Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Bridgeman]

My Lords, I shall be very brief. Perhaps I may respectfully say that the protocol has been given a very bad press by both the noble Lord, Lord Blair, who is not in his place at the moment, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester. I draw your Lordships’ attention to what I think is one nugget in the protocol. It says that the police and crime panel has:

“The power to ask HMIC for a professional view when the PCC intends to dismiss a Chief Constable”.

So far as I am aware, there has been little or no mention of the role of the HMIC in the relations between the commissioner and the chief constable, and I suggest that this is a very important link.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister to her appointment. I welcome her because of her experience, her willingness to listen and the manner in which she has behaved since she came into this House. I, too, thought of something that I will, if she will forgive me, offer her as a word of advice. It came to mind when I was listening to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and particularly the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough. Sometimes this end of the telescope is slightly more difficult than the other end. On occasions, the difficulty is in convincing colleagues in the other place of the strength of feeling in your Lordships’ House. During the passing of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act, the then Secretary of State stood in the Corridor trying to negotiate through me, as the Whip, in order to get things through. Therefore, I welcome the noble Baroness’s experience and I am sure that she will adapt to this end of the Corridor.

I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Dear. With respect, I think that he proved the point that I am about to make rather more than the one that he made. Had there been the direct election of an individual, I fear that at that time and in those circumstances the person to whom he referred, David Bookbinder, would have been elected because the political climate then was even less fettered. However, the most important point is that, as a result of some difficult experiences, modifications and improvements were made to the composition and role of police authorities, but they were incremental. One noble Lord after another has spoken about the need for incremental change in a service that we all hold dear.

My second point is equally important. The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, referred to our police service—to me, it is a service, not a force—roughing up the middle classes and failing to look to the interests of deprived communities. I am sorry: I live in the police authority area where I served as a member of the authority for 20 years and I do not recognise that description. What I do recognise, however, is that the middle classes are more vocal. They want a police officer in a car to appear at their door if they have a burglary and they also want police officers walking the streets, but I am afraid that, however populist the campaign, the concerns of that community will not be met by anyone. To my mind, my noble friend Lady Henig was, as leader of the County Councils Association, one of the best chairs of a police authority in the country. However, she could not provide what those vocal people wanted, because they wanted it and they wanted it now, and they were not prepared to talk through how much money it would cost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

The noble Baroness has given way to me. Does she accept that there are some very deprived areas in our inner cities where the police do not patrol at all?

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

That is not my experience of Lancashire or of the other authorities that I know well. I know that there are areas where the police service is stretched to breaking point by the circumstances that they face on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, but my experience in Lancashire is that the service is provided without fear or favour to all the communities there.

[Lord Dear]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way so quickly for a second time. For the avoidance of doubt, when I referred to Derbyshire and Councillor Bookbinder, I was making the obvious point that things go wrong under the present system, or something approximating very closely to the present system. The main thrust of what I said, as I am sure she will agree, was that, if we are to have police and crime commissioners, we must work very hard indeed to make sure that the checks and balances are sufficient so that we get an exact balance between the chief officer and the PCC.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

I think that we can agree to a degree that the conclusion the noble Lord reaches is not the same as the one that I reach. My main point is the importance of incremental change, taking the police service and the communities with us.

My other point is a very strong one and concerns the importance of the relationship between the police service and other services in local authority areas. In my experience, we had one difficulty during my first period on Lancashire County Council when the chief constable left, not totally willingly. However, beyond that, our chief constables wanted to talk to and be part of the community that was discussing social services problems and education problems, in which they had an interest. To argue for separately elected police authorities and police panels ignores the importance of that relevant link.

Noble Lords have asked why this should be party political. Has anyone sat down and thought about the cost of an election covering a huge police authority area? Has anyone thought about the fact that, if someone is well known in one town or city in Lancashire or in one part of one police authority—I refer to Sir Peter Soulsby, who was elected very recently as mayor of Leicester—they will not be known across the whole area? Therefore, one will need total back-up to run an election campaign in those circumstances.

My final point is that I fear, even more than political bias or political clash, community disaffection as a result of one person from a small area of a police authority being in charge. Communities want to feel that they have a representative. Noble Lords have said that some people do not know the names of members of their police authority. In my experience, if they had a big problem they found them out pretty quickly and came to us. I suspect that quite a lot of people cannot remember the name of—please forgive me—the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister or the Home Secretary. People find out when they feel strongly. We must ensure that when people look to change our police service, they build in an evolutionary way on experience and judgment.

[Baroness Hamwee]

Perhaps I will be not quite the last noble Lord to give a very warm welcome to the noble Baroness. I am not sure whether she expected a rerun of Second Reading. I hope that she has found it helpful, because there have been some very perceptive, interesting and thoughtful speeches. I cannot resist saying that she will have noticed that we are right behind her.

In view of the time, I will edit my remarks as I go, and I hope that they are not too disjointed. The longer the debate goes on, the more I wonder whether it will be possible to have sufficiently strict checks and balances on an individual, and the more we expose the nature of the position of an individual with so much power, with all the characteristics that are often intrinsic to an individual in a powerful position, some of which—but not all—need to be guarded against. I am in no position to comment on whether bishops may sometimes operate as commissars. However, I can see that the commissioner would be in a very distinct position from that of a chief constable, who has the eyes and ears of a police force on the ground.

Chief among my fears is that of moving towards the politicisation of the police. I fear that this will be difficult to avoid, not just because of the likelihood of candidates having a campaigning infrastructure of political parties behind them—as elected mayors have, with whom they may well be confused. That is perhaps an issue for another debate. The very nature of a democratic mandate involves policy, and one cannot separate policy from a budget because the money facilitates the implementation of the policy. Like other noble Lords, I fear that what is populist may sometimes be dangerous, and may not reflect the needs of those who can shout less loudly.

However careful and detailed the protocol—it seems to be a useful summary of the Bill which I wish I had had when I started reading the Bill—it is not a great deal more than that, and cannot change the statutory structural framework. Nor can it apply the governance. I was chair of the London Assembly budget committee when the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, was chairing the Metropolitan Police Authority. Who was the check and balance on whom, history may tell.

I wonder whether, ironically, this is a move against localism. I have a question for my noble friend. I very much welcome the fact that she has enabled the House to have a debate at this stage of the Bill. Democracy has rightly been mentioned often. Her proposed structure involves panels. Perhaps she can tell us how she envisages democracy being used in connection with the panels.

Lastly, I will be wary throughout the Bill of appearing to be either promoting or opposing the interests of a number of sectors, but particularly the police. I, too, would like to see us achieve the production of a collaborative framework. Most importantly, my noble friends and I are on the side of citizens.