Police and Crime Commissioners and ACPO

Damian Green Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. It was also a particular pleasure to hear some thoughtful and trenchant views in the course of this short debate. Those who spoke, most of whom are members of the Home Affairs Committee, have thought about the subject deeply and long. Furthermore, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Select Committee, said that a report is gestating; as ever, we look forward to its birth. I was especially grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for saying that he was “excited” about the new policing landscape. There were many reasons why we conducted such a widespread and radical reform of the police. It was extremely necessary to improve policing in this country. It is an uncovenanted and added bonus that it excites the Chair of the Select Committee.

The time is right, amid all this change, to look again at the role of ACPO to ensure that it has adapted to the massive change and reform programme introduced by the Government, because the whole of the policing landscape has been reformed. As was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), who introduced the debate so thoughtfully, police and crime commissioners have given communities a greater say in policing and introduced new lines of accountability for chief constables. Also, the Independent Police Complaints Commission has been strengthened to ensure the highest standards of police integrity, which is clearly an ever more important reform; the National Crime Agency has been created to lead the fight against serious and organised crime; the inspectorate of constabulary has been made more independent; and the College of Policing has been established to provide professional standards for policing. It is therefore essential that ACPO’s functions are now delivered within the ethos of the new policing landscape.

In the short time—a little more than a year—that PCCs have been in office, they have innovated by developing strategies to tackle drug and alcohol misuse and the problem of people with mental health problems being held in custody cells; they have worked with young people to improve engagement; and they have driven innovation in technology to improve policing. They have done all that while holding their forces to account and scrutinising police performance. Many PCCs have wasted no time in introducing new processes to hold chief constables to account for the delivery of the PCC-prepared police and crime plans and in driving value for money. All that has fundamentally changed the accountability process in and governance of policing for the better. I am grateful for the endorsement of that change in the tone of the debate so far.

PCCs have reviewed the role and remit of ACPO within that new context—this is essential, and I very much welcome it. Various hon. Members have talked about the Parker review, which demonstrates that PCCs are providing an impetus to reform at the national as well as the local level. They are of course innovating and delivering policing more efficiently in each of their individual areas, and not only have they brought real local accountability to how chief constables and their forces perform, but they are working hard to ensure that their local communities have a stronger voice in policing.

Everything is happening against the economic and fiscal background with which we are familiar. In the current climate, it is essential to drive innovation and transformation that deliver value for money, so that savings can be made and priority given to front-line policing. PCCs are doing this at the same time as they are delivering against their national responsibilities, which I hope is putting an end to the view of some people that that is a weakness of PCCs. I think that it is a strength.

I now turn in some detail to the Parker review. As Sir Nick Parker said in a review undertaken on behalf of PCCs, not of the Home Office, there are frustrations with the lack of transparency in ACPO funding and with the inadequacy of audit and performance monitoring. Sir Nick said that

“these arise out of ACPO’s undoubtedly complex and unorthodox structure.”

There is a variety of governance mechanisms across the full range of ACPO’s functions, and its status is unusual, in that it is a company limited by guarantee rather than a public body. We have heard some of those frustrations aired in the Chamber today.

[Keith Vaz]

To be fair to the president of ACPO, Sir Hugh Orde—I am a great fan of his and the way in which he conducts his policing—he said that he was very uncomfortable with being in a company limited by guarantee. He had torn what little hair he had left off his head in order to find alternatives.

[Damian Green]

Absolutely. The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right to make that point. I am conscious that Sir Hugh Orde has thought as much about these matters as anyone else and has, as one would expect, come to thoughtful conclusions.

I support the broad direction of travel of the Parker review, and I was pleased that PCCs had taken collective action to review the role and functions of ACPO. I was also pleased the review recognised the need for efficiencies and for deriving maximum value for money from services that are currently provided under ACPO.

The PCCs have a vital role in ensuring that there is a national forum in which chief constables may come together to co-ordinate what they see as their needs at the national level. We all agree that that is an essential function. As the review recognises, crucially, the majority of ACPO functions have now transferred to the College of Policing. We are using the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill to give the college the power to set standards. It will be for the college to provide leadership for the whole of policing in future.

[Dr Huppert]

The Minister is absolutely right to highlight the role of the College of Policing in providing standards and leadership. It is also important to evidence-informed policing and to developing new approaches that were not seen in the previous policing landscape. Will he talk about that role as well?

[Damian Green]

Indeed. My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am about to come on to the college and its vital, central role in future, but first I will point out the one part of the Parker review with which I disagree: the need for a centralised change management programme for police reform, potentially run from the Home Office. That is exactly what we do not need and is very much against the ethos of the more accountable, locally driven and bottom-up police service that we are introducing. That is one of the reasons why I am so glad that the PCCs have grasped the nettle of reform themselves, because it shows that we do not need a small group in the Home Office driving all change.

[Mark Reckless]

The PCCs I have spoken to do not interpret the report in that way. I can see how the Minister might, reading it broadly, but that has not been their interpretation, to the extent that change management is needed and the Home Office’s co-operation with that is desired. I believe that is an issue for the transitional final year funding that PCCs are prepared to offer to help the Home Office to ensure that ACPO’s functions are wound down and that the appropriate transition is made.

[Damian Green]

Absolutely. I thought that that was what I had said. I am conscious that PCCs want to do that. I am not saying that there is no role for the Home Office—there is of course a role for it, and we have a very senior official sitting on the transition committee precisely so that the legitimate interest that the Home Office has in the process can be represented at this vital time of change.

I have been invited to talk about the College of Policing, however, so I will. We saw before Christmas with the code of ethics that the media and the public are increasingly—and rightly—looking to the college to speak boldly on how it believes the police should response to press and public concerns, in the way that, in the past, they would have looked to ACPO. The college has taken on much that we used to look to ACPO to provide—setting out the case for change, providing leadership and enabling police forces to provide a more effective service to their communities.

In future, we will be looking to the college as the body responsible for developing a better police force, for identifying the challenges that policing faces and for setting out how those challenges should be met. In future the college will come up with the big ideas for reforms to improve the way policing is delivered. I expect to see the college providing dynamic leadership in the face of a wide range of challenges, including reducing bureaucracy, increasing officer discretion and driving the modernisation of the police.

To achieve all that, the college will need to be visible not just to the few at the top of the police or to the many thousands working in policing but—perhaps most important of all—to the general public, without whom the police could not be effective. We have always had a model of policing by consent. The famous dictum of Robert Peel, that the

“police are the public and the public are the police”

needs constant reinvention in every age. It will be to the college that Governments, the police and the public will look to interpret how we achieve that hugely desirable end, which has always been at the heart of British policing, in the 21st century.

We have talked about accountability today, and I agree that it is important. The college is accountable through its board, with a far greater range of people from right across policing responsible for taking decisions about the way the college works. It will also be accountable to Parliament for the standards it sets.

[Mark Reckless]

The key is that the range of people on that board include a serious number of PCCs, who are elected. That is the difference, surely.

[Damian Green]

It is one difference, but the most important difference, and the next thing I was going to say, is how inclusive the college is. It is for the whole of policing: officers, staff, special constables and volunteers. There is a wide range of people on the college board as well as on its professional committee. As my hon. Friend says, that rightly includes PCCs, who are themselves directly elected.

The college is new and new organisations need time to get their strategy and structures in place, and to make sure that they have the right people in post to deliver their aims, but there has already been huge progress. In September, the college published its strategic intent, inviting views on its strategy, including on whether police officers and staff should pay a fee to join. In October, it consulted on the code of ethics for police officers and members of police staff. While we are debating the changes to ACPO here today, the college is working through its longer term structures and developing its commercial strategy. All that is being progressed alongside the work the college is doing on direct entry, on the threshold tests linking pay to skills, on police digitisation and on freeing up police time. It is essential that everyone not only gives the college time to develop but supports it in that development. It will be a vital institution for the future success of policing in this country.

We should all recognise that it will not be some diktat from the Home Office or lever pulled by the Policing Minister that will bring about reform. We need to work in partnership with police and crime commissioners and chief constables to ensure that the model for the future is the right one. We continue to take a strong interest and financially to support those critical national functions that chief constables undertake and must continue to deliver, namely those where operational co-ordination is needed on national issues. Critical national functions including the national police co-ordination centre and the ACPO criminal records office must continue so that we safeguard work on, for example, the sharing of international criminal information across the EU and the rest of the world—clearly an area of increasing importance to the police.

Sir Nick Parker’s review was comprehensive and looked at the future of ACPO in the round. It concluded that reform was needed to ensure that chief constables have a forum with functions and structures that fit the new police reform landscape. I support that objective. The changes to the policing landscape that followed the publication of the review of ACPO will take time to unfold. Once those changes take place, it will be essential that they work. We have already seen the changes the Government have made to this part of the policing landscape through the creation of the college. Those changes have worked because they have been supported by all parts of policing—by chief constables, PCCs, the Police Superintendents Association, the Police Federation and those trade unions that have members who are police staff. The changes to ACPO need to be worked through in exactly the same way.

I am grateful to ACPO and its members. Chief constables have shown the ability to adapt and evolve to meet new challenges. That pragmatic, reforming approach will need to continue as police reform and, in particular, a sharper focus on public accountability and transparency continue to drive change across the policing landscape.

Question put and agreed to.