Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

My noble friend made a comment—which I do not quite recall—asking what support the chief constable would receive in some of the situations that have come to light in recent days. That is key, and that is why his Amendment 3 is so important. Underlying all of this is my concern that at a time of rising crime—crime will rise, under all Governments, from time to time for reasons that are not always under the control of the police—it would be very easy for a mayor to point the finger at a senior police officer and say, “It’s their fault, and they have got to go”, when that may not in fact be the case.

[Baroness Hilton of Eggardon]

I, too, speak in support of Amendment 3. In earlier stages of the Bill I spoke about the dangers of police and politicians becoming too close. These dangers are exemplified by the current crisis in the relationships among the police, press and politicians. At one time in my police service, when David McNee was commissioner, we were quite explicitly forbidden from speaking to the media. This changed when Ken Newman became commissioner, and we were encouraged to be more open and democratic and to explain police actions to the public. Unfortunately, when a channel of communication is opened, it becomes a two-way street. The wrong information may flow from the police and inappropriate influence may be exercised by the media on the police service. Relationships develop and become too close or antagonistic, as they have in this current nexus of police, press and politicians.

This is a model of what will happen once these elected police commissioners are in post. In the past, politicians were treated by the police service with respect but not deference. Now, politicians, who necessarily represent factions in society and whose concern is a short-term desire to be re-elected, will have excessive influence and we will be back to the bad old days of the excessively politicised watch committees that we used to have in some of our major cities. By emphasising the importance of impartiality, this amendment would offset these political pressures to some extent and go some small way towards establishing an explicit code of conduct for the police and crime commissioner. I therefore hope that the Minister accepts it.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I put my name to this amendment out of consistency with what I have been saying at various stages throughout the Bill’s passage: namely, that, despite the fact that it is called a police reform Bill, there is precious little in the Bill about police reform and it is all about the reform of police governance. Therefore, anything that would support and help the police must be welcomed. I notice that today we are to have a Statement on public confidence in the police. It is the police on which we should concentrate. I hope that noble Lords have read the excellent, thought-provoking and very timely article in today’s Times by my noble friend Lord Dear about leadership in the police.

Therefore, it seems to me that this amendment, which talks about the need for the police and the crime panel to support the police and help them in what they do, is entirely in line with what we should be trying to achieve in the Bill. The governance that we have spent so long talking about is actually miles away. Mindful of what Lord Acton, I think, said about hindsight being the privilege of the historian, I suspect that, in view of what we have had disclosed in the past two weeks, if the Government were introducing this Bill today, it might be a very different Bill, which I hope would concentrate more on the police than on governance.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I also welcome the new Minister to her role. I hope that today she will listen carefully to the views expressed in the House on the detail of the Bill. I have previously talked about the problems of elected police commissioners twice in debates in this Chamber. I will not reiterate what I have said on previous occasions. Suffice it to say that we must not, through our debate on the Bill, end up polarising power in the hands of one individual. We should not politicise the police or produce conflict in electoral mandates between councils, their leaders and elected mayors and a police and crime commissioner. We should maintain impartial allocation of resources, preserve the neutrality of the police service and balance operational command with accountability.

Reference has been made to the coalition agreement. I shall quote precisely what it says:

“We will introduce measures to make the police more accountable through oversight by a directly elected individual, who will be subject to strict checks and balances by locally elected representatives”.

The issue is that the checks and balances are not strong enough and they are certainly not strict. They are very weak indeed. As we have heard, the commissioners will have the power of appointment and dismissal of a chief constable. They will have the power to set a precept, which must then be charged by the local authorities. They will have the power to set a budget and agree the heads of expenditure for a whole police area. They will also have the power to issue a detailed police and crime plan.

There are some checks in place. As the Bill makes clear, 75 per cent of the panel voting can veto the appointment of a chief constable, and 75 per cent of a panel can veto the level of the precept. However, as currently stated in the Bill, a panel has no power to veto the police and crime plan. It has no power to veto the budget and no power to veto the dismissal of the chief constable. The panel will be consulted on the plan and the proposal to dismiss a chief constable will have to go to it for consultation, but it does not have the powers to veto either of those areas.

Further, the commissioners will have the right to appoint their own staff directly. Crucially, the commissioners will have no legislature underneath them, unlike London, where there is one. Therefore, there is no structure underneath the commissioners which provides them with the advice, guidance and support that is absolutely required. As set out in the Bill, enhanced powers are needed for the panels in relation to the plan, the budget and the dismissal of the chief constable. The panels need to be bigger; 10 is too small. Geography, diversity, and urban and rural areas all need to be reflected in the panel. The veto should not sit at 75 per cent. Amendments have been tabled calling for two-thirds. The more I think about this, the more I believe that 50 per cent plus one is probably the right level. The panel must have power to scrutinise the police directly, as police authorities currently do. Under the Bill, they will be able to scrutinise only the commissioner, not the police. I do not regard that as acceptable.

The panel should be able to appoint one of its own members as a temporary replacement when the commissioner is incapacitated. As stated in the Bill, it will be required to appoint a member of the commissioner’s staff who has been appointed to that post by the commissioner and who will, by the very nature of the appointment, not be elected. I simply do not see how that is a strict check and balance on the power of the commissioner.

We shall need to debate many questions in relation to the Bill. I raise a further matter which has not been raised today but comes from the Constitution Select Committee and concerns the voting system. Your Lordships may have had quite enough of discussing voting systems, but a major constitutional issue is involved here. The committee states at paragraph 17 of its 14th report:

“The Government should explain clearly the rationale for adopting the supplementary vote system for the election of police and crime commissioners. In particular, the Government should explain why they have seen fit to recommend a different system to either of those put to the vote in the 5 May referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons”.

The point is extremely important because the supplementary vote does not require 50 per cent support. We simply do not know how many candidates there might be, but as people will have only two votes you could end up with a police and crime commissioner being appointed on a very low percentage of votes. I hope that in our debates in Committee we will look very carefully at how people get elected, because in my view the person who is elected a commissioner—should we have one—must have the support of 50 per cent plus one of those who are voting.

[Baroness Hilton of Eggardon]

My Lords, I too speak in support of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, and the important principle that the police service should remain politically neutral. The current system provides for a spread of political allegiances and representation of many sections of a force area. I cannot see that a single person can fulfil this role or that having the power to set the budget and sack the chief constable will not inevitably interfere with police operational actions.

On Second Reading I talked about my experiences as a chief superintendant and serving police officer at Chiswick, and of the distortions that can occur when policing is influenced by politics. In particular, I spoke about Chiswick and Brentford, where most of the problems of crime and disorder were located on the Brentford half of the ground, but all the public pressure came from the articulate, organised middle classes of Chiswick.

The role of the police service in this country for nearly 200 years has been to be politically neutral. The oath that we all took on joining the police service was that we would act “without fear or favour”. Indeed, in my view, the main role of the police service is to act as a buffer between the strong in society and the weak. This may be to protect specific citizens from attack by violent criminals, but it is also to protect minorities from the overbearing power of the majority, and allow them the space to demonstrate and to represent their points of view. Where this goes horribly wrong has been recently demonstrated in places such as Syria and Libya.

In contrast to the role of the police service, the role of politicians is to represent the interests of those who elected them and to favour policies that will ensure their re-election—not to have regard to the problems of disfranchised minorities. If the Bill becomes law, we will end up with police forces that are almost permanently influenced by one party or another. We will have Tory police forces, Labour police forces and, increasingly, different styles of policing.

My second problem with the provisions of the Bill is the title, “police and crime commissioner”. The introduction of “crime” into the title strikes me as cheap populism. The police service has many other responsibilities, in particular those relating to public order. One of the primary objects of Peel’s police was the preservation of peace and tranquillity. That holds true today. If we are to have these commissioners—which I very much hope we do not—then “crime” should be dropped from their titles.

My final problem with this proposed duopoly of power is that either the relationship will become too close, or there will be a clash of personalities. During my police service, there was a series of scandals in places such as Blackpool and Southend, where chief constables became too close to the local politicians and did them favours, or interfered with prosecutions—often on traffic offences. Alternatively, political differences may lead to, for example, the recent difficulties between the Mayor of London and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. We have just heard cited the Bookbinder case. The most notorious example of this problem took place some time ago with the chief constable of Nottingham—the gloriously named Captain Athelstan Popkess—who saw his Labour councillors as Soviet sympathisers and had them investigated by his Special Branch. He was subsequently sacked by the Home Office.

The Bill, as it pertains to policing, is wrong in principle. We have a police service in this country that is admired very much throughout the world, despite some reservations elsewhere, for its impartiality and reluctance to act as a tool of politicians. To jeopardise that political neutrality is, I believe, extremely dangerous.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I shall be brief to the extent of telegraphy, even if it costs me welcoming my noble friend, which of course I do. I did not speak at Second Reading. As this is, therefore, my first speech during the passage of the Bill, I hope your Lordships' House will excuse my momentary pomposity if I say that I must declare an interest, which I shall declare only once. When the Police Act 1964 passed into law, my late noble kinsman was the Home Secretary who took it through. Given the heat that seems to surround the present reform, it might be said that that Act has stood the test of time well over those 47 years, but it does not mean that my late noble kinsman would necessarily have regarded its reform as inappropriate. His first nine years in politics were in the fledgling Conservative Research Department, whose historian, my noble friend Lord Lexden, now sits in your Lordships’ House and who would, I suspect, say that my late noble kinsman was an indefatigable producer of detailed policy documents at the drop of a hat.

I am profoundly fond of my noble friend Lady Harris. We have shared many British-Irish occasions, as well as police ones. However, my remarks are composed on the flyleaf of the Bill, and flyleaves are often passed through like small station halts by an express train. To remind your Lordships' House, the flyleaf, after the title and the word “Contents” reads, Part 1, Police Reform, Chapter 1, Police Areas Outside London. Clause 1 is entitled “Police and crime commissioners”. Those words recur on page 1, before recording Clause 1(1), which my noble friend’s amendment would strike from the Bill. It would be difficult for Clause 1(1) to have more of the quality of a foundation stone or a greater centrality in the Bill so my noble friend has chosen a target worthy of her mettle, but it is no surprise that the speeches that the amendment has occasioned have had largely the smack of Second Reading speeches, which are normally frowned on in Committee. As, conventionally, we do not vote at Second Reading, I hope that my noble friend will remember the spirit of that convention when we come to her final speech on the amendment.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hilton of Eggardon]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a police pensioner with 34 years’ service in the Metropolitan Police. I, too, will concentrate on Clause 1, which concerns the appointment of elected police commissioners. I confess that I have particular difficulty in understanding how a single individual can be expected to represent all the variety of local communities in a police area the size of, for example, the West Midlands or Thames Valley. However, there are more fundamental objections to this plan.

First, there is the very simplistic idea, often held by politicians, that elections are always a guarantee of democratic accountability. My experience of helping to monitor some 14 or 15 elections in countries of the old Soviet empire has shown that the mechanics of voting—now generally efficiently performed—have little to do with democratic accountability, which is much more dependent on a free and open media and a neutral police service that does not serve the sectional interests of politicians. I am puzzled, moreover, by the provenance of this idea that an elected politician should have direct control of a police force. The Home Office has always been irritated by the independence of chief constables, but to turn 43 forces over to the control of 43 politicians will only increase diversity and disparity between individual forces. We will no longer have a common standard of policing in this country.

It is also possible that the germ of the idea was drawn from the United States. That country, as we have heard, has about 17,000 separate forces, some of which are excellent. However, others have more examples of racism and brutality than we have seen in this country. Moreover, the crime rate has been declining both in this country and in America but, nevertheless, there were almost as many murders in New York last year as we had in the whole country. Therefore, I do not think it is an example to be followed.

Secondly, in this country we have had nearly 200 years of a tradition of a police service that is independent of political direction. Before Robert Peel managed to get the Metropolitan Police Act through Parliament in 1829, he had made previous attempts to establish a professional police service. These attempts were rejected by Parliament on the grounds that the whole concept of police was a foreign—specifically, French—idea, which would lead to a police state with a police service acting as a tool of government.

My own direct experience of the police service being used as a tool of government came most vividly during the miners’ strike. I was a commander at New Scotland Yard at the time and for a few months was responsible for the police co-ordinating centre that organised the transfer of large numbers of police officers around the country. Every morning someone came from the Cabinet Office for a situation report. I was horrified by their attitude, which was that this was some sort of war game and that the mining communities were the enemy. There was no understanding of the damage that was being done to police and public relationships in those areas.

I would also like to draw on my experience as a chief superintendent at Chiswick and Brentford. The division of Chiswick and Brentford has two very distinct parts, as many of your Lordships who are familiar with London will know. It is a large and diverse community but is inevitably biased in favour of those who are most powerful and most middle class. Chiswick is a leafy suburb of London with riverside communities, low-rise houses and a well-to-do middle-class constituency. Brentford in contrast has two high-rise council estates and a football ground. No part of the division was a high-crime area but the majority of the thefts, graffiti, harassment of Asian shopkeepers and rowdyism and two of the three murders that we had during my three years there were in the Brentford half of the ground. Nevertheless—this is the point of the anecdote—all the pressure that I had from the local community came regularly from the middle-class inhabitants of Chiswick. They wanted a considerable police presence—as someone said earlier, a policeman on every corner—to prevent commuters using their leafy streets as rat-runs. I had difficulty persuading them that there were more serious problems elsewhere in the division. I fear that a single politician representing a particular constituency would be similarly biased in directing what a chief constable did.

In many ways the police service is already highly accountable, and not just to police authorities. There is always intense media interest in all aspects of policing, whether crime detection, civil emergencies or the manner in which public order is maintained. The current widespread debate throughout the country about the tactics of police in dealing with demonstrations is an example of this scrutiny. There are great dangers in having police commissioners, who would inevitably represent a single political party and who would have such power over a chief constable, being able to set a budget and appoint and sack a chief constable. To claim that that individual represents the whole community would inevitably impact on operational policing. It is naive to assume otherwise. We have had 200 years of a police service that is admired throughout the world. It would be a tragedy to destroy it now.