) which provides that public assemblies will come within the Public Order Act, including,
“public assemblies which started, or were being organised, before this section comes into force”.
This may not be retrospective in a technical sense but I wonder what it means. Section 14 of the 1986 Act provides that a police officer can only give directions or impose conditions prospectively. I have been wondering whether Clause 142(2) means that the directions bite only from when they are given. This is of course relevant to whether there is an offence as regards the past, or whether the offence is committed maybe in respect of a continuing activity but only from the point of a direction that is not obeyed. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I shall intervene for a few moments. We are often told that scrutiny in the Lords is better than that in the Commons, but this is a section of the Bill that I would have liked to have talked on, under a number of amendments, and due to pressure of time and the fact that we will be going late this evening we will not have the opportunity. This section of the Bill will not be subject to the level of scrutiny that I believe it deserves.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord is enjoying asking a hypothetical question. As we know, the police operate through discretion and by consent. I remind him that the most hostile response I have had from the House when answering a question was when we discussed sessional orders and a number of his colleagues on the Benches opposite demanded that the police should clear space for their cars to enable them to drive through large demonstrations on their way to the House. I had to point out that the police operate by consent and occasionally do not wish to clear away thousands of demonstrators in order to ensure that noble Lords can drive in here. These are matters of judgment. We have to allow the police to operate by consent and to have confidence in them in that regard.
We are working with Westminster City Council and the Greater London Authority to ensure that the relevant by-laws are strengthened to deal with disruptive activity in the wider area as well as in the central traffic island—as I call it—of Parliament Square itself. Our approach is aimed at targeting specific problems in a small area of Parliament Square and empowering the local authority to take action by giving it the ability to enforce relevant by-laws more effectively. Having reassured the Committee on that, and having encouraged it to continue the wider debate which we started on Friday about the future of Parliament Square, Old Palace Yard and the environs of this world heritage site, I hope that I can persuade the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend and to the noble Lord, Lord Desai, for their support. I keep coming back to my question about what is so special about Parliament Square, apart from the fact that we love it. Noble Lords may have noticed that although I oppose a great deal of the Bill, the encampment is a different matter. I am not entirely encouraged to hear that more by-laws may be applied, but there we go.
I do not think that my noble friend answered my question about Clause 142(2). Can he answer the question about when it applies from—what I said was not technically retrospective—
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I apologise. That is very much a transitional arrangement to ensure that those who are already encamped there when the regulations are changed are not enabled to say that they do not apply to them. As I say, this is a transitional arrangement.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I understand that but since they will be committing an offence it may well be relevant to how long that offence has been committed for. If a direction is given on a Wednesday and they move the following Wednesday, they have committed an offence for a week, but they may have committed an offence for a year and a week if this measure is not technically retrospective, as I say. In terms of sanction, I would have thought that might be very relevant.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that is a very fair point. I promise that I will go back to the department and will write to the noble Baroness about that.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am grateful for that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 244ZZB. I suppose for Hansard I should also say that I am also speaking to Amendments 244ZA, 244ZAC, 244ZCE, 244ZCF, 244ZDZA, 244ZDZB, 244ZEA, 244ZEB, 244ZEC, 244ZED, 244ZEE, 244ZEF, 244ZF, 244ZG and will oppose the Question that Clause 149 stand part.
The first half of the amendments in this group would replace “constable” with “senior police officer” in Clauses 144, 145 and 146. Under Section 12 of the Public Order Act a “senior police officer” means the most senior in rank at the scene. I had wondered whether a constable was referred to because of the seizure powers that would be likely to be carried out in many instances by a relatively junior officer. However, the definition in my Amendment 244ZAC answers the point. The Public Order Act got it right by stating that the officer should be the most senior in rank at the scene. It is appropriate to ask the Government to justify why they have extended that right, only in the case of Parliament Square, to warranted officers below the most senior in rank at the scene.
What worries me more are the powers to be extended beyond warranted officers; those powers are the subject of the remainder of the amendments in the group. Powers are to be given by the Bill to authorised officers, who will include employees of the GLA and Westminster City Council. Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens of the Metropolitan Police gave evidence to the Public Bill Committee in the Commons to the effect that a broad discretionary power, vaguely drafted, is very difficult for a police officer to exercise in the middle of a protest. However, police officers have training and experience that are probably not available to authorised officers—council employees. I know that the duties of some council employees have been extended to some public order matters. There are wardens in Trafalgar Square, but their experience and duties are rather different from those expected under the Bill.
The Bill grants powers of direction and seizure to an authorised officer, although, as a result of an amendment during proceedings on the Bill before it reached us, only a constable may use “reasonable force”. I welcome that, of course, although I cannot quite envisage an authorised person—a council employee—seeking to seize an item, its owner holding on to it, and the authorised person saying something such as, “Oops, please wait right there while I get a constable”. It is not clear that this is workable. It is better not to let those who are not warranted officers—warranted officers would be clearly identifiable—getting into the situation at all.
This was something on which the Joint Committee on Human Rights made a number of comments, referring to the fact that the Minister had explained that the Government thought it would be bureaucratic and time-consuming to limit the direction-making power to police officers. I am well aware of how much work the Committee has to get through tonight, but I nevertheless want to read the JCHR’s recommendation into the record. At paragraph 1.22 of the report the committee said:
“We are concerned that the main reason given by the Minister … is cost and administration saving”.
The committee continues:
“We welcome the Minister’s reassurance that these powers would be accompanied by guidance dealing with the appropriate exercise of discretion, identification and, in particular, with the reasonable use of force. However, no provision for these important safeguards is made on the face of the Bill. We regret the Government’s reluctance to accept the need for further definition or statutory guidance. In the absence of statutory safeguards, we do not consider that the Government has provided adequate justification for the extension of this broad discretion to use such powers to local authority employees or contractors”.
It also states at paragraph 123:
“We consider that the power to seize property is a power of the type which should generally be reserved to police personnel. Without further justification for seizure powers to extend to the local authority, we consider that this power should be limited to police personnel”.
I have cut down the amount that I was intending to read into the record. I beg to move.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
Briefly, I agree heartily with my noble friend. It is not just a question of the seniority of the police officer, or whether they are warranted. My noble friend made some important points. Every inquiry into difficulties with protests recently has found that training is the issue. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell the House what provisions are in place under this Government for better training. The other place concluded after G20 that never again must untrained officers be placed in the front line of public protest. Nowhere is more front-line than Parliament Square. Inadequate training in the law, including human rights and public order powers, and a lack of clarity about the role and function of the forward intelligence teams, who are very much on the ground in the case of bigger public demonstrations, have been issues.
I realise that since some of those comments were made, we have had the appointment of Sir Hugh Orde, who has brought some valuable experience in human rights training from Northern Ireland, which was recognised for integrating human rights training into general training. In human rights training, it is so important to get the balance between freedom of expression and that spilling over into something else.
The previous Government rather sloped their shoulders with regard to the Home Office giving guidance on what training should be given and said that it was a matter for ACPO. Does the Home Office feel more strongly now that guidance on training, particularly in this regard, is a matter for the Home Office?
Baroness Browning
My Lords, I will pick up on that last point about seizure before I begin to address the amendments. Police officers have different seizure powers that are largely based on their need to prevent crime or to seize evidence for a crime. People have mentioned deckchairs and other such items. Depending on the circumstances, it would be up to the police officer concerned to exercise their judgment about whether the item they were seizing was involved in either preventing crime or was evidence that might be used in a later prosecution.
Amendment 244ZZB is premised on ensuring that only the most senior officer present at a scene can issue a direction to cease doing a prohibited activity. The Government fully appreciate the likely challenge to these provisions. We understand that the intention behind the amendment is to ensure that directions are properly issued by escalating authority to the senior officer present at the scene. On a point of principle, the Government are confident that police constables, regardless of rank, can issue appropriate directions. The Government support the return of discretion to police professionals.
On a point of operational practicality, the package of reforms is designed to support early and proportionate interventions by the police to prevent an escalation of prohibited activities. However, the amendment would hinder that. Amendments conferring powers only on the senior officer present at the scene would have an adverse impact on practical enforcement on the ground, and on that basis I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
The same arguments extend to Amendment 244ZA and other amendments in a similar vein. These amendments would remove powers from authorised officers of the Greater London Authority and Westminster City Council, about which I shall say more in a moment. The effectiveness of the new legal framework in Part 3 depends on a strong collaborative partnership approach between the Metropolitan Police, the Greater London Authority and Westminster City Council, with which the Home Office continues to work closely. It is necessary for all three agencies to be able to exercise some powers to avoid the type of situation in which, for example, a heritage warden employed by the Greater London Authority found himself unable to act or to deal with an individual until a police officer arrived to assist. Removing all powers from authorised officers would make the provisions in Part 3 unworkable.
Clearly, members of the public must be able to identify authorised officers, understand what powers they have and their authority to use them, and what avenues of complaint are open to them. Greater London Authority heritage wardens carry identification and wear a uniform, as do authorised officers from Westminster City Council. We understand from both the GLA and Westminster City Council that to date there have been no issues with authorised officers’ identification for the purposes of implementing by-laws. In addition, we are working with the relevant authorities to develop enforcement protocols and guidance on all these issues. I say to my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer that the Home Office has undertaken to provide the guidance and operation for this part of the Bill.
The Government recognise the concerns generated by the powers that are available to authorised officers. That is why, as noble Lords may know, we have listened to concerns raised in the other place and have decided to remove the power to use reasonable force from authorised officers. However, the amendments would take away the powers of authorised officers to deal with even the most routine cases. I urge noble Lords not to press their amendments, which would make the provision in Part 3 unworkable. I hope they will feel that I have given them sufficient information to be more confident about how we intend to proceed with this part of the Bill.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, as has been said, seizure of items, as well as directions, will be very much a matter for judgment. My noble friend referred to training—an issue which was highlighted following past experience. We often talk about lessons learnt but do we ever actually learn the lessons or just talk about learning them? Exactly the same applies to the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours—it will be a matter for judgment. Overenthusiastic authorised officers may well escalate a problem rather than calm it down. The Minister refers to practical problems regarding the senior officer on the scene. I think that the issuing of directions will be less of an issue than one-to-one encounters. Therefore, again, I am not wholly persuaded.
The GLA and Westminster say that there have been no problems with identification as regards their own officers in the past, but I wonder how much that has ever really been tested. I hear what the Minister says, so at this point I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Doocey
In view of the lateness of the hour, I will be brief. The purpose of Amendment 251 is to move the implementation of the changes to policing in London from October this year to October next year. The Mayor of London and the Government are keen to introduce the new system from 1 October this year and the Bill would allow that to happen. There are two important reasons why that should be delayed.
First, the Olympic and Paralympic Games will take place between July and September next year. There will also be many preparatory events which require large policing operations. For example, the torch relay will start in May and continue until July. That will be a major security challenge. Police officers will be drafted in from all parts of the country to police the Games. The Olympics will affect every police force in Britain, not just the Metropolitan Police. There is absolute agreement that the Olympics present the biggest security challenge that British police have ever faced in peacetime. They will require a policing operation on an unprecedented scale. The Metropolitan Police have spent years planning for every eventuality. As circumstances develop, these plans will need to be updated and revised to take account of issues as they arise. For any Government to allow the police to divert their efforts from this huge security operation in order to take part in a reorganisation is deeply worrying.
Secondly, the mayoral election in London next May could result in a change of mayor. It is entirely possible that a new policing system could be put in place on 1 October this year, designed to reflect the current mayor’s priorities, only to be dismantled again next year if another party wins the election. It is a real possibility that the police in London could face not one but two major reorganisations in the period leading up to the Olympic Games. Reorganisations are disruptive in any organisation. This one will require the police to change all their reporting structures and to brief a completely new set of stakeholders and board members. This is no easy task, as anyone who has ever been involved with policing will say. It will take huge effort and time on both sides. The reorganisation will be work-intensive, expensive and time-consuming. It should happen only once and at a time when it does not conflict with the planning of the Olympic Games. The police must not get involved in a major reorganisation at this time. They must be free to concentrate their efforts and energies on the greatest security threat this country has ever faced.
Baroness Hamwee
I support my noble friend in her amendment. She has been absolutely consistent and spoken powerfully on a number of occasions, both in public and in private, about this issue. She has certainly convinced me. I have not told her, but I thought at the start of the conversation some months ago that she was perhaps overegging the case. I do not believe that now. In view of the time, I do not want to detain noble Lords any longer but wanted to put that on record. Similarly, though I do not want to enter into much of the discussion that surrounded Amendment 252, I said during the debate on pilots that I thought it a good idea for HMIC to report on the operation of pilots. That was many hours of debate ago but it is only consistent of me to support a different arrangement but one also involving HMIC and a report to Parliament, as contained in Amendment 252.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington
My Lords, I support the amendment in respect of one issue in particular, which is the issue in terms of judge and jury where the commissioner would decide on a case and then be the appellant authority. It flies in the face of natural justice. All I ask is that the Minister has a look at that and takes legal advice in relation to it. I am quite sure that at some stage there might be room for changing that part of the Bill.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the noble Lord from the Cross Benches interestingly reminds us of the two limbs of the item in the coalition programme for government. The second, which in my view is of equal status to the first, is the strict checks and balances on the first limb.
I support what has been said on Amendment 234. On Monday, I put forward an amendment which specifically addressed the monitoring of complaints to which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, has referred. It is important to look at how complaints are handled overall as well as individually.
The theme of Amendment 220ZZA surfaced strongly when we debated the Localism Bill a couple of days ago. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, is right to draw our attention to this. Assuming that there will be different codes of conduct, and there should be, how such codes are to fit—when you have members of a panel who will be subject to particular standards and provisions, we hope, in their capacity as local councillors—with any separate code of conduct in this capacity and the need for a chief commissioner to be subject to some sort of arrangement requires a lot more thinking through.
The noble Lord’s point about the monitoring officer, who will I assume be appointed by the commissioner or a member of the commissioner’s office—perhaps we will hear whether the Government have any different idea in mind—is important. I have seen monitoring officers a little out of their depth. It is important that they should have both the tools and the qualifications to be able to carry out what can often be a difficult and sensitive role. I have also seen monitoring officers who are absolutely splendid at the job because they are so sensitive to the huge range of issues that not every monitoring officer spots is going across her or his desk as part of the monitoring process.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Browning)
My Lords, following the decision on the first day in Committee, this Bill now removes the current arrangements for policing governance. The Government’s intention in relation to Schedule 14 is to ensure that there is a proportionate and effective police complaints system with responsibility for responding to complaints resting at the appropriate level. The Independent Police Complaints Commission will be responsible for the handling of appeals in cases where the complaint is of a description set out in regulations. Such cases may include those where the allegation may amount to a criminal offence or would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings. In low level complaint matters, it is appropriate that the chief officer of the force concerned should be responsible for ensuring that there has been an appropriate response to a complainant’s concerns.
The amendment to Schedule 14 would mean that the responsibility for dealing with appeals against low level complaints in the Metropolitan Police would be handled by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime rather than it resting with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. While the Government recognise that this is one way of providing some independent scrutiny of such matters, we are not persuaded that the responsibility and duty to consider individual appeals should be different in London and rest with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. The Bill already provides a power to the relevant local policing body to enable it to direct the chief officer to take such steps it considers appropriate if it determines that the complaint has not been appropriately dealt with. The local policing body also has functions to ensure that it is kept informed about the handling of complaints within its force and to ask for information being held on the force’s systems related to complaints. The Government consider that these safeguards are sufficient and achieve the same effect as the amendment suggests. It is the Government’s view that the responsibility for the handling of low level matters should rest with the chief officer of a force, with the local policing body holding the chief officer to account and vested with the power to intervene if it is not satisfied that a specific complaint has not been dealt with by the chief officer to a satisfactory standard.
Moving on to Amendment 220ZZA, this Labour amendment which seeks to insert a new clause after Clause 78 would give the Standards Board for England a role in providing guidance relating to the conduct of chief commissioners, members and co-opted members of the police and crime panels, and the police commissions in England and Wales. It would also be able to issue guidance relating to the qualifications and/or experience that monitoring officers should possess. However, Clause 15 of and Schedule 4 to the Localism Bill will abolish the Standards Board so there would be no practical effect in accepting this proposal.
However, I take the points made about the Localism Bill, which has come before your Lordships’ House in the past few days. In the Localism Bill, with the abolition of the Standards Board regime, it will become a criminal offence for councillors deliberately to withhold or misrepresent a personal interest. This means that councils will not be obliged to spend time and money investigating trivial complaints while councillors involved in corruption and misconduct will face appropriately serious sanctions. This will provide a more effective safeguard against unacceptable behaviour. In order to retain confidence in the policing system, any allegations of criminal behaviour against police and crime commissioners will be referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It will then be for the IPCC to determine the appropriate method of investigation. Allegations of criminal behaviour against members of police and crime panels will be investigated by the police service in the normal way.
We realise that there are two pieces of legislation here. In the light of that, we are negotiating with colleagues to see whether amendments are needed in either this Bill or in the Localism Bill.
Baroness Henig
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 220ZA, 220ZB, 221B, 228B and 228C. These amendments can be split into two groups, though both parts seek to foster appropriate safeguards which will protect the public from the possible whims or vagaries of an individual commissioner exerting inappropriate influence over the police. The first group, Amendments 220ZA, 220ZB and 221B, seek to strengthen the idea of the strategic policing requirement or SPR—a concept supported across the House but one which many think needs to be strengthened to enable it to succeed.
First, my recollection is that the Policing Minister in the other place said in Committee there that a draft strategic policing requirement document would be available to Peers at Committee stage. There has been no mention of this document in discussions in your Lordships’ House thus far. Can the Minister tell us when we might expect to see that document? It is very important that we see it because it will set out the police’s approach to dealing with national and regional threats and help us to understand what the role of police governance needs to be at this level. At present, we are being asked to approve an approach in principle to legislation without being able to scrutinise the detail in this area, when we do not know what the national police landscape might look like. I hope that the Minister might be able to tell us a bit more about that document.
The strategic policing requirement is a crucial component of the changes proposed by the Government. Under a new regime of accountability, driven by a focus on public perception and visibility while constrained by cuts, that requirement could help to ensure that less visible cross-border and specialist policing functions are not neglected while issues such as antisocial behaviour predominate in planning and local police resourcing. Amendments 220ZA and 220ZB therefore propose practical changes that would ensure sufficient time elapses between the Home Secretary producing the SPR and each local policing and crime plan being finalised. The idea is that the timescale would help to ensure that the strategic policing requirement could be wholly and thoughtfully reflected through each force’s local planning, not as an afterthought but as the core consideration that it must be if the public are to be kept safe from what are commonly known as level 2 or protective service threats.
Amendment 221B goes further in embedding the worthy idea of the strategic policing requirement by making all the members of the panel have regard to it. It is hoped that this will assist in balancing the necessary tendency towards parochialism on the part of those with an explicit role to represent a certain area with the duty to have regard to the bigger picture. It could prove a useful factor in ensuring that resources sufficient to protect the public are devoted to less visible or immediate local areas of policing. Finally, on the strategic policing requirement, Amendment 221B makes sure that although the entire police and crime commission must have regard to it, it is the commissioner who must ensure that it is fully,
“incorporated within the police and crime plan”.
I believe this requirement on the commissioner to lead from the top in delivering the strategic policing requirement is an essential component in its success if neighbourhoods are not to be consigned to a postcode lottery of unfairly inequitable levels of local protection from serious threats, such as terrorism and cross-border crime or issues such as domestic violence. That is my first set of amendments.
The second pairing of amendments, Amendments 228B and 228C, relate to the functions of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary. We heard from the Minister at a much earlier stage in our deliberations about the importance of that inspectorate’s assessment of police authorities as one means of driving improvement. Noble Lords might recall that it was urgently necessary to change from the present structure because of the inspection results that had so far come forth. It is worth detouring here just a little, if I may, to meet these criticisms: I remind your Lordships that 22 out of 43 police authorities were inspected and not one failed either an Inspectorate of Constabulary inspection or an Audit Commission inspection. I recall that the same level of success has not been achieved by the Government in their departmental inspections, or even by local authorities. So police authorities did extremely well in these inspections because the vast majority of scores assessed their performances as more than adequate or doing well, and a number attained the rank of excellent. That, not surprisingly, was reflected in a recent YouGov poll undertaken for Liberty, which revealed that 65 per cent of the public, on a nationwide sample of more than 2,300, think that the present system of police accountability is serving them well and is preferable to that proposed by the Government.
Whatever the results of these inspections, everybody has agreed that they were important, rigorous and thorough. If they have revealed the case for change, then why on earth should they not be engaged to continue driving improvement and measuring the success or otherwise of the new system? It is by no means clear to me that the Government wish the inspectorate of constabulary to have any duty to inspect police commissioners as they propose to abolish the ability and, indeed, the duty on HMIC to inspect police authorities.
By this stage in our deliberations, I think I can anticipate the Minister’s reply. I might be wrong, but I think it will go along the lines of saying that a commissioner’s fundamental accountability is to their electors and it is these electors who should have the job of deciding whether the commissioner has done a good job. We have had the argument a number of times that if there are to be directly elected commissioners, they will be responsible to their electorate. Of course, this argument is dangerously flawed because it assumes that a commissioner will stand for re-election. Certainly, those commissioners in a second term will not, and even first-term commissioners might not. Where is the accountability then?
Every time we try to put a check or balance in place to rein in a commissioner, the response is always that that runs counter to the Government’s concept that in the last resort, were we to have a directly elected commissioner, they can be accountable only to their electorate. If you accept the logic of that model, it means that you cannot have any strict checks and balances because ultimately it will all be up to the electorate. Under that model, 43 individual party politicians deploying huge resources will be able to exercise fairly decisive and possibly capricious pressure on policing and on the force senior and divisional command teams.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, quite rightly reminded the Committee earlier, the coalition agreement wording refers to strict checks and balances by locally elected representatives. The model currently before the Committee—the one outlined in the earlier amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, which found favour with your Lordships—actually provides these strict checks and balances and does so much more effectively than anything else that the Government have so far come up with.
The amendment seeks to provide another check by restoring the requirement on HMIC to inspect police commissioners who will not just be spending public money but setting public budgets and priorities for the emergency service of last resort in every community. It is important that they should be able to allow any part of the police commission to call in the inspectorate to inspect itself or a component part of the commission, as it can for any part of the force. It is an essential requirement that these inspections should be allowable. I believe that these simple changes could make a world of difference to public trust and confidence in the new system, providing, as they would, requirements on all forces to address the fullest range of threats to the public and also to provide independent verification of the efficiency and efficacy of those charged with overseeing the police and their substantial budgets. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I have Amendments 223, 224 and 225 in this group. I support the amendments in the group that would extend the duties to observe the strategic policing requirement to commissioners, for the reasons of which the noble Baroness has reminded us and on which many noble Lords spoke powerfully on previous days. Perhaps I can summarise those reasons as being the temptation for the commissioner to play to the local gallery, which is one of the dangerous aspects of the politicisation of policing to which many of us referred. I share, too, the concern that the words “have regard to” are insufficient. The Constitution Committee put it tactfully, saying that,
“the Government must explain why”,
the wording “is sufficiently compelling”. Those of us whose natural inclination is to go local are concerned about this; it is quite significant. As we come to the end of Part 1 of the Bill, I shall mention the need for strict checks and balances again, even though these are of rather a different kind.
My first amendment, which proposes that,
“any matter within the functions of the Serious Organised Crime Agency”—
I am aware of yesterday’s statement—
“shall be deemed to be … a threat”,
within this provision, is intended to seek assurances from the Minister on the approach to the work that is currently within SOCA. I chose that wording because I did not want to single out one area of criminality above others. I have said this before in Committee. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Laming, referred on the second day of Committee proceedings to child protection. I acknowledged then its importance. He acknowledged that child and adult trafficking, for instance, are—I hesitate to say of equal importance—within the same category. My noble friend Lady Walmsley will speak to a specific amendment on this in a moment.
It might be worth mentioning a letter that I am sure other noble Lords will have received from the Howard League for Penal Reform as we approached Second Reading. It is certainly useful to realise that some of the points that we make over and again are not just ones that we have dreamt up but are of concern outside this House. The letter mentioned the concern that the proposed elected police and crime commissioners would find it,
“electorally enticing to run a campaign aimed at”—
the example it chooses—
“the easy arrest and detention of children, rather than devoting resources to crimes that appeal less to the local media or populace”.
The Howard League for Penal Reform reminds your Lordships about the large number of sentences imposed on children, whom it describes as,
“‘low hanging fruit’ which partly accounts for their … high arrest rates”.
In what it calls the,
“harsh world of electoral politics”,
it is right to remind us of the different parts of the jigsaw.
My Amendments 224 and 225 would change the second part of the definition of a national threat from one that,
“can be countered effectively or efficiently only by national policing capabilities”,
to one that “is most likely to” be countered effectively or efficiently by national policing capabilities. The wording in the Bill, as drafted, of,
“countered … only by national policing capabilities”,
seems too restrictive. One would not want to see an argument over whether that criterion was satisfied when common sense says that the likelihood is that a national policing capability is required with regard to the matter. They may look like two rather small and insignificant amendments, but I am concerned that this part of the definition is too narrow and too restrictive. I hope this is something that the Government might take away and think about again.
Baroness Henig
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and I thank all noble Lords who participated in the debate, which covered some serious and important issues. That is why we have gone on at such length; it was necessary to cover the topics that we did. I will start with the point about having regard to the strategic policing requirement. My concern is that having regard to something is fine: “Yes, I have had regard to it, Minister, and then I have gone and done something else”. That is not the same as being inspected against it. It is not a matter of balance, but of what happens in practice on the ground. The words “have regard to” will not make people who want to have local policing requirements as a very important part of their menu do anything other than that. Being inspected against it would be the really important measure. I found the arguments of my noble friend Lord Harris compelling when he talked of the national threats that face us and the way in which they cover the whole country. Judging by the way noble Lords listened to that part of the debate, there was a general sense across the House that what the noble Lord was talking about was likely to be the situation.
Baroness Hamwee
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness, who has gone on to another point. Does she agree that it would be helpful if the Government could produce before the next stage a briefing on how the term “have regard to” has been interpreted in other contexts? Like the noble Baroness, I have a difficulty with it. However, if we are told that the courts have given it a greater importance and weight than she and I fear, that might be very useful.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for instigating this debate, although the precedent he sets of seeking to put right past legislative mistakes is rather disturbing for some of us. We would not have much Summer Recess this year if we were to follow his course of action. I had an enjoyable two years as Health and Safety Minister and dealt with the Health and Safety Executive on a regular basis. I recall discussions with the Minister of Defence on some similar issues; not in relation to Armed Forces in the theatre, but certainly in training exercises where some of the same issues obtained because of the need in training to help the Armed Forces understand the dynamics of being in theatre. I have some sympathy with where the noble Lord and noble Lords who have served as police officers are coming from.
However, my experience of health and safety is, first, that the legislation since 1974 has had a hugely positive impact in terms of a dramatic reduction in the number of lives lost and injuries suffered by people in the workforce. One ought to pay tribute to the Health and Safety Executive for the work that it has done. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Condon, when he recognised that and described the HSE as taking what he described as a common-sense approach. Secondly, my experience is that the HSE moved away from a kind of performance-management culture which judged the inspectors on the number of prosecutions that they instituted to one that was much more proportionate. That starts from the basis that if we can encourage employers to do the right thing in health and safety that is our preferred option unless there has clearly been a gross abuse of the law by an employer.
To be fair to the HSE, it has come under considerable criticism in recent years as the number of prosecutions that it has undertaken has gone down, but I think that that has been a common-sense approach. I am sure that the focus of inspectors on giving advice and guidance and seeking improvement is right. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, referred to the urban myths that often surround health and safety stories in the media. I share that view. When you dig down into some stories in the media, you find that, far from the Health and Safety Executive inspector saying, for example, “You can’t have hanging flowers in pots”, that is often an excuse used by public authorities for reducing expenditure.
The second problem relates to health and safety advisers. I very much agree with the comments of my noble friend Lord Harris, who has great experience of this. One of the problems is that a whole plethora of health and safety advisers has grown up and the advice that they give to organisations is often very risk averse. Sometimes employers run away from the fact that in the end this matter is not the responsibility of the health and safety adviser but of management and the employer. Sometimes employers need to say to health and safety advisers, “You may have given this advice, but it defies common sense and we are going to carry on doing what we want to do”.
If the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, were tempted to press the amendment either today or on Report, he would risk compounding his original error by encouraging us to pass bad law. This matter is much better dealt with through effective dialogue between police forces, the DWP and the Health and Safety Executive. I invite the Minister to encourage her colleagues in the DWP to institute discussions between the police service, the HSE and the Police Federation because it is important that the staff in the police force own any future development. The development of a dialogue and a greater understanding between the three parties is probably the best way forward rather than the way proposed in the noble Lord’s amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am relieved at the way this debate has developed because, when I first saw this amendment, knowing of the noble Lord’s seniority in his party I wondered whether this was some sort of “done deal”. Clearly, that is not the case. It sounds terribly patronising to say this, but the balanced attitude which noble Lords have displayed in their speeches is extremely welcome. The noble Lord, Lord Condon, talked about not exempting the police force en bloc, but where is the demarcation line? I think that all noble Lords have recognised that there needs to be one. Like other noble Lords, I think that health and safety, with a capital H and a capital S, is important and has had an unjustifiably bad press—not that I tend to read that press but one cannot avoid hearing about it. The law in regard to health and safety, and certainly the way in which it is applied, may have gone too far one way, but the pendulum should not swing too far in the other direction.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for introducing this fascinating debate. However, I should make clear that we on this side join the Police Federation in opposing the amendment, which would remove from police officers the statutory protection afforded by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. We believe that this would be a seriously retrograde step.
I had made a note to remind the noble Lord that a Conservative Government had brought the police service within the health and safety legislation through the 1997 Act but clearly I did not need to do so. Therefore, I congratulate him on mentioning that. Notwithstanding the debate that we have had, I believe that it was the right thing to do. I am not familiar with the detail of the prosecutions that took place, which were clearly traumatic and difficult for two very senior members of the police force. The message I take from that is that the prosecution did not succeed and that common sense prevailed. That is the real message. I am grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Condon, said that and recognised that events have moved on.
Perhaps I may pick up the issue around myths, because health and safety is beset by myths, half-truths, and sometimes downright fabrications. The police have been on the receiving end of this too often. As my noble friend Lord Hunt said, this is sometimes because people want to use health and safety as an excuse for not doing something, sometimes by overzealous application of health and safety requirements and sometimes due to ignorance of the law. The HSE, together with partners in local authorities and the wider health and safety community, has gone to great lengths to push back against these myths and to explain what is required. I shall come back specifically on that in relation to a case that the noble Lord, Lord Dear, mentioned.
My noble friends Lord Harris and Lord Hunt got it absolutely right. My noble friend Lord Harris said that it was important to inculcate health and safety into the mainstream of an organisation and to address it proportionately. Analysis shows that organisations, whichever one we are talking about, with good health and safety management invariably have other good management systems in place. My noble friend Lord Hunt referred to the positive impact of the 1974 legislation. That is right. It has stood the test of time. It is non-prescriptive and is meant to be operated proportionately. My noble friend said that sometimes it is the role of overzealous consultants to encourage people down paths that are not required under the legislation. One of the things on which I would congratulate the Government is the introduction of a register for consultants. It is work that we could claim to have started in our term of office and it will help to address this issue.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to the bad press that the Health and Safety Executive and others get. Let me refer to the report of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. In Appendix D, entitled “Behind the myth: the truth behind health and safety hysteria in the media”, he picks up one of the issues referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dear. The appendix refers first to the “Story” and states:
“In May 2007, newspapers published a story concerning the death of a 10-year-old boy who drowned while fishing for tadpoles with his siblings in an outdoor pond. Questions were asked about the role of the emergency services and accusations were made that the policemen involved stood by and watched a boy drown because health and safety rules forbade them from entering the water to save him”.
The report goes on to record the “Reality”. It states:
“Fishermen noticed that two children had fallen into the pond and they tried to bring the children in with their fishing tackle. They managed to drag a girl out of the pond but were unable to reach her brother. One of the fishermen tried to call 999 but was unable to get through so he called his wife. She rang the police and reported the incident. There was some confusion over the location of the incident and this resulted in the police attending the incorrect location. At the same time Police Community Support Officers were undertaking a normal patrol when they came across the incident. They alerted police officers to the correct location. The boy’s step-father and friend arrived at the pond just before the police officers. They immediately dived into the water and brought the child to the surface. The police officers then arrived and one of them dived into the water and helped to bring the boy onto the bank. Unfortunately by this point he had been underwater for 20 minutes”.
That is the gap between the myth and the reality.
I am bound to say that there are responsibilities on us all not to recycle these myths. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, when addressing the IOSH conference a little while before he was formally appointed, cited an incident some 18 months before when two police community support officers had stood by and watched a 10 year-old boy, who had jumped into a pond to rescue his sister, drown. The noble Lord said that they explained afterwards that they had not had their health and safety course on rescuing people. He also said that if that was thought to be completely exceptional, there was a case only a few weeks before where a man allegedly drove his car containing his two children into the river. He and the boy escaped but his sister was trapped screaming in the car. The two policemen stood by for 92 minutes while a diving team was brought from the other end of the county and said later that they were not allowed to rescue the girl themselves on health and safety grounds, and she died the following day. We all need to be mindful not to recirculate these myths.
Baroness Hamwee
“Exemption from civil proceedings for trespass brought by offender
(1) Section 329 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (civil proceedings for trespass to the person brought by offender) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1)(b), at the end insert “, and”.
(3) After subsection (1)(b) insert—
“(c) at the material time, the defendant was not a constable acting in the course of his or her duty.””
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 233A on behalf of my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill. Reference has just been made to experts. I am not as expert as my noble friend, and I may get into trouble because I am not going to use all the briefing that he has given me.
Amendment 233A would exclude from Section 329 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 a constable in the course of his duty. That section is what noble Lords might know as the Tony Martin defence. It was enacted in response to the case of Tony Martin, who shot two intruders in his home thinking they were attempting a burglary. It provides that the court must give permission for an offender to bring a civil suit for an assault committed at the time and in the circumstances that the offender committed the act for which he was convicted. It provides the defendant with a defence to such proceedings provided that his action was not grossly disproportionate. The defendant must believe the offender was about to commit an offence, was in the course of committing one or had committed one and that his actions were necessary to defend himself or someone else, to protect or recover property, to prevent or stop the offence or to catch and secure the conviction of the offender.
At the time that the section was being debated, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland of Asthal, said that the section,
“would strengthen the civil law to improve protection for victims of crime against civil claims for damages by offenders”.
She also said:
“It benefits third parties who are not the direct victim of the offence, but who may have intervened to protect the victim or deter the criminal”.—[Official Report, 11/11/03; cols. 1307-08.]
That was the only indication of the intended use of the section by those who are not direct victims of the crime.
In 2009, there was a case in the Court of Appeal: Anthony Adorian v The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. In his judgment, Lord Justice Sedley said:
“There is nothing on the face of the section or in its shoulder-note which manifests an intention to afford the police a novel protection from claims by offenders for objectively unreasonable or unnecessarily violent arrests”.
Only police defendants have invoked this section. Lord Justice Sedley went on to say:
“The consequences should not go unnoticed. In place of the principle painstakingly established in the course of two centuries and more, and fundamental to the civil rights enjoyed by the people of this country—that an arrest must be objectively justified and that no more force may be used in effecting it than is reasonably necessary—the section gives immunity from civil suits, not confined to those involving personal injury, to constables who make arrests on entirely unreasonable grounds, so long as they are not acting in bad faith, and accords them impunity for using all but grossly disproportionate force in so doing”.
In summary, Section 329 has only ever been used by the police, and my noble friend tells me that it has led to a mismatch between civil and criminal proceedings with no equality of arms between police and private individuals. The current position does not recognise that the police are public officers of the state endowed with special powers and that as a corollary they have special obligations that Section 329 allows them to circumvent. My noble friend says that ordinary people may be given some leeway for honest and instinct overreactions when protecting or defending themselves or another from a crime but, on the other hand, a police officer trained in the use of force must be required to justify his or her actions objectively and to use no more force than is reasonably necessary.
I had not appreciated until listening to the previous debate how neatly this followed on in some ways. My noble friend Lord Lester has tabled this amendment and as he is not able to be here this afternoon he asked me to move it.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on having picked up this point so well from her noble friend Lord Lester. I congratulate him too on putting down this amendment. I hope he will forgive me in his absence for describing him in this instance as a dog with a bone. He has come back to this issue today after first raising it following the judgment in the case that the noble Baroness referred to when the previous Government were in power. He did that in the course of a couple of Bills. At that stage Ministers, including me, I have to admit, had to tell the noble Lord, Lord Lester, that consultations would take place with the police.
There is undoubtedly a point here—the noble Baroness has described it very well. This particular section of the 2003 Act was clearly intended as some sort of response to the Martin case and the Act’s purpose was really intended, or so it said, for other citizens as opposed to the police. There is some sort of at least theoretical clash, as Lord Justice Sedley pointed out in the instant case, between the position of police officers and others on arrests, so it does require an answer from Government.
We said on 25 February 2010—it was me, I am afraid to say—that the consultation that we had said would take place had not taken place by that date. But of course the noble Baroness will know that her Government have now been in power for a good 13 months now—it is 15 or 16 months since I uttered those words—and I am quite sure this consultation will have taken place regardless of government. I therefore look forward to hearing her response to this small but quite important point about the 2003 Act. I presume the consultation has taken place and the Government will be able to tell us what they intend to do about the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lester.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, it falls to me to answer this debate. I have to say that I am not fully briefed on whether or not the consultation has taken place. I suspect there was a little bit of irony there from the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and his confidence that this will automatically take place regardless of changes in government, but I will write to him to inform him about how far it has got.
We are talking of course about Section 329 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The intention was to benefit victims of crime, together with third parties who are not the direct victim of the offence but who may have intervened to protect the victim or deter the criminal. We are aware that it has so far been invoked only in respect of damages claims by police rather than by others who have sought to rely on the provisions as a defence in a number of cases. As noble Lords have mentioned, Lord Justice Sedley, in the case of Adorian v The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, made a number of criticisms.
Section 329 of the 2003 Act is not a licence for the police to use disproportionate force as under the criminal law. The police can use only reasonable force. Neither does the section affect the criminal liability of householders, victims and others. Let us also keep in mind that the section applies only when the offender has been convicted of an imprisonable offence committed on the same occasion as the incident he is now suing for.
With these points in mind, this amendment raises a number of issues. First, is it fair and reasonable under general law to treat a person who holds the office of constable less advantageously than any other member of the public? Secondly, we should be very clear on what the practical consequences will be before making an amendment which would result in making it easier for a convicted offender to sue the police for damages. Thirdly, we need to be a little clearer on how this amendment might work, given that the powers of constables apply 24 hours a day, seven days a week. An off-duty constable who exercises this power to arrest a suspect found breaking into his own private dwelling or a neighbour’s dwelling would still be acting in the course of his or her duty. We also need to consider how the amendment would apply to special constables or others who are lawfully employed to prevent crime.
We note the thrust of the comments in the Adorian case and that the application of Section 329 to the police was not expressly discussed in Hansard at the time that that legislation was passing through Parliament. However, we are currently unconvinced that for the police to invoke Section 329 is really an unintended consequence of that section. Arguably, the police are the people most likely to rely on a provision which restricts liability towards a person who is committing a criminal offence at the time. The reference in Section 329(5)(b) to the defendant believing that his act was necessary to,
“apprehend, or secure the conviction, of the claimant after he had committed an offence”,
might suggest that it was not so very far from Parliament’s contemplation that the police could seek to invoke this provision. But what matters is whether it is right, fair and proportionate for this protection to apply to constables.
I am afraid that as yet we remain unconvinced that the provisions in Section 329 are not right, fair and proportionate in their application to the police. Therefore, we remain unconvinced that they require amendment as the noble Lord suggests. In particular, we cannot see any reason why the civil liability of a victim and a constable who act jointly on the same occasion, or act as individuals on separate occasions, to resist and detain the convicted offender should not be subject to the same threshold.
Nevertheless, as this amendment raises important issues relating to the role and powers of the police, and given that the noble Lord has been patiently pursuing this matter for some time, I can give the noble Lord and the noble Baroness on his behalf the assurance that this Government, while bearing in mind other government priorities, will take one final look at this matter before the next stage. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness feels able to withdraw this amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, my noble friend may be a dog with a bone, but he is quite a pedigree sort of dog. Clearly, the noble Lord as an outgoing Minister did not leave a letter on his desk for his successor, so we have no amendments.
Baroness Hamwee
My noble friend has made a number of detailed points on the amendment, which I understand. I am prepared now to undergo a seminar by my noble friend when he has read Hansard but the important point is that the Government have acknowledged that this amendment is deserving of some thought. I am grateful for that and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 244, which unashamedly originates in Wales. Its aim is to make sure that “Licensed Premises Cumulative Impact (saturation) Policies” for local authorities have teeth and apply to off-licence premises, because at the moment they do not. The problem is the rise in alcohol consumption, in particular in our city centres, to which supermarkets have greatly contributed, with cheap alcohol often being a loss leader with price promotions. Young people buy alcohol to preload before going out, so they get intoxicated even before the beginning of the evening. They then tank up again on more alcohol from these outlets, because it is far cheaper than buying it on licensed premises. The problem is what to do in our city centres. The cumulative impact saturation policies do not have statutory status; they are only guidelines, so they are not enforceable and they are easily overturned by a legal challenge from retailers. I spoke about this at Second Reading and will not go through the argument again. However, the size of the problem in city centres warrants being addressed briefly.
We know that 60 per cent of liver disease is caused by alcohol abuse. Thirty years ago, that was seen in chronic alcoholics. Now it is seen in young drinkers who kill themselves with acute pancreatitis and liver failure. Individual human tragedies are known to everyone in the NHS: the student deformed for life, the student who falls under a train, the child burnt because somebody has got intoxicated and set fire to their home, or the 14 year-old who gets drunk and pregnant at a party. We have seen them all, and there is an increasing catalogue of these disasters. The other problem is the litter and environmental damage caused by alcohol misuse. Let us not forget that Damilola Taylor was killed not with a knife but with a supermarket lager bottle that had been left in the street.
In the UK, average consumption is now a staggering 9.7 litres of neat ethanol for every man aged 45 to 64. Sadly, women are rapidly catching up, with a 30 per cent rise in the incidence of heavy drinking in the past decade. In Cardiff city centre recently, a study asked people to be voluntarily breathalysed. One in three of the men and one in six of the women had damaging blood alcohol levels. The high-risk drinking patterns are concentrated particularly in ex-industrial heartlands such as the north-east, Humber and Yorkshire, and my own home, south Wales. Alcohol misuse accounted for 1,000 deaths in Wales in 2009, and the harm costs £1 billion annually—equivalent to £770 per Welsh household. Our trends in the UK are going in the opposite direction to those of many other countries. We have a rising incidence of liver disease deaths, but in France and Italy it is falling. Consumption by teenagers in England has overtaken that of teenagers in Spain and Italy.
The amendment would introduce a provision that “Licensed Premises Cumulative Impact (saturation) Policies” should include supermarkets and other off-licence premises. It will make it clear that they are included, with the result that managers of supermarkets and other off-licence premises will not be able to argue, as they have to date, that they are not included. It will also remove the current discrimination against licensed premises such as pubs produced by the current lack of clarity. Giving the impact policy statutory status would also allow revision and monitoring of the decisions taken.
The final part of the amendment includes a provision to ban the sale of alcohol in petrol station outlets. I have had representations about this and I recognise that in these outlets, drink is often purchased to consume later, and there is no evidence of a direct link between alcohol bought on those premises and drink-driving—although it appears to give a slightly inconsistent public message in relation to driving and alcohol. However, selling alcohol sometimes makes these outlets viable. I accept that this amendment is not perfect, and it may well be that it warrants refining in relation to that last part.
However, the other parts are important because it will finally allow local authorities to take decisions, empower the voice of people at a local level and make sure that those decisions are not challenged, as happened with Sainsbury’s in Cardiff by very highly paid barristers coming down from London with their managers and effectively driving a coach and horses through the guidance because it could not be enforced as it did not have statutory standing. It would also demonstrate consistency in those areas that are particularly bad hot spots of alcohol consumption, violence and crime, which are known to the local authorities in that area and would avoid inappropriately penalising rural areas where the sale of alcohol has to be managed in a different way. I commend the amendment to the House.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, my noble friend will speak to the substance of the amendments, but noble Lords may have noticed a minor flurry on these Benches when I went out to check whether there had been a reissue of the groupings and to see if I could find out just what was happening. We were not aware of the degrouping—that became clear before—nor of the grouping of the amendment to which the noble Baroness has just spoken with this amendment. I simply make a plea that if there are any further changes to the groupings in the list we are working to, noble Lords will use the informal arrangements of the House to make sure that we all end up speaking to the same group. That was in no way directed at the noble Baroness, who may have thought that this had all been sorted.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
My Lords, I apologise to the Committee. I was part of the discussions, but I did not double-check that everybody knew. I apologise to the Benches opposite.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, my understanding of the background to the change in wording brought in by the Government is a little different from that of my noble friend Lord Astor, although closer to that of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. My understanding is that it has proved to be difficult and costly for some licensing authorities to prove, on challenge in the courts by applicants, that such-and-such a condition or restriction to the licence was necessary to promote the licensing objectives. In the face of strong legal challenges by trade interests with deeper pockets than local authorities, particularly in these parlous times, some authorities have backed down. I am glad to say that Westminster City Council is a praiseworthy exception.
It is difficult for a local authority to prove that some restriction is “necessary” in advance of a licence being granted, even if on the basis of probability it would be sensible to do so. My reading is that the Government have effectively decided to reduce the burden of proof so that a licensing authority would in future have to prove only that a particular measure is appropriate to promoting the licensing objectives, as the Bill states. Members of my former constituency in Soho and Covent Garden certainly think that the Government’s proposals are sensible and should stand.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Shipley and I have not necessarily taken the same view on this part of the Bill as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. If I may put it crudely, we start from the localist rather than the business position, but I deliberately said on Second Reading that I thought that local authorities have responsibilities to businesses in the area as well as to residents. However, we are both sympathetic to these amendments—except, perhaps, for one of them.
The issue has been cast as a subjective versus objective test. Can the Minister say whether, on either or both “appropriate” or “necessary”, the term “reasonably” would be implied? That might help us to see the position as a little less polarised. My noble friend Lord Shipley, with his local government experience, reminds me that it could be difficult for the licensing authority to administer what is appropriate. That could be much more difficult to assess.
I depart from my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones on one amendment: Amendment 240P. I can see an argument for using the appropriateness test for making the new early morning alcohol restriction orders. We are talking about something a little different there, but I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I have added my name to those who have given notice to oppose the question that Clause 110 stand part. I do so as a way of probing the intentions of the Government. We will have to see what the Government have to say in deciding what view we take on Report.
I start from a position of supporting a rigorous approach to licensing. In this area, it is right that we have a rigorous approach. Equally, it is important that those bodies and individuals who apply for licences are clear what is required to be done under the law. My concern at the moment is that the arguments for changing the law as the Bill suggests do not seem to have been supported by the publication of policy, or anything more than the anecdotal evidence referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, in discussion in another place. If it is true that the LGA is concerned about the changes—I can imagine the uncertainties that they bring to local authorities—there is a problem here. I invite the noble Baroness, between now and Report, if she cannot do so today, to set out the evidence that supports the change in the policy. If she could do that, we could come back on Report and have a more thorough debate.
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, this is a device to elicit from the Government their motives for introducing a barrage of new provisions relating to temporary event notices. We seem to be building up a parallel system through the TENs system. It has worked extremely well. The notices are used extensively by community groups. They are not intended for commercial purposes, but are used for community events, village fetes, charity fundraising events and so on. It would be extremely interesting to hear from the Government why they feel that it is necessary to introduce so many new elements into the TENs system.
It was always designed as a form of flexible licensing for community groups. What is now happening under the various clauses relating to temporary event notices is that we are adding environmental health to the scrutiny process and are adding cost to the regime for local government as well. I do not know whether it is because the Government feel that TENs are being used by commercial operators, but the evidence given to me—I think, in particular, that increased hours during the new year celebrations was cited by the Government in their response to their consultation—has not painted that picture about how they are used. Ironically, it is likely that in any event there will be greater reliance if premises are caught by the late-night levy. There will be a greater use of TENs by commercial premises in those circumstances.
What is the justification for all these changes? What seems particularly odd is this extension: the change from a duration of 96 hours to one of 168 hours under Clause 116 and the increase in the number days from 15 to 21. If anything, one is making them more available for commercial purposes. We are changing from a temporary type of licensing to something much more permanent as far as I can see, so we have a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now we will have more conditions, and if there are going to be conditions, they should be standard conditions, so I have some sympathy with the amendments that follow in this group. I look forward to hearing from the Minister why we have to have more objectives, more bureaucracy and an extension of TENs as a concept in these circumstances. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I do not think my noble friend is moving that the clause stands part of the Bill. I have Amendments 240C, 240E, 240F, 240G, 240H, 240J and 240K in this group. My noble friend mentioned parallel provisions. I think the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and I have managed a degree of parallelism which probably adds to the confusion, but I think we are heading in the same direction.
In response to my noble friend, I say first that when we get to some amendments later on the subject of New Year’s Eve, I have a lot of sympathy for them. As I understand it, temporary event notices or TENs—I have always known that word in a completely different context—have grown in number far more than was anticipated. Almost 125,000 were used in the financial year to March 2010. They were introduced as a means of minimising the regulatory burden on small, ad hoc events, as my noble friend said, but they have grown somewhat. The Bill proposes that only following a representation from the police or environmental health will licensing authorities be able to insist that relevant conditions from the licence also apply for the duration of the temporary event notice and that regulations will stipulate the process, format and timescales for notifying applicants of the conditions.
I was glad to hear my noble friend’s comment about standard conditions. We know the view of the Local Government Association on this matter. It has briefed noble Lords that a more transparent and less burdensome approach would be for all existing premises licence conditions to apply automatically, apart from those that will be altered by a temporary event notice, such as hours. Licensing authorities should be given the ability to add appropriate conditions to a temporary event notice. Currently, there is no mechanism for adding controls in unlicensed premises. During the Commons stages, the Government responded that TENs would increase bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is not always a bad thing. Some bureaucracy is necessary. Giving authorities an effective tool would give them greater, but not disproportionate, control. Standard conditions would actually reduce bureaucracy.
Secondly, on the time allowance for temporary event notices, I share the LGA’s concern about the extension of the duration to seven days from the current four. Seven days seems to me to be qualitatively different from four. The Bill does not introduce a mechanism whereby unlicensed premises can be conditioned when using a temporary event notice, and the LGA is concerned about the scenario of periods of up to seven days with no conditions on things like closing times, door staff and so on. There would be a qualitative difference, and I think this extension would go too far.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, may I in parallel—if that is a word—follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and not for the first time in this Bill? I am very puzzled because the argument the Government have used in relation to this clause about increasing bureaucracy and their concerns about it seem to contrast with their approach to Clauses 113 and 114. There does not seem to be a consistent approach here. I do not understand why the proposals that the noble Baroness has talked about would increase bureaucracy. I would have thought they would be more straightforward. The Bill proposes, in relation to a TEN, that only following representation from the police or environmental health will licensing authorities be able to insist that relevant conditions from the licence ought to apply for the duration of the TEN. Surely a more transparent and less burdensome approach would be for all existing premise licence conditions to apply automatically, apart from those to be altered by the TEN. I do not understand why the Government are taking this approach.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I do not understand the extension from four days to seven days. We heard from the Minister when we debated earlier clauses why the Government think there has to be extra vigour in the licensing process. Why, when we come to temporary events, has it suddenly been loosened up and the four-day limit extended to seven days? I would have thought that extending to seven days changes the circumstances. I would have thought it likely to lead to contentious, more costly disputes between operators, police and local authorities, and certainly on the part of the general public. The clauses are very close to each other. It seems they have been drafted by different bits of the Home Office, and they are wholly inconsistent.
Baroness Browning
I am grateful to my noble friend. Because of the noise factor, we are allowing environmental health departments to take powers with regard to these things. As I mentioned, environmental health officers will have more authority than they had under previous legislation. I should have thought he would quite like a week-long music festival on his doorstep, but perhaps not. However, if he is concerned about the effect of noise on residents, he can contact the environmental health office, which can object on noise grounds. If, as a local resident, my noble friend felt that he needed to make that point to his local environmental health department, it would have the new power to object.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, in a less regulated world, I wonder if the Minister can help me. The proposals for standard conditions would allow but not require licensing authorities to prescribe standard conditions. To my mind, those conditions would be the basis on which one would build conditions appropriate to the event. Do the Government object to a licensing authority having the power to set up its own standard conditions, which I would have thought would be quite helpful for prospective licensees? They would then know what they might be subject to. Can she also tell me how this aligns with the provisions in the Localism Bill? I am sorry that we keep throwing this at the Minister. It is inevitable since the Bills are running concurrently and a number of us are looking at both of them. I can stop talking because the Minister probably has an answer by now. Again, my question is that where local authorities are to have a power of general competence, I do not quite see how these things will work together.
Baroness Browning
My Lords, I am pleased to say that I already have the answer. I can tell my noble friend that the conditions must be tailored, which I hope meets some of her concerns. However, I will have to write to my noble friend so far as the Localism Bill is concerned. I am not familiar enough with that Bill to be able to make a comparison of how it interposes with this legislation, but I will find out for her.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Hamwee
“(c) the local authorities in the area (including parish and town councils),”
Baroness Hamwee
I shall speak to other amendments in the group and refer to their numbering as I come to them.
In the last debate, my noble friend Lord Shipley referred to the tools that police and crime panels need; I would add to that ammunition. From time to time ammunition is needed—although preferably not used—and the knowledge that it is there can sometimes work wonders. My noble friend did not use the term “outward looking”, although it was implicit in what he said. Panels need to relate—I appreciate that I am in part reflecting the previous debate as an introduction to the points that I am about to make—not only to the police and crime commissioner but to everyone else, including the communities involved in, in the jargon, the policing landscape, although one might just say life.
Amendments 91 and 92 deal with obtaining views in connection with the precept. Under the Bill as drafted, the police and crime panels have to obtain residents’ and business’s views; my amendments provide that they should also obtain the views of local authorities and, in London, the London boroughs. Again, this is blindingly obvious. The local authorities are there at the most local level—by definition they are the most grass root—and they send out the bills that incorporate the precept. If the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is agreed, they will send out separate bills with the precept. So my first point is about more extensive consultation.
Amendments 117, 118, 119, 120 and 121 relate to Schedule 5 and concern what I might summarise as the realities of approving or blocking the precept. In our view, if the police and crime panel is to provide the right checks and balances, it needs to be able to do more. I have always thought of the precept as the last point in a discussion about local authority and equivalent budgets. One has to think about what needs to be spent, how it should be spent and what is available to be spent before one comes to the precept. In order to go through those thought processes and apply their logic, the panel needs to be able to bring other issues into the public arena for debate and have tools to deal with more than just the precept—in other words, to deal with the whole budget and the steps on the way to creating it. The budget is essentially the spending to be undertaken using the local funding—the precept—and the central grant. Of course, in the policing world, the central funding is enormously important. It would be a great pity if the panel were taken down the road of thinking that what mattered was what people were charged instead of also looking at the totality of the budget. I know that that attitude is very widespread, but I would always do anything that I could to stop it being perpetuated.
My amendments propose that the panel should have a role in looking at the heads of expenditure within the budget. That may not be the right way of expressing it, but noble Lords will understand what I mean if I refer to “press and PR” as one budget head, and perhaps the “commissioner’s office”. Then there is the “back office”, if one can ever define what the back office is, and things such as sickness rates. My amendments intend to give the panel the opportunity to make a reality check on what is proposed and to block virement between budget heads. Unless the panel can prevent moving around between the different parts of the budget after the totality has been agreed, it is not really able to fulfil the function that it should.
Amendments 146 and 147 would change the majority needed to block or veto the budget from three-quarters to two-thirds, although as this debate has gone on I have become more and more persuaded of the need for that veto to be exercisable on the basis of 50 per cent plus one—not 50 per cent, which is different, but 50 per cent plus one.
I have provided for an iterative process for the panel to give its approval or not, built on the procedure and drafting with which I am familiar from the Greater London Authority but also from other authorities that have directly elected mayors. I do not like the word “iterative”, but noble Lords will understand it.
I think that the two-thirds level is counterintuitive, which is a term that has been very much used—and other noble Lords will have heard this—by our then colleague Bob Neill, who is now a Minister. In criticising the way in which the GLA budget had to be dealt with because of the legislation, he talked often very powerfully about how constituents had spoken to him on the subject of his having a direct electoral mandate but not being able, as a Member of the Assembly, to block the mayor’s budget. Other noble Lords, as Members of the GLA, will have heard about the budget being in a common-sense way defeated when it came to us from the mayor but having to be approved technically because there was not the sufficient majority against it.
I am sympathetic to Amendment 116ZA in this group, which refers to a link between the money and the objectives. In my mind, that is what I am trying to say when I talk about budget heads.
Finally, I refer to the 13th report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Paragraph 7 is on the regulations regarding precepts in Schedule 5, which the committee says,
“go to the substance of precepts that may be issued in cases where commissioners’ proposals have been vetoed by panels—and, as well as enabling constraints to be imposed on such precepts, the regulations may confer wide discretion on persons not even identified in the Bill”.
The memorandum provided to the committee by the Home Office,
“gives no explanation about the purpose of those powers, how they might be exercised or who (if anyone) might be consulted before … regulations are made. The issue and withholding of precepts are potentially important matters which may affect the operational capability of the police or their perceived independence”—
I stress the words “operational capability” and “perceived independence”. The committee drew this power to the House’s attention to,
“seek further information from the Minister in order to determine whether the negative procedure provides an appropriate level of scrutiny”.
That is what I am asking for with my final amendment. I beg to move.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Browning)
My Lords, I sense that I have been tempted to enter into something of a Dutch auction. Many figures have been bandied about in terms of the veto. I should say that this is an area where I am genuinely listening, but I think that noble Lords on all sides of the House have colluded this afternoon to try to beat me down to a particular figure. I will promise to look at this, because I realise that there are strong feelings about it. However, I cannot make any promises. If I were able to move, I am sure that I would be unable to move as far as some of the figures that have been suggested. I do not want to raise expectations unnecessarily, but I recognise that in this area there is feeling on all sides of the House. I will genuinely look at this.
The word “accountability” has been mentioned a lot. I must reiterate that police and crime commissioners should be accountable to the public, first and foremost. That is the whole thrust of this legislation and change—I quite accept that it is a big change. We are talking about significant changes to the way in which we organise ourselves at force level. Police and crime commissioners will be elected by the public, and our provisions propose that through elected police and crime commissioners, the plan and the precept—the provisions that these amendments seek to change—were the very tools that would allow commissioners to consult and be measured by the public.
In this debate I am grateful for the constancy from Members of this House on the importance of getting the balance right on the limits on the police and crime commissioners’ powers. Members from across the House have raised this—particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. I can assure her that I will hold a round-table meeting to which I hope she will come, because I want to make sure that we get these checks and balances right—although I doubt that I will be able to satisfy her on everything she asked for.
Noble Lords will remember that in the original Bill, as drafted, the Government intended that panels would have provided a robust overview of police and crime commissioners’ decisions. I must emphasise that we intended for these panels to be constructive and supportive relationships. In this vein, if the first time that the police and crime commissioner discussed the police budget with the panel was the point at which the precept was being agreed, that was not the model we proposed. Members have raised many concerns about heads of budget and other matters to do with the precept. Our intention would be for a series of discussions to be held, not just one blanket meeting at which, for example, the precept or the budget was discussed and a decision taken without the panel having a lot of background information that it would clearly be entitled to ask for. I hope that that will reassure noble Lords that it is not the Government’s intention for there to be one blanket meeting, nor was that the intention of the Bill as originally drafted. Having a veto is a back-stop for when these relationships break down—no more. If the provisions had stood, I would have looked forward to hearing noble Lords’ views on the level at which this could best be achieved but, as we all appreciate, we are now talking about something rather different.
I can promise your Lordships that we will take another look at the figure of three-quarters. I note that many references were made to the figure of two-thirds, although this was in the Bill. I gently remind your Lordships that the figure in the Bill is three-quarters. We seemed to get to a much lower level than that this afternoon, but that is where we are at the moment. I promise to take that away to look at it. Given that, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am certainly not setting out to beat the noble Baroness down, up, across the Chamber or in any direction; I am seeking to persuade her. This is not a Dutch auction but to do with what the public would expect. I referred a few minutes ago to it being counterintuitive in the minds of the public when a proposition is, in commonsense terms, defeated by a simple majority but is not actually defeated. Public expectation in all this is very important. If the new model is to be successful, people need to be persuaded to buy into it. They need to be persuaded that it is worthwhile voting for the new commissioners, or whoever we end up with. That philosophy is behind my amendments, along with what the noble Baroness describes—and I agree—as what should be constructive and supportive relationships. I also agree that the arrangements we have been debating should not be the first discussion about the budget, but unless there are formal provisions in the Act—as it will no doubt become—there is no statutory framework to require discussions to be held with the information for which the noble Baroness said the panel would be entitled to ask. We seek to pin that down, together with the attendance at panel meetings by various people who can give the panel the necessary information on which to base its decisions.
Baroness Browning
I should clarify something, because I do not want in any way to mislead the House. Although of course it is right that the panel has information and that there are meetings leading up to the decision on the precept and discussion on the budget, nothing in the Bill would allow the budget as a whole to be overridden by the panel. It can override the veto, and regulations will address how that would then be managed. I did not want to lead my noble friend into thinking that I was suggesting that the panel could override the budget as a whole.
Baroness Hamwee
No, my Lords, I took that point. The noble Baroness said “override the veto”; I think she meant override the budget.
Baroness Hamwee
A veto on a veto.
This debate has dealt with seeking information about the budget. We have previously discussed amendments about the panel's right to seek information and require attendance to deal with wider issues. I had assumed that, in dealing with those amendments, all noble Lords had the budget in mind as well as other matters, which would make the narrower amendments unnecessary. The noble Baroness has given us welcome news, in the way that she put it, about resisting a Dutch auction but thinking about the merits of the arguments. I hope that, when the points that we have made have settled in people's heads, the merits will be obvious. For this afternoon, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
Baroness Hamwee
I shall speak also to Amendments 139, 150 and 226, and shall perhaps mention the other amendments in this group. Amendment 93 is very short. It seeks to understand why subsections (6) to (10) of Section 96 of the Police Act 1996 are to be omitted, although I can see that this is partly consequential. However, subsection (6) deals with the Common Council of the City of London and, as we debated the other day and as the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, mentioned this afternoon, the City has escaped being affected by this Bill. Subsection (7) is about the duty to review arrangements and subsection (8) gives the Secretary of State powers. I am always happy to see Secretary of State powers going but I wonder why it is happening in this instance.
Amendment 139 relates to Schedule 6 to the Bill. Paragraph 32 of the schedule deals with regulations made by the Secretary of State to modify or exclude the application of enactments. That seems to be a rather extreme way of putting it without a limitation regarding, for example, the modification being only as necessary for the particular requirements of the panels. I put down this amendment to give the Minister an opportunity to give some assurances on that. I tabled it before seeing the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which deals with this issue at paragraphs 11 and 12 of its report and recommends that regulations under paragraph 36 of the schedule,
“should be subject to the affirmative procedure”.
I overlooked taking the matter to the next stage. If the Minister can give us the assurances that we need, perhaps we will not have to come back to this at the next stage, although we may need to do so.
Amendment 150 would take out paragraph 6 of Schedule 7 to the Bill. The paragraph says that regulations may apply to amend or modify Part 2 of the Police Reform Act 2002—I am abbreviating the wording—and may apply such other enactments,
“as appear to the Secretary of State to be necessary or expedient in connection with, or in consequence of, regulations”.
What is that intended to achieve? Regarding the words,
“in connection with, or in consequence of, regulations”,
I ask: what regulations? It seems a bit circular to me. Therefore, again, I seek information.
I turn, finally, to my Amendment 226. Clause 80 gives the Secretary of State the general duty to exercise powers in a way,
“best calculated to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of the police”.
I heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, said about that phrase in the previous debate. I have proposed substituting the phrase “safety and security” because I think that it goes wider and deeper than, and encompasses, “efficiency and effectiveness”.
We will hear from other noble Lords about their amendments but I think that Amendment 226AA, which will perhaps be dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, seeks to retain performance targets for police strategic priorities. I have never been much of a fan of targets but I am a fan of reporting, so I go a little way along the road with him on that. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I break the habit of a brief parliamentary lifetime by suggesting that the Secretary of State retains the two powers which she proposes to dispense with under Clause 82. This amendment would restore the power of the Secretary of State to issue codes of practice for and to secure reports from police authorities. It seems to me that there ought to be a standard code of practice, not necessarily covering everything, but at least covering the basics in the operation of the police force to provide a degree of uniformity across the country or countries—Wales is, of course, included in the provisions of the Bill—rather than different forces operating significantly differently in the way in which they conduct the crucial area of public policy in crime and community safety. It is perfectly reasonable for the Secretary of State to issue such guidance, obviously after the appropriate consultation.
Similarly, accountability is repeatedly averred to be the core of the Bill. At some level the Secretary of State needs to be informed about what is going on nationally in terms of policing so that, in Parliament, she can answer issues that are her responsibility, particularly when they relate to strategic concerns. My noble friend Lord Rosser will be moving an amendment precisely relating to those strategic priorities. There are national and local priorities and it seems to me axiomatic that the Secretary of State should have the information available in the form of reports which she can digest and which Parliament can also read and discuss. This is another aspect in which transparency and accountability can be reinforced, somewhat paradoxically in this case, by restoring to the Secretary of State powers which, at the moment, she is happy to lose. I hope that the Minister will consider this modest accretion to the functions of central government in the wider interests of accountability and transparency in respect of these matters.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I think the noble Lord wishes to tempt me down the road back to what his noble colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, suggested about detailed and excessive reporting to the Secretary of State. I take the point that he is making in terms of comparison, but this will be available in public. I think it highly unlikely that scrutiny committees in another place, and in this place, will not begin to look at the comparisons. That is part of the process of scrutiny. Perhaps I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who challenged me on accountability, that I have always understood that scrutiny is part of the process of accountability. I am afraid that I am not immediately able to quote Professor John Stewart on this question, but I think he would agree with me that scrutiny and accountability are indeed parts of the same process.
Clause 92 ensures that the Secretary of State will retain powers to intervene as a last resort when a police force is failing, but that is a backstop clause for the Secretary of State. In the event of serious or systemic failure of a police force, backstop powers will remain in place so that the Secretary of State can give directions to the police and crime commissioner. These existing powers, currently applicable to police authorities, are applied to police and crime commissioners under this clause.
Where the Secretary of State is satisfied that the police force is failing to discharge its functions in an effective manner, she can direct the police and crime commissioner to take measures to remedy the failure. These measures can include the submission of an action plan. This is important because retaining backstop powers in relation to police performance provides an additional layer of accountability and assurance to the public. But I stress that these are intended to be backstop powers and not to impose detailed reporting requirements on police and crime commissioners throughout all their activities. The intention is to loosen central controls on local policing. For these reasons, I respectfully ask that the amendment is withdrawn.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend’s time on his allotment was well spent and he should not fret about that. I agree with him that scrutiny and accountability are closely related. This is one of those replies when one needs to read the detail, which I will of course do, rather than attempt an off-the-cuff response.
However, I shall mention one thing that is not apposite but I cannot resist it. When Section 36, “General duty of Secretary of State”, of the Police Act 1996 was enacted, the Secretary of State was a man. Therefore, it reads:
“The Secretary of State shall exercise his powers … to such extent as appears to him to be best calculated”,
and so on. The drafter of this Bill finds it difficult to accept that the Secretary of State might not be a man. Although the word “her” appears sometimes, the wording is not precisely the same and does not change “him” to “her”. It changes “him” to “the Secretary of State”, which is rather sad. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Harris of Haringey
I certainly know why that is. We start from the basis that London is the greatest city in the world and that Birmingham and Manchester pale into insignificance. To be very serious about this, under the current arrangements, the 32 boroughs in London feel that they are not directly involved, which is one reason why we have had amendments in Committee on the importance of consultation and involvement with local authorities. It is all part of a package, and I hope that in looking at the issue outside London the implications inside London will be reflected on. Part of the solution will be to build in robust relationships between, in London's case, the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime and, outside London, police and crime commissioners and commissions or panels, or whatever else we have, and the elected local authorities in each area, both in providing scrutiny and in developing plans for policing in those districts.
Baroness Hamwee
I realise that I have not spoken in this debate yet, but following the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, perhaps the Minister would also consider the position of the current London Assembly. It appears not to be too concerned about most of the functions of the panel; it will be restricted to a number of the members of the London Assembly, but not all of them. On the noble Lord’s point, only a selection will do the job, not all 25 members, so the position there is exacerbated.
Baroness Browning
I promise my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, that I will look at that, but I cannot make any promises. Speaking of my disappointments, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that I do not accept that there is no corporate governance in the Bill. We are looking at matters that have been raised by this Committee. I refer him to Clause 28, which deals with independent members; to Schedule 1, which deals with the requirement of chief executives; to Schedule 16, which deals with external audits; and to Clause 11, which deals with the duty to provide information. Those might be imperfect and noble Lords might not agree with them, but it is just not right to say that there is no corporate governance in the Bill. I am very happy to look at that in the light of remarks that have been made in previous debates. I think the noble Lord overegged the situation a little this evening.
Perhaps I can turn to the amendments; there have been a lot of them. I shall begin with Amendments 123AB, 139A, 148C, 148D, 149B, 149C and 149D. Those amendments envisage an entirely different approach to handling complaints against the police and crime commissioner. They would mean that a code of conduct for a PCC would be drawn up centrally and that police and crime panels would hold PCCs to account against it. It would even allow a police and crime panel to go as far as removing a directly elected person with a public mandate from their office and to suspend the PCC indefinitely while the allegation was investigated.
I cannot support the amendments because they would enable the police and crime commissioner to be removed from office without recourse to the public who elected him or her. A PCC will be elected by the public in their force area and will be accountable directly to that public for the decisions that it makes. Of course, that is if the Bill returns in a different form from the one that is before your Lordships tonight. I add that caveat. The commissioner cannot be removed by the police and crime panel for a perceived breach of a centrally defined code of conduct. If the PCC makes the wrong decisions, the panel will ensure that the public are informed, and the public will remove them at the ballot box. That is at the heart of the matter, and something on which probably we will not agree.
Perhaps I may refer to my folder, which I have left on the Bench. I apologise; I put my papers down in the wrong order. They are now on their way. I will set out how the amendments would affect the Bill, and the Government's position. The overarching effect of the majority of the amendments would be to change the relationship between the police and crime commissioners and the police and crime panel, as well as the composition and powers of the panel. This would include provision for the police and crime commission to be drawn from the panel membership. The Government's intention remains that police and crime commissioners will be elected by the public to hold chief constables and their forces to account, subject to—
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I was trying to attract the attention of other Members on the Front Bench. I think that the noble Baroness has gone on to the next group of amendments. I wonder whether I am the only one who is confused; other noble Lords are listening obediently. Of course, it may be very useful to have the answers before we move the amendments.
Baroness Browning
I apologise to the House and hope that noble Lords will forgive a new girl for getting her homework mixed up. Perhaps we might pause—I do not know the procedure—while I make sure that the right notes are in front of me.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I, too, have amendments in this large group—I am afraid that it is another nine. Like other noble Lords, I apologise to Members of the House who are waiting to speak in the next debate. They are sharing something of the pain that has been experienced during the past few Committee days.
My Amendment 148 deals with the suspension of a PCC who is charged with an offence. The Bill provides that the suspension will kick in if the charge is of an offence which carries a term of two years’ or more imprisonment. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has pitched that at six months; I have brought it right down to any imprisonable offence.
The commissioner will be a man—almost certainly—to whom the chief constable, and hence the force, is accountable. It is important that the credibility of the person right at the top is not under threat. I recognise that this is harsh, because we are talking about a charge and not a conviction. There may be a balance to be struck by looking at the type of offence and at whether the salary should continue to be payable. In most situations where somebody is suspended, salary, allowances and so on continue to be paid. The penalty in this case is that the salary is not paid for the period of suspension, which could do with some examination.
Amendment 148AA would provide for the suspension of the commissioner who
“is the subject of an allegation of a serious complaint or … conduct matter”—
I have picked up definitions from elsewhere in the Bill—extending beyond a criminal offence to “other corrupt behaviour”. Other noble Lords have talked of their experiences of dealing with corruption and have seen the fallout at close quarters. I am not sure that “corrupt behaviour” is the right expression, but I am sure that conduct matters are too central to the model—any model—to be left to regulations. We need provisions in the Bill. Nor is it proper to put matters which may affect the whole attitude of the force and individual careers into secondary legislation.
Notwithstanding that, my Amendment 149B would give a regulation-making power to the Secretary of State on the setting of standards to be observed by the commissioner. It would do so not because I think that that is necessarily the right way to go about it but because I want to draw attention to and probe how the Government intend to deal with the setting of standards.
Amendment 149D would add to Schedule 7 a new paragraph providing for the panel to monitor and review complaints and conduct matters and their handling. It would give the panel a wider role in order for it to be able to consider not just individual problems but the overall picture. I stress “monitor”, “review” and “handling”.
Amendment 172 takes us to the veto of the appointment of a chief constable, which should be a meaningful power. I shall not repeat the arguments advanced for three-quarters, two-thirds or 50 per cent plus one, but noble Lords know where I have been going on this issue.
Amendments 173, 174 and 175 would remove certain powers of the Secretary of State. Schedule 8 provides that the Secretary of State may make regulations about next steps if there is a veto of the appointment, including, as I read it, allowing them to insist on the appointment of a candidate who has been rejected. Secondly, the schedule provides for regulations on limits on who may be considered for appointment, including limits not only on but to—in other words including—a previously unsuccessful candidate; and then confers functions on the Secretary of State or “any other person”. That raises a lot of questions.
Finally, Amendment 216A is an add on to the disqualification from election for or being in office as a commissioner—that is, being the subject of an investigation by or on behalf of the IPCC resulting in a recommendation for qualification.
The group covers an enormous amount of ground because there is an enormous amount of ground still to be covered.