Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Lord Bishop of Chichester and Lord Blair of Boughton

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the commissioner to whom the noble Lord, Lord Soley, just referred. I am afraid that I will spoil the party of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, by saying that yes, there is someone here who was a Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and opposes the Bill in root and principle. The reason why I do so is the nature of the beast, in terms of who these police commissioners will be and how they will behave.

I support the amendment because I do not support pilots. We do not need pilots because we can see how the system works. The gentleman who has been mentioned a great deal, Bill Bratton, a good friend of mine, the greatest commissioner and probably the greatest police officer that I have ever met, was fired after 28 months, after reducing crime across the board in New York, including homicide, to limits that had never been seen before. He did that but he crossed Mayor Giuliani by appearing on the front of Time magazine, and was fired instantly. Giuliani of course appointed a man who ended up in prison later on in his undistinguished career. That, I am afraid, is how the beasts behave.

Another example of my worries about the Bill goes back to what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said about the protocol. Much was made about the protocol at Second Reading. I have read the protocol and it is not worth the paper that it is written on. It has no statutory basis, and when it comes to the point of hiring and firing the chief constable, there is nothing in that protocol that will stop an individual police and crime commissioner simply announcing that he has got rid of or wishes to get rid of the chief constable, or that he has no confidence in the chief constable. Once that has been announced, the chief constable is almost finished—without any help, because there is no panel there that would be able to support him.

If noble Lords do not think that British politicians would behave like that, I shall give the example—I will not name him, but your Lordships will all know him—of the Home Secretary who tried to have the chief constable of Sussex and the chief constable of Humberside fired, without the power so to do, and he did that effectively on the front pages of the national newspapers. This is for your Lordships’ House to consider: unless someone does something that puts limits around the power of these commissioners, who may well go into office with wonderful ideas and deep integrity but may also see their chances of re-election fall through the floor, and unless their power is constrained in some way, the only answer is for this House to support the amendment put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Harris.

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for making the first point that I wanted to make about the danger of populism. You have only to look at the way in which reactions to particular high-profile cases have led to some very dangerous situations on our streets in recent years to recognise that although democratic accountability is highly important, populism can have a very nasty face as well.

The other point that I wanted to make, picking up something that the noble Lord said, was about the diversity of the communities that will be served by these commissioners. My own county of Sussex is a leafy, largely prosperous place, but with huge pockets of both rural and urban deprivation—precisely the places that are likely to feel themselves excluded because our community as a whole feels itself to be prosperous and settled. It seems extremely difficult to deliver policing, as it is to deliver the services that the church tries to offer, in a community as diverse as that. Great sensitivity is needed to the nature of the communities that are being served.