Police Service: New Governance Structure

Baroness Henig Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Baroness Henig]

That this House takes note of the future of the police service in the light of the new governance structure.

[Baroness Henig]

My Lords, in moving the Motion standing in my name I should like to declare my membership of the Independent Police Commission, my chairmanship of the Security Industry Authority, the fact that for 16 years I chaired the Lancashire Police Committee and then the Lancashire Police Authority, and that for 15 years I was first chair and then president of the Association of Police Authorities.

Policing over the past 20 years has been extremely successful. Essential partnerships with local authorities, social services, the probation service and health bodies have been very effectively forged. Neighbourhood policing, one of the biggest success stories of recent years, is delivering tangible results to appreciative local residents. Police and community support officers have added a new and important level of resilience and response. Not surprisingly, crime has fallen markedly, by up to 40% in the past 15 years and public satisfaction has risen. You could be forgiven for thinking that any sensible Government seeking to exploit this success would adopt an organic and incremental approach to sustain these major improvements and build upon them. But clearly we do not have a sensible Government. As far as policing is concerned, we have a dogmatic and destructive Government. In the past few months, this coalition has launched a veritable tsunami of revolutionary change across the policing service. National bodies have been scrapped. New entities are being created, while at the same time changes to long-standing police terms and conditions and police career structures are being forced through. Novel governance arrangements at the local level threaten to destroy not just all the good work of the past 20 years, but the Peel principles themselves, which have been the fundamental bedrock of British policing for nearly 200 years. No wonder morale among police officers is at a record low.

I want quickly to run through all the changes that are currently taking place, just to give a clear picture of their sweeping scale. The Serious and Organised Crime Agency has been abolished, and the National Policing Improvement Agency and the Police Senior Appointments Panel are about to disappear, if they have not already done so. A new National Crime Agency is being established, and some of the National Policing Improvement Agency’s responsibilities will transfer to a new College of Policing, which is currently in an embryonic state. Other NPIA functions have gone back to the Home Office and we are to see a new IT body, NewCo, emerge some time next year. At this point, we do not know much about it. There is a big question mark over ACPO, especially over its important operational activities and professional leadership role. We know that ACPO will no longer be funded nationally, but it is currently unclear what workstreams will pass to the new College of Policing, what operational work will still be carried out at the national level by senior officers, how this might be commissioned in future by the Chief Constables’ Council, and whether police and crime commissioners will put any of their or their forces’ funding towards this work. The police inspectorate, which for decades has worked closely and effectively with forces and authorities, is being changed in scope and responsibilities into a more regulatory body, headed up for the first time ever by someone who has never served as a senior police officer. Simultaneously, far-reaching changes are being forced through in police terms and conditions with minimal consultation. The second phase of proposed reforms is currently out to arbitration.

As if that is not enough change, at force level across England and Wales, police and crime commissioners are to be elected two weeks from today with wide and sweeping powers to challenge and undermine the work of their forces, and with the capacity to cut across the crime fighting partnerships that have been so carefully and patiently built up in their areas. Most, if not all, of these commissioners will be elected on a party political ticket. This is the most revolutionary change of all: the importing of a highly politicised American model of local police governance into this country. The public have made it very clear, and are still making it clear on the doorstep and in the columns of many of our newspapers, that they do not want this to happen and that politicisation will reduce their confidence in policing. This is hardly surprising when police officers in this country, despite all the events of recent weeks, are still held in far higher esteem than party politicians. It seems extremely perverse, if not downright dangerous, to put individual politicians directly in charge of police forces, with the power to undermine operational independence by withholding funding or questioning the operational judgments of senior officers and, in the last resort, by dismissing them.

No wonder the public are alarmed and so many of them will refuse to sanction this new model of police governance, by not voting in the elections. We know that turnout will be extremely low, as some of us forecast a year or more ago when we tried as much as we could to shift these elections towards next May, when at least they would have been held in tandem with other elections, which would have increased turnout quite considerably. As it is, turnout will be extremely low, with a further damaging loss of confidence in the validity of the results.

All this is going on in the face of savage cuts to police budgets of around 20% over four years—front-loaded cuts—with the inevitable loss of thousands of front-line police officers. Miraculously however, up to £100,000 has been found for this novel injection of direct democracy into policing that is taking place on 15 November and for a completely fatuous series of advertisements on local radio and TV. I do not know whether any noble Lords have heard these advertisements but I have and do not think they will do anything to boost turnout.

My concern is with public confidence and public safety. That has always been my concern in policing ever since I became involved in it. Policing should be what the public want it to be—that is absolutely fundamental and why we have to look at all these changes in the light of public confidence and public safety. I will highlight four issues that I believe will seriously erode that confidence and undermine that safety.

I have already mentioned the first issue: bringing party politics into policing, in a direct way, for the first time ever in the history of British policing. In the next few months, between one-third and one-half of chief constable posts will need to be filled. It might interest the House to know that there are currently around a dozen acting chief constables and another half-dozen chief constable posts to be filled in the next few months. Our commissioners will have a completely free hand in the appointments process. They will inevitably choose chief constables in their own image, and I fear very much that the public will begin to perceive chief constables as being in one party political camp or another. This must surely undermine public trust in the impartiality of policing.

Furthermore, with only 18% of commissioner candidates being women, and hardly any ethnic candidates, it is absolutely certain that most commissioners will be white middle-aged males with, I suspect, very strong personalities. In turn, they are likely to appoint white, male, middle-aged chief constables. As a result, we will see less diversity in senior ranks, which, again, we know will impact seriously on public confidence. There are inevitably going to be arguments and disagreements between the commissioner and the chief constable in respect of strategy, staffing and financial policies, and I cannot see how it is possible to argue—although it has been argued in this House—that operational independence will remain unscathed. There are all sorts of ways in which that independence is likely to be undermined and, again, the impact on public confidence, and possibly even on public safety, cannot be overstated.

Secondly, the PCCs will not be subject to any impartial inspection or scrutiny process, unlike police authorities. Although they will operate under the watchful eye of the police and crime panels, which may provide some sort of check on their activities, I fear it will be a much more feeble one than some of us would like to see. The performance of the commissioners, we are told, can only be fully and appropriately judged after four years, at the ballot box. So if they are slow learners, poor performers, mavericks or dangerous ideologues—and we have seen such people elected in recent mayoral contests up and down the country—the public are stuck with them. Imagine the possible damage to a force’s performance or the changes that could take place in four short years. We could see massive outsourcing to private companies to save money, without essential safeguards in place to protect the public interest. It is not difficult to predict enormous variations in policing quality and levels of service across the country, with the result, again, of undermining public confidence and public safety.

The third issue I wish to highlight is the impact of the election of commissioners on local partnerships. I have spent a lot of time in the past few months at policing meetings up and down the country, hearing about the work of local partnerships involving the police, and how successful they have been. What has been most striking is the level of police integration into a range of local networks that are delivering impressive results, which is what lies behind this sustained fall in crime. But there is considerable anxiety about how the election of commissioners will impact on existing partnerships.

We know that some of the funding that went to community safety partnerships is already being redirected to commissioners, who will be able to spend this money as they choose. They will be able to commission a range of local services, and naturally they will want to make their own mark and establish their credentials, with an eye on the next set of elections. We will see them announcing their presence locally with a raft of eye-catching new initiatives, challenges to divisional commanders or local authorities—a series of high-profile activities. Can it really be assumed that there will be a smooth transition and that the commissioners will galvanise local groups into new and more productive relationships, or will they not rather undermine the effectiveness of what already exists and is delivering results? We can only guess at this stage, but establishing local priorities and giving funding to one group and not another is a complex and sensitive task, best done by a body representing a range of interests. One party-political commissioner handing out largesse at local level to some groups and not to others will be a sure recipe for public unrest and loss of confidence, with the danger that marginalised groups, vulnerable young people or unfashionable causes will be ignored.

My final concern is in many ways the most serious. How much importance will the new commissioners attach to the national and regional policing requirements that their forces currently meet? With the scale of cuts to police budgets already in the pipeline, will commissioners really be willing to see reductions in local policing services while a range of regional and national responsibilities continues to be shouldered by the force? That seems unlikely. Yet counterterrorism work, international drug-smuggling rings and slave traffickers cannot be dealt with by the new National Crime Agency alone. That body will need support and operational assistance from individual forces, and at the very least there is going to be creative tension between PCCs, chief constables and the National Crime Agency. At worst, there could be serious friction, with commissioners perhaps trying to exercise a veto over the directive powers of the National Crime Agency.

Will commissioners do more than pay lip service to the strategic policing requirement? If another round of riots were to sweep the land, can we be sure that commissioners will agree the necessary financial arrangements and force deployments so that the threats will be met by a co-ordinated national response, or will their focus inevitably be on local policing? I have made the case many times that in this 21st century we need fewer, larger forces working more closely together. The impact of elected commissioners will be to accentuate the local and parochial at the expense of the collaborative, regional and joined-up operation. That, I fear, is a serious challenge.

Too many changes are taking place too quickly, without an adequate level of co-ordination. A whole number of new jigsaw pieces have been created, but they are not being joined up and I believe that the public could be exposed to increased levels of danger as a result. Police morale is very low at the moment and that makes the problems worse. In a recent survey of superintendents and area commanders—an absolutely crucial layer of policing leadership at divisional level—44% of those who responded said they had seriously considered leaving the service in the past year. This is a major cause for alarm at a time when the policing landscape is changing so dramatically. The danger is that the service is becoming more fragmented, just when the nature of global threats requires joined-up, committed and vigorous responses.

I hope that when he comes to reply, the Minister will be able to tell the House how the Government intend to limit the damage their policing revolution is causing to public confidence and public safety, and what they are going to do as a matter of urgency to restore police morale. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Henig]

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate and the Minister for his response. As the Minister has said, there have been many notable contributions—from the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, at his most super-optimistic to my noble friend Lord Prescott at his battling best. No wonder so many chief constables are nervously awaiting the election of all-powerful commissioners. We have had important speeches: from the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, on the victims of crime; from the noble Lord, Lord Dear, on professionalism; from the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, on the IPCC; and from the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, on the work of the Independent Commission on the Future of Policing. I was particularly interested in the issues around diversity, or rather the lack of it, that the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, raised. We have also had a worrying reminder from my noble friend Lord Harris about the dangers of politicising operational activities with reference to phone hacking and the Metropolitan Police.

I listened carefully to what the Minister said about the elections in a fortnight’s time. I have been asking everyone that I have met in the past month whether they are going to vote. I accept that this is a rather imperfect survey, but it was the best one I could have. I asked everybody, “Are you going to vote in a fortnight’s time?”. I have to tell the Minister that nine out of 10 people I have spoken to have said no. They have said that because they do not know about the elections—some have said that—or they said, “These elections have nothing to do with me”, or they have said no because they do not approve of bringing party politics into policing. In a way, that last group of people should concern us most. These are people who have voted in every election, local and national, and yet have said to me, “We are not voting. We do not believe that voting is appropriate for police commissioners”. The Government may not like that, but that is the reality. That is what people are saying to me. That is what is being reflected in newspaper columns.

I take the reproof of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. I take her point that she feels that I am being too pessimistic in my assessment of what is happening in policing. I would respond to her by saying that it is very easy to stand in this Chamber and welcome change and to be optimistic that it will all work out. My interest is in those people out on the front line up and down this country; people in communities who actually have to implement these changes, and do so effectively. My point is that if you bring in so many disparate and disconnected changes simultaneously, it undermines people’s ability and capacity to join everything up at the local level. That is my fear.

I have never been against change which is organic, or change which builds on what is already working. However, what I am against is wholesale revolutionary change which can be damaging and very dangerous. That is what I was trying to draw attention to in this debate.

The challenges facing policing now are unprecedented in their scale, compounded as they are by the savage financial cutbacks. For me, nothing could be more damaging to the fight against crime than a wholesale loss of public confidence in the policing service. It is for this reason that I tabled this Motion for debate today. My hope remains, despite what has been said from the opposite Benches, that the Government will start to realise how much damage their policies are causing to the police service and will engage constructively with the leaders of that service in a way which restores public confidence and police morale. If they do not do this urgently, my concern is that that thin blue line will become so demoralised and badly stretched that it will snap, with incalculable results for all of us.

Motion agreed.