Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

My Lords, I have added my name in support of Amendments 41, 42 and 46, which the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, has set out in very clear detail, so I will be brief.

These are important amendments to test the implications of chief officers being corporations sole. Like the noble Baroness, I am uncomfortable with chief officers being given a legal status as corporations sole, and I look forward to an explanation from the Minister outlining answers to some of the questions that have already been asked about what this means for accountability and corporate governance.

The alternative amendments here deal with limiting the status of corporations sole to powers of employment only. As I understand it, that would prevent chief officers from owning assets or entering into contracts not directly related to employment. I have to say that I also have some significant concerns about giving chief officers unfettered responsibilities for employment of police staff without any role for the governing body. At the very least the latter should have an oversight role in grievance and professional standards, or the chief officer will become both judge and jury in these matters. But I am sure we will return to this later in the Bill. However, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, that the most objectionable aspect of the current wording is the role that chief officers could play in determining how huge sums of public money should be spent, for instance through entering into multimillion-pound contracts or borrowing money in their own right. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can reassure me on this matter.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 64B, which differs only in a minor fashion from one or two of the others, and in support of Amendments 66A, 67, 67B and 234A to 234Q, to which I have added my name. I want to say why all this stuff matters. It no doubt seems like a terribly arcane set of arguments, but I rather suspect that some of our discussions on this group of amendments will determine whether what the Government are trying to do on police accountability actually happens. The way that the Government have framed all this is a recipe to undermine police accountability rather than strengthen it. I am sure that that is not the intention, but I suspect we have ended up here almost by accident.

Let me explain what I mean: it relates to the amendments dealing with corporations sole. The Government have decided that it would be appropriate for chief officers of police and the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis to have responsibility for the employment of police staff—a function currently carried out by police authorities. I think that is the wrong decision because it places too much power in the hands of a single individual. It is the argument that we have about policing and crime commissioners, and everything else. However, it is particularly difficult in a policing context.

There is a tendency among some chief officers of police to have around them a group of blue-eyed boys and girls who they see as their favoured supporters, and who they tend to promote in favour of others. One of the checks and balances that we have at the moment is that appointments at ACPO rank—commanders in the Met and assistant chief constables and above outside—are appointed by a panel from the police authority rather than simply on the decision of the chief officer of police. I am suggesting not that chief officers of police would use this power capriciously but that the temptation or tendency might be there. Having worked closely with a number of chief officers of police, I am well aware that some of them have extremely strong personalities and that they like to get their own way. This is about creating some checks and balances on those very strong personalities from getting their own way on every single occasion. It is going to be particularly important on employment.

It is actually a protection for the chief officers of police not to be doing this or not to be taking sole responsibility. I lose track of the number of instances where there have been complaints following appointment processes in the police service—the police are a particularly litigious lot. The complaints were about whether processes have been followed properly, whether there has been favouritism or whether individuals have been discriminated against. For a chief officer of police to be able to say, “Actually, this was done through a proper equal opportunities process and properly documented by the police authority” is an important protection. However, Ministers in their wisdom have decided that the employment function for police staff, as well as for the appointment of senior officers, should pass to the chief officer of police.

If that is the decision that the Government have taken, it is of course not too late for them to reconsider this matter. I do not believe that it runs to the centre of the main political headline that the Government wish to achieve by all of this, so they have that opportunity but they have made that commitment. To make that commitment work, as police officers have a particular status of being officers of the Crown, if you transfer responsibility for police staff across to chief officers of police you have to create the legal framework around which that can happen.

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[Lord Harris of Haringey]

Does the noble Lord accept that it is possible to construct a situation where you have a finance officer in the force and a finance officer in the authority, the commission, commissioner or whatever it is, with different roles, so you do not have duplication; but you have removed from the commissioner, authority or whatever the opportunity adequately to control the financial matters which, as the body to which the chief officer of police is accountable, it should control?

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I am always prepared to defer to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, because he is a much greater expert than I am on how police forces are run. I see the potential for constructive tension, if it has to be tension, between two finance officers carrying out different roles. I see them as providing a check and balance on one another and their roles as being markedly different in any event. That is something we can learn from the current situation in which, as I said, the chief finance officer of a police force carries out a major managerial role and the accounting officer of the police authority a very different function.

Can the Minister confirm that the Government feel satisfied that we will not have a high degree of duplication and that the role of the finance officer in the force will be related to operational matters and that of the other finance officer to the rather different strategic matters? There, perhaps, we have the answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, about Tasers. Tasers are the sort of thing which may well be strategic and one would expect to be discussed by the commissioner and those to whom he is accountable, whatever structure we end up with at the end of the Bill. The deployment of such Tasers as are purchased at any incident is plainly an operational matter, which must be left in the hands of the chief officer. That is an example of how different functions will deal with different aspects of police activity.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I may have misheard her, but I thought that the Minister hinted or said that amendments would be brought forward which would make it clear that contracts would have to be approved by the police commissioner. I can see why the Government have come back with that proposal, but to my mind, it just gives the commissioner that much more control over the chief constable. Because the commissioner is being given so much power with regard to money, whatever a protocol says about the relationship between the commissioner and the chief constable, the fact is that the person who holds the dosh usually controls what goes on. I hope the Government will give this further thought.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I want to question whether my noble friend has got the correct nuance of the argument. We have to be very clear about what we are trying to achieve with this Bill. My understanding is that the Government are trying to achieve stronger accountability, and that the mechanism for accountability is an elected police and crime commissioner—or we may end up with some other model. The danger is that, inadvertently, that accountability will be weakened. While my noble friend is right to say that being able to set the overall budget and strategy provides some degree of control, it does not provide the full picture. If you have a situation in which the corporation sole status of the chief officer of police is untrammelled—I was very pleased to hear what the Minister said about putting some limits around that, and I think it would be helpful to see those sooner rather than later—the danger is that chief officers of police will ignore what the body to whom they are supposed to be accountable will say are the key strategic issues that matter to their local communities. We would not want every minor arrangement in respect of an individual investigation to be referred to the accountable body, but we should have some system that ensures that those key decisions lie clearly with the body to which the chief officer of police is being held accountable.

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the further contributions that have just been made to the debate. I can assure my noble friend Lord Carlile of Berriew that if, for example, forensic science commissioning were suddenly needed, there would not be a time lag while permission was sought. That is not our intention. I also take on board what noble Lords opposite have said about getting the balance right. I can assure the Committee that we will bring forward an amendment that I hope meets the concerns that have been expressed.

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[Baroness Browning]

Yes, that is right. I ask noble Lords not to press the amendment.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, the Minister has given a very helpful explanation in relation to the chief financial officer. I do not think anyone is suggesting that the chief officer of police should not have financial support from somebody who was suitably qualified. It is told, no doubt apocryphally, that the Metropolitan Police, when it was under the control of the Home Office, had only two qualified accountants responsible for a budget of £3 billion, which may have explained why it did not have a system for knowing whether it had paid bills more than once. Having a senior financial person who is a qualified accountant is not the same as having a chief finance officer, which has a specific meaning in local government law. It is clear that the post is intended to have that specific meaning in local government law. I do not think that anyone is suggesting that we should move away from the situation that exists at the moment, where every force has a senior finance person, but the person who is clearly responsible for accounts and everything else resides within the police authority or, in this case given the Government’s construct, with the police and crime commissioner.

[Baroness Henig]

It has been an extremely interesting debate which has teased out a number of important issues, many of which I am sure we will come back to. I am most grateful to the Minister for her response and for telling us that the Government will bring forward an amendment in relation to some of the issues. I am sure that we will have further debate at that point simply because so many important, technical issues relating to where the balance of power lies in different situations are still to be clarified. Given that we shall come back to a number of them, and given the important assurances that the Minister has provided, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

49: Clause 3, page 3, line 13, at end insert “and the City of London”

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 53, 54, 55 and 56. I see that Amendment 55, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is in this group. I do not quite know what it means and I am not sure that it is meant to be in this group, but the noble Baroness will no doubt enlighten us later.

The purpose of the amendment in my name is to extend the responsibility of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime to cover the City of London Police. I put this forward because I was sure that it would be a minor and non-controversial change to the Bill—something that would attract universal approbation and something that the Government would have done had they thought of it at the time.

We are all familiar with the City of London Police force. Of course, it does an excellent and much-respected job. It has an annual budget of around £61 million, which is what the Metropolitan Police gets through in a week. The City of London Police force covers a population of 8,000 people, which is rather smaller than most local government wards in Greater London. There is of course a slight commuter issue in that some 300,000 people come into the area each day. The area covers just over one square mile. It has 800-plus police officers, 85 special constables, 48 PCSOs, a number of police staff and three police stations. It is the smallest territorial police force in England and Wales. It is something of an anomaly.

The argument is that because of the economic significance of the City of London, it has historically had a separate police force. That argument has prevailed every single time in the past 180 years that people have considered whether there should be different policing arrangements in London, but I hope that it is something that we can consider afresh today. I looked at the figures from the City of London Police annual report. Apparently, the average monthly number of crimes recorded in the City of London Police district is 505. The Metropolitan Police force clocks that up in around six hours. That gives noble Lords some idea of the different scales.

The noble Lord, Lord Condon, who is not in his place, is apocryphally said to have been asked on one occasion, “Commissioner, what would you do if you were given responsibility for the City of London Police?”. I have never asked him whether he actually said this, but he is alleged to have replied, “I would put a sergeant in charge”. I say that not to be pejorative about the City of London Police, but to highlight what a strange anomaly it is to have within Greater London this tiny enclave catering for a tiny population with the full panoply of staff. It has its own commissioner—a commissioner in the policing of the metropolis sense rather than in terms of an elected police and crime commissioner. The Bill is silent on whether there will be any changes in governance of the force. It will continue to be governed by the Corporation of London Police Committee with no changes whatever to reflect the general drift of government policy in this area, whether amended or not by your Lordships' House or Parliament.

I hope that the Minister, in responding, will be able to enlighten us as to why the Corporation of London is exempt from the general provisions of the Bill. If one believes in the principle of seeing direct and visible accountability, what could be better than to say that the entire police service within Greater London should be accountable to the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime? Surely that is the way to do it. That is the way to make it explicit and demonstrate that the entire police service in London is the responsibility of the mayor's office.

In an earlier debate in Committee, we talked about the problem of the confusion of members of the public. The City of London Police force goes to great lengths to ensure that its officers are distinguishable. The little squares on the cap band are red rather than black and the insignia and helmet are different, so it should be immediately apparent to members of the public that they are now being dealt with by the City of London Police as opposed to the Metropolitan Police. However, I rather suspect that this is a distinction—even though enormous efforts are made to demonstrate it—that will be lost on most Londoners.

The point in putting forward this amendment is to say, for the sake of completeness, that Greater London contains the square mile of the City of London. Its 8,000 residents—who vote for the Mayor of London—should have the right, through that process, to see their police service being governed through the same arrangements as the rest of London, the mayor’s Office of Policing and Crime as envisaged in this Bill. I am sure that the five people who were subjected to firearms offences in 2009-10, or the four instances of trade description offences that the force dealt with, or the two offences relating to obscene publications or the two offences of dangerous driving—and this is an area where 300,000 cars come in each day—would all be better served it if it was seen as part of a Greater London police force, accountable to the Mayor of London’s Office of Policing and Crime. I beg to move.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, is using this group of amendments to seek to achieve, at a late hour and in Committee, the merger of the City of London Police with the Metropolitan Police, a matter that has been around not just since 1829 but goes back to 1785. The matter is frankly for the Minister to respond to, as the Minister in charge of the Bill, but I must put a small gloss on it, having been the Member of Parliament for the City of London for the third longest length of time since 1283. It goes back to 1785 because there was a genuine essay to secure a London police force that went wider than the City in the 1780s. William Pitt the Younger embarked on it because of the Gordon Riots, when he felt a police force was needed. The City of London Police—this is the one thing I concede to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey—did actually scupper that idea by saying that they would not themselves have anything to do with it. Pitt himself confessed to the House of Commons that this was a subject of which he was himself insufficiently the master and therefore he would not press the point. Thereafter, it was decided to create a police force in the city of Dublin and it was the existence of that force that prompted Peel, who served as Chief Secretary for Ireland between 1812 and 1818, to pursue the idea when he became Home Secretary on his return to London in the 1820s. Of course, from 1829 onwards, everything is history.

I will fast forward from 1829 to 1977, when I entered the House of Commons at a by-election as the Member of Parliament for the City. I recall that before I had made my maiden speech, the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, had moved a 10 minute rule Bill in the House of Commons to abolish the City of London Police, to which I was not allowed to reply because it was a controversial subject and you should not make your maiden speech on a controversial subject. The late, lamented Lord Finsberg opposed it himself. I have to remark on the coincidence that these Bills always came forward in the spring of a GLC election, because they were quite clearly intended to provide further grist to the political mill.

Your Lordships’ House will be glad to hear that I am not going to make a prolonged defence at this hour but I will say that I did think that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, was a little selective in the observations that he made. There is no question at all that the City of London Police response to the terrorist outrages that occurred within the square mile was both prompt and efficient. I can recall long, long ago reporting to the House of Commons on the technology that the Corporation of London had developed so that any car approaching the ring of steel was photographed and, at the moment that it reached the ring of steel, the policeman on duty knew perfectly well who the driver was and who it was registered to et cetera. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, made no reference to the expertise developed by the City of London Police in the context of fraud or to the international implications of the City of London and its police force nor did he allude in general to the terrorist issue to which the ring of steel contributed as a defence, but he did refer to the City of London’s population, on which his figures were broadly right. The 8,000 residents do not all have votes, but I agree that that is approximately the right figure. He was certainly right about the number of commuters. The number of commuters is the reason why the European Commission says, erroneously, that the City of London, the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea are the richest areas in the whole of the European Union. The reason why the European Commission’s statement is ill founded is that, in the context of the City, it is the 300,000 commuters who contribute to the area’s wealth rather than the 8,000 people who live there. However, in working out its calculations, the European Commission takes the GDP produced in those three local authority areas and divides the figure by the resident population rather than by the number who come in to work there, who make such an enormous contribution to the economy of this country.

My noble friend Lord Eccles was present during our Committee stage debates on the Bill last week; I just want to allude briefly to his late father, who was the 1st Viscount Eccles, or David Eccles as was. In 1944, David Eccles moved an amendment to the Education Bill—no doubt it was also moved late at night—at a time when David Eccles had been in the House of Commons for a year. His amendment said that, once the war was over, all women teachers in the United Kingdom should receive equal salaries with all male teachers. The Division was the only one in the House of Commons throughout the war on which the Government were defeated. Rab Butler, who was the Minister in charge of the Bill, was not the fastest of movers and was actually not in the Chamber when the vote was taken, although he was proceeding towards it. The amendment was carried by 117 votes to 116. The next morning, Churchill sent for the Chief Whip and said that Herr Goebbels would make such an enormous profit out of this defeat for the Government that it had to be reversed on Report as a matter of confidence. The amendment was reversed by 417 votes to 25 and, thus, the Bill was restored to its original form. I tell that story in the context of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, because, once all that had been done, the then Prime Minister sent for David Eccles and—I shall not put on a Churchillian accent at this late hour—said words to the effect, “Young man, I have a great deal of personal sympathy with the underlying proposition and principle that you were advancing in your amendment, but to do so late at night on the Education Bill, in the midst of the greatest conflict the world has ever seen, is frankly the equivalent of putting an elephant in a perambulator”. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, in my view that is what he is seeking to do tonight. I hope that he will be wholly convinced by the arguments advanced by my noble friend.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way—or perhaps he had resumed his seat anyway—but he has referred three times to the lateness of the hour. There is no desire on my part for us to be debating at this hour; we are doing so as an assistance to the Government, who have decided that the House should sit beyond 10 pm tonight despite the normal convention that we do not sit late on occasions when the House will sit early the following morning. I would have been much happier to have debated this at an earlier hour, when no doubt we could have devoted much more time to the particular arrangements in the City of London.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I am deeply sorry if I have in any way offended the noble Lord, Lord Harris, but the fact remains that it is a late hour.

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[Baroness Browning]

Not at all, my Lords. We studied very closely the actions or lack of actions of the previous Labour Government. I assure the noble Lord that they are on our radar screen all the time. However, we have this situation not just because of the many years that the City of London Police has been in place but because of the exemplary way in which it conducts itself. The size of the population of the City of London has been mentioned. There are 8,000 voters but one must put that in the context of there being 25 wards in the City, of which only four have residents. To translate that into representation would be quite complex. The City of London is unique and has unique policing governance to recognise that fact. I suspect that various Governments down the years have looked at this and probably all came to the same conclusion. It operates on a non-party political basis through its lord mayor, aldermen and the members of the Court of Common Council. The governance is tailored to the particular institutions and traditions of the City of London. I am sorry to disappoint your Lordships, but it is not my intention to change that tonight. I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful to Members of the Committee for their consideration of the amendment. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, for his history lesson as it demonstrated the extraordinarily effective lobbying power of the Corporation of London over the past two and a bit centuries.

Noble Lords have asked why the previous Labour Government did not address this issue. I was very engaged in the discussions that led to the creation of the Greater London Authority and I can let your Lordships into a secret: the then Prime Minister, who was renowned for his bravery in taking on international conflicts when other counsels might have prevailed, was not prepared to enter into a conflict with the massed troops of the Corporation of London. He did not wish to see tanks trundling down Ludgate Hill towards Westminster to try to suppress any uprising on the part of the unruly citizens of Westminster vis-à-vis the traditional powers and role of the Corporation of London.

I am sure the Committee will recognise that my amendment is very modest. It does not propose subsuming the City of London Police into the Metropolitan Police. It merely suggests that the City of London Police should be accountable to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime in the same way that the Metropolitan Police are. That would not necessarily mean any disruption of the City of London Police’s excellent work, particularly on economic crime. It may have been unfair of me to refer to the heavy load of traffic offences with which the force deals. I was talking to a colleague in the House earlier this evening who remarked that the City of London Police dealt with a particularly high number of cases of indecent exposure, and that that factor should be taken into account when arguing for a separate force. However, the argument has always been about economic crime, certainly during my involvement in this area. We are talking about 213 new investigations during the past year, which is a comparatively modest figure.

This was intended to be a minimalist amendment to try to bring the City of London Police into line with some of the arrangements prevailing in the rest of the country. London is already an anomaly in the Bill, as we shall discuss further in a few minutes. The amendment is not intended to destroy the City of London Police or its work; it simply tries to create a system of accountability which would at least be parallel to that in the rest of London, if not in the rest of the country.

I note that the Minister is as susceptible as all previous holders of that office and, indeed, all previous Ministers in every other department of government, when it comes to the lobbying power of the Corporation of London, to which I defer. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 49 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

50: Clause 3, page 3, line 15, leave out subsections (3) and (4) and insert—
“(3) There is to be a Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime for the metropolitan police district and the City of London.
(4) The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is to be elected, and hold office, in accordance with Chapter 6.
(4A) The person who has been given the title of deputy mayor and particular responsibility for policing and crime by the Mayor of London at the time this section is brought into effect is to be the occupant for the time being of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.”

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 50, I wish to speak to an extremely long list of amendments which, because of the lateness of the hour, I will not proceed to go through individually and in detail.

The purpose of this amendment is to try to bring some of the arrangements in Greater London more into line with the Government’s original intentions in the Bill. The principle of the Bill was that there would be greater visible accountability of the police service through the election of a police and crime commissioner. That is what the Government have proposed everywhere in the country apart from London. However, it is proposed that because we already have a directly elected Mayor of London, the processes will not be the same in London as they will be elsewhere. Instead, there will be created the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, which will be a functional body of the Greater London Authority. There is recognition of the very wide range of duties of the Mayor of London. Therefore, it is understood that he might not be able to fulfil the office of Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime—there is a very strange use of language in the Bill—but might appoint a deputy mayor of London to fulfil that role. There are clauses in the Bill that describe the functions of the deputy mayor for policing and crime; how they relate to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and to the Mayor of London; the arrangements for the appointment of that person who might or might not be an elected member of the London Assembly; the arrangements that would occur in the event of a vacancy in that office; what would happen if that person were disqualified or incapacitated; and so on. However, the real gap in those proposals is that if the Government believe, as they do, that the single act of election and the visibility of the person fulfilling the role of holding the police to account is the key element, why does it not apply in London?

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I am interested in the concept suggested by my noble friend of different people being elected to a position in the same authority. What does he think about the Government’s proposal to appoint shadow mayors? Can I take him from the great city of London to the equally great city of Birmingham and the situation whereby the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is intending to nominate Councillor Mike Whitby, the Leader of the Conservative-Lib Dem council, to be the shadow mayor of Birmingham at the very time when it is clear that he will lose control of the council next May? We have a bizarre situation of having a shadow mayor with all the powers of the mayor, and the council being Labour-led. What does my noble friend think about that?

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I think that that is a consequence of extending discussion in your Lordships' House past our normal finishing time of 10 pm, when we tend to range more widely on subjects.

My noble friend raises an important point. Neither I in my amendment nor the Government in their original proposal were doing anything as bizarre as seems to be suggested under the Localism Bill. Had they followed the same principle, no doubt we would have had chairs of police authorities all over the country suddenly becoming shadow commissioners of police and crime for their areas. Although many chairs of police authorities would no doubt have relished that transformation and enjoyed their brief period in that role, we are not in the Bill being offered the same arrangements that are being offered under the Localism Bill for the creation of mayors in major cities. The Localism Bill also envisages that there would then be a referendum of the local community. Some of us had hoped that we would have an interesting debate on that, but my noble friend chose to deny us that opportunity and is perhaps, by the back door, trying to give us the opportunity to have such a debate now. I shall not be lured down that path.

The purpose of my amendment is that, if the principle is clarity—that the person who holds the police to account should be directly elected and visible in that role—that individual in London should also be directly elected. In the Bill, we have a system where the Mayor of London is elected but, effectively, will automatically delegate an individual who need not be directly elected—and certainly will not be directly elected to fulfil that function—to carry out the role of the police and crime commissioner. That is wrong. It is a mistake. It runs against the entire premise of the Government's proposals, which is that there should be a directly elected individual who holds the police to account. I beg to move.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

I intervene very briefly. When I am attending your Lordships' House, I stay in a club in my former constituency. In the 1930s, a Duke was slumbering in that club after lunch one day when he became conscious that a man and a woman had entered the room. He waited until they had left and then pressed a bell. The club servant arrived and said, “You rang, your Grace?”. The Duke said, “What was that?”. The club servant said, “That, your Grace, was the club secretary and Her Majesty the Queen”. “Thin end of the wedge”, said the Duke, shut his eyes and went to sleep again.

I will not expand on the point at this hour of the night, but I wanted the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, to know that I have noticed, as the thin end of the wedge, that the City of London again creeps into his Amendment 50.

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, these amendments would prevent the mayor holding the mayor’s office for policing and crime and would instead create an elected deputy mayor for policing and crime to hold that office.

This Government’s policy is to introduce a directly elected police and crime commissioner in every force area in England and Wales outside London but, as your Lordships are only too well aware, these provisions have been removed from the Bill. It therefore seems rather odd that your Lordships should now be debating whether those self-same provisions should apply to the Metropolitan Police Service. I noted the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, about wanting to remain consistent. However, having struck out from the Bill the part that proposed elected police and crime commissioners, your Lordships now seem to be applying the same arguments to elect the deputy mayor for London.

The Government had not intended to introduce a new elected person to hold the police to account in London for the very simple reason that the whole of London already elects a single person to take responsibility for strategic issues such as policing, and that of course is the Mayor of London. The mayor is in the unique position of having responsibility for a whole force area and, as such, it seems sensible for him to have overall responsibility for holding the police to account as well.

The amendment would create a situation in which both the mayor and the deputy mayor had a direct democratic mandate across a whole force area, although they might have different ideas about what should happen. I do not think that that could work. It is right and fitting that the mayor should take on formal responsibility for holding the Metropolitan Police to account and, in turn, the mayor should be directly accountable to the public for how that is done. I am tempted to say to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, “Nice try”, but I regret that I am not able to accept his amendment.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. As ever, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, highlighted what he called the thin end of the wedge. There is a choice and it goes to the heart of the Minister’s response to this. One can either envisage that the deputy mayor for policing and crime is elected by all Londoners on the same day and in the same manner as the Mayor of London, in which case the logic is that the 8,000 electors in the City of London should cast a vote for the deputy mayor of London as they vote for the Mayor of London. Alternatively, if the noble Lord preferred it and would be happy to support it on a later occasion, we could exclude the 8,000 electors from the Corporation of London area and have a deputy mayor elected on a slightly different franchise from that of the Mayor of London. That would, of course, completely undermine the Minister’s argument about how difficult it would be if these two individuals were elected on the same basis. The Government cannot have it both ways—I am trying to—by saying that we should not include the City of London in this. If you do not include the City of London, you therefore require that the franchise for the deputy mayor of London should be different from that for the Mayor of London and the argument about having the same franchise, being elected on the same basis and possible conflict, disappears.

The reason for including it was to try to achieve some consistency with the arrangements for the election of the Mayor of London. If it makes the Minister happier I am sure that we can construct the amendments in a way that excludes the City of London. That would then mean that she had achieved her objectives in terms of my previous amendment as well as this one. I am not clear that even had we altered the franchise slightly the Minister would have been happy with the amendment.

I have to say that there is a difficulty. I do not believe through very close observation that it is possible for the Mayor of London to fulfil the full range of activities of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. I was certainly clear when I chaired the police authority about the amount of time that that took up. The role of being responsible for the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime will take up more time than that, and it would be impossible to combine that with the other responsibilities of the Mayor of London. The present Mayor of London, who no doubt is the role model for which the MOPC is being created, tried for a period, having made a manifesto pledge, to chair the police authority as well as being Mayor of London. After a comparatively short period, he decided that it was impracticable and not possible. We now have the situation that the Mayor of London appoints the chair of the police authority.

The difficulty is arguing that the arrangements will somehow be an improvement in transparency with current arrangements. Essentially, you are saying that the Mayor of London will appoint a person to fulfil the responsibilities in respect of holding the police service to account. That is the arrangement that we have at the moment. The Mayor of London appoints the chair of the police authority and that person, who is called the deputy mayor, although it is not a statutory title, fulfils those functions. That dilutes the principle of direct accountability. People might feel that the Mayor of London was doing a wonderful job on transport arrangements, introducing bicycle schemes, representing London on an international stage in such a way that all Londoners feel that the cockles of their hearts are warmed by seeing him perform. They might feel that or they might not, but they might have very different views about the conduct of the role on policing.

Under these arrangements being proposed by the Government, people cannot differentiate between them. All of it is subsumed in the responsibilities of the single elected mayor and the mayor can distance him or herself from what happens in policing by the fact that they appoint somebody else to do it. That is a weakness. If the Government are intent on restoring the principle of direct election to the rest of the Bill they need to think again about restoring the principle of direct election to the position in the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. If they are worried about duplication, they could take policing out of the Mayor of London’s area of responsibility. That is not something that I would personally advocate. The proposals are intended to balance those different responsibilities.

I will think carefully about what the Minister has said. When we know the Government’s intent it will be clear whether something like this needs to be put into the Bill at a later stage. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 50 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I should like to address Amendments 103, 105, 112 and 116, the four amendments in my name in this group. The purpose of the amendments is to ensure democratic legitimacy to the function of police and crime commissioner as exercised in London. I have no objection to the concept of the Mayor of London, acting as the PCC, appointing a deputy mayor for policing and crime. The issue that arises is the fact that the deputy mayor for policing and crime will not be an elected person. The mayor has the right to appoint anyone to this position.

Mayors are not infallible. London has so far had two elected mayors. Both have appointed a range of unelected people to a wide variety of important posts, some of which have resulted in controversy, resignations and sackings. I recognise that no such mistake has been made in the appointment of the chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority or, in fact, any of the appointments, but the fact is that that very important principle still stands.

However, I believe that there is a much more fundamental objection. Were the mayor to appoint an unelected person to the post of deputy mayor for policing and crime, it would negate the whole purpose of the Bill. How on earth can an unelected police and crime commissioner be accountable to local communities? Does not this proposal to hand the powers of the PCC to any unelected individual make a nonsense of the Government’s argument about democratic legitimacy?

Previously in Committee, my noble friend the Minister said:

“Cabinet Office research in 2008 showed that more than two-thirds of the public wanted an elected person to hold the police to account … It means an elected individual charged with being the voice of some of the most vulnerable people … I believe that police and crime commissioners will be both visible and democratically accountable”.—[Official Report, 11/5/11; col. 940.]

My noble friend made the same comment earlier this evening.

Therefore, I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, said earlier. Why on earth should every area outside London have a democratically elected individual carrying out the job of PCC, but not London? What rationale is there for treating London differently from any other part of the country? Whatever misgivings one might have about certain sections of this Bill, it is essential that the new legislation works in practice and does what it is supposed to do. But it must also be logically consistent and ensure the same degree of democratic accountability throughout the country. These amendments would achieve these objectives by obliging the Mayor of London, in delegating his functions as PCC, to choose a deputy mayor for policing and crime only from elected Members of the London Assembly.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I will speak to an amendment that is in my name, to four other amendments to which I have added my name and to an amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. The amendment in my name is Amendment 110. I have to confess that this is possibly a refugee from what should have been another group. However, it could stand on its own here. It essentially deletes Clause 19(4), which is about the power of the deputy mayor for policing and crime to,

“arrange for any other person to exercise any function of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime which is, in accordance with subsection (2), exercisable by the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime”.

This comes back to the issue that we keep raising in relation to policing and crime commissioners: their ability to delegate functions to people who are not accountable in the same way. The proposal is that, even though this is an activity which is specifically the responsibility of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, and specifically should be carried out by the deputy mayor, it should not be possible to delegate this to any other person in such a cavalier way.

I also wanted to speak to Amendments 103 and 116, which essentially say that the deputy mayor for policing and crime shall be a Member of the London Assembly. If your Lordships and the Government are not minded to accept the principle of direct election, then the second best must be that the person delegated by the Mayor of London must themselves be an elected person, a Member of the London Assembly. It really is extraordinary that the Bill gives such latitude to the Mayor of London to appoint someone whom they have not met and may have no personal direct mandate. One could create a justification as to why it would be inappropriate to have a direct mandate, but it seems to me that the main thrust of this ought to be that that the person who is acting on behalf of the Mayor of London in this very important role should themselves have at least been subject to the electorate for at least part of London, if not the whole of London. It is important that the deputy mayor of London for policing and crime should be an elected Member of the London Assembly, and Amendments 103 and 116 deal with this.

I have also put my name to Amendment 105, which enables the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime to delegate to any person the functions that would otherwise be carried out by the deputy mayor for policing and crime. The issue is the same: whether it should be possible for these functions so easily to be delegated to people who are not elected. Amendment 105 would at least require the mayor to delegate them to somebody who was part of the structure of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime rather than to someone completely different. What would be the point of having a Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime if the mayor could say, “Well, one of these functions I am not having done by somebody who works for the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime; I’ll have it delegated somewhere else”? I suspect that this was an unintended consequence of something else when the drafting was done, but it seems to be a very strange arrangement.

Amendment 180 would involve Members of the Assembly in the appointment of police officers of ACPO rank other than simply the commissioner and deputy commissioner. I spoke earlier today about the importance of that responsibility being shared. It is an important issue of governance. It is also important that senior officers of the Metropolitan Police not only see the line of accountability to the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis but recognise the importance of democratic accountability. The involvement of Members in the appointments process would help facilitate that.

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, there is a great number of amendments in this grouping. I shall try to do justice to as many of them as I can.

Amendments 61, 62, 107 and 116 would prevent the mayor appointing as deputy mayor for crime and policing anyone who was not already a Member of the London Assembly. I understand the concerns that lie behind the amendments. It is argued that if PCCs elsewhere are directly elected to their position, the deputy mayor should have some democratic legitimacy. We touched on this in previous amendments. However, it is important to remember that the deputy mayor does not occupy the Mayor's Office for Crime and Policing; the mayor alone may hold that office. The mayor may appoint a person to whom to delegate the day-to-day responsibilities of the office, but I emphasise—particularly to my noble friend Lady Hamwee because she raised this matter—that the liability and accountability to the public rest squarely on the shoulders of the mayor, whatever the nature of the delegation. For that reason, I suggest that it is not necessary for the deputy mayor to be elected, although there is no reason why they could not be.

To require the deputy mayor to be an Assembly Member would also limit the mayor's discretion to 25 people, many of whom already have important responsibilities. Until the Greater London Authority Act 2007, Assembly Members were not able to serve on the Transport for London board. While they are now able to do so, there is no requirement for any of the members or the chair to be an Assembly Member. In fact, none of the current members of the Transport for London board is also an Assembly Member; the accountability comes through the mayor. I therefore ask that this cluster of amendments not be pressed.

Delegation is very important in any organisation. No one person, be that the mayor or the deputy mayor, can carry out all the functions of an organisation from making strategic decisions to replying to letters. The Bill sets out that the mayor may delegate to the deputy mayor, who in turn may also delegate functions.

Amendment 109 would seriously restrict the mayor's ability to delegate to the deputy mayor, meaning that the mayor would have to carry out all the day-to-day functions of the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime. With a role as large and strategic as the mayor’s, it must be right that day-to-day functions are able to be delegated. As such, I ask that that amendment not be pressed.

Amendment 105 would restrict the mayor's ability to delegate functions so only the deputy mayor or an employee of the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime may have functions delegated to them. I would be very concerned that this would prevent the useful shared services that already exist in the GLA, as it would require that all of the mayor's functions in respect of policing and crime are performed by the staff of that office. In order to ensure that the mayor can make sensible decisions about the most efficient and effective way of working, I ask that this amendment not be pressed.

Amendments 106 and 109 make it clear that the mayor retains overall legal responsibility for any function he or she should choose to delegate. This is a fundamental principle of the law on delegation. The mayor could not choose to delegate overall responsibility of his or her functions even if he or she should wish to. As such, these amendments would have no practical effect and I ask that they not be pressed.

Amendment 114 would forbid any person but the mayor from exercising any rights of his or her office or using any property. That would effectively be a bar on the mayor from delegating any functions, as nearly all functions would require that person to exercise some rights of the mayor.

Amendments 110 and 111 would prevent the deputy mayor from delegating any functions that he or she has been delegated by the mayor. This would mean only the mayor or the deputy mayor could carry out any function of the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime. Were this the case then the mayor's office could have no effective staff, as every function from appointing a junior member of staff, to replying to a letter on behalf of the mayor's office would need to be carried out by either the mayor or the deputy mayor. Similarly, Amendments 103 and 112 would prevent the mayor and deputy mayor from delegating functions to any person but a London Assembly Member. I do not think it is right that only the mayor, deputy mayor or a London Assembly Member are able to perform the basic administrative functions of that office. Any organisation needs to allow for effective delegation to be efficient, but the amendments would prevent that and so make the office bureaucratic, if not actually impossible. For that reason, I would ask noble Lords not to press those amendments.

Finally, Amendments 97 to 101 make similar changes to restrict the ability of a police and crime commissioner in delegating functions. Your Lordships may care to consider what effect if any the amendments will have following the vote on the first day of this Committee. Had that vote not taken place, I would be arguing that PCCs also need to delegate, and it would be as inappropriate to expect police and crime panel members to handle a PCC's correspondence or to interview the staff.

I would have made similar arguments in respect of a PCC as I have in respect of the mayor; that it is right that conflict of interest considerations prevent them from delegating functions to a police officer, and the law is already clear that they cannot delegate overall responsibility for any function. I do not think that Clause 18 has any practical effect any longer, and as such, neither do the amendments sought.

To pick up on some of the other points raised, my noble friend Lady Hamwee mentioned the question of term limits on MOPC. As drafted, the amendment would mean that the current mayor would not be able to take on MOPC if successful in the 2012 election, as only the mayor can hold MOPC. That would leave the office vacant. This is probably not the place to open up the debate on how that problem might be resolved, but no one other than the mayor would be able to fill the role of MOPC and how that would be decided and how that situation would be dealt with is not clear in the proposals that have been brought forward.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The Greater London Authority Act provides for circumstances in which the office of mayor is vacant. It provides for arrangements in which the statutory deputy mayor under the Greater London Authority Act—not to be confused with the deputy mayor for policing and crime—assumes the functions of mayor. Surely those arrangements are covered under the Greater London Authority Act.

[Baroness Browning]

I am not up to speed with the Greater London Authority Act, but I would have hoped that in bringing forward amendments that created the circumstance, there would have been provisions to decide how to deal with the situation that I described and could well happen in respect of the sitting mayor and the elections due next year. So if the noble Lord does not mind I will not engage in the detail of that. Those proposals are simply not in front of the House today and I am going to move on to the role of the London Assembly.

These amendments would establish the London Assembly as the police and crime panel for London. I appreciate the position that noble Lords have taken with this. Like them, I am keen to ensure that the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime in London is properly challenged and that its decisions are tested on behalf of the public on a regular basis. However, I see that the police and crime panel must comprise members of the London Assembly so as to ensure proper accountability.

The first question to address here is why there should be a bespoke committee of the London Assembly called the police and crime panel rather than, as proposed by noble Lords, the functions being conferred on the London Assembly as a whole. The reason is one of practicality. Having a dedicated committee, representative of the wider London Assembly, will ensure that sufficient attention and scrutiny can be paid to delivering its policing responsibilities and would also allow for independent members to be brought on to the panel to ensure diversity and the right mix of skills. Independents would be appointed subject to the existing rules of the Assembly.

This smaller group will be able to focus its attentions on the important business of scrutinising, in detail, the actions and decisions of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime—particularly in respect of the police and crime plan. The requirement for the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime to produce a police and crime plan is a statutory requirement. It is right and proper that the London authority, through its police and crime panel, should have the appropriate opportunity to review and report on the draft police and crime plan. This is a very important element of its scrutiny role. However, given the statutory nature of the police and crime plan, and the accompanying requirements made of it by this legislation, it would not be appropriate for the police and crime panel to have the power to veto the plan itself.

Finally, these amendments would introduce a role for the London Assembly in the appointment of the commissioner and the deputy commissioner, and their senior team. I will address these in turn. The Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police remain royal appointments, subject to the advice of the Secretary of State, due to the number of important national and international functions that they undertake. In making this recommendation, the Secretary of State must have regard to any recommendations made by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.

It has been proposed that the London Assembly should also be a part of these considerations. Requiring the London Assembly to do so, be that directly through the police and crime panel, would add an additional layer of bureaucracy to the process, which would delay the decision further. The proposed amendments would also establish a role for the London Assembly in the appointment of the assistant commissioners, deputy assistant commissioners and commanders of the Metropolitan Police. Such appointments under this legislation will now be made by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, in consultation with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. They will no longer require the approval of the Secretary of State, which reflects the Government’s commitment to reduce interference from the centre and reduce bureaucracy.

The Government feel that the commissioner is best placed to make decisions about the make-up of his top team. The role of the police and crime panel for London is to scrutinise the decisions taken by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime in London. It is not its role to scrutinise the decisions of the commissioner and neither it, nor the GLA more widely, as these amendments propose, should therefore have a role in the appointment of the commissioner’s senior team.

Furthermore, allowing the assembly to call in the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to give evidence will mean the commissioner having to answer to two masters. The commissioner is held to account by the mayor and the mayor by the assembly. These clear lines of accountability are needed.

I have not been able to go into a lot of detail—we had a long list of amendments before us—but I hope that your Lordships who have tabled amendments will feel able not to press them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I should like to speak briefly to the amendments in my name in this group—Amendments 73, 152, 159, and 160 to 163. Their purpose is to make the provisions of the Bill consistent with those proposed in the Localism Bill. That Bill will change the relationship between the London Assembly and the Mayor of London, as set out in the Greater London Authority Act 1999, because it will give the London Assembly a new power to reject by a two-thirds majority the Mayor’s statutory strategies.

However, this Bill makes no equivalent provision. As it stands, it would not allow the Assembly to reject the Mayor’s draft policing and crime plan. Consequently, once both Bills have become law, the London Assembly would have the power to reject every one of the Mayor’s strategies, with the sole exception of the police and crime plan. This discrepancy makes no sense. There are no substantive differences between the police and crime plan and other mayoral strategies that would justify it being excluded. These amendments, which are supported by the Mayor of London and all political parties on the London Assembly, would remedy this discrepancy.

The amendments also propose that the power to reject a draft police and crime plan would be exercisable by the whole Assembly. I am very aware that the Bill’s provisions suggest that none of the functions of the police and crime panel should be carried out by the full Assembly. However the whole point of vesting this specific power in the full Assembly, as opposed to in a committee of the Assembly, is to provide consistency with the provisions of the Localism Bill in relation to mayoral strategies.

These amendments would ensure that accountability arrangements within the Greater London Authority are coherent and internally consistent.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I have put my name to the amendments to which the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, referred. It is extraordinarily anomalous that two Bills that we will be considering at the same time in your Lordships’ House have such very different provisions for the role of the London Assembly and the strategies of the mayor. It seems sensible that they are made consistent. The proposal that the London Assembly has the power to reject—or, when it comes to the Localism Bill, perhaps even amend—the plan is extremely important and it would be sensible if the power was consistent across the two pieces of legislation.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We have another complex and technical set of amendments here. I listened with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, although I was not quite sure when he came to his conclusion whether he was referring to organising crime prevention or organised crime prevention.