Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Henig Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Henig]

41: Schedule 2, page 108, line 25, leave out paragraph 2

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[Baroness Henig]

My Lords, I am going to speak to 24 amendments in this group that stand in my name and one to which I have added my name. First, I want to address Amendments 41 and 64A but I am also going to put forward some alternative proposals that are set out in Amendments 42, 46 and 64C and need to be taken together. These broadly relate to my concerns about using the construct of a corporation sole within which to encompass the functions of a chief officer of police and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I am then going to talk about Amendments 66A, 67, 67A, 67B and 234A to 234Q, and also say a little about Amendment 44 in this group, which I support although I did not put my name to it. These all relate to concerns I have regarding the creation of two chief finance officers and auditable bodies for one police fund. I apologise to the House as I will go into some detail and also for trying to put my own construction on this idea of corporation sole. I cannot claim to be an expert but looking around the Chamber there may be noble Lords who are more expert than me in this area, who might perhaps allay some of my concerns—or possibly add to them, I do not know.

I start off with my concerns regarding corporation sole. I am extremely uncomfortable with this idea. Chief officers, to me, are meant to be police officers, not corporations or commercial enterprises. Amendments 41 and 64A remove the status of corporation sole from chief officers and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, while Amendments 42, 46 and 64C limit the scope of the status of a chief officer and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner as a corporation sole for the purpose of employment of staff only. I start by probing what this construct of a corporation sole means in practice and what the implications are for corporate governance of policing and the accountability of chief police officers.

As I have already said, I am not a lawyer and I do not know a great deal about corporation sole, but even the name seems to be a contradiction in terms: a corporation suggests a collective body but sole most certainly does not. Putting aside for a moment what is said in the Bill about the accountability of chief officers of police, the very name corporation sole suggests that the incumbent is accountable to him or herself. What laws set rules about corporate governance within corporations sole? What general powers and duties do these laws give the incumbent and what do they say about the accountability of the incumbent for those powers and duties? Do any of those laws or any other common practice within corporations sole conflict with what is being proposed in this Bill, whether in relation to the powers and duties of chief officers, the corporate governance regime of policing, or the accountability and operational responsibility of chief officers?

I am concerned that this construct creates technical difficulties in other areas of the Bill, for instance by creating two auditable bodies for one police fund—which are the subject of other amendments—or additional bureaucracy and expense in relation to transfer schemes. It might also create other unintended consequences. I am having a very hard time seeing what the benefits of this extra difficulty and expense will be.

I shall briefly explain how things work at the moment. The governing body is the police authority, which holds all the assets, funding and land for the police force. It is also the employer of all police staff. The chief officer has operational independence and also has direction and control of all police staff and officers. As an aside, I think it worthy of note that police officers are not employed by either the authority or the force but hold warrants from the Crown, and this will not change under the proposed new arrangements. The police authority then delegates functions to the chief officer so that he or she can manage the force and police funding on a daily basis. The delegation framework is a flexible document that can contain freedoms or restrictions on the functions delegated according to what is appropriate to the context. Typically, a scheme of delegation would contain limits, for instance, on the value of contracts that a chief police officer could sign before he must refer it to the authority for approval. This enables the authority to give chief officers freedom to exercise their professionalism, unless they give cause for concern, but also enables the authority to have the final say, as the governing body, about how public money is spent.

It seems to me that this current practice is both more flexible in practice and more robust in terms of corporate governance and accountability than the artificial construct of corporations sole. I am completely unclear, for instance, how this new arrangement will enable funding to be passed from the elected policing body to the chief constable or Metropolitan Police Commissioner to manage the police force yet still give enough traction to the elected policing body to determine how that money should be spent. How can a corporation have any influence over how its money is spent once it has been given to another corporation? Surely the money passes out of its jurisdiction and control.

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[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, the Minister has given a very helpful explanation in relation to the chief financial officer. I do not think anyone is suggesting that the chief officer of police should not have financial support from somebody who was suitably qualified. It is told, no doubt apocryphally, that the Metropolitan Police, when it was under the control of the Home Office, had only two qualified accountants responsible for a budget of £3 billion, which may have explained why it did not have a system for knowing whether it had paid bills more than once. Having a senior financial person who is a qualified accountant is not the same as having a chief finance officer, which has a specific meaning in local government law. It is clear that the post is intended to have that specific meaning in local government law. I do not think that anyone is suggesting that we should move away from the situation that exists at the moment, where every force has a senior finance person, but the person who is clearly responsible for accounts and everything else resides within the police authority or, in this case given the Government’s construct, with the police and crime commissioner.

[Baroness Henig]

It has been an extremely interesting debate which has teased out a number of important issues, many of which I am sure we will come back to. I am most grateful to the Minister for her response and for telling us that the Government will bring forward an amendment in relation to some of the issues. I am sure that we will have further debate at that point simply because so many important, technical issues relating to where the balance of power lies in different situations are still to be clarified. Given that we shall come back to a number of them, and given the important assurances that the Minister has provided, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 41 withdrawn.