Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Henig]

My Lords, Amendment 10 is a very modest amendment, like some of the amendments we have had this morning, but I believe it is a very important amendment in the light of current events. Its purpose is to afford some protection under the proposed protocol to senior officers if they resign prematurely by ensuring that HMIC must conduct a review in these circumstances. The amendment would also ensure that the regulations setting out the protocol would need to follow positive resolution procedures. Given the significant impact regulations could have on the practice and the governance of policing nationally, I believe that this is essential.

I would like to say a few words on why I think this improvement to the Government’s amendment is necessary. I, along with many noble friends and colleagues in the House, have consistently raised concerns about the Bill in a number of key areas. We have already heard about these concerns earlier this morning; concerns about whether these reforms will politicise policing and place too much power in the hands of one person; that we need a more corporate approach with more emphasis on good governance and internal regulation; a desperate need to strengthen checks and balances across the whole Bill; inadequate provisions for conduct and complaints, particularly in relation to commissioners, but also in relation to senior officers. Once chief officers become responsible for appointing and disciplining their own senior team, in my view and in the light of the events of recent days, this is a very serious concern. Things have actually been changed by what has been going on.

I acknowledge that the Government have improved some of the checks and balances while the Bill has been in this House—for instance, around lowering the veto majority required by the panel—and we welcome the progress that has been made. In particular, I welcome the government amendment in relation to the protocol which seeks to provide some rigour around protecting the operational responsibility of chief police officers, although my amendment suggests an improvement to these proposals, prompted by recent events. In any event, the devil will be in the detail of the regulations at the end of the day, but my amendment will ensure that they must at least address situations where the chief officer resigns prematurely. Because the devil will be in the detail, I suggest that the regulations need to be subject to positive resolution procedures in both Houses because this is fundamental to ensuring that operational responsibility is adequately protected.

I echo the comments of many noble Lords and Members of the other place about the long and dedicated service of both Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates. I mentioned at earlier stages of the Bill that I did not always agree with Sir Paul, but I have always respected and admired his great abilities and his tremendous commitment to policing. He will be a great loss to London and to the service.

The events of the past week have fuelled my great concern about the future of policing and the impact this could have on reducing public confidence in policing as well as creating instability and uncertainty in the police themselves, particularly among senior ranks. Recent events have dramatically illustrated the vulnerability of senior police officers when subject to the control of a single individual elected on a party political ticket, an individual who is used to operating in a very political environment. The fact is that all senior officers at some time or another need support in difficult situations. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, referred to this earlier this morning and it is absolutely the case. Every now and again they need the opportunity to talk things through on a confidential basis. I know for a fact that that has often happened up and down the country with police authority chairs and deputies and, indeed, with independent members of police authorities. The governance structure has given senior police officers the opportunity to talk to and confide in members and that has helped them in doing their job.

It is quite clear from recent events that individuals elected directly to oversee policing will operate completely differently from police authorities under the present governance arrangements. I am not arguing that that may not have many advantages. The Government have argued that they want a new governance structure and I understand what their reasons are. But I want to point out the huge downsides of this new governance structure, because the individuals so elected, the commissioners, will put their own political career prospects and their own survival ahead of any other factor when problems arise. They will ramp up the pressure on senior police officers rather than work with them supportively behind the scenes. It does not matter what protocol you put in place or whether you say, “This is operational but this is not, and you must not cross this line”, ramping up pressure is of a different order entirely. That is what I am so concerned about. It is for that reason that two Metropolitan Police commissioners have gone in the past two and a half years.

My concern is that once this system is extended to the rest of the country without any safeguards, we can predict fairly certainly that the same problems will arise up and down the country. Chief constables will be driven to resign and police and crime commissioners will boast about how tough they are being and play to the media for effect. That will happen; anyone who is a politician knows that.

Another of my worries is that the effect on the public’s trust and confidence in the police will be enormous. I think that their trust and confidence in the police will go down but their trust and confidence in politicians will not go up. That will mean a poisonous outcome of these new governance arrangements that a statutory protocol will not alleviate. Hence my amendment to have resignations thoroughly investigated by the inspectorate and, if necessary, the IPCC so that at least the public can get a clear and dispassionate picture of what the issues and problems are, free from the distortions of the media or of the commissioner’s account. That is what is motivating me in the amendment.

I remind noble Lords, although I am sure that they need no reminding, that the government Benches have consistently claimed that the London pilot model is a pilot of the proposals for the rest of the country. I do not happen to agree with the Government that it is a very good pilot, but the Government have consistently claimed that the proposals are close enough to act as a test bed and that no other pilots are needed because the London model is such a success. After the previous few days, that rings very hollow and worries me enormously. If London is the model for the rest of the country, then what we are seeing now is what we will see writ large over the next few years.

We are seeing the direct consequence of politicising the police. The senior ranks of the Metropolitan Service have felt the need to employ PR and media advisers, for example, in order to do their job in a political environment and to try to cope with political pressures. Do we really want that sort of scenario to be repeated up to 43 times across the rest of the country as the reforms are rolled out? I am sure the Government will tell me that my fears are misplaced, but I am sorry, that is what I am concerned about.

We live in a complex world. The media play an essential role in enhancing the accountability of the police. The police need to have a balanced relationship with the press, to answer their questions and disseminate information. Obviously, they cannot cut ties with the press and still be seen to be accessible and accountable, but we need to spend time getting the relationship right.

I warmly welcome the recent announcement by the Minister, when she repeated the Home Secretary’s Statement to the other place, that a review of this relationship is to be conducted, but surely we must await the outcome of that review before pressing ahead with the reforms in the Bill. Surely it is madness to do otherwise.

I fear that we are heading for a perfect storm of colliding events in the police world. The first of these, as I have just mentioned, will be a combination of the erosion of public confidence in policing as a result of the phone-hacking scandal together with instability and increased uncertainty among senior ranks of the police. This will be combined with unprecedented demand and pressures on the police with the upcoming Olympics; the Jubilee; the implementation of budget cuts that will affect the police directly but also increase demands on them; the changes predicated by the Winsor and Neyroud reviews on leadership; and more changes thorough the demise of the NPIA and the creation of the national crime agency. Is this really the time to be going ahead with all this along with the new governance structure, which, as we all acknowledge, has serious concerns attached to it?

My noble friend Lord Hunt has warned time and again as the Bill has progressed through the House that the Bill is badly thought through and will require the Government to bring in changes within a year or two to correct its errors if it goes ahead. I agree with him. Recent events have shown the cracks and dangers in the Government’s proposed model. Even if some noble Lords do not accept my view that these dangers are pressing, surely we have to take on board the lessons of the reviews and inquiries into the recent scandals—otherwise why have them? Surely we are going to wait to see what they say. Surely we must ensure that these problems that the reviews will bring up are fixed before any new model of policing is considered, because if we do not, the consequences will be severe and disastrous when combined with all the other demands which are coalescing on police resources. Senior police officers deserve a sense of stability and some certainty that they are not going to be asked to fall on their swords to protect their political masters.

I accept that there are some safeguards in the Bill, although in my view they are inadequate if the chief officer is formally required to resign. As the noble Lord, Lord Blair, has pointed out to us many times, there are ways of persuading a chief officer that he should resign voluntarily if a directly elected individual deems that his or her face no longer fits. Chief police officers deserve some certainty about this scenario too. In fact, it is fundamental to a healthy relationship between the commissioner and the chief officer.

My amendment cannot undo all the dangers and inadequacies of the Bill, particularly those around corporate governance and the woefully inadequate standards regime, but it tries to provide some safeguards for chief officers against losing their job on spurious grounds by ensuring that the HMIC must review all premature resignations. A question arises about whether checks and balances are strong enough and whether we need more of them. I urge the Government to consider this again, particularly regarding the powers of the panel and the ability—or lack of it—of the inspectorate to inspect commissioners.

Although I do not for a minute suggest that either Sir Paul Stephenson or John Yates would come into this category, the uncertainty about tenure prompts questions about whether we need again to consider banning disgruntled former police officers from standing as commissioners straightaway, because of course the Bill does not rule that out. In fact, recent events have prompted so many queries about the inadequacies of the Bill that I feel we must make sure that a strong message goes to the other place about this: a very strong warning about all the problems inherent in the Bill that may result in complete disaster.

With all due respect to the Minister, who is innocent of formulating these proposals in the first place, she has done a sterling job in trying to defend them. I know she has tried to bring about changes. She keeps telling the House that she will go away and seek changes and then she comes back and says that she is terribly sorry but the changes are not possible. We can only speculate about what goes on behind the scenes, but I know that she has battled hard. Surely there is now only one course of action: to pause and think again. We need time to reflect on the impact of recent events and to consider how the reviews being undertaken by the inspectorate and the IPCC need to be reflected in any reform proposals. At the very least, people will surely accept that this is the wrong time for reform. While I hope that over the summer the Government will pause to reflect again, in the mean time I seek to put forward this minimum safeguard to mitigate some of the more extreme possible outcomes. My amendment is really directed to safeguard chief officers’ operational responsibility and to protect their positions from the capricious, media-seeking, and politicised antics of some—not necessary all—directly elected commissioners. I beg to move.

[Lord Wasserman]

Does the noble Baroness really mean that if a chief officer resigns for domestic, private or health reasons, there has to be a published report from the HMIC?

[Baroness Henig]

I say to the noble Lord that what may appear as a private matter may have been caused by months of stress because of wrangles between the commissioner and the chief constable. There are all sorts of things that may not meet the eye. I really believe that we have to think of the public in all this. What is the public going to make of this system, of the new governance structures and of the police? It is important that they see chief constables and their forces as operating above party politics. In a lot of amendments that I have put forward I am trying to help the public to maintain respect for the police and not to feel that party politics will undermine the integrity of the police force. That has been in the back of my mind in all my amendments.