Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Lords Chamber

The point is that local authorities have an interest in the totality of the taxation raised in their communities, as do the communities. It does not seem right that a significant proportion of local council tax—I remind your Lordships that it is something like 11 per cent of council tax in England and 15.5 per cent in Wales—goes towards the police service. That is a significant chunk of local expenditure. It is unreasonable to divide into separate compartments what has to be levied and what a local community can be expected to pay. There needs to be an overview and, given that, in the end, the commissioner will take a decision. It is clearly right that the local authority should have an opportunity to contribute to the debate about the precise levy that will be required as part of the overall pattern of expenditure and taxation in the area. Again, in the interests of accountability and transparency, we need to devise a system where those factors are facilitated and not obscured. That is the thrust of these amendments. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee]

That was only four minutes—it really is not good enough. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, the first part of the test is about the budget and I have amendments on that as well. Amendments 112, 113 and 114 are my amendments in this group. I tabled them, and I think that my noble friend Lord Shipley’s name would have been added to them had he known I was doing this, as he agreed the wording. I associate him with them.

After a discussion instigated by the Minister at the all-party meeting which she held to discuss the protocol—where she talked about the role of the panel as being supportive as well as destructive, or, at any rate, as carrying on the scrutiny function—we had a discussion about what scrutiny meant. I decided to write my amendments to that effect and these three are the result. “Constructive”, “collegiate”, “collaborative” and so on are words that we have been tossing around in debate over the past few days. We have been talking about checks and balances and, to my mind, this is the balance. The words that I have added in as part of the balance are:

“keep under review the exercise by the … commissioner of the statutory functions”;

“undertake investigations”; and,

“support the … commissioner with regard to”,

not just the functions, but specifically:

“the development of his or her police and crime plan and its implementation and the development of his or her budget”.

That is quite deliberate because we need to recognise the budget as the facilitator, the implementer of the police and crime plan. They are so connected as to be inseparable.

I am afraid that I will repeat what I have said before, but the panel cannot be supportive without a major role in both the plan and the budget. You have to start with the panel’s role in the plan and the panel cannot do its supportive job without the tools to undertake it. The Minister has her version in Amendment 107. Although I welcome the warm words here, I think that the panel needs the specific powers. I realise that we are unlikely at this stage to persuade the Government of this, but my mind is unchanged. We are each a product of our own background, and the baggage that I carry is of spending some years in a scrutiny role. Knowing that I have, as it were, the tools in my back pocket, rarely having to be used but always there, is a very important part of the tool-kit, as the jargon goes.

My earlier amendments in this group, Amendments 94, 96, 97, 98 and 100, again are to make the point—which, I suspect, has not been understood—that you cannot just look at the precept, a point that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made as well. The precept is the last stage in the development of a budget. There may be a fundamental political difference—I do not want to say fault line—between different politicians as to whether one starts by looking at the precept as taxation, and therefore bad, or as the result of a budget and how you spend the money, and therefore good.

My amendments are not just about the precept but about the heads of expenditure that go to make up the budget and the important tool that the commissioner will have, which is virement between the different heads.

Amendment 146 deals with the need for approval of the budget and spells this out in some detail. It includes the veto of the budget, as distinct from the veto of the precept. In response to a debate on these issues, the Minister said:

“Our intention would be for a series of discussions to be held, not just one blanket meeting at which, for example, the precept or the budget was discussed and a decision taken without the panel having a lot of background information”—[Official Report, 6/6/11; col. 34]—

and so on. Of course that must be right, but stating the intention is a very long way short of giving the mechanisms to the panel to do the job that I have described.

[Baroness Henig]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 108 and 111 in this group. As my noble friend Lord Beecham said, this is a very diverse group of amendments. The two amendments in my name relate to the functions of the police and crime panel. Amendment 108 revises and rationalises the functions of the panel and Amendment 111 simply removes an existing clause relating to panel functions to reincorporate it in a more rationalised fashion within Amendment 108.

In briefly outlining the effect of these amendments—not too briefly, since we seem to be racing through them, so perhaps I will try to slow down a little—I would say that they are designed to set out a more collaborative approach to the panel working with the commissioner. This includes an essential role in engagement with the public at local level and with police performance at divisional level. My aim is to exploit the strength of local councillors in a way that enables them to contribute constructively to police governance. I emphasise that there is no great gulf between what I, my noble friend Lord Beecham and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, are trying to do in these amendments, and what the Minister is trying to do. She talks about the panel having a supportive role. Others of us see that role as being collaborative and constructive. There is not much difference between “supportive” and “collaborative and constructive”. If I could nudge the Minister just a little further, that would be helpful. It is not a big change, but being constructive and being able to collaborate would help the panel to operate in a more tangible way that I will come on to describe.

I want to give specific functions to the panel in relation to working with the commissioner to develop a detailed police and crime plan, budget and precepting proposals. Again, this is designed to encourage a corporate approach rather than, as might otherwise happen in some areas, a confrontational approach to police governance. My amendments also provide that a panel must hold public meetings, which is ultimately a cornerstone of securing true public accountability. The driving concern behind this group of amendments is the attempt to describe a more co-operative approach to overcome the dangers of polarised political differences or overfamiliar political relationships between the commissioner and the panel that would render governance ineffective.

I appreciate that there is a government amendment in this group that attempts to specify a more co-operative and supportive approach for the panel and the commissioner. It is very welcome, but rather unspecific. This is true of a lot of government amendments; they go in the right direction and their spirit is right, but they are very general. My amendments attempt to put more flesh on the bones, to nudge the Government a little further and to describe in more detail how the panel and the commissioner should work together. I draw noble Lords’ attention specifically to the part of the amendment that covers the policing plan, the budget and the precept. These are key areas in which the panel should be involved not just in scrutinising the commissioner but in contributing to developing the shape of these things. That is what it should be doing and that is what I hope my amendment would achieve.

It echoes some amendments put forward by others which specify a more detailed role for the panel in, for example, scrutinising the detail of the budget. Again, my amendment goes a little further and suggests that the panel should contribute constructively to shaping the budget. As I said earlier, it also provides a key role for the panel in providing a link between local areas and the wider police area. We discussed in earlier debates the need for this more local link, which is consistent with what councillors do and puts members of the police and crime panel in a good position to play a more active role at local level. In this context, two elements are particularly important. First, it will enable panel members to complement the role of the commissioner in engaging and consulting with communities. Panel members can bring views from areas and communities that might otherwise not be heard into the wider policing family. Secondly, it will enable panel members to keep an eye on police performance at a more local level, so that they will be in a position to bring emerging problems to the attention of the panel and the commissioner before they become major.

In practice, a lot of this will happen anyway in areas where the commissioner is good at forming relationships. Where there are good commissioners, good relationships will be formed and the commissioner will want to work with the panel in this way. This will all happen as a matter of course. My concern is about areas where the commissioner will not be good at forming relationships and working with others. Of course, it will be in precisely those areas that prescription will be most necessary. In a sense, we are all looking to the areas where things will not necessarily work well, where problems will arise and where the Government will be forced to say, two or three years down the line: “What a shame we did not put this or that in place”. I am trying to envisage how this will work in practice, how it might best be played out and what we can put in the Bill to make it happen.

I will also mention voting. My amendment specifies that all decisions of the police and crime panel should be taken by majority vote. I am sorry about that: I heard what was said about two-thirds, but I am a great majority-vote person. It is what I am used to and it is consistent with other amendments that I will put forward in relation to veto powers, which suggest that these, too, should operate by a simple majority of the members present.

For me, that has the virtue of bringing consistency to the majority required for all panel votes and will avoid confusion that might otherwise arise by having different voting limits for different things. In later amendments I will discuss why I think veto powers should be exercised through a simple majority. Suffice to say for now that I believe it is entirely consistent with strengthening the role of the panel.

As I mentioned, these amendments put some flesh on the bones and set out how greater co-operation between the panel and commission might be achieved in relation to key functions. While they set out some practical ways in which the role of the panel can be strengthened, to perhaps guard against some of the worst problems that could arise, they cannot entirely cure what I still think is a fundamentally flawed model. None the less, I hope they will be regarded as—and they really are meant to be—constructive suggestions about giving a stronger and more balanced role to the panel.