Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am sure that we are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for allowing us to have an almost Second Reading debate on the principles of the Bill. I must say that I feel that his unduly modest fees are almost always worth it. As I say, this takes us back to principles. I remain deeply puzzled about the merits of the legislation and am yet to be convinced that there are so many problems in policing as to warrant such a dramatic and potentially very damaging shake-up in the way that our police service will be run.

I was very interested to receive an email this morning from Liberty in which it says that it believes that the Bill’s premise is fundamentally wrong and that the Bill, if implemented as proposed, will cause irreversible damage to the relationship between the police and their communities. Indeed that is so. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, did not really address that point. I understand his point about democratic accountability, but surely he will recognise that there are huge risks in the politicisation of our police force. There are very few guarantees that the elected police and crime commissioners will not seek unduly to influence the operational behaviour of chief constables.

I remain concerned that the construct of the Bill still provides too few safeguards against that undue exercise of authority by the elected police commissioner. Although I disagree with the noble Lord’s amendment, it is interesting that he has raised issues of good corporate governance. This is the problem of the concept of corporate soles: individuals—the elected police and crime commissioner on the one hand, and the chief constable on the other—who have enormous powers without being subject to effective corporate governance. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to the extent that it would be much better if a group of people were collectively responsible, rather than leaving it to an individual. We will come on to issues of corporate sole later today but I welcome the noble Lord’s attention to the issue now. He is right to do so.

Ultimately the question is whether adding on an elected police authority to an elected police and crime commissioner would risk far too much politicisation of our police force. As the noble Lord will be aware, when we were in government we looked at this issue and originally made proposals for partly elected police authorities. However, we stepped back from that partly because of a lack of support out in the community and partly because of the risk of politicisation. We remain of the view that this is not the right way to go. However, the noble Lord has done us a service by raising some of the issues surrounding the lack of corporate governance in the Government’s approach.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, I have nothing but respect for the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and for the certain merit that is involved in this amendment. However, I respectfully disagree with him in so far as it can be regarded as a full and complete solution. For many years England and Wales have been blessed with a system in which there is a generally accepted tripartite balance between the Home Office, on the one hand, and the chief constable and the police authority on the other. So far as I am aware, I do not believe that that tripartite balance, or indeed the system, has ever been spelt out in statute, and in many respects it may well be that that is its strength.

One might find that, over the decades, certain segments of that balance have grown more substantial and influential than others, but the balance remains. That balance imposes a duty to consider something that is central to the role of the chief constable, which is that it is the chief constable who is responsible for direction and control. Direction and control is already a well established statutory principle and will not in any way be materially affected by the Bill. It will remain exactly as it is at this moment, and a former Home Secretary in his place to my left is nodding in agreement. But what does direction and control mean? Too often over the past few weeks we in this House have equated direction and control with operational control, but it means much more than that. It means that a chief constable is entitled, in a professional way, to the independence to run the strategy of a particular police force unaffected by and untrammelled by any unprofessional interference, political or otherwise.

As I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, will remember, the rules are set out clearly in Lord Denning’s judgment in 1968 in R v Blackburn. Those principles have stood the test of time. Therefore, although the amendment proposed by the noble Lord is probably an improvement on what was originally set out in the Bill, I still believe that both are misconceived. I am prepared to accept that the misconception in both cases, by the Government and by the noble Lord, comes from the best of motives, which is to try to strengthen the segment of public control that relates to the tripartite balance. However, I still think that this is the wrong way.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

If the Minister wishes to read other documentation prior to the next stage of this legislation I could do little better than to commend some of the policies that were developed by the noble Lord, Lord Howard—who is in his place—during the changes that he made to the legislation, not least, I think he would agree, the changes that he made to cope with too much party political dominance over what was happening to the police service. He finely judged how to ensure independence within the tripartite system. Were the noble Baroness to read the whole proceedings and the issues that the noble Lord took through, she would agree that he made some very fine judgments.