Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Lord Dear and Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dear]

The noble Lord’s last remarks were a bit like the instructions that go with a piece of information technology; when all else fails, turn to the instruction book. I agree entirely with what he said. Any chief officer who tries to push back on politicians who are giving good advice is a fool. The wise chief officer will say at every stage, as in the example of the Notting Hill carnival, “Come and have a look at it and tell us what you think. In the end I, the chief officer, will make an operational decision, but I value your contribution”. I would have thought that the majority of chief officers would do that. I have not heard of those who want to test it in the courts. I hope that they are very few in number and I do not wish them well.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I apologise for taking us back by two or three speeches, but the Committee really should be grateful to my noble friend Lord Eccles for making his observation about the assumption that the Official Opposition’s spokesman was making, when there is in fact nothing in the Bill to confirm it one way or the other. I am extremely grateful myself for his doing that. Earlier this afternoon the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said that the arguments in our debate at the end of the evening last week were metaphysical, but the speeches which my noble friend Lord Eccles picked up on were being hypothetical in that there was no definitive reference to this in the Bill.

I go back to my own experience on the Greater London Authority Bill, a not dissimilar Bill to the one that we are discussing, when the Minister in charge of that Bill kept saying again and again that it was a breakthrough in local government legislation because, for the first time, the Mayor of London would have advice from advisers that would remain totally confidential and would not be available to anyone else in the authority. It was a novel development in local government affairs, but again and again I asked the Minister—no names, no pack drill—“Where is your legislative cover in the Bill for what you are continuously reiterating to the Committee?”. Eventually, he broke down and said, “The right honourable gentleman is quite right. We haven't yet put the amendments down”.

Given the particular circumstances in which we are debating this Bill, with which one is familiar because of the action of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, last week, we will inevitably find ourselves debating a number of hypotheses throughout. It is extremely difficult for some of us to follow exactly what is happening, not least that we are now going backwards in the Bill in an Alice in Wonderland way to a group of amendments that were put down earlier. All I seek to plead is that if people are going to be hypothetical, they should say that they are being hypothetical so that the rest of us know where we are.