Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

I also support this amendment, very strongly so. It follows a number of things that I have argued on this Bill on the relatively few occasions that I have spoken. It is the issue on which I feel most strongly. Although it is not the Government’s intention, there is a real danger of breaking the link between the local authority, the local crime partnership and the police. What the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, has just said is absolutely right. Particularly before the 1998 Act, it was difficult to get really good relationships between police, local community groups and the local authorities. It was not because anybody was actively willing against it; it was because we did not have a structure for doing it.

It is a long time since I was involved in this sort of thing, but I remember those years and I fear very much us going back to that. I would have great trepidation because it will result in crime and social disorder being less well dealt with and it will therefore result in an increase in crime and social disorder. If the Government would cast their minds back to the period before 1998 they will recall that various groups, particularly those led by local authorities, and the police were trying to find new ways of working together. Some police forces, local authorities and groups managed to do it; others did not. It took that structure of the 1998 Act to give force to it. A situation emerged where, slowly, everybody accepted that the key to keeping down crime was not just more police officers on the beat—important as that is—but really good crime prevention programmes and a close link between the community and the police, headed up, but not always necessarily led by, the local authority. When you got that you suddenly found that everybody began to co-operate on a single target. They also began to identify crime hot spots or particular difficult crimes and you began to get co-operation.

I know that the Minister will say, “Don’t worry, it will be all right on the night, everything will be there to follow it up”. I have to say that I cannot see it in this Bill. You are talking about very large police areas and a remote detachment. When the Minister says, as she did on the last group of amendments, that a member of the panel will be able to attend or discuss with the council or the various groups which have been implied here, then my memory—again it is perhaps many years ago—of that sort of arrangement with local authorities often did not work well. The reason was that the commitment to that level of involvement was not satisfactory. What we need is a much more structured way and what my noble friend is putting forward offers that.

If the Minister cannot see her way to accepting this amendment, I would like to see the Government spell out much more clearly how they think crime prevention is going to work in the new structure and make sure that crime panels, local authorities and everybody else are working together on this. There is a danger with this Bill, structured as it is, that that will cease to function and if we lose that, we will go back 20 years, frankly, and the Government will live to regret it. So if the Minister can spell out to me why she is so convinced it will work I will be delighted not only to listen to her now but to reread her comments and try to understand it. For the life of me, I cannot at the moment see how this is going to improve the situation and it may well make it worse and take us back—as the noble Baronesses, Lady Henig and Lady Harris, said—to 1998 and possibly further than that.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Soley has put his finger on it in supporting my noble friends Lady Henig and Lord Beecham. The argument for this Bill is about enhancing local accountability of the police force. Yet, remarkably, in a number of its provisions, it seeks to reduce the direct involvement of local authorities in these important issues. I accept the House has come to a view about police and crime plans, but surely we should be seeking to involve individual local authorities in a partnership with their local police forces and with the police and crime commissioner.

That is why it is right to seek to encourage the Government to ensure that there are references in the Bill to the relationship between police forces and local authorities. That is why this group of amendments is so important. The argument of the noble Baroness is that the police and crime panel, which will have representatives from local authorities, can do the job. I am sure we all hope that police and crime panels will be effective and I certainly think they would be more effective if the Minister could accept the amendment of my noble friend Lady Henig. The argument she put forward is that the panels, while concerned with scrutiny, could also play a valuable role in supporting the police force and the police and crime commissioner.

I certainly hope that, despite all my fears, there will be a mainly co-operative relationship between all three partners. Otherwise, we could end up with a situation in which the police and crime commissioner engages in political argument with the police and crime panel, with the chief constable squeezed in the middle. One thinks of all the energy that these partners in the local policing situation will spend arguing with each other and seeking to get public support when they should be working together to enhance police activity and effectiveness in a community.

I strongly support the amendments, which seek to place clearly in the Bill the role of local authorities and ensure that the police forces and PCCs of the future are required to engage with community safety partnerships. Surely one of the great advances that we have seen over the past few years has been the way that people have worked together to do everything they can to prevent crime and make sure that all the agencies involved co-operate and collaborate. It would be a great pity if as a result of this legislation those bodies were discouraged from so doing. That must be particularly so in the case of crime prevention and community safety partnerships. On those grounds, I hope that the Minister will be able to come back with at least some reassurance to noble Lords.