Policing Protocol Order 2012

Lord Dear Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dear]

My Lords, when I spoke at Second Reading of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill on 27 April last year, I described the Bill as a crucial step towards a thoroughly modernised police service. I did not say that the Bill would in itself produce that; I described it as a crucial first step. As we all know, the issue of PCCs was an essential element in the Bill. In fact, one could well say that it was the essential ingredient in that Bill, especially in so far as handling police finances and, even more importantly, the operational independence of a chief officer or interference with that.

We all remember and understand the difficulties that we had when Clause 1 was voted off the table, as it were, in Committee, and the difficulties that we had in discussing the role of PCCs in that environment. It was a lengthy and very detailed series of debates, and I will not go into them. They are fresh in our memories. But it became very obvious as we went through that series of debates that there was a need for a protocol to flesh out the detail behind what we meant by some of those terms. I personally welcome it and speak in support of it tonight.

After the General Committee debate, which took place two days ago in the other place, I ran off 23 pages of that debate on my computer and could not find a single word that passed any comment to say that the consultation process was less than robust. The Committee preoccupied itself very much with trying to tease out a definition of proper or improper political interference, which comes very close to what we are talking about tonight. But I could find no trace of any disquiet there about a lack of proper consultation. Indeed, the consultation has involved all the three existing major players; it cannot obviously go to PCCs as they do not exist yet—they have not been elected. But it involved ACPO, the Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Police Authority Chief Executives. I cannot think of anyone else that it could have gone to, and certainly ACPO is satisfied with the procedure and believed that its views were put forward in adequate fashion. I think—although at second hand, and I am subject to correction at this point—that the other two agencies felt very much the same way. So with the greatest respect, I disagree with our own House of Lords Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments, which said in paragraph 3 of the report:

“Given the constitutional importance of the governance of the police service, the Committee considers that a full consultation might have provided a more complete test of the robustness of the Protocol”.

With the greatest respect, I disagree.