Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
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Policing and Crime Bill
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Adebowale (CB)
I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. I have some experience of the police and their responses to mental health as chair of the commission on the Met’s response to mental health policing in London which—I hesitate to claim credit—led to the concordat mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. It is important that mental health is included in reference to collaboration because those people are at the sharp end of the inverse care law when it is not. I am concerned and would like to know more about the Government’s intentions in this regard. I support the amendment.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, for explaining the rationale for this amendment. I feel sure he would agree with me that we are already seeing how much of a difference the concordat is making in developing and improving the response to people who experience a mental health crisis. This includes improving the accessibility of local preventive mental health services and reducing the number of times a police cell is used as a place of safety for a person detained under the Mental Health Act. As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, stated, we shall have an opportunity to debate that issue further when we reach Chapter 4 of Part 4 of the Bill.
These are important developments that should be supported and encouraged, and I recognise the noble Lord’s intentions in proposing such a requirement. However, we must also recognise that the strength of the concordat is the flexibility that comes from it being—here is the nub—a local voluntary agreement. This means that all local partners who can make a difference can be involved, which will vary from area to area, and enables every local concordat partnership to agree actions that make sense in its area.
I will give some examples of how it is working. In Greater Manchester, local concordat partners have worked with the charity Self Help to create three places of calm where people with mental health concerns can go at unsociable hours and receive the support that will hopefully avert a crisis. In Sussex, which sees the emergency services respond to a particularly high volume of crisis incidents, the partners are working directly together in street triage schemes in most of the main towns. The triage approach has saved lives, notably at Beachy Head, where, as we know, a lot of suicides have been recorded. In the West Midlands, the police, ambulance and mental health trust share details of people who frequently call them in distress and jointly review the care being offered to them. In many cases these people are now following a constructive care plan instead of phoning in at least four times a day.
As the concordat is a voluntary agreement and does not, as such, impose specific duties on its signatories, we believe that this amendment is misconceived in suggesting otherwise. I would also question the appropriateness of singling out mental health crisis care in the Bill to the exclusion of other areas where collaboration agreements could lead to improved efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of front-line services.
Our local emergency services are acutely aware of the need to appropriately and compassionately respond to those in mental health crisis. I have already pointed to a number of excellent examples of collaboration between emergency services. The provisions in the Bill will encourage and support further such collaboration, and although the noble Lord is right to flag this as an important area where local agencies need to work better together, I am not persuaded that adding this amendment to the Bill helps to secure such an outcome.
Lord Harris of Haringey
The noble Baroness keeps talking about the strength of the concordat, and I do not think any of us disagrees about its importance and potential value. However, she will be aware of figures that have been released by the National Police Chiefs Council, which show that in the last year the police use of Section 136 has increased by almost 20%. Earlier in her remarks, she cited the improvements in Greater Manchester, where the use of Section 136 increased by 2.3 times in the last year. Where exactly is this improvement that she describes happening? Given that there are perhaps some problems with the delivery of the concordat—probably more in the availability of mental health services than necessarily in the response of the emergency services—is that why the Government are so reluctant to see the concordat mentioned in the Bill?
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
No, that is not the reason. As I was saying, the strength of the concordat, which is making real changes in many places to services at the local level, is the flexibility that comes from it being a local voluntary agreement. That is its main strength: it means that all local partners who can make a difference can be involved, rather than having an inflexible list of partners set out in law. Similarly, this enables every local concordat partnership to agree actions that make sense in its area.
Lord Harris of Haringey
The noble Baroness seems to miss the point. If the concordat is working so well, why has the police use of Section 136 increased by 20% in the last 12 months? Why has it increased by 2.3 times in Greater Manchester?
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I cannot answer that. We have to give these agreements time to work; a lot of them are quite newly put together, and it may well be that it has not been worked out where they need specific people to deal with the problems that are happening. On the whole, where they are working, they are working well. They have led to collaboration between the police and all the emergency services, such as the health service, to come together to find where they need extra help in the areas where they have problems.
Lord Adebowale
I understand the point that the Minister is making but I wonder whether she might comment on this question: in areas where such concordats do not exist, are the Government willing to accept that those with mental health challenges will receive a poorer service? Do they accept that if you happen to live in an area where the voluntary agreements have not come together, you get a poor service? If the concordat is doing as well as she states, why should it not be in the Bill so that everyone can benefit?
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I am not suggesting that where there is no concordat, people are not receiving good help. The whole point is that you do not have to have a concordat; it is voluntary. That is the strength of it. It is not always necessary to intervene in everything. People should be allowed the flexibility to organise their arrangements as they feel fit for their area.
Lord Harris of Haringey
In her earlier remarks, the Minister specifically referred to Greater Manchester. There, the number of Section 136 cases has increased by nearly two and half times in the last year. If the example that she cited of the concordat working well has delivered an increase of 2.3 times in the number of Section 136 referrals, what does that imply constitutes doing badly or failing to work at all?
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I am sure the noble Lord is correct that the use of Section 136 has gone up in the 2015-16 data, but perhaps that is not necessarily a negative. It could be that it reflects better understanding between the police and their partners of what is happening. From statistics that I have, the use of police cells as a place of safety is down by 50%, so that must show that something is working well somewhere. I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Rosser
I thank the Minister for her response, and I thank noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I say before I go any further that I will of course withdraw my amendment. I accept that in later clauses we will undoubtedly have a much fuller debate on the police, the provisions of the Mental Health Act 1983 and the changes proposed in the Bill.
I have to say I am slightly disappointed with the response. It did not seem to me that the amendment I moved sought in any way to alter the terms of the concordat or indeed to fix what those terms should be. I accept that the concordat is a voluntary local agreement but, as I understand it, so will be most of the collaboration agreements that we have been talking about, and in that sense they will be on a statutory footing. All my amendment asked was that, in considering effectiveness and efficiency, the impact on the effectiveness and efficiency with which the emergency service is able to meet its duties under the mental health crisis concordat should also be taken into account. I do not intend to push the matter further at this stage; there will be an opportunity for a further and, I am sure, much longer discussion of these issues later.
My final point is that I said that I understood that on 22 March, the Minister referred to an inter- ministerial group having been formed during the previous Government, with the inference that it was dealing with the kind of issues on which the amendment touches. I should be grateful, if the noble Baroness cannot answer the question about what the group is doing, has achieved and hopes to achieve—I fully understand if she cannot—if she would agree to write to me with a response.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
Yes, I apologise to the noble Lord for not getting back to him on that; I will have to write to him, as I am not quite sure to what he is referring.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I suggest that the Government might like to look favourably on Amendment 8, in particular. One should focus on the word “varied”. If an agreement is varied by something else, the original agreement survives—it is simply changed a little and varied in form. Clause 4(8) refers to a collaboration agreement being varied by a “subsequent collaboration agreement”. The word “varied” should really be “replaced”, because you then have something different. So there is force in the noble Baroness’s amendment, which is small but neat way of expressing what everyone agrees should be done. The agreement should be capable of being varied; my point is that the original agreement survives, but with a small or large change made to make it more effective. For those reasons, I support that amendment.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I thank noble Lords for taking part in this debate. I understand from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that these are probing amendments designed to tease out how collaboration may be varied. It is of course vital that collaboration agreements can be amended where appropriate to reflect local developments and to ensure the best outcomes for the public they serve. There may be a number of reasons to vary a collaboration agreement, perhaps to include a new partner to the agreement or to change participant roles and responsibilities. Clause 4(8) is simply intended to make it clear that such variations may be made. In locally agreeing to vary the terms in an existing collaboration agreement, the parties will in effect create a new or subsequent collaboration agreement. Such an agreement would be subject to all the provisions that pertain to collaboration agreements. I hope that clarification reassures the noble Baroness and that, accordingly, she will be content to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Hope of Craighead
With great respect to the Minister, she did not address my point. One has a choice: either one varies an agreement or one replaces it with something else. The example given is a very good one of a variation, leaving the existing agreement in place. We are at a very early stage of this Bill and all I am suggesting is that the amendment might be taken away and looked at again. It is a question of the proper use of the English language, which is why I have taken the liberty of standing up and making my point.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
Certainly. I feel I must bow before the noble and learned Lord’s incredible intelligence in these affairs. I cannot possibly completely disagree with what he says because he is way above my intellect. Of course we can go away and look at this.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, that is very helpful. The noble and learned Lord makes the argument far better than I did. I will attempt to rope him in on future amendments. As I said, it became not a probing amendment in the course of that exchange. I want to make it clear that we are not at all arguing against the variation of collaboration agreements—that would be intellectually incoherent. That is not the purpose of this. For the moment, at any rate, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has indicated that these are probing amendments, designed, in the cases of Amendments 14, 32 and 100, to provide some reassurance to those persons to whom a liability is owed that they will not be disadvantaged by a scheme transferring the liability. I appreciate that assurances on liabilities are important when considering arrangements for their transfer from an existing fire and rescue authority to a new PCC-style FRA or to a chief constable.
Statutory transfer schemes of this kind are well precedented. Indeed, I might add that the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 directly transferred all property, rights and liabilities of the old police authorities to the new police and crime commissioners or other local policing body. We have adopted the usual approach here of not requiring the consent of affected persons to the transfer of property, rights and liabilities. Once a Section 4A order is made, the existing fire and rescue authority will cease to exist and it is therefore right that all property, rights and liabilities held by the existing FRA should be transferred. If a person to whom a liability was owed was given an effective veto as to the transfer, that would arguably necessitate the preservation of the existing FRA alongside the new PCC-style FRA. This is a recipe for confusion and muddle.
However, I reassure the noble Baroness that the new PCC-style FRA, or the chief constable, to whom liabilities are transferred will take on the contractual obligations in respect of those liabilities, including, for example, the repayment of any debt. The person to whom the liability is owed will not be disadvantaged.
On Amendment 15, I hope I can reassure the noble Baroness that the approach taken in the Bill to the modification of a transfer scheme is the right one. The power to make modifications is designed principally to ensure that, should it be necessary, corrections may be made to a transfer scheme, particularly to address any errors made regarding the persons to whom rights or liabilities have transferred. As I am sure the noble Baroness appreciates, such transfer schemes can be complex and it is important to safeguard the ability to make revisions. These would need to be effective from the date at which the transfer came into being, rather than the date when the modification was made. To provide otherwise would risk disadvantaging a person, for example, to whom a liability was owed. I assure her that such modifications will be made only where there is agreement to do so between the affected parties.
On the basis of these reassurances, I trust that the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, that is very helpful, and I do indeed beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
My Lords, I recognise that there are quite a lot of amendments in this group. It is more like reading War and Peace than a group of amendments but not quite as gripping or enjoyable. However, as my noble friend Lady Williams explained in her letter of 7 September to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, these amendments are essentially minor and technical in nature, and ensure that the provisions in Part 1 of the Bill can operate as intended.
In particular, the amendments ensure that the provisions in respect of the new PCC-style fire and rescue authorities, whether operating under the governance model or single-employer model, are properly aligned, with appropriate modifications, with existing statutory provisions relating to policing and fire and rescue authorities. For example, the amendments apply the existing provisions in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 in respect of the handling of complaints against PCCs to the new PCC-style FRAs. This ensures that complaints against a PCC, whether in respect of his or her policing or fire and rescue functions, are handled in a consistent fashion.
I should also single out Amendments 38 and 105, which are subject to amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. The Bill already provides in new Section 4L of the 2004 Act a power to apply, with any necessary modifications, relevant legislation relating to police and crime commissioners to a PCC-style FRA. Similar powers are needed to apply, with any necessary modifications, relevant provisions of fire and rescue-related legislation to the chief officer and his or her staff where the single employer model is in operation.
These new order-making powers would be used in particular to ensure that references to employees of an FRA can continue to operate as intended under the single-employer model, where they will become employees of the chief constable—for example, to ensure that they have the relevant powers and functions necessary to perform their fire-fighting functions. A similar power is taken in respect of the single-employer model under combined authority mayors.
At this point, I suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, speaks to his amendments, and I will then respond. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, we indeed have amendments at the various points at which there is reference to the application of an enactment with or without modifications. I apologise to the Committee that two of the amendments were published only this morning. They were tabled at the same time as the others and I do not know at what point they got lost—there is no particular significance in that.
I missed whether the noble Baroness in her reference to existing legislation was using the term “necessary modifications” as a quote from legislation or whether it was an assurance. If it is in other legislation, that makes my case; if not, I am not clear where the assurance will be in the Bill that the modifications will be “necessary” only for the purposes that she explained. On the face of it, to be able to apply an enactment with, by definition, unnecessary modifications, gives the Secretary of State a very wide power. I am sorry if I am being dim. It is entirely possible that I have lost the plot, but assurances not just from the Dispatch Box but in the Bill as to how the power will be used would be the most desirable way to go.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for explaining her amendments. She explained that they are designed to seek further clarification of the scope of the order-making powers conferred on the Home Secretary to enable provisions of local policing and fire and rescue enactments to be applied to a PCC in relation to their fire and rescue functions, and to a combined authority mayor, where they are exercising the single-employer model.
The ability to apply provisions for such enactments with or without modifications is important to ensure that PCCs and combined authority mayors have the necessary powers and duties to exercise their functions effectively. This may include the ability to make consequential modifications as well as those that are necessary in the strictest sense to enact the arrangements contained within the PCC’s fire governance proposal.
I reassure the noble Baroness that the Home Secretary would need to exercise these powers reasonably and rationally and would do so only on the basis of applying provisions that are consequential on the implementation of either the governance or single-employer models. The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments will also play an important role in scrutinising the use of the delegated powers and would make a report if in its view the Home Secretary had acted outside her powers or used them in an unusual or unexpected way. I should add that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee did not raise any concerns in respect of the existing order-making powers in the Bill relating to local policing enactments.
On the basis of these assurances, I hope that noble Lords will support the government amendments.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness. She seemed for most of her response to be making my case for me. I noted that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee had not commented on this—but, undeterred, I ploughed on. I will want to read precisely what she said, but I think that the important point is about the reasonableness of any modification made by the Secretary of State and how it relates to what she and I are both describing as “necessary”. I will not pursue the point this evening, but it is no reflection on her if I say that an assurance that the Secretary of State will do the right thing does not cut it for me with legislation.