Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

I finish by saying that we have a Bill and we have a decision to make, but we also have a duty. That duty is to ensure that, as we move towards elected police commissioners, we do so properly, methodically, conscious of all the difficulties that have been referred to this afternoon, and by having pilot projects. I beg the House, as I did earlier, not to vote this afternoon, but rather to look at this matter again on Report when the new Minister has had chance to reflect and discuss with her ministerial colleagues. Perhaps we can then have a consensus. We may have to vote; who knows?

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in extending a warm welcome to the Minister. I share entirely their confidence that she will listen very carefully to the views of all sides of the House on this extremely important matter.

I confess that I have what can be described only, in appropriate terms, as form in the reorganisation of policing. As vice-chairman of the Local Government Association and leader of its Labour group, I led an ultimately successful campaign within my own party and against the policies of the party in government when it sought to introduce the least bad of three bad propositions for the reorganisation of policing. The Labour Government’s proposal was that the majority of members of police authorities should be directly elected. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, pointed out, the Liberal Democrat policy was for the entire police authority to be directly elected. The present Government’s proposition is that all of that should be replaced by the election of a single person. The campaign was against the least bad of the three. It succeeded because the Government were persuaded that it was wrong to vest separate powers in the hands of bodies elected from other parts of local government.

It is instructive to look at the protocol, which has somewhat belatedly been circulated. I refer to the introduction to this document, in which the following words appear:

“The election of Police and Crime Commissioners is at the heart of the Government’s plan to cut crime”.

There is, as has already been pointed out, little evidence that such an appointment would have that effect but let that stand. It goes on:

“They will reconnect the public and the police, and allow us to replace bureaucratic accountability to Whitehall with democratic accountability to local communities”.

That is as classic a piece of gilding the lily as I have come across in a long time. I need hardly remind your Lordships that lilies are poisonous plants. The first part of the sentence is surprising: it implies that the police and public have been disconnected. As I have previously had occasion to point out to the House, I have served for 44 years as a councillor in Newcastle upon Tyne in quite a deprived community in which crime has always been an issue, although it has been reducing in recent years. The past few years have seen a much greater connection between the public and the police than at any time previously, certainly during my period of service. The police regularly attend meetings, communicate with the local community and report back on crime statistics. They are more accessible than most other public services, if truth be told.

As I said on Second Reading, the interest of the local community is very much focused on the immediate locality. In all the meetings that I have attended with the police and public present, never has anybody raised force level matters or even, frankly, matters concerning another part of the city in which they live, let alone Berwick, which is 56 miles to the north, or Sunderland, which is 15 miles to the south, all of which would be included in the area to be governed in this respect by the police commissioner. Therefore, there is already a connection between the public and the police. Having said that, accountability needs to be reinforced and there are ways in which the Bill could be improved to secure that, with or without the imposition of an elected police commissioner.

However, the second part of the relevant sentence in the protocol is a non-sequitur. I agree that the previous Government overdid the provision of targets and laying down what should be done in this and other areas. Occasionally, I used to say that the Government of the day had established more targets than the Pentagon had during the whole of the Cold War. Their setting of targets was excessive, including in this area of public policy. When I was chairing a review of local public services in Wales, I well recall a very charismatic, if somewhat idiosyncratic, chief constable of north Wales saying that he was not minded to follow the Home Office advice about giving priority to knife crime—I think that was the crime in question—because in his part of the world that was not a serious issue. I cannot remember whether sheep rustling was his preferred priority, but at all events he made a perfectly valid point which certainly needs to be borne in mind. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, pointed out, that does not require, nor does it necessarily flow from, the proposition to establish a directly elected police commissioner. The Home Office could relax its grip and its tendency to dictate priorities under the current system or, indeed, any other system for that matter. It is a question of a self-denying ordinance on the part of the Home Secretary and the Home Office of the day, and certainly that should be welcome, but the two issues are not connected in principle or in practice.

The protocol goes on to say in a further paragraph:

“The Police and Crime Panel within each force area is empowered to maintain a regular check and balance on the performance of the PCC”—

that is, the police and crime commissioner. If one looks at the proposals for the police and crime panels in the Bill, it is very difficult to see the substantial checks and balances that the protocol suggests are present; they are few and far between. For example, they would require a three-quarters vote to veto—they cannot amend—the budget of the police and crime commissioner or his crime plan. There is no provision for the police and crime panel to call in decisions of the commissioner before they are implemented, as can a scrutiny panel, for example, in an authority with an elected mayor or any other form of executive It seems to me that very few checks and balances are present, despite what the protocol claims.

Another part of the protocol states:

“The PCC has the legal power and duty to … provide the local link between the police and the public, working to translate the legitimate desires and aspirations of the public into action on the part of the Chief Constable to cut crime and antisocial behaviour”.

That raises a number of questions. To begin with, who determines the,

“legitimate desires and aspirations of the public”?

Apparently it will be the single person who is the elected police and crime commissioner. That suggests the very kind of populist flavour that is likely to characterise the campaigning for an election to that position, which many of us—I suspect on all sides of the House—fear will actually aggravate problems, rather than resolve them. It will lead to an increase in the fear of crime, and that in turn makes the job of the police more difficult.

The protocol also implies something very close to interference in the operational performance of the chief constable. I repeat:

“to translate the … aspirations of the public into action on the part of the Chief Constable”.

It might be argued that that is to be confined to the plan, rather than operational detail, but the terminology is suggestive of a rather greater role than many of your Lordships would like.

There are further responsibilities referred to in the protocol and in the Bill, one of which will again concern many of your Lordships. The protocol states:

“A PCC has wider responsibilities than those relating solely to the police force”,

including,

“a wider responsibility for the enhancement of the delivery of criminal justice in their area”.

The Bill refers to collaboration between the commissioner and a range of organisations, including the courts, the Prison Service, the probation service and youth offending teams. I would be concerned if anyone holding the position of a police commissioner or, indeed, the chair of a police authority under the present structure, engaged with the courts or any of those bodies. The police function in that sense is separate. Again, the notion that a single individual should have that responsibility strikes me as being inherently undesirable, and perhaps even dangerous. The powers of the commissioner are virtually untrammelled in the Bill, and that is a serious objection to the proposal as it stands.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, who is not now in his place, prefers the model of democratically elected police bodies. There are a number of arguments against that, one of which is that the existing police authorities, and even the Bill, propose the retention of some independent element within the police and crime panels. Police authorities at the moment have a significant number of independent members. That has contributed significantly to ensuring that there is geographical balance and a balance of gender and ethnicity in the composition of police authorities. The Bill provides for only two such members, and their number should be somewhat greater—perhaps a third of the total number—in whatever structure we end up with. However, as I understand it, the formulation of the noble Lord is that all members should be democratically elected, and one would thereby lose that important dimension.

However, councillor members of police authorities are democratically elected. Although they are not specifically elected to the police authority, they are accountable to their electorate in their ward or authority, and are accessible to the wider community. It is perfectly true that they may not be household names in every street or town in a country area, but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, pointed out, authorities have done a great deal to extend information on and access to those who serve.

There is a further objection to the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. His formulation implies the creation of a separate elected body with a separate mandate. This represents a fragmentation of local governance, beyond what we already have. Of course, some police authorities are based on existing counties—there is effectively a county force. Thames Valley is not an example, because it links several counties, but Hampshire, for example, has its own police authority, which is effectively part of the county council with additional members.

The noble Lord's argument could be extended. If we are to have separate bodies separately elected with their own mandate—and, incidentally, responsible for a significant portion of council tax; 11 per cent in England and 15.5 per cent in Wales—why not have a separately elected body for passenger transport? Why not go back to the 19th century and have elected school boards? Why have local government at all? It is an infraction of that principle that the noble Lord appears to support. I do not think that his arguments are well founded. All of us want more accountability; all of us want a democratic element; the Bill as currently set up does not achieve those objectives. I hope that it can be substantially revised, and I certainly support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness.