Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

233: After Clause 95, insert the following new Clause—
“Application of health and safety enactments to police
(1) No police and crime commissioner nor chief officer of police shall be liable for prosecution under any health and safety enactment in the performance of their duties.
(2) No police and crime commissioner nor chief officer of police shall be liable for damages or compensation for any injuries caused as a result of a breach of health and safety law in the performance of their duties, save where it is proved that the individual acted maliciously or with reckless disregard for the safety of others.
(3) A police officer in the execution of the officer’s duty who believes that an action or actions are necessary—
(a) to prevent crime,(b) to prevent risk to the health and welfare of others, or(c) to save the lives of others,shall not be prevented from taking that action or actions by the intervention of any other public official, of whatever rank, who alleges that there is a health and safety risk to the officer.(4) It shall be an offence for any public official to obstruct a police officer in the execution of the officer’s duty when the officer has decided under subsection (3) that an action or actions are necessary.
(5) A police officer who has come to a decision under subsection (3) shall have no authority to compel others to join with the officer in the action or actions.
(6) Sections 1, 2 and 5 of the Police (Health and Safety) Act 1997 are repealed.
(7) Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary shall issue general guidance on health and safety matters to all police forces for every police area listed in Schedule 1 to the Police Act 1996 (police areas).
(8) A breach of the guidance issued under subsection (7) by any officer of the rank of constable may result in disciplinary action but shall not result in any prosecution or civil action.
(9) A police and crime commissioner shall not be liable for prosecution nor civil action because of any breach of the guidance issued under subsection (7).”

[Lord Blencathra]

I need to correct a mistake I made in 1996-97. It was not the only one I made then, but it is the only one I may have a chance to rectify at the present moment. Putting the police under the statutory provisions of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act was my policy and my responsibility. I was the Police Minister at the time; I was the guilty man. Admittedly, I was aided and abetted by the whole of ACPO, the Police Federation, the Police Superintendents’ Association, the whole police department of the Home Office and all the police authorities. In this House, the late Lord McIntosh of Haringey said that it was his duty to oppose things but that there was nothing in the Bill that he could find to oppose.

All the great and the good, and even I, thought this Bill was the right thing to do. It was a jolly good move and put the police on the same basis as other workers, and we thought there would be no problems. In that frantic legislative climate at the end of 1996-97, heading up to the election, the Police (Health and Safety) Bill was given to a Back-Bencher in another place to introduce as there was no time in the government programme—I believe I had led on about 15 Home Office Bills in that last Session. It was bounced through on the nod in another place at 2.30 pm on a Friday, not having received any debate whatever. It then got 45 minutes in Committee, on a Friday. There was no Report or Third Reading. When it got to this House, it had 19 minutes of debate at Second Reading and, since no amendments were moved, it had no Committee stage, no Report stage and no Third Reading stage; and it passed into law. I am not being critical here, because I put through Bills with even less scrutiny. However, this Act received a total of 64 minutes’ scrutiny in both Houses of Parliament. From a total of about 1,400 Members of both Houses, only one Member queried its provisions. So, I pay tribute to Mr Michael Fabricant MP, who at the Committee stage in another place, said:

“The other area that disturbs me is that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State at the Home Office”—

that was me—

“is reported … as telling a seminar: ‘One of the difficulties in moving towards a statutory regime’—such as this—‘has been the fact that policing duties and the environment in which they are carried out are so different from those which generally apply in factories, offices and other static premises’”.

Mr Fabricant went on to say,

“that concerns me deeply … That question must be dealt with, however, as it is at the heart of the Bill”.

He went on to ask what action officers should take when faced with danger. Do they retreat or intervene? He queried the potential conflict between the operational independence of chief officers and the powers of the health and safety inspectors. He said:

“Those problems have not been properly addressed by the Bill”.

For an answer, Mr Fabricant was given the reassuring line to take which I had prepared and approved, having apparently changed my mind in the intervening period since I had addressed the seminar. That answer was:

“A potential conflict remains between the requirements of health and safety and the operational requirements of the police service but it is well understood by all parties. I am optimistic that those conflicts will always be resolved in a sensible manner against the background of the statutory provisions of the Bill”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/2/97; cols. 578-584.]

Yet, just six years later, two of the finest Metropolitan Police Commissioners who I have ever had the privilege to work with stood in No. 2 dock at the Old Bailey, in the same dock where people are tried for murder and treason, defending themselves against a criminal offence because a brave police officer, PC Kulwant Sidhu, died when pursuing a criminal in the course of his duties and because another police officer had been injured in another incident.

I take this opportunity to apologise publicly to the noble Lords, Lord Condon and Lord Stevens, for the injustice that they suffered from a law that I was responsible for and which went through with inadequate scrutiny. That prosecution was outrageous, wrong, misguided, expensive and so lacking in common sense that it convinces me that one cannot leave a provision on the statute book which can be abused by bureaucrats—admittedly, well-meaning bureaucrats. It should be amended.

I am not alone in thinking that, thank goodness. Your Lordships will be aware that my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham stated in his report, Common Sense, Common Safety:

“Police officers … should not be at risk of investigation or prosecution under health and safety legislation when engaged in the course of their duties if they have put themselves at risk as a result of committing a heroic act”.

The Health and Safety Executive, ACPO and the CPS, my noble friend concluded,

“should consider further guidance to put this into effect”.

My noble friend Lord Young is absolutely right in coming to his analysis of the problem and I believe that the principle of what he has enunciated is now government policy. With respect, however, my noble friend has misdirected himself in his last sentence. He has suggested that the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Health and Safety Executive and the Crown Prosecution Service should get together and ensure that police officers should not be prosecuted for a possible breach of the law. That is not the right way to go about it. If it is the law, it should be enforced. What signal does it send if a cosy deal has been done between the CPS, ACPO and the HSE not to prosecute police officers? No—the approach must be: if we do not want to see police officers in the dock and being prosecuted for that sort of breach, we must amend the current law which allows it to happen.

I believe that my proposed new clause, while no doubt inadequately drafted and with some technical flaws, attempts to do just that. It seeks to ensure that chief officers are not prosecuted for a health and safety breach while trying to ensure that ordinary police officers are not disadvantaged and receive full employment law protection. At the same time, it does not leave a big black hole with no health and safety guidance whatever, because I want HMIC to promulgate non-statutory guidance.

I turn to the specific subsections of the clause. Subsection (1) says that,

“No police and crime commissioner nor chief officer … shall be liable for prosecution under any health and safety enactment”.

Perhaps I should have added, “Nor any other person holding the rank or office of constable” because I do not want anyone, of any rank, to be prosecuted by the HSE for a breach of health and safety.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in a very useful, serious and worthwhile debate. It is appropriate to say from the government Front Bench that we will take away the points made and consider whether we have got the balance right. On that basis, I will ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment. I note that prolonged service as Chief Whip does not adversely affect one's rhetorical skills.

The noble Lord, Lord Condon, talked about the need for a sensible balance, and that is what we all want to achieve. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, rightly said that policing is all about taking risks. My wife and I were invited to attend the Leeds police awards dinner some months ago and the award for bravery was given to a constable from Northumbria who had been blinded when stopping an offender in his car. It was quite an emotional experience.

My only close experience with the Health and Safety Executive was when the parliamentary choir was due to perform in Westminster Hall in 2003. On taking the portable organ into Westminster Hall and playing the 16-foot stop, bits of wood began to fall off the roof. Our first response was to say, “The Minister responsible for the HSE is a contralto in the choir, surely we can override the rules”, but the HSE pointed out that in addition to parliamentarians, there would be senior civil servants in the audience, so it would clearly be dangerous to go ahead with the concert and we had to make do with performing in Westminster Abbey instead.

We all recognise the culture of health and safety that has evolved through the media. I regularly read the Daily Mail, which demands that there should be nil risk to the public in anything that is undertaken in a public place. It then sets out to attack the regulations that were drawn up in response to those demands. That is how we have got to where we are now.

The proposal to repeal this clause would have to go significantly further than the noble Lord, Lord Young, recommended in his independent review of health and safety last year. He did not call for the duty to be removed as it serves both to,

“protect employees and ensure that activities carried out do not adversely affect the health and safety of other people”.

Of course the Government recognise the need to strike a balance between protecting the police and the public while acknowledging that it is in the nature of police duty that officers take risks and should not be at risk of prosecution under health and safety legislation when engaged in their duties.

Following the report of my noble friend Lord Young, the Crown Prosecution Service issued guidance in March—which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, quoted—under the title, Heroic Acts by Police Officers and Firefighters, which clarifies the legal situation and highlights the fact that the public interest would not be served by taking forward the prosecution of police officers who act in heroic ways when decisions are likely to be taken in fast-moving and dynamic situations. The Government will carefully consider the extent to which the recommendations of my noble friend Lord Young's report have been adequately met through the CPS guidance. We will institute a dialogue, if it is needed, between the police, the Home Office, the DWP and the HSE, as suggested. We recognise that this has to be a question of balance and we will assess whether the balance has now been struck in the most sensible place.

[Lord Blencathra]

My Lords, I am so pleased in retrospect that I tabled this new clause, because it has enabled me and the House to hear such excellent speeches from noble Lords such as the noble Lords, Lord Harris of Haringey, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, Lord Condon, Lord Stevens and Lord Dear. Tomorrow when I read Hansard I will come to the same conclusion that I came to when I heard their speeches, namely that between them they have got the solution to this problem.

I do not want the whole police service exempted en bloc from health and safety legislation, or even from its statutory duty. However, neither do I want a situation in which we rely mainly on guidance, so that one day, somewhere, a prosecutor or an HSE person, possibly not following that guidance, will create a situation where a Metropolitan Police commissioner could still be in the Old Bailey in the circumstances that I described, and which the noble Lords, Lord Condon and Lord Stevens, witnessed first hand. I say to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, that common sense did prevail—but in the jury. To me, that was a couple of steps too late; I wish it had prevailed in the HSE and in those who brought the prosecution.

I am perfectly content to withdraw my new clause and will not come back to it on Report. However, I urge Ministers to go back to the Home Office tomorrow with the Official Report and initiate that dialogue, because I am not convinced that the guidance at the moment is enough. I would like to see a few more steps taken to make sure that there is a deeper understanding. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, was so right to say that the person responsible for health and safety should not be the health and safety officer but every manager of every organisation, thinking it and doing it. There must also be an understanding in the HSE and the prosecuting authorities of the special, unique nature of the police service.

I conclude by saying that if at the end of the day, after all the dialogue, we still face the possibility that a brave police officer may get a bravery award one day while their commanding officer may be prosecuted for that act, that will be wrong. No matter how many million words of guidance and advice we have, we cannot have a situation where a chief officer is still liable to prosecution for a brave act by one of his officers. Let us initiate a dialogue. I am not volunteering to participate; I have done my inadequate duty.

I was always told that when one went to the House of Lords, one would hear expert speeches. I have had the privilege today of listening to such speeches from all sides, which proves that this House should continue in its present form, because we would never have heard these speeches from elected politicians. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 233 withdrawn.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I break the habit of a brief parliamentary lifetime by suggesting that the Secretary of State retains the two powers which she proposes to dispense with under Clause 82. This amendment would restore the power of the Secretary of State to issue codes of practice for and to secure reports from police authorities. It seems to me that there ought to be a standard code of practice, not necessarily covering everything, but at least covering the basics in the operation of the police force to provide a degree of uniformity across the country or countries—Wales is, of course, included in the provisions of the Bill—rather than different forces operating significantly differently in the way in which they conduct the crucial area of public policy in crime and community safety. It is perfectly reasonable for the Secretary of State to issue such guidance, obviously after the appropriate consultation.

Similarly, accountability is repeatedly averred to be the core of the Bill. At some level the Secretary of State needs to be informed about what is going on nationally in terms of policing so that, in Parliament, she can answer issues that are her responsibility, particularly when they relate to strategic concerns. My noble friend Lord Rosser will be moving an amendment precisely relating to those strategic priorities. There are national and local priorities and it seems to me axiomatic that the Secretary of State should have the information available in the form of reports which she can digest and which Parliament can also read and discuss. This is another aspect in which transparency and accountability can be reinforced, somewhat paradoxically in this case, by restoring to the Secretary of State powers which, at the moment, she is happy to lose. I hope that the Minister will consider this modest accretion to the functions of central government in the wider interests of accountability and transparency in respect of these matters.

[Lord Blencathra]

We now make rapid progress because my amendment jumps to Clause 80 but it is in this group for discussion. Clause 80 contains the general duty of the Secretary of State and states that it is to be best used,

“to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of the police”.

I take a quite different view. It is not the duty of the Home Secretary to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of the police because this Bill seeks to have elected police and crime commissioners to do that. Even if the first amendment on which we voted were to be accepted in another place and by this House when the Bill returns, and we had the continuation of police authorities, surely it should be their duty to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of the police.

I say to my noble friend that I would not dream of pushing my amendment to a vote because I seek to use perhaps an extreme form of words. I take the totally contrary view, suggesting that it is not the duty of the Home Secretary to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of the police but that she should interfere only to prevent the safety of persons in a police area from being put at risk. I suggest that the Home Secretary should intervene and use her powers generally in the Bill only in those dire circumstances. I accept that that goes to a more extreme position than even I might believe in at times. However, somewhere between that position and the general power which, I suggest, continues in Clause 80, of total interference by the Home Secretary in anything that he or she likes, there may be a balanced, happy medium which would permit an elected police and crime commissioner or a police authority to exercise their proper duty of efficiency and effectiveness.

As soon as I got the Bill, I turned to look at what powers of the Home Secretary would be abolished. I found Clause 82 and thought, “Jolly good. What about the rest?”. Unfortunately, I could not find many other powers of the Home Secretary that were being abolished, and there were still too many powers for the Home Secretary to call for reports from chief constables and elected police and crime commissioners, to call for statistics and to call for this, that and the other. Members of this House who have served in another place will know that if a Member of Parliament asks the Home Secretary for a single statistic about a police force, inevitably it will be replicated for other police force areas. The Home Office will then invent 10 forms so that the Home Secretary is never wrong-sighted, and we will build up a plethora of information gathering that will be excessive and unnecessary. This is not germane to the amendment, but I use it as an example to say that the Home Secretary's powers could be further circumscribed in the Bill without any risk to national policing and the proper co-ordination of policing throughout the country—a role that is better promoted by HMIC than by the Home Secretary.

I conclude by referring to Clause 80, much further down the line, which gives the Home Secretary the power and duty to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of the police overall. If the Home Secretary has and exercises that duty, what is the point of police authorities, and what is the point of the elected crime commissioner? That is what their job was supposed to be. I do not suggest that my amendment is perfect—it is far from that—but it adopts an extreme position in the hope that I can make a point to my noble friend and that, possibly by Report, we may have a slightly different form of words for what the duty of the Home Secretary may or may not be.

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, the amendments in this group deal with the powers of the Secretary of State. I tabled Amendment 226AA on police strategic priorities, but will speak to others in the group. Among other things, the Bill deletes the regulation-making powers and provisions relating to seeking the views of the community on policing. It deletes the powers of the Secretary of State in respect of performance targets for police strategic priorities, codes of practice for police authorities and reports from police authorities to the Secretary of State—as my noble friend Lord Beecham said when he moved his amendment. The amendments seek for the most part to preserve these powers for the Secretary of State, although I accept that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has gone down a different road.

The Bill also places a general duty on the Secretary of State to exercise powers in a way that appears to the Secretary of State to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of the police. One amendment in the group seeks to replace the efficiency and effectiveness duty with a duty to exercise powers in a way that best ensures safety and security, which one would have thought was a rather more important consideration in relation to policing.

We have already had a debate today on consultation, with the Minister agreeing to look again at certain areas of concern. I hope that, as part of that further look, he will also reconsider the proposal in the Bill to delete the regulation-making powers and provisions on ascertaining the views of the community on policing. In the context of our previous debate, one would have thought that they were important powers for the Secretary of State to have.

As for my amendment on performance targets for police strategic priorities, there are national strategic police considerations, in particular relating to more serious crimes, to be taken into account and that would not be assisted by these powers being taken away from the Secretary of State. Unlike police and crime commissioners dotted up and down the country, the Secretary of State can take national strategic policing considerations into account. Surely there must also be a need for some consistency on basic strategic objectives over policing, which does not necessarily appear to be the way that the Government are thinking of going in the future. It is also not clear why there should be an efficiency and effectiveness duty on the Secretary of State rather than, as I said a moment ago, a duty to exercise powers in a way that best ensures safety and security, which is surely more important.

These amendments, as has already been said, obviously raise the issue of the future role of the Secretary of State in relation to policing powers in the light of the likely advent of police and crime commissioners. We hope that, in response, the Minister can explain why the Government take the view that the current powers of the Secretary of State to which I have referred, and which are referred to in these amendments, should be reduced rather than retained in the way that this group of amendments proposes.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

I am sorry, North Yorkshire. In Staffordshire, including the city of Stoke-on-Trent, there are a dozen constituencies, but it is a fairly populated county, particularly in Stoke. The interests, concerns and priorities of those who live in that city are very different from those of the people who live in the rural area of the south of the county, which I represented, or in the Staffordshire moorlands. Is it really possible for one person adequately and properly to understand people’s conflicting priorities and interests in such a diverse area?

[Lord Blencathra]

If it is not possible for an elected police commissioner to know the different conflicting views and opinions throughout Staffordshire or North Yorkshire, how then can a chief constable manage to do it at the moment?

[Lord Cormack]

My noble friend, for whom I have real affection, as he knows, has been a champion of this policy, very honourably. He knows that I take a different view. We respect each other and will continue to do so.

In this case, the situations are different. An operational chief—after all, we are so keen on operational independence that it is written into the Bill—with a series of assistants and deputies under him, with this as his sole and absolute duty and having done it all his life, because a chief constable by definition is someone who has risen through the police service, is in a far better position to know this professionally. I cast no aspersions on those who would aspire to stand as a commissioner, of course, but for the most part they would be party politicians with party priorities, to a degree.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

We have been discussing this for some time but I want to add a few points. The first one is that Mr Bookbinder, whom many of us will remember, was of course elected from an area where one would wonder what sort of police commissioner would have been elected at that time.

I very much support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, for the reasons that have been given by so many Members of this House, but I should like to add one or two points. First, I also was very impressed by Ms de Grazia, in particular because she pointed out that, in the United States, the FBI monitors the elected police authorities. There is no body such as the FBI to monitor the new police and crime commissioners. Secondly, I have put my name to the first of the amendments proposing pilot schemes. I have done that very much as a second option, as I much prefer the option proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Harris.

It is suggested that the police commissioner would reconnect with the people. I live in the Devon and Cornwall Police Authority area, which the Minister knows very well because she was my MP, and I very much welcome her in her new capacity as a Minister in this House. She will know that the Devon and Cornwall Police Authority has 19 members, who represent areas ranging from the Isles of Scilly—for those of you who know what the south-west is like—right the way through to east Devon. In their way, they represent all corners of this part of the country where I live.

I suggest that we really ought to consider, with this pause that I would very much like to see, whether the police panel should not be elected. In electing the police panel, we would be creating an organisation very much like the police authority but which would have teeth and which would, under Amendment 31, appoint the police and crime commissioner. We would then have the connection with the public and we would have democratic elections, but we would not be putting all the power in one person.

I urge that we support the amendment and have a pause. I am very concerned that we should not plunge into very deep water without buoyant life jackets.

[Lord Blencathra]

My Lords, I, too, welcome my noble friend Lady Browning to her new responsibilities. She was a superb Minister in another place, and I am sure that she will be equally good in this House. I say to my noble friends that she is a listener and she has tremendous experience of policing. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, said in her remarks in her excellent speech, which I much enjoyed listening to, that the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, would hear some examples today of practical policing. The Minister may now be hearing those examples from a different perspective, but if one has been a constituency Member of Parliament in the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary area, I think that one gets practical examples of policing from constituents both happy and unhappy. I welcome her to her new responsibilities.

It was a privilege to listen to the speech of my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond, who introduced her amendment with a very passionate and well intended speech, but like my noble friend Lord Carlile I think that she is profoundly wrong. I say so to your Lordships as someone who must also declare some form, not from any past responsibilities as Police Minister but from the sabotage that I successfully performed two or three years ago when Cumbria Constabulary decided to amalgamate with Lancashire Constabulary. I am not sure who decided that or who was in the driving seat, but both police authorities—unelected police authorities—were fanatically keen that the amalgamation should happen. I urged the Cumbria Police Authority not to do it, as I think did most other Members of Parliament in Cumbria from all political parties, but the unelected police authority, paying no attention to our views or to the views of the vast majority of the public in Cumbria, proceeded hell for leather with amalgamation talks. I decided that I would do my utmost to stop it because I thought that it was wrong and not what the people wanted. After I challenged the suggested savings of £20 million, they came down a few months later to £10 million and a couple of months later to being cost-neutral. Once they got to minus £10 million, the authority began to think again. When they became a cost of plus £21 million, the unelected police authority finally abandoned all effort at amalgamation. At that point I concluded that there has to be something better than an unelected police authority driving this process forward and not caring what the local people want. Therefore, I do support the main thrust of this Bill and, with all due respect, must disagree with my noble friend on her amendment, which would stop this Bill in its tracks.

Your Lordships will be pleased to hear that I can be mercifully brief, because I entirely agree with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dear. I had the great honour of him following me when I made my maiden speech, and he was so generous in his remarks as to be almost bordering on the untruthful. Of course, he was not—but today I can assert with all authority that he has not exaggerated his case in any iota. If we were to remove this element of the Bill today, we would do a great disservice to the agreement made between the coalition parties and to the electorate, because of the manifesto commitments of the major parties.

The only other little point that I shall pick up is one from the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. She said that she was worried that crime might go up with an elected commissioner, but I profoundly disagree, for a reason advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who was afraid that an elected commissioner might be a bit populist. Well, I hope so; if populist means doing what the people or the electorate want, then bring on populism. If the commissioner is to be populist, he will be bearing down on crime day in and day out, because that is what the electorate will want. They want that in the rural areas, the city areas, the Tory areas and the Labour areas, as well as in the areas where people do not vote or apparently care a fig about politics. They want the police to bear down on crime, as it affects them.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Does the noble Lord also agree that an elected commissioner might well cut down on the form-filling and paperwork that seems to take place under police forces these days and put the police back on the street where they can cut the crime?

[Lord Blencathra]

I would like to hope that that would be the case, but I suspect that the only means of cutting down on form-filling rests with the Home Office. I shall put down some more amendments to remove some more of the form-filling, if I may.

I remember in my time at the Home Office that every time we asked the police to fill in a new form it was in response to our need to answer a parliamentary Question. When a colleague wanted to know the number of helmets lost in Herefordshire we would ask the police to supply that information, and inevitably the Home Office would then invent the form for every police force to fill in the number of helmets lost. So the responsibility for cutting down on the form-filling rests on us as parliamentarians not wanting to know the minutiae of policing in local areas, but leaving that to the local people.

I have pushed noble Lords’ kindness and generosity too far and will conclude my remarks. I visited Commissioner Bratton in 1996, when I was passing back through New York, and I was impressed by what he was doing. I thought, yes, that is almost as good as what they are doing in the Met already and in most of our county forces. This thing about the broken window syndrome—yes, it was wonderful. Commissioner Bratton overnight got his hands on 7,000 extra police officers, who were not very well trained because they were from the New York Transit Police and Housing Police. But overnight he put 7,000 extra bobbies on the streets, and New Yorkers saw a difference. That was one of his main successes.

The problem we have here is that the term commissioner for an elected commissioner is the same as the term commissioner in New York, but the job is totally different. Commissioner Bratton was a hands-on police officer; he had direction and control and operational policing charge, just like Met commissioners and just like the commissioner in the City of London. The commissioners envisaged in this Bill are political appointees with no direction and control over the police force—that will be the chief constable. Perhaps not today but at Second Reading there was some confusion among some of us that we were electing commissioners who would have hands-on responsibility. They will not.

There is something in what the noble Lord, Lord Condon, has said about having more resources for the commissioner so that he or she can connect with the local people. I disagree with my noble friend Lord Cormack that it would be impossible for an elected commissioner to know the views of the people in Thames Valley. If the chief constable can do it, surely a politician can as well.

I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Condon, who, interestingly, is not in disagreement with the principle of the Bill. I would be very worried if someone of his experience and responsibilities in the past was opposed to the principle, but he is not. He is worried that the elected commissioner may not have enough back up to carry out his role of assessing what the people in, say, Thames Valley, North Yorkshire or other large-spread police areas want. I hope the Government will address that issue and reassure him.

On the basis of what the noble Lords, Lord Condon and Lord Dear, have said, I, too, urge that the amendment not be pushed to a vote. If it is, with all due respect to the noble Baroness, I hope that she will be defeated.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra]

My Lords, it is with more trepidation than usual that I seek to make my maiden speech on this Bill. Not only am I still in awe of the glorious history of this Chamber and the illustrious noble Lords who have preceded me in this place, and those who are currently serving, but I am deeply conscious of the fact that this House has at present noble Lords with a total of 250 years’ service in the office of constable—from a president of the Police Superintendents’ Association to chief constables, Metropolitan Police commissioners and senior inspectors of constabulary, some with bravery awards.

I was privileged to work with some of these noble Lords in the four years that I was Police Minister in the Home Office—the most satisfying, difficult, but enjoyable post that I ever held in government. Indeed, I so much enjoyed working with the splendid members of the police service, of all ranks, that I declined to leave my post on promotion, but stayed until the electorate forcefully removed me in 1997.

Before turning to the Bill, I wish to express my appreciation of the extent and depth of welcome that I have received from noble Lords on all sides of the House, and the extraordinary help given to me daily by the doorkeepers. As an ex-Chief Whip in the other place, I thought that I had seen everything; but nothing can prepare one for the genuine warmth of welcome that a new Member receives in this House.

I support this Bill because it goes a long way towards getting national politics out of policing and lets chief officers concentrate on local priorities. Let us not kid ourselves: politics has been in policing for many years, and some of the ablest politicians I met were chief constables who were even better than the generals. However, this Bill concentrates any politics into the person of the locally elected police commissioner and reduces substantially Home Office political interference. I have been through six general elections and I know that the electorate will not vote capriciously, whimsically or erratically on things that matter to them—and local policing matters. We do the electorate a disservice if we think otherwise. In my opinion, neither of the voting systems proposed in Clause 57 will deliver extremists as police commissioners.

The old-fashioned concept of the balanced three-legged stool—the tripartite relationship of independent chief constables, strong police authorities footing the bill and the Home Office giving a bit of advice and guidance—is as mythological as the storyline of “Midsomer Murders”. It has long gone. The Home Office dictates too much local policing from Whitehall, with a plethora of targets and reporting back. The police authority is an anonymous body, not accountable to the electorate, and chief constables are first in the firing line when local politicians are unhappy about any aspect of policing in their neighbourhood.

We are told these days that all politics is local. That is a good thing. The Bill inserts an elected police commissioner between the electorate, with their aspirations and grievances, and chief constables, who have to deliver neutral, local policing. The policing panel of elected local authority councillors, the policing plan and all the consultation involved with police commissioners ensure that local priorities are addressed at that level. Chief constables should not then be dragged into political considerations. How many hours have chief constables spent in agonising over press releases on their funding settlement from the Government, and in trying to balance gentle criticism of the Government for not giving them enough money with trying to appear a champion of local interests? That should be the job of elected police commissioners, not of neutral chief constables. Rather than introduce politics for the first time, in my opinion the Bill takes out national politics and puts in local priorities.

The first clause that I looked at concerns repeals. I was delighted to see that Home Office target-setting powers are removed, with the exception of the power to set a strategic policing requirement on national security grounds. There was no harm in the past in the Home Office setting a few key targets for violent crime, burglary et cetera, but the excessive number of targets set in recent years means that this power should not be left on the statute book to be potentially abused in future.

When I look at the £50 million cost of electing police commissioners, even if it were £100 million, I would compare it to the total police budget of £13.8 billion this year. The cost of elected commissioners at £50 million is less than 0.5 per cent of local police funding. Of course, that is additional money that we are promised; it will not come out of the police settlement. Elsewhere, money is wasted. We can free up resources for the front line by speeding up the demise of the National Policing Improvement Agency, which spent £37 million on consultancy fees in the past two years alone. It performs essential services such as maintaining the police national computer homes—whatever number we have now—and the national DNA and fingerprint databases, which should be put into a trust company owned by all the police forces. Bramshill should be under Home Office control and the task of promoting best practice should be given back to Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary.

HMIC is one of the finest examples of the police and Home Office family. It has the most highly trained police officers in the United Kingdom, who visit all forces regularly and know what is happening on the ground. Yet the role of the NPIA was expanded to do what HMIC can do a dash sight better. When we consider in Committee Clauses 84 to 90 on the functions of HMIC, I hope that we can make it clear that in addition to inspecting forces and detecting strengths and weaknesses, HMIC will be the key body,

“identifying good practice and sharing experiences from within the service”.

That is a quotation from the NPIA website on one of its main activities. I suggest that considering all the functions that the NPIA performs with regard to improving police efficiency, there is nothing that HMIC cannot do better, and at much lower cost—and from my experience, it would be done by a body that is respected, feared slightly and utterly independent.

I have tried noble Lords’ patience for too long already and I shall save my other points for Committee. I simply conclude with this point. If your Lordships think that the opinions I have expressed are right, they should support the Bill. If, on the other hand, noble Lords think that I am utterly wrong, that my judgment is flawed and that I cannot be trusted, it is absolutely vital that your Lordships support the Bill, to prevent politicians like me being in charge of the police in future in the Home Office.