Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Baroness Henig and Lord Beecham

Monday 11th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Chief Whip for inflicting me on the House at the earliest possible moment. I move the amendment with what your Lordships may think is not my customary diffidence, because we have here three excellent amendments to do with the majority required to levy a precept. Mine is probably the least attractive, even to my mind. I am moving for a two-thirds majority to be required to overturn the precept. My noble friends Lady Henig and Lord Hunt have respectively better amendments. Mine is therefore something of a fallback position, which I think the noble Baroness has indicated might be acceptable to the Government—a rare event where I am concerned, which underlines my preference for the other amendments.

Nevertheless, we clearly need a better regime than that contained in the original Bill, which required a 75 per cent vote to overturn the precept. As I understand it from previous debates, there is no provision in the Bill to amend the precept. It is the veto or nothing. Presumably it is then envisaged that there would be discussion between the commissioner and the panel about a revision. All the amendments contain the—to my mind, welcome—addition of a proposal to allow the panel to amend as an alternative to a simple veto. I apprehend that the Minister may not be as willing to accept that, but one lives in hope.

That being the case, I move the fallback amendment, as it were, and leave it to my colleagues to make the even better case for their amendments.

[Baroness Henig]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 102 and 104 in the group. As my noble friend Lord Beecham said, they both deal specifically with the majority required to veto the precept, and taken together suggest that it should be a simple majority of the panel members present. I have made similar suggestions in relation to other powers of veto through separate amendments in other groups.

The usual way to decide things in a democracy is by simple majority. I cannot see what is wrong with that principle. My amendments would apply that principle to the veto that a panel could exercise over the policing precept element of council tax. Before I argue for that, I mention that I remain concerned that there will be confusion between proposals in the Localism Bill about excessive precepts and the provisions in this Bill on the policing precept. The public may well be confused about the difference between the power of veto and the power to call a referendum on a precept. They may well also be confused if there are to be two referenda: one on the police precept and one on the council tax.

I welcome the fact that the Government have now tabled amendments to reduce the required majority from three-quarters to two-thirds, but that is still too high and too confusing for the public. They might well have trouble understanding why a referendum will be decided on a majority, but the power of veto cannot be exercised in the same way. The public operate on straightforward principles, and I think that they would find that quite difficult. Of course, a straight majority would also give the police and crime panel a stronger role in contributing to policing governance and would guard against giving too much power to one person.

We have heard a lot in Committee and on Report about strict checks and balances. In practice, these checks and balances remain extremely elusive. The police and crime panel remains very feeble. One way of strengthening the panel and providing a stronger check on the commissioner would be to go to a simple majority for a veto rather than two-thirds. The current proposals are inconsistent with democratic practice. They are better than the original proposals but we could go further in strengthening the panel and fostering a mature relationship between the commissioner and the panel. That is the purpose of my amendments. I beg to move.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Baroness Henig and Lord Beecham

Monday 4th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[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 Henig]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 47 in this group. I apologise that I was premature in attempting to speak to this amendment an hour or so ago, having failed to notice that, in between the draft groupings and the final groupings, there had been some slight changes.

I particularly note the Minister’s Amendment 43 on behalf of the Government, which specifies that the local policing body must have regard to the priorities of the other statutory partners in developing policing plans. That is very welcome, and it begins to improve linkages with community safety partners. However, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I still think that there are gaps in the landscape and that the Bill proposals could be further strengthened.

Amendment 47 suggests an active role for police and crime panel members in community safety partnerships, and it specifies that a panel member must sit on each such partnership within their area. The idea of this is to enable the panel to influence the strategic priorities of those partnerships before they are set, and to provide information to the panel and the commissioner to ensure that the policing family plays its part too.

It is all very well to say that the local policing body must have regard to the priorities of other partners; but what if these were at cross-purposes? Having a panel member in the partnership would enable an intelligent dialogue to take place and would enable that panel member to pick up on concerns before they became major problems.

The Minister is right in what he said earlier about this crucial set of relationships between CDRPs on the one hand and the commission, as we have it, on the other hand. However, I do not want this to be a discussion just about generalities, and it would be nice if this happened or that happened. Ultimately, all this is about better engagement. It is about trying to get an improved response on behalf of local communities. We are looking to try to get a system that works well for local people.

I recall that in Committee this House expressed real concern that one person, in the form of a commissioner, could not undertake the kind of in-depth engagement that 17 members formerly did, and that there was a real risk that they would be perceived as remote, not just by electors but by the many other bodies—public, private and voluntary—that work with the police. If the commissioner is going to find it very difficult to get round all the CDRPs, who can do it instead?

I think that the Government broadly agreed in their recently tabled amendments that the role of the panel must be as much about supporting the commissioner as about scrutiny. My amendment is a way of letting the panel develop a supportive role in practice. We keep hearing about the panel being supportive and about stricter checks and balances, but I am trying to get the panel to play a stronger role in practice. We know that membership of community safety partnerships would be one way for panel members to help to make this ambition effective and to get panels to be more supportive and play a more practical role.

We know that the police alone cannot solve all local problems that could arise. That is why community safety partnerships were set up in the first place. If we allow local policing bodies to become disconnected from the wider community safety partners, we will go back 15 years to the kind of silo thinking that saw record levels of crime at the end of the 1990s. I cannot believe that that is what the Government want.

It might be salutary if I remind the Minister that police authorities were not originally among the bodies required to be on CDRPs when they were established. Over time, it was found to be an error and was changed so that police authorities became statutory partners. Indeed, police authority members became among the most dedicated and active members of the partnerships. The reason was that it was a good source of two-way information. It was not just that police authorities, and now police panels, would get information back. Their presence was very much valued at district level both by local councils and divisional police officers. That system is working as we speak and I would be very reluctant to see it disappear.

I understand that the concept was not invented here. The charge has often been levelled at police forces up and down the country that they are very reluctant to introduce things that they have not pioneered or invented. I feel that the Government face the same danger here. They are trying to set up a new policing arrangement. I understand that, but there are lessons to be learnt about what has happened in the past 15 to 20 years, and we need to be prepared to learn them. My amendment attempts to restore a link that will otherwise be lost. I am trying to enable panel members to keep their pulse on the local landscape and ensure that both the panel and the commissioner are aware of developments, are equipped to understand problems and are able to co-ordinate effective joint action. Once again, I am trying to be constructive and to assist. I am absolutely certain that in the years to come, sooner or later the links will be restored. They have to be, because it is common sense. That is the way in which things will work at local level; it is just a question of making the change now rather than later.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Baroness Henig and Lord Beecham

Monday 6th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Henig]

I shall speak to Amendment 116ZA and, briefly, Amendment 122A. We have heard a lot about checks and balances in the debate thus far and this is my attempt to provide some of them in relation to police budgets. Again, while we have heard that people want checks and balances, every time one suggests some, one is given a whole sheaf of reasons why they are not appropriate in that case. I hope that there might be some sympathetic view, at least on police budgets, that checks and balances are required here and that what is being put forward has some sense to it. Amendment 116ZA proposes that the panel must consider not only the bald, simple figure of the proposed precept but, in a timely manner, an appropriate level of detail about the proposed budget—what the precept is to be spent on.

Put simply—this relates to a point that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, made on the previous group of amendments—how can the panel fulfil its duty to scrutinise and shape the precept, drawing on its own local public consultations and knowledge, and to make sure that it will meet local expectations if the panel is not told how it is to be spent? In other words, you need information to be able to carry out that scrutiny role. When it comes to life's fundamentals or even the simplest purchasing, do we not all start out by identifying the very basics of what we need before working out how much we shall spend? Yet the Bill proposes that the panel should consider only the overall amount to be spent, rather than what is needed and what it should be spent on. Frankly, this seems a not very sensible way to conduct the scrutiny of budgets of many millions of pounds within a total national policing spend of something over £12 billion a year.

Let us be clear: the panel is there to provide scrutiny in some detail. It is not there to provide a rubber stamp for generalisations or headline figures. While the level of precept is of course of enormous influence and importance, and will rightly command significant space in the local press, what is as important in policing terms is the detail of what that money is to be spent on. If the panel is not equipped to engage with this level of detail, it is in danger of being consigned to being little more than a forum for the exchange of generalities and political knockabout.

I hope that the Minister will forgive me for saying that police authorities and recent surveys have demonstrated that the public want not a single commissioner dictating a budget according to his or her preferences but a broadly based range of local people, with the skills and experience of a range of communities across the force area, who can shape the police budget and priorities according to the needs of the public—particularly in local terms. We have spoken many times about the near impossibility of a single politician providing an effective funnel for the needs of vast and differing communities across the widest police force areas. That is why the panel is so important, being drawn from each district or subsection of the force area. The panel members will bring their local perspective to bear on strategic decisions and there are no more strategic decisions than on the budget and the precept, matching resources to evidenced needs.

Incidentally, noble Lords here will attest from personal experience that, far from the London experience providing a test bed for the single-commissioner model where, it is claimed, one mayor provides an exemplar for the proposed solo police and crime commissioner, London’s 23-member police authority seems in fact to be an excellent example of how a panel can complement the strategic force-wide view of the commissioner, providing a golden-thread link from the cul-de-sac to City Hall. That is an example that we already have. It is crucial that a diverse multi-member body engages with the detail of the proposed budget.

Let us be clear: right now, every subdivision within the force area has a local link member on the police authority who can constructively influence the force budget with knowledge of the public’s policing priorities for their local area. Authority members can ensure—and, under my amendment, so could panel members—that the budget is fit to address local objectives within the police and crime plan. If the Bill is not amended by your Lordships, this meaningful local influence will be lost because the panel will have no say over the detail of the budget—how it is divided and spent—but will have influence only over the overall size of the public purse. In these days of austerity we know only too well that how the contents of the public purse are spent is just as important as the overall size of the budget.

Subsection (4) of my amendment makes explicit reference to the need for the draft budget to explain how the commissioner proposes to ensure that the budget is effective and efficient. Efficiency and effectiveness are two requirements currently at the heart of police authority oversight of budgets—to considerable success, it should be said. Authorities have delivered on every efficiency target set by central government and, while there is much more to do, they continue to drive innovation in collaboration and procurement, which fosters efficiency. I am puzzled about why now, of all times, amid unprecedented budget cuts in peacetime, the Government should consider dispensing with the simple, highly efficient and effective maxim that budgets must be efficient and effective, which is why I suggest putting it back in again.

In Amendment 122A, I am proposing a majority vote rather than a vote of two-thirds. That is what I am used to in local government. The only reason for two-thirds, or, originally, three-quarters, was the model that the Government set up. I have already indicated that I think that is a very poor model; it is not very workable and will not be effective. A half—or a half plus one; I could be pushed to that—is a much more normal majority in terms of local government. It is what I am used to, it is how local government works and I see no reason why we should depart from it.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, we heard at Question Time that the House gave considerable support to an issue about cheques, in a different context. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and my noble friend Lady Henig have again raised the issue of checks in the context of checks and balances—that is, other than bank balances. My amendments to Schedule 5— Amendments 116A, 117A, 117B, 121A and 121B—are intended to complement those proposed by the noble Baronesses. I entirely adopt and endorse what they say about the need for the budgetary process to be a proper process, not simply a matter in which the precept is determined.

I make no apology for once again reminding your Lordships that 11 per cent of council tax in England and 15.5 per cent in Wales goes on policing, a significant proportion of local taxation. My initial amendment is in the interests of transparency to make it clear who is levying what on local taxpayers, rather than for a combined precept to be issued, which many will assume is the entire responsibility of the billing authority—that is, the local council.

There is another aspect to this that will arise when we come to discuss the Localism Bill. I have to say that the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill is a model of brevity, clarity and simplicity compared with the Localism Bill, which we will begin to debate tomorrow. The latter Bill contains a difficult provision in this context, because it provides for a compulsory referendum to be held if the Secretary of State deems an increase, either by a local authority or by a police commissioner, to be excessive. It will be a little difficult, I suspect, for a local authority if its precept is deemed acceptable by the Secretary of State but the police precept is not. If it is all in one bill, one can see complications arising. There would have to be a referendum on the part of the bill that people are expected to pay, which would presumably hold up payment of the rest of the bill. There are practical as well as philosophical reasons for separating the two precepts. That is the object of the first amendment.

The other amendments deal with the process of determining what the precept should be. They go beyond the Bill’s present proposal, which is simply that the commissioner—assuming there is one—notifies only the panel of the proposed precept, without notifying, or apparently being under any obligation to consult, the local authorities about it. As many of your Lordships have pointed out, policing is not a stand-alone service. It is intimately connected, if it is to be effective, with the other services of a local authority. For that matter, the totality of the fiscal burden to be placed on the local community has to be looked at as well, and judgments made about the balance between different heads of expenditure. It is entirely appropriate, therefore, that local authorities should be involved in discussing the proposed police precept. This provision and the subsequent amendment, which requires the commission to have regard to those representations made by local authorities, will, I hope, deal with that. It is remarkable that there is no obligation on the police commissioner or commission to take account of representations made by local authorities in the relevant area.

The next amendment deals with the power of the panel to veto or amend the proposed precept. The previous amendments referred merely to the veto. I would be very comfortable with a smaller majority, as proposed by the noble Baronesses, of 50 per cent plus one, as opposed to two-thirds. There is a hierarchy of preference here. The least desirable is the 75 per cent in the Bill; slightly more desirable is the two-thirds proposed here. The ideal would be 50 per cent plus one, but it is perhaps sensible to have a fall-back position against the remote contingency that the Government might not be entirely happy with 50 per cent plus one. They may be slightly more sympathetic towards the middle position. However, the major feature of this is the proposal that the panel should be able to amend, rather than simply veto—and therefore presumably freeze the whole budgetary process—the recommendation of the commissioner. I see no reason why there should be no power to amend. It would be more efficient than renegotiating the whole process of a budget.

Taken together, the amendments in my name would make the situation more transparent from the point of view of the taxpayer and more efficient in the involvement of local government in the process. Indeed, it would be both more transparent and more efficient in terms of the proposed role for the panel.