Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Baroness Hilton of Eggardon and Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[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.