Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Dear Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Condon]

My Lords, I sympathise with the motivation behind the amendment. Although I realise that it is a probing amendment, I cannot support it. The perfect storm of change that understandably surrounds policing needs to be resolved in the quickest and best way possible. However, pilots might be an unnecessary delay for a number of reasons. A small number of pilots might tell you a great deal about the relationship between some individual police and crime commissioners and some individual chief constables in localised areas, but I am not sure that we would learn great lessons that could be extrapolated to the whole of the country in all circumstances over 40 police forces. Although I acknowledge that this is a probing amendment that seeks a way to test, explore and challenge some of the rationale behind elected police and crime commissioners, I am not sympathetic to pilot schemes. Having discussed them with serving chief constables, I know that not many of them are supportive either.

[Lord Dear]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Condon, has said, because my views accord very much with his. Normally, I am a great fan of pilots—they give you a step-by-step approach, they are often sensible, they lead to a sense of being sure-footed, and they hammer off the rough edges of what was proposed in the first instance. In this case, however, I submit that they would lead to a sense of great unreality.

I, too, have taken a straw poll of members of the police service, ACPO members and so forth, and I have met with the same result. So far as I can make out from a fairly detailed survey, the service wants a degree of certainty, certainly nationally. That is particularly so when one looks forward. One does not need much of a crystal ball to recognise that more is coming down stream towards us that has not yet reached your Lordships' House, such as the national crime agency, which relates to national issues. Today, we have been focusing more on the local, and issues of leadership that are bound to flow from what part 2 of the Winsor report will propose. All those things and others depend on a sense of certainty. If we get into pilots now and they overtake us, the service will not be in a position to handle the other issues that are bound to come before your Lordships' House in the next 12 months or so.

What I propose flows logically from the argument that we have just heard. We should make quite sure that the proper checks and balances surround the whole concept of police and crime commissioners and at that stage vote yes or no. We either have them or we do not, having given them due and appropriate consideration in your Lordships' House. We should not get into the business of pilots, which will be disruptive.

[Lord Soley]

I share the concern about pilots, but I also very much share the concern expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. The Bill contains so many unanswered questions that we are in danger of causing policing in this country more problems than we need. My profound anxiety is that, having spent the past 10 or more years trying to get the police from where they were 20 years ago, which was not a good place, to where they are now, which is a very much better place, we are in danger of losing that if we do not think this through.

I pick up on the suggestion made by the noble Baroness and echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that there is a strong case for the Government to go away and think about this. They should think about how they can ensure that this Act will not introduce profound changes to the police that are unpredictable in their outcome and that might move us backwards rather than forwards. The police are in a better position than they used to be. Let us not throw out the good for the sake of something that we think might be better but that does not have the checks and balances that are necessary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dear]

I understand that we are debating an issue of uniformity, which has to be a good thing. I do not think that anyone will be surprised if I remind the Committee that nearly all the organisations mentioned are either controlled by or commercially responsible to either Her Majesty’s Government or to commercial concerns.

I wish to draw attention to the Central Motorway Policing Group, which is in the list. I set up that group in the late 1980s. It was then, and remains, a collaborative agreement between four police forces: the West Midlands, which is at the heart of the ring around the West Midlands conurbation, with substantial stretches in Staffordshire, West Mercia and a small section in Warwickshire. It covers the M5, M6, M40, M42 and the M6 toll road. It is a collaborative agreement in which the constituent chief constables take an interest but it does not fit usefully into that list. Those proposing the amendment, assuming things are not changed, might consider withdrawing it from the list.

[Lord Beecham]

I rise to speak briefly to Amendment 83A. The clause requires the elected police commissioner to co-operate with a variety of partners in the criminal justice system. One might think that it might be overegging the pudding to require that he should co-operate with,

“the chief officer of police for that police area”,

but that is what Clause 10(4)(a) says. The clause then identifies a range of other partners, such as the Crown Prosecution Service, the Lord Chancellor in respect of courts, a Minister of the Crown in respect of functions relating to prisons and a youth offending team —effectively NOMS and probation.

It is arguable that a body might be under a duty to co-operate with such agencies of the criminal justice system but it strikes me as somewhat invidious for a single individual to have that relationship with bodies administering the courts and these other functions. Those powers are sensitive—extremely sensitive, it might be thought—and likely to promote some concern on the part of the public as to whether single individuals should be engaged at that level in such a co-operative enterprise. I should be grateful if the Minister could elucidate the thinking behind that provision. It seems somewhat dangerous to me. One might be more ready to accept the duty if it were that of a police authority, constituting more than one individual. If we do revert to that position, there are some concerns that need to be discussed.