Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Condon Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Condon]

My Lords I declare my registered interests in policing and the private security industry. I want to speak primarily, as you would expect, about Part 1 of the Bill and the creation of the National Crime Agency. I warmly welcome the creation of the National Crime Agency and I wish Keith Bristow, the inaugural director-general, and his team every success. I hope the new agency gets off to a confident and successful start. However, I think the Government still have a huge challenge to demonstrate to your Lordships’ House and beyond how the National Crime Agency and their other proposals for policing all fit together in a cohesive and comprehensive way. Their plans for policing must work from the bottom up from the local level of the police force and from the top down from the new NCA in a joined-up way. The Minister acknowledged this in his opening speech.

Sadly, I still have residual concerns that we may be left with a disjointed patchwork of policing with significant gaps and a lack of co-ordination. I will explain why. Scotland, for example, is taking a different route. Local, regional, national and international policing issues will be delivered by a single police force with local accountability being accommodated within the single force structure. In November we will have over 40 newly elected police and crime commissioners, some of whom may be elected by less than 10% of the electorate if the predictions for very low turnouts come to fruition. These new police and crime commissioners will, by definition, be intensely parochial. They have to be. They will focus only on local issues and will be looking for re-election exclusively on local performance and local popularity. How, then, will the National Crime Agency and any other regional or national structures take care of the very important regional, national and international policing issues and concerns?

Before looking at the Bill’s provisions for the new NCA, it is worth considering just for a moment what is being simultaneously dismantled or potentially downgraded by the Government as they create the NCA. You have already heard that the Serious and Organised Crime Agency has been in place for six years and its staff and functions will provide the core or spine of the new NCA. But the NCA must be far more than just a change of name as SOCA becomes the NCA. I mean no disrespect to the professionalism or the endeavour of colleagues who have worked in SOCA but the metamorphosis from SOCA to NCA must be far more than in name only. The National Policing Improvement Agency which has looked at police leadership, performance standards and information technology will be disbanded and we have no clear picture of how it will be replaced. The future of the Association of Chief Police Officers is uncertain, with its funding and its role still to be resolved, but there is a strong presumption that, at the very least, it will be downgraded in importance and role.

Against this background, how will the new NCA provide all the policing needs above the local police force level? I have three areas of concern: first, resourcing levels, secondly, dealing with terrorism, and thirdly, the gaps and grey areas that may be left out because they do not fall comfortably within the NCA remit. I am concerned about the planned resources for the NCA. I have said many times in your Lordships’ House that the police service cannot be immune from cuts and savings. I have spent the past 12 years in the private sector delivering more for less and I am very comfortable with that concept. However, I do have real concerns about the resources being allocated to the National Crime Agency. New bodies in the public and the private sector inevitably have start-up costs. Other noble Lords have mentioned their concerns about resources. There is no new money for the NCA. It will inherit the budgets and the 20% reductions of the constituent bodies it is taking over. Despite my enthusiasm for the new agency, its budget proposals look perilously stretched. I hope the Minister can reassure your Lordships that the NCA will be more than just a rather feeble co-ordinating mechanism sitting above the units that are already in existence, but I fear that resource limitations may force it down that avenue. The NCA must be better than the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, and it must be better than the UK Border Agency. Good leadership and determination will go a long way to ensuring its success, but this new agency must not be allowed to falter through unrealistic budgets.

My second area of concern relates to terrorism, which other noble Lords have mentioned. Clause 2 sensibly provides for the Secretary of State to make further provision about the NCA counterterrorism functions. In essence, what is at stake here is whether the status quo should prevail, with the Metropolitan Police retaining its national co-ordinating role with operational hubs around the country, or whether the co-ordinating role should be transferred to the NCA, as the Home Affairs Select Committee in another place recommended. Again, very sensibly, the Minister said in opening that no decision will be taken until after the Olympics.

I am genuinely relaxed if there is to be change, but I urge those making the decision to do so on the pragmatic grounds of what is likely to work best and what is likely to provide the best levels of protection for the public. The decision on who should lead on terrorism should not be about what looks tidy on an organisational chart or the seductive impact of the word “national” in an agency’s title. The fight against terrorism is as much about hearts and minds as it is about dramatic operations and arrests. With over 80% of terrorist incidents happening in London and the successful integration of neighbourhood policing, intelligence gathering and hearts and minds projects in the community, it will require strong empirical evidence and a compelling case, as the Minister said, to prove that the new National Crime Agency is better placed than the Metropolitan Police to lead this endeavour. The only assurance I seek from the Minister on counterterrorism is that the decision as to who should lead on combating terrorism will be based on what is most likely to protect the public—no more, no less.

My third and final concern relates to gaps and grey areas and things that the Bill is silent about. The disbanding of the National Policing Improvement Agency and the potential downgrading and functionality of the Association of Chief Police Officers could—I emphasise that it is only “could”—leave gaps and grey areas which the National Crime Agency is not mandated to deliver in any respect at all. Who in the police family will worry about and take responsibility for the police response to multi-location, multi-force riots which historically take place every so often? Who in the police family will worry about and take responsibility for responding to national employment disputes such as the recent tanker drivers’ threatened strike? Who in the police family will worry about multi-force natural disasters such as floods or diseases like foot and mouth?

Clause 5 is about the relationship between the NCA and other agencies. It enables and encourages voluntary arrangements and, in limited circumstances, allows the director-general to direct co-operation from local forces. Very sensibly, the Bill envisages more than one force taking part, with the NCA, in a coalition of the willing or, in extremis, a coalition of the directed, but it does not deal with any of the concerns I mentioned earlier. We need reassurance on who will worry about and co-ordinate some of the issues that do not sit comfortably within the NCA.

In conclusion, I genuinely welcome the Bill. I also welcome the new drug-driving offence, which I think will improve road safety. However, as other noble Lords have said, there are some challenges in the detail. I am excited about the potential of the National Crime Agency, but I am concerned that inadequate resourcing may hamstring it and reduce it to an anodyne co-ordinating body rather than allowing it to be the potent force for good that, in the public interest, it deserves to be. I am concerned about counterterrorism and that changes may be based on organisational tidiness rather than on what is most likely to deliver public safety. Lastly, I am concerned that as the Government dismantle, downgrade and rebuild the constituent parts of our policing model, they may inadvertently—I think it would be inadvertently—create gaps and grey areas which we need to think about plugging and clarifying.

I know that the Government are still making up their mind about some of these issues. However, they have unleashed a programme of change that replaces core elements of police accountability and independence, most of which have been enshrined in our system since 1829. So it is the Government who are under an obligation to convince your Lordships’ House that what they are putting in place will provide the public with joined-up policing locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. The proposals for the NCA are an important part of the overall police jigsaw, but as this Bill passes through your Lordships’ House, I intend to test whether the pieces of the police jigsaw genuinely fit together, whether the Government really know what the picture should look like, and which pieces, if any, are missing.