Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Lords Chamber

The Minister is frowning at me, but I was hoping that he might at least see his way to considering these amendments further. It seems a sensible way forward to have a more appropriate governance structure for such an important role. I beg to move.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I shall support this amendment simply by reflecting on my own experience. I will be very brief. I served at a senior level, although not as commissioner, in the Metropolitan Police when there was no police authority. I also served when there was a police authority. With respect to the noble Lords who served on that police authority, some of whom are present, I did not always agree with them. However, in terms of strategic principle, to have a senior police officer—as the director-general will be—running a large, complex and controversial law enforcement organisation with no statutory advice from any outside body around him or her is dangerous in the modern age. As the noble Baroness has just said, it is not just dangerous for the director-general; it is dangerous for the Secretary of State.

Let us assume for a moment that the investigation which came to be known as “cash for honours” had occurred at a time when no police authority existed in London. As commissioner, while my service was investigating what had or had not happened inside No. 10 Downing Street—presided over by a Labour Prime Minister—I would have been reporting direct to a Labour Home Secretary, rather than to a more variegated body. The difficulties, temptations, pressures and politics of what that would, or could, have been like are pretty obvious and unpleasant to contemplate. What this amendment is suggesting is not a police authority. I am not at all precious about the detail of some of the appointments laid out in the different clauses; I just believe there is no need to mirror the PCC arrangement so recently announced in this kind of central body.

This amendment is less vital to me than Amendment 14, about counterterrorism functions, to which we will come shortly, but my experience suggests that a board of this sort would be an advantageous addition to the NCA, the director-general and the Secretary of State, and I commend the amendment to the House.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. Having been a member of the police authority to which the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, reported, I confirm that we did not always agree with the views that he put to us or the proposals that he made—but that was a healthy tension; there was a healthy process of governance. When I was chair of that authority, on three separate occasions a proposal was brought to the police authority by the noble Lord, Lord Blair, in his previous incarnation, which was rejected each time, and in the end a modified proposal emerged, which I think was better for London.

That was a relationship of dialogue and openness. What the Government are proposing in the Bill will be very different. There will simply be the director-general, who will report to the Home Secretary, and the Home Secretary will have the powers to set the strategic direction, the general way in which the organisation operates and, of course, have the power to hire and fire. There will be no scrutiny of that, no external validation and no one else sitting round the table—it will be a one-to-one relationship.

One of the fundamental principles of British policing, ever since Sir Robert Peel started the whole process, is that there should not be direct political control of the police service. What we have here is the creation of a potentially incredibly powerful national policing body that will report to a single politician, with no other people sitting around the table when directions and advice are given.

The advantages of my noble friend’s amendment are that it puts a layer between the Home Secretary and the director-general—a governance board—but also that the governance board has several people and interests represented. That does not absolutely prevent political interference because I am sure that the Home Secretary may on occasion phone the director-general and there will be direct dialogue, but it provides a governance structure that is a safeguard against the distortion of operational priorities for political purposes.

The noble Lord, Lord Blair, referred to the difficulties that he might have faced in respect of cash for honours. At the time of that investigation, there was a Labour chair of the police authority—it was not me; that was after my time, although I was still on the police authority—and I know that that Labour chair came under considerable political pressure from Labour Party colleagues about that investigation. Quite properly, he did not intervene on those matters; indeed, he defended the operational decisions of the police. But even had he been minded not to resist that political pressure, he had around him 22 other members of the police authority calling him to account and saying, “Actually, this must be allowed to run its course, right or wrong”. Here, there will just be the Home Secretary relating to the director-general in private, with no one else around the table able to say, “Is this appropriate or not?”.

It is a profoundly dangerous structure. I am sure it is being done for the best of all possible reasons and we will be told how efficient it is. But I have yet to hear anyone say that the SOCA board has been a waste of time, that it has not added value or that it has not improved the governance of the Serious Organised Crime Agency—none of those points has been put.

Instead, we are offered this direct-line relationship between the director-general and the Home Secretary. It is extremely dangerous. Even if the current Home Secretary and her successors have no intention of ever crossing that line and trying to intervene in the operational decision-making of the director-general, they will be open to the allegation that that is precisely what they have done. That weakens the position both of the director-general and of Ministers. For that reason I believe that the Bill’s proposals are profoundly dangerous, and I support my noble friend’s amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I declare my registered interest in policing. Last week, during the debates on the Justice and Security Bill, a number of noble Lords expressed the sentiment that national security is the first duty of government. I agree with that point of view. I put my name to this amendment because I believe that Clause 2 directly affects national security and so, in my view, is more important than any other clause in this section of the Bill.

The Metropolitan Police currently has—and has had for many years—primacy for counterterrorist law enforcement in all parts of the United Kingdom, including Scotland and Wales, although not Northern Ireland. The roles of the commissioner, the Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations—who, by agreement, is the ex-officio chair of the ACPO Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee—and of the National Coordinator of Terrorist Investigations, who are all Metropolitan Police officers, are understood and accepted by chief officers of police throughout the land, and by our colleagues in the security services and the Special Forces.

A whole regime of counterterrorist units outside London and national procedures has been developed, including the ceding to the Metropolitan Police of ultimate responsibility for CT executive operations. This is an effective and tried and trusted regime that allows for the transmission of intelligence and decisions about surveillance, interception and arrests to flow from the very local to the global, and vice versa, without crossing organisational boundaries—the curse of arrangements in so many countries, including the United States.

However, along with the noble Baroness, that is not the case that I make today. The decision as to arrangements for counterterrorist policing, including whether they should be passed from the Met to the NCA, is not a matter for the police or even for ex-commissioners of the police, but for Parliament. However, I suggest it should not be done this way. I understand the super-affirmative procedure laid out in Schedule 18, and it has many checks and balances, but it is essentially passive. It does not require debate in depth. The kernel of my argument for deleting this clause is that nothing is more important than national security, and in my lifetime no change more significant than this in the policing arrangements to protect our nation has ever been contemplated. A change in the NCA’s responsibility may be right, but it may not be. Lives—lots of lives—may depend on this piece of legislation. Such a decision deserves primary legislation, to allow the suggestion to be scrutinised, debated and amended by both Houses of Parliament.

Moreover, I am suspicious of the motivation behind such a change even being contemplated. He has been mentioned already in your Lordships’ House today, but from the very moment he entered office in 2008, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, began to speak to me, as commissioner, and to others, about the anomaly of the police of London having responsibilities outside London; not only for counterterrorism but for investigations in UK overseas dependent territories and the protection of prominent persons, including the Royal Family, wherever that might be. He and his senior advisers wanted those duties removed. The reason for that was not economy, or the security of London, but so that he and his successors had the untrammelled ability to select and dismiss the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police without reference to the Home Secretary, who currently recommends the person to be appointed to that post to Her Majesty the Queen. I do not know where this idea has come from. I do not know whether the current idea is in some sense about tidying up—a conviction on the part of the Government. However, if it has entered government thinking in order to satisfy a mayoral ambition, that would be wrong both in practice and in principle. I would be grateful to be assured by the Minister that such ambition has no place in this legislation.

As I said at the beginning, I am not here arguing the case for the status quo, nor for change, but merely because I know—having spoken to them—that senior police officers who have current responsibility for these matters believe that the maximum public scrutiny should occur of the reasons for and against such a change. They are owed no less. The people who do this have a very dangerous and responsible job. They believe with me that, “It ain’t broke, so it doesn’t need fixing”.

[Lord Condon]

My Lords, I support this amendment. However, I must say at the outset that I am not interested in turf wars between the Metropolitan Police and the new NCA; I am not interested in protecting the status quo or over-arguing that it should remain with the Metropolitan Police. But I am passionately engaged in the constitutional issues which have been set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, in moving the amendment. This is a hugely important matter that deserves primary legislation rather than an affirmative order, however comprehensive that seeks to be. I had the role for seven years of worrying about terrorism nationally. I worked very closely with all the agencies involved here and abroad. History tells us that more than 80% of terrorist incidents in this country happen in London. The fight against terrorism is as much about hearts and minds as it is about laser-like operations to combat terrorism. That hearts and minds approach involves great co-operation with local communities; in the London context, that has involved working with the Islamic community, with the mosques, the schools and the integration of neighbourhood policing in that preventive role. In London, therefore, there is a very inter-connected prevention and detection response to terrorism which has been built up over many years and in response to terrorism which has emerged from all around the world.

As I say, I am not interested in a turf war or in arguing for the status quo. However, this is hugely important for this country. The Constitution Committee has isolated why this is so important and why primary legislation is more desirable than the super-affirmative process. I support the amendment passionately.

Police: Strike Action

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the decision by the Police Federation of England and Wales to ballot their members on whether the legal prohibition on police officers taking strike action should be repealed.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)]

My Lords, the Home Secretary has been clear that police officers cannot strike, and that is not going to change. As a civil emergency service it is vital that the service is able to discharge its duty to protect the public and to keep the peace at times of serious national and local disorder.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer, with which I agree. However, I am more concerned to know how we got to this place. I should point out to the House for the avoidance of doubt that this Question was laid down before the imbroglio concerning the Chief Whip in the other place came either to my notice or to public notice. My supplementary question is in three brief parts. First, in 93 years this is the first time that the Police Federation has balloted its members: does the noble Lord believe that that indicates a breakdown in trust between the Police Service of all ranks in England and Wales and the Government? Secondly, whether he believes that or not, does he accept, as I do, that a substantial number of police officers believe that there is a breakdown in trust? Thirdly, what are the Government going to do about it?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The Government do not underestimate the strength of feeling among officers at the moment. The Home Secretary and the policing Minister regularly meet with representatives of the Police Federation, the Police Superintendents’ Association and members of the Association of Chief Police Officers to discuss ways of tackling this issue. We are looking of ways in which we can ensure a greater input from officers of all ranks in policing matters. We will continue to engage with police officers and staff to ensure that their opinions help shape future policing policies.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

I thank the Minister for that. It is of course not a police force establishment these days but an NPIA establishment. I just hope that it will find a future within the new structure. I sincerely plead for Harperley Hall not simply because it is in the north-east but because it does excellent work on behalf of this country which has saved lives and improved the quality of forensics work both here and across the world. I do not believe that as a country we can afford to lose that. I hope that the Government have some warm words for us this afternoon.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

I agree with the conclusions of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, that the abolition of the NPIA is hasty, ill thought out and potentially extremely damaging. I want to build on a question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, about training. What is the future plan for Bramshill House? There it sits, a grade 1 listed building, a place at which I was present when one of the Minister’s friends, Kenneth Clarke, was Home Secretary. He arrived late for a meeting, having just been appointed, to say that he was sorry he was late but he had stopped in the driveway to ring the Prime Minister to tell him that he had found a very suitable residence for the Home Secretary.

Bramshill provides two things of vital importance. First, it provides the strategic training for the most senior officers of the police service. Secondly, it is a centre of excellence for international and European police training. Are there plans for what will happen to Bramshill when the NPIA is abolished?

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, just said. I had the great privilege of being invited to Bramshill on several occasions to speak to different groups of police about family issues. The time I particularly remember was being left with the most senior group being trained, who I understood were destined for high office. I was introduced in two sentences and the door was shut, and I was facing about 50 men—as it happened the group was made up entirely of men—many of whom were not from United Kingdom police forces. Having somehow or other got my way through that, I learnt, when going to lunch, how enormously valuable it is for the police forces round the world to have the opportunity to go to Bramshill. It is a wonderful institution and I hope, as the noble Lord, Lord Blair said, that it will be given the greatest possible respect and encouragement to remain doing what it does so well at the moment.

Stephen Lawrence

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I think that I made it pretty clear when repeating the Statement that my right honourable friend has made it quite clear that she is not ruling out an inquiry, and I repeat that assurance to the noble Lord. I also make it clear that she has promised to keep the House updated as a matter of course. I cannot promise precisely how and when she will do that or whether she will do something before the internal inquiry ends, but there might be other occasions. The precise timing and method by which she keeps the House updated obviously will be a matter for her.

I thank the noble Lord—who I think is the only former Home Secretary in the Chamber at the moment—for his intervention, and particularly for what he said about the police and the debt that we owe them. Let us hope that all these allegations prove to be unfounded as far as possible.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

I lived with the Lawrence inquiry for something like 16 years, and I had the honour this year to be invited to give the first Stephen Lawrence inaugural lecture. Like many others, I pay tribute to the Lawrence family, and Doreen Lawrence in particular.

I suggest that the Home Secretary is taking a very sensible line on this matter. When I read the Independent a month or so ago regarding these allegations I was surprised at how many of those allegations I had heard before—how many had been in the investigation by the Guardian in 2002 and by the IPCC, and how many were known to those of us who had worked on the case. My concern now is to distinguish, as statisticians do, between coincidence and causation. The original Macpherson inquiry clearly did not say that there was no corruption, but it could not find any connection between corruption and the failures of the first investigation. I think that that is probably the situation that we still sit with.

I commend the idea that if an inquiry is necessary we should pursue it with absolute vigour. I also commend the view of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that perhaps the Metropolitan Police’s internal inquiry should be given the support of an independent position from HMIC. This case has so many layers that we should take it very slowly, as the Home Secretary suggests, and very carefully, before we rush to judgment.

[Lord Henley]

I am very grateful for the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Blair, who knows more than anyone about these issues. I am also very grateful for the support that he offers to the Home Secretary as regards taking this very carefully. I think that my right honourable friend will also note in particular his comments on the possible assistance that HMIC may wish to give to the Met in this instance.

Abu Qatada

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I am afraid that my noble friend has probably asked me the hardest question of all, as to how we can deal with that problem and how it can solve our problems. Nevertheless, we want to make it clear that we think that it is right to look at reform of the ECHR. One of the reasons for that was given by my noble friend—that is, the backlog of cases that has built up there and the fact that the court seems to be involving itself in a whole number of relatively small cases that are not necessarily appropriate to it, particularly when one thinks of reforms brought through by the party opposite that have given us something known as the Supreme Court. It seems rather sad that, as soon as we have something called the Supreme Court, we have to announce that there is a court above it in the form of the European Court of Human Rights. As I said to my noble friend, finding a way to reform a court such as the European Court of Human Rights, which has of the order of 47 different members, will be a difficult job—but it is one that this country should continue to pursue.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, as somebody who, in a different role, has known of Abu Qatada’s case for nearly a decade, I fully understand the dilemma in which the Minister and the Government find themselves. The same dilemma has sat in front of us in different ways for 10 years. I will look forward and then ask the Minister a question. If we go forward three months and it has been impossible to reach an agreement with Jordan, I understand that we would then revert to the TPIMs process. One issue about that process, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, is that it can only be done once, for two years. So in two years and three months, Abu Qatada will be a free man under the current legislative arrangements. While not wanting to make one case into bad law, will the Minister refer this specific case to the reviewer of counterterrorist legislation to see whether that two-year rule is sustainable under these circumstances?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention, for all the experience that he brings to these matters, and for reminding the House, as I did in my Statement, that successive Governments have tried to get this man out of the country for over 10 years, since 2001. This and the previous Government have obviously faced some difficulties in that. The noble Lord talked about the future and mentioned that in three months these bail conditions are likely to expire unless we have got Abu Qatada out of the country—I sincerely hope we will have done—or he will be detained again for some other reason. The noble Lord then speculated that it might be that, after the three months expire, we find we have nothing else to use but TPIMs. As he said, that can only last two years and we would then be in some difficulty. He then rightly stressed the important point that one case might make bad law, and that the matter should be referred to the reviewer of counterterrorism. I can assure the noble Lord that the reviewer will examine this and its consequences. At the moment, we are satisfied that we will make some progress—I hope that we will—and will have a happier outcome to announce within the next three months.

Interpol

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am not aware that there is. I want to make it clear that the United Kingdom Government will not either arrest or extradite a person solely on the basis of a red notice. If we are going to extradite someone, it will go through the usual and proper procedures under the Extradition Act 2003.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, Interpol has suffered for some years, or perhaps for 100 years, from two structural problems. First, it is an organisation that every country in the world, including some very unpleasant ones, can become members of and share intelligence, and secondly, cases like this one arise from time to time.

At the moment both Interpol and Europol work out of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, which is to be abolished. Will Her Majesty’s Government, and the Minister, be able to reassure the House that when this function moves to the National Crime Agency, a little more attention will be given to both Interpol and Europol as their powers gradually expand?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the remarks from the noble Lord, who brings enormous experience to these matters, and I can assure him that we will be taking particular notice of this as SOCA moves into the NCA, over the coming months and years, and will make sure that these points are taken up.

I also note what he said about Interpol covering a very large number of countries, some of which we would recognise as having systems similar to our own, while some have systems that are somewhat dubious. Nevertheless, as I made clear earlier, its constitution does enshrine its neutrality. That is very important and we will continue to try to get that across. The United Kingdom Government will make their views clear in the appropriate manner, through the annual general assembly.

Metropolitan Police Service

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

I quite agree with the principle that my noble friend Lady Hamwee has just espoused. Certainly, the investigations, and the recommendations that will come from them, will, I hope, show us the best way forward for things such as hospitality. Very often, these things come down to personal judgment. All of us in public life have to make a personal judgment about some of these issues, and sometimes we are bound by the spirit of the law as well as what is said in the law. I therefore hope that when we see the final results of the investigations, they will include codes and practices that encapsulate the spirit of the law as well as the law itself.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

I declare a rather special interest. Until yesterday I was the last commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I am now the one before that. That is rather a striking position. The last time commissioners resigned was in the 1880s; these were Sir Edmund Henderson and Sir Charles Warren. The circumstances were somewhat different; Sir Edmund resigned because the club of which he was a member in Pall Mall had its windows broken by rioters.

My question to the Minister is in two succeeding parts. First, does the resignation of two successive Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police in just over two and a half years indicate that something is gravely wrong with the political oversight and governance of that body? Secondly, does the Minister agree that there is a much wider question at hand than the grave matters now entrusted to Lord Justice Leveson? My concern is that we have a police Bill and the Winsor report, and we now have the Filkin and HMIC reports. Why does the Minister not agree that the Home Affairs Select Committee recommendation should now be put into place and a royal commission into the mission, structure and governance of the police be appointed? Every time this has been raised, the coalition Government have said, “We have not got time”. I think we should take time now.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman]

I, too, am a great believer in non-executive directors. Having served as a non-executive director on a public company and on several private companies, I think that non-executive directors have an extremely important role to play, but their role is defined as relating to “fiduciary duty”. They are there to look after the interest of the shareholders, or owners, of the company. They understand their role, management understands their role and, where it all works extremely well, as several noble Lords have already said, we know that they appreciate that role.

However, the amendment is not about fiduciary duty but about expertise, advice and management, which are quite different. This is not about the role of a non-executive director, who is an independent director on the board who ensures that the interests of the shareholders are looked after; this is about having a team that will bring expertise, knowledge and advice to the police and crime commissioner. I think that the amendment confuses a non-executive with, as it were, a consultant or a special adviser; they are not quite the same. We ought not to think of this proposal in terms of a board of non-executives who provide independence but in terms of people who provide expertise. The amendment says that these people will advise on financial matters, staff matters and equality matters. It is important that such expertise should be available to PCCs—there is no question about that—but to suggest that these are non-executives who form a non-executive board is, it seems to me, the wrong way to go about it.

Also, we know that it will be open to any PCC to hire advisers and consultants—no doubt some will, and no doubt there will be some who will not who should—so the amendment seems to be rather a sledge-hammer taken to a nut. The amendment would require all 43 or all 41 forces, no matter how small, to have at least four non-executives. I think that the whole thing is far too prescriptive.

And yet the amendment also leaves lots of questions unanswered. For example, how often should the non-executive board meet? If we put this in the Bill, it will be quite open to a PCC never to bring the non-executives together or to bring them together once a year for a meeting lasting half an hour. The PCC would thereby fulfil the terms of the amendment, yet he would not get the advantages of having non-executives. The next thing, we know, is that we will want to set out regulations to make it clear that the PCC has to meet with them and how often he has to meet with them. What papers could the non-executives see? Could they see all papers or only those that relate to their particular subject? Could they see operational papers and all the papers that the PCC sees? Could they be briefed by the chief constable? Could they deal directly with the chief constable and with the management team, or could they only advise the PCC? Finally, how is their effectiveness to be judged? Can the PCC fire them whenever he wants to, or does he have to go back to the panel to fire them? According to this amendment, he does not. It would be a ridiculous situation if he fired them and then hired a new group, the panel approved a new group and then he disagreed with them.

There are several problems, but the main problem is that it is far too prescriptive while leaving these gaps. It smacks too much of central direction. I was thinking of the day when there will be an association of non-executive members of police authorities. They will meet regularly with ACPO at the annual conference and discuss the problems of non-executives. It will be all far too organised. There will certainly be directives out of the Home Office describing in minute detail when they should meet, how often they should meet, what records should be kept and so on.

Even worse than that, I see this as a sort of consultants’ windfall. What will happen, unless we specify that these non-executives have to be resident in the area of the particular force, is that we will have a group of high-powered, well paid, very able and experienced consultants who act as non-executive directors for five, 10 or 20 forces. They will be specialists in equality, finance or staffing. There would be nothing wrong with that; it would achieve what this amendment wants it to achieve—namely, it would bring expertise to the commissioner. It would hold his feet to the fire if he refused to make decisions or, on the other hand, tell him that he has not got all the power in the world. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, suggested that that was one of the functions. I see this very much as a windfall for consultants, and I doubt that we really want that.

While the Bill gives chief constables more freedom to manage, at the same time this amendment gives the PCC less freedom. We are saying on one hand that the chief constable can appoint his top management team and at the same time that the PCC has to have approval for his non-executive team. That seems wrong.

Finally, I think or hope that people see this Bill as strengthening the link between forces and their local communities. This amendment will in effect weaken it by bringing in experts who are not related to the community but are simply there for their expertise, their knowledge and their experience.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Newton, for adding to his collection of commissioners and chairmen of police authorities. However, I want to say, having served as a chief officer of police for 15 years, that I served with the police committees that the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, reformed in order to bring in an independent group of people. The committees were transformed by that process. I know from what I have heard of the speeches of my erstwhile colleagues that all of us feel that the independence of some people around this police and crime commissioner is fundamental. I have not seen a better amendment than the one put forward by the noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Stevens, and I support it.

[Baroness Henig]

I wish to add a word or two. I heard very much what the noble Lord said, and I very much sympathise with the idea of strengthening the panel. Nobody has tried harder during the Committee stage of this Bill than I have, with the assistance of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, to strengthen the function of the panel. I have put five amendments to that effect. Thus far, the Government have not been minded to strengthen the panel, for a very clear reason. They feel that the only role of the panel is to scrutinise the commissioner and that the panel should be able to scrutinise the commissioner only on very specific areas. Thus far, I have to say that I do not believe that that constitutes strict checks and balances, which is a different issue. None the less, if I was confident that at Report the Government would change their views and accept some of the amendments that I have down later for strengthening the panels, I would feel differently. But I cannot say to the Minister that I have that confidence at the moment, because of the very strong line that the Minister has taken. The issue is the relationship of the panel to the commissioner. If the Government maintain their attitude on that issue then this is the only other mechanism to accomplish what I was trying to do with the panels.

I wanted to raise one slight point with my noble friend Lord Harris, which I asked him about very early on when he was putting together his ideas. Is it an either/or situation? Is there any way in which some or all of the independents who we have been talking about, and who we all value so highly for their expertise, could also serve on the panel? Perhaps he could say in due course whether it is an either/or situation, because I am not absolutely convinced that it needs to be.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I shall try to be brief; a lot of arguments have been made and I shall try not to repeat them. However, I will repeat the congratulations that have been given to the Minister—although I will change it to commiserations because being dropped into a contentious Bill of this complexity and which has constitutional implications is a big challenge. However, I know she will listen and that is very important.

My reason for offering support to this group of amendments is because we are engaged in something very serious and a pause for thought is right. The trial period might be referred to in a more important group of amendments than this one but it involves the same principle that we need to pause and think about this.

One of the most important statements in the report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee, quite rightly, is:

“From a constitutional perspective, the chief risk with Part 1 is that of politicising operational decision-making”.

That, and what follows from it, is profoundly important. I ask the Minister, when she considers all of these arguments, to take that statement by the Constitution Committee into account more than anything else; it is particularly important.

I shall refer now to the optimism of people who believe that elected police commissioners will address a democratic deficit of some type. I am a strong believer in democracy and in voting generally, but there are times when you need to step back and think about whether it is the best system. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile—who is in a committee at the moment and will not hear my comments—is convinced that it is very important to have the senior officer of the police committee elected in the way described in the Bill. I say to him that one of the things that we all underestimate at times is that the British public as a whole put such great store on their constituency MP that they tend to go to their MP before they think of going to anyone else. Any ex-MP will know that despite the fact that you might say 100 times to an individual, “The local councillor can sort out your problem quicker and better than I can”, they will still go to the MP. That there are people who think that by setting up elected police committees covering large areas they will have people going to them, is a triumph of hope over experience.

The other fear I have was put clearly by my noble friend Lord Beecham and I do not need to repeat it in too much detail. There is a problem about people being elected on the basis of a fear of crime. I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, but the problem with populism in an area such as crime is that it is based on fear. One of the difficulties in dealing with crime prevention is lowering the fear of crime. The greater the fear of crime, the more people retreat indoors, the more communities get cut off and the greater the risk of crime becomes. There is very strong evidence for that.

One of my objections to, particularly, the tabloid press in the 1970s and 1980s was that it played on the fear of crime to the extent that it drove the crime level up. I shall give a simple example; I shall not delay the House on it. I remember chairing a meeting in my then constituency of Shepherds Bush, with two police officers sitting alongside me, because there had been a murder at the base of a block of flats. The public meeting was very angry and the residents wanted large, 20-foot high gates erected to stop people coming in. They kept referring to three murders and I kept saying, “I know of only one murder”. I asked the police about this and they said, “No, there has been only one murder”. When I talked afterwards to the people, who were, importantly, mainly elderly, they kept referring to three murders. “There were three murders here, Mr Soley. You don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re not listening”, they said. So we went away and researched carefully the papers for the area. There had been three headlines in the paper: one when the murder was committed, one when the guy was caught and one when he was sentenced. The more I think about it, that was a classic example of the fear of crime because people had read it as, “Murder in this block of flats”, and it became three whereas in fact it was one. The fear of crime produces a higher crime level.

I will not go into this now because it is for a future debate on the Bill but I have reservations, too, about confusing crime prevention measures with policing. Police have a critical part in detecting and preventing crime but crime prevention is infinitely more than just policing. In fact, if you try to deal with crime just by dealing with the police you are unlikely to succeed. Those are my reservations about going down the election route without testing it pretty thoroughly first.

A couple of examples have been given, of Derek Hatton and the Bookbinder case. I knew about the latter, incidentally, but not its details. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, might well agree that if it was the first time we had to do it in 50 years—I think his term was “half a century”—that is a pretty impressive success ratio for a system. Any governmental system that lasts for 50 years without a major intervention of that type is one you have to look at carefully and think about copying, because you do not normally get that level of success. You do not need to look just at the Bookbinder case and Hatton examples: as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, pointed out, Hatton was not a case but could have been. You need to look only at the recent case of Boris Johnson and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Leaving aside whether the mayor or the commissioner was right, we should bear in mind that we appear to be creating a structure which will make such conflict much more common. Can the Minister keep that very much in mind? It is profoundly important. If we really want to see battles between an elected official and a chief constable, the danger in the Bill is that that will be a high risk.

My other point is one that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, made carefully with her great experience of Northern Ireland. I remember from my own time dealing with Northern Ireland, both on the Front Bench in the House of Commons and as chair of the Select Committee, that the problem of policing there was extreme. That was because the divisions in the community were based on both national and religious identities, while we had a police force which primarily, and almost entirely, represented one section of the community. The method of control had been by one section of the community. I think my noble friend Lady Henig made the point that if you have large areas in mainland Britain, as opposed to the United Kingdom including Northern Ireland, there will be patches in them where the people are not similar to the whole area. You do not need to take your example from Northern Ireland; you can simply look back to London in the 1970s and 1980s.

When the riots broke out in 1981 and the Scarman report came out, Lord Scarman powerfully made the important point that racism within the police had to be tackled. Racism in the London police force at that time was very serious; we all knew that. Despite noble efforts by police at all levels to deal with it, the problem was severe. I say again to the Minister, who I am sure is in her listening mode, that if she is looking at large areas of this country she will find that some of them contain large minority populations who already feel, in some cases, that the policing does not represent them. If we are to go down the road that we are heading down with this Bill without checking it out pretty carefully first, one thing I ask of the Government is to look very carefully at how on earth they make sure that ethnic minorities in those large areas feel represented within that system. London was a classic case of the explosion of anger about policing, when a large and growing section of the community was left out.

I am the first to congratulate the police in the metropolis on all that they have done in recent years; they have worked wonders, and things are infinitely better than they were. As any senior police officer will tell you, though, there is still a problem—in other words, it is not easy to deal with. As the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, pointed out, although we have made enormous strides in this area in Northern Ireland, the idea that somehow we cracked this problem is a triumph of hope over experience.

I said that I would keep my words brief. My single message, picking up on the point made by the Select Committee on the constitution of the House of Lords as well as the points that have been made by myself and others, is that the Government are embarking down a road that has an awful lot of elephant traps in it. When policing is such an important part of our constitution, as the Constitution Committee makes out, the case for making sure that we get the detail right is profoundly important. We will come to this in a later group of amendments, but there is a case for piloting or a pause of some type.

[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.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest. In common with a small number of noble Lords speaking today, I served as a police officer for a long period—in my case, 35 years, with 10 as a chief officer. I shall have some other interests to declare later on.

I rise to my feet with a heavy heart. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has just said, the main measures in the Bill are seen by both parties in the coalition as manifesto commitments in principle. They have been passed by major majorities in the other place and seem likely, whatever happens in this House, to become law in their essentials. I am concerned with only one part of this Bill—the election of police and crime commissioners and what will flow from that change. This idea is quite simply the most lamentable provision about policing that I have ever encountered. The idea is an unintended changeling—a potential cuckoo in the nest of policing. It will set back 60 years of progress towards the establishment of the operational independence of the police, which is the jewel in the crown of British policing and its most important contribution to the rule of law in this country, with unforeseeable consequences.

I am grateful to the Home Secretary, to the noble Baroness and the policing Minister for recently taking the trouble to see me. However, while they listened, their speeches as reported in the other place and as heard today indicate that they did not agree with the concerns that I expressed. I told them that the Government had the right diagnosis but completely the wrong remedy. Despite the honourable service of those noble Lords here who served on them, it is true that police authorities are little known by the public. However, the cure proposed by this lack of public profile is worse than the disease. To replace police authorities with a single, directly elected person is to introduce a foreign species into an indigenous environment without knowing what the impact will be.

Some 20 years ago, after the Bookbinder case in the early 1990s in Derbyshire, a Conservative Government introduced independent members to police authorities in the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994, precisely to limit improper political interference in policing. I believe that that independence is crucial, which is why I told the previous Labour Administration while commissioner that I could not support fully elected police authorities. It seems strange to me that a Government 20 years later should completely reverse their position.

The proposal is based largely on the American model of police governance. There are a reputed 17,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. I recently visited Martha’s Vineyard, which is about half the size of the Isle of Wight. There are six police forces on that island, the largest of which in Edgartown has 26 officers. The chief holds office at the pleasure of the town mayor; the people of the town know him, know the officers and love the arrangements—but they also know that these officers serve only their small community and that if anything happens beyond the force’s capability, which it quite regularly does, in will step the Massachusetts state police, then the FBI, then the Department of Homeland Security and then one of the many other federal organisations. If, after a suitable inquiry of some sort, the Government had proposed breaking back policing to local towns and communities in this community, that would have been logical, but there is little logic in replicating the arrangements for Edgartown with one person representing the interests of electors in all of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire.

Neither of those points are my main objection, which lies in the relationship between the elected commissioner and the chief constable. Here, I must declare my second interest as the only former police chief in your Lordships’ House who knows what it is to serve under a person who is acting like an American mayor. For that reason, I hope that your Lordships will excuse me if I exceed the advisory limit by a minute—that is all it will be.

The Government have laid much emphasis on a proposed protocol concerning the relationship between the chief constable and the elected commissioner, which may or may not be statutory. The Greater London Authority Act currently contains specific statutory provisions for the processes which should be followed in the removal or the suspension of the Commissioner of Scotland Yard. However, the present mayor of London, acting as chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority—he having assumed that office the day before, after a change in legislation—did not choose to use those processes. He merely told me that he would arrange a public vote of no confidence at the next authority meeting, which I would lose. I could have said, in terms, “So what?”, as the commissioner is appointed by the Home Secretary. However, I could see that that would have put my force at war with its own authority and damage the service of which I was a steward. When I saw her, the then Home Secretary could see that as well. We were also aware by the next day that news media had already been enquiring about my resignation. There was no time for recourse to the processes laid out in the legislation because the stable door had been thrown open and the horse had bolted. A pretty similar situation arose in the subsequent case of Assistant Commissioner Robert Quick.

This Bill contains similar, detailed clauses and schedules on the removal of a chief officer. There may indeed be an additional semi-statutory protocol in future, but neither will help a chief officer in the face of an elected commissioner determined to get rid of him or her or, as sometimes happens in the United States—I know that the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, will acknowledge this—of a proposed mayor who campaigns on getting rid of the current chief constable or bringing in another named individual. Politicians appoint and dismiss for political reasons, as they do everything else. How many times will a chief constable go on arguing with a man or woman who can replace him or her for reasons other than proven incompetence or misconduct? How often will the police chief insist on his or her operational duty to deal with national and regional crime, rather than the local issues on which the commissioner has been elected? How robust will the police chief be in examining allegations concerning a friend of the commissioner? Finally, what bright young man or woman will put their pension at risk of such capricious termination by becoming a chief constable? This, as one American police chief put it to me, will introduce into Britain the weakest link in US policing. No protocol or clauses in legislation will stop this possibility.

I said that I have a heavy heart. I have been approached by Members on different sides of the House to support or suggest amendments to the Bill. With the deepest regret, I do not expect to be doing so. That probable decision is because I believe that this provision is simply wrong in principle. No amendment to the powers of the police and crime panel, to the protocol or to any other provision, however wisely suggested by Members of your Lordships’ House, will prevent the significant damage that this measure will do to British policing, probably irrevocably.

In closing, I must declare another interest: the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who was my history teacher at school. Of course, I bow to his knowledge of politics as well as of history. I accept that many elected commissioners will be men and women of integrity, although some may not, yet they will all be politicians. This is what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said in the other place in a debate in November 2008 on a Private Member’s Bill seeking to introduce elected police commissioners:

“To politicise the police in the way that has been suggested”—

then there was an interruption. He continued:

“Of course it would politicise the police; people would stand for election on party tickets and for populist policies. Frankly, the Bill is a prescription for anarchy and disaster, and I cannot support it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/11/08; col. 640.]

Neither can I.