Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Rosser and Baroness Redfern

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Redfern (Con)]

My Lords, Clause 2 concerns collaboration, and I see that in terms of further collaboration between services. I declare my interest as leader of North Lincolnshire Council, as noted in the register of interests. In Committee, we must highlight the importance of this issue in strengthening and building the capacity and accountability of the police service.

As we know, the profile of demand for all emergency services is changing. I am pleased to say that even the fire and rescue services have seen a steep decline in the number of calls made to them. Many people now have fire detectors, which has led to a reduction in the number of call-outs. Conversely, there has been an increase in demand for the ambulance service, while a large proportion of police activity has been directed towards public protection.

Collaboration presents a real opportunity for emergency services to increase their efficiency and effectiveness, maximise resources and improve the service delivered to the public while giving value for money. Seeking greater integration with other elements of the criminal justice system also offers great benefits. Sharing good governance structures with other services such as fire and rescue services could open up a desire for collective working, resulting in real efficiency gains. With a joint delivery of training, fleet, logistics and the collocation of premises, a fully integrated prevention and community protection team, formed from a police and fire joint operation team, could plan all operational activity across these emergency services. Therefore, today’s debate must be about endorsing collaboration to make significant savings through the multiagency implementation of a hub to transfer incident data. We know that quicker, smarter and more advanced technologies are operated by emergency partners when more than one service is required at an incident, again saving operator hours per year.

The more we can do to improve taxpayers’ value for money and improve our service to our communities, the better it will be, and the Bill will give that opportunity. This is not about the takeover of one emergency service by another. There is a distinction between operational police and firefighting which should always be recognised. Like my noble friend Lady Scott, I do not have experience of the police and fire services being co-terminous. Lincolnshire is progressing through devolution and, at the moment, part of the county is served by Lincolnshire PCC while the northern part comes under Humberside. We hope that that anomaly can be looked at so that we can move forward on it.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

We have an amendment in this group to which I will speak. Like other noble Lords who have spoken, I wait with interest to hear the Government’s response to the various questions that have been raised.

Our amendment in this group provides that an emergency service would not be required to enter into a collaboration agreement if to do so would not be in the interests of public safety, in addition to the provision in the Bill that a relevant emergency service would not be required to do so if it was of the view that it would have an adverse effect on its efficiency or effectiveness.

Surely public safety must be a key consideration. Indeed, it is more important than either efficiency or effectiveness. As has been said, voluntary collaboration agreements already exist—there are a great many of them—and presumably the Government would have expected considerations about the impact of those voluntary agreements on public safety to have been a key factor in determining whether to proceed and continue with them.

Under the terms of the Bill, collaboration is now being placed on a statutory footing. Surely it is therefore even more important that a proposed agreement not being in the interests of public safety should be in the Bill, as well as an adverse impact on efficiency or effectiveness, as a reason for a relevant emergency service not to enter into such an arrangement.

The criteria against which a proposed collaboration agreement has to be assessed is that it would be in the interests of the efficiency or effectiveness of the proposed parties. But of course being in the interests of efficiency or effectiveness is not the same as being in the interests of public safety. Indeed, being in the interests of efficiency or effectiveness could well run contrary to being in the interests of public safety, depending on how effectiveness is defined and who defines it, and particularly in relation to the ability of an emergency service carry out its emergency functions and to have emergency cover available.

It would certainly be helpful if the Government could say in response, with regard to a relevant emergency service being invited to enter into a collaboration agreement, who will determine whether it would impair effectiveness or efficiency. Is it the emergency service concerned, and if it decided that it would have an adverse effect on its efficiency or effectiveness, does one take it from the terms of the Bill that the emergency service in question can decide not to be involved and that that is the end of the matter? Or can some sanction then be imposed on, or some body overrule, an emergency service that decides not to get involved in a collaboration agreement on the grounds that it would have an adverse effect on its efficiency or effectiveness?

The other issue is why, if we are going down the road of statutory collaboration agreements, there is still apparently a need in the Government’s view to have a forced collaboration through the later clauses in the Bill that provide for a police and crime commissioner to be able to take over a fire and rescue service. That will have to be debated later, although not too much later. One of the amendments that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, spoke to referred to consultation with employees. Under the terms of the clauses on collaboration agreements, do the Government intend there to be consultation with the relevant trade unions, where the employees are members of one? I would have thought that having that consultation was rather important; in fact, I would have thought that employees might have a considerable amount to offer, either in support of what was proposed or pointing out its difficulties. Probably better than anyone else, they know what is likely and unlikely to work when it comes to collaboration.

I turn to government Amendment 4, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. To put it in the simplest terms, I think that it attempts to put right a clanger that has been dropped over the wording of the clause. The question of why the criteria should not be “efficiency and effectiveness”, rather than only one of them, has already been raised. What is the point of greater efficiency if it adversely affects effectiveness? Presumably the Government have looked at existing voluntary collaboration agreements. How many of them have they decided do not improve both efficiency and effectiveness, as opposed to only efficiency or effectiveness?