Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I accept that the noble Baroness is merely trying to elucidate what it means. It seems to me that in this case the Government are entirely sensibly trying to cover all the various types of agreement and contract that might exist. That seems to me what that part is about, and in my view that is why it should remain.

I turn to easier ground and to that part of the noble Baroness’s remarks with which I strongly agree. I find it bizarre that the Bill prohibits an elected policing body entering into a collaboration agreement with another. Surely, this is precisely what we hope would happen. I hope to see all sorts of networks of agreements between policing bodies around the country, perhaps to share back-office facilities or an agreement that one police area will develop an area of policing expertise and other police areas will agree that that body will take the lead in that matter. That seems to me eminently sensible. I find it strange that the Bill appears to prohibit that. I do not understand why the Government have gone down that road. If this is a probing amendment perhaps the Minister will tell us that we have completely misunderstood what the schedule is about. However, it seems to me that it cannot be interpreted in any other way. I thought that it was government policy to encourage this collaboration.

The Conservative Party, and probably the Liberal Democrats although I cannot remember their precise position on this issue, were deeply opposed to the idea of mergers of police forces when it was raised by previous Home Secretaries. They felt that this was a terrible diminution and that people would be affronted by changes in the hat badge if police forces in different parts of the country were merged. Their response was that they would want to see this sort of collaboration. Indeed, I recall the Minister for Police Nick Herbert pointing out at a conference that the proposals and discussions that were then—as I understand it—going on extremely slowly between police forces about how they might share helicopter services were a test case to establish whether police services and police authorities could collaborate under any circumstances. The message that I took from his comments was that if there was a failure to share helicopters in that instance, where there seemed to be an overriding case for doing so—however, the chief constables who wanted their own helicopters might argue differently—the Government would try to make that mandatory. I hope the Minister has received the advice that she needs on this point and that we will be told that that is not the Government’s intention. However, if it is the Government’s intention, perhaps they can explain why that is the case.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I rise to make a short comment on Amendment 31E, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, and to add a gloss on the earlier debate that we had in the context of Amendment 32, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

On Amendment 31E, the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, spoke out for localism in deciding what these salaries should be. I find myself frequently reading in both the national and local press about the extreme distress caused by the salaries that are paid to the chief executives of local authorities, which seem to be totally out of order when compared with the salaries paid in a neighbouring county. Here we are talking about an office which is not elected, but where the decision is taken by the local authority itself. I understand the noble Baroness’s argument about localism but I recall doing these exercises from the centre for four years between 1985 and 1989, when the then Chancellor, my noble friend Lord Lawson of Blaby, delegated to me responsibility for the pay and conditions of the Civil Service. I negotiated with a number of people who now sit on the Benches opposite in connection with those matters. I recall that some jobs in public bodies went beyond purely the Civil Service and that in those cases the Treasury reserved the right to decide what the salaries would be. It was a difficult task and one which I think we discharged with reasonable consistency, accuracy and honour. I would be happier with something of that order rather than the provision which the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, suggested.

In the context of Amendment 32, I heard my noble friend Lady Hamwee say she did not believe that the police and crime commissioners would have a full-time job. I recall that on the previous occasion we debated these matters my noble friend Lord Eccles pulled up the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and asked him where the Bill stated that it would be a full-time job. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, had made the perfectly reasonable assumption that it was likely to be full time. However, here we are on Amendment 32 going back to the situation where it is not likely to be a full-time job at all. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire whether the Government expected the job to be full time and received an immediate answer. I go back to a mild comment that I made on the previous occasion when I said that there was some danger of entering an Alice in Wonderland scenario if we did not keep track of the matters that we were discussing, particularly given the way in which we are dealing with the Bill.