Police: Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life

Lord Bew Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for initiating this debate and, even more than that, for the work he carried out which first drew my attention to the key issues of leadership in modern policing. Some three years ago the noble Earl initiated a major debate on police statistics. That was before it became pretty fashionable or commonplace to read newspaper headlines saying that police statistics are maybe not cast in gold and that there might be some problems with them. Long before that, the noble Earl led the way in this Room, basing himself in part of course on the work of Dr Patrick—as he would say himself. That gained my interest.

I agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, that the Committee on Standards in Public Life had been in existence for too long without looking at policing, given our remit. My first intention was to look at the statistics. I discussed this with the chairman of PASC and he became very interested, too. In the end, PASC reported in the autumn of 2013 on policing statistics, and the first document from the committee under my chairmanship was a submission to that report. The PASC report ends by saying to us, “Again, would you look at questions of leadership and policing?”. That is what we have tried to do.

It almost pains me to say something so simple about the debate around PCCs but I have one strong idea in mind: even in our best quality newspapers, there has not been a serious discussion about how this major experiment, whether you like it or not, is working out. Either X was wonderful and transformed the sensitivity of the police to crimes against women in their area, or X was a total idiot. That is all you get in one headline after another, with no systematic attempt to look at what this means. PCCs were a major attempt to place the local principle at the heart of our policing and a major transformation, so our idea above all else was to try to produce a balanced and sober report.

I accept the point of the noble Lord, Lord Blair, from a position that I well understand, that there is an essential lacuna—from his point of view, a lack of sharpness—in the report. I also accept the point of view from the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman. However, our approach was to try and raise the quality of the debate. One reason I am so happy about the debate today is that the Committee on Standards in Public Life has a new practice in that we do not just produce a report. We come back at the end of a public debate, as we did on our most recent report last summer, and produce a follow-up. Many things have been said today from all parts of the Room that are of great seriousness and will be reflected in the follow-up report.

While we found a great deal that was positive—greater innovation, visibility, and focus on community engagement and victim support—we also found clear evidence of standards risks in the new experiment: confusion over roles; insufficient challenge and scrutiny; and insufficient redress where PCCs fell below the behaviour expected of them by the public. I am anxious to hear the Minister’s views on the particular recommendations our committee made.

We recommended a national minimum code of conduct for PCCs. That is an essential component in ensuring clarity as to the standards of conduct and behaviour expected from PCCs, and to give the public—to whom they are accountable—a common yardstick to judge acceptable conduct. We also suggested a review of the current powers, and that the Home Secretary should urgently review whether there are sufficient powers available to take action against a PCC where conduct falls below the standards expected of public officer-holders. In our view, those standards are always defined by the known principles of public life.

The committee considers the introduction of a power of recall a matter for Parliament, but believes that should this power be introduced for PCCs, commonality relating to the thresholds and triggers to initiate recall is required. In other words, we accept that this is a complicated message. As far as I understand some of the public remarks from the Home Secretary, she acknowledges that if you have recall for MPs, there is an analogy that there should be recall for PCCs. We understand that argument, but we want to ensure that it is done with precision and fairness.

I concede that it is now the very short term with the elections coming up in 2016, but an idea the committee is keen on is the circulation of an ethical checklist to all declared candidates for a PCC post, with a request from the committee for each candidate to publish their responses. We will encourage relevant local media outlets, whether print, broadcast or social, to seek out and publicise their candidates’ responses. For us, accountability should not simply be an issue at four- yearly election intervals. We need greater scrutiny and transparency of PCC’s decisions between elections. The public must be able to make fair and balanced assessments of this very important new experiment.

There is one other thing that we did not see, apart from the points so cogently made this afternoon. We did not expect the number of resignations by PCCs. As a practical matter, I am not now saying that there is a solution to this. I simply acknowledge that it is something that we did not expect at all from our visits—and we talked to lots of PCCs around the country. It is not something that can be solved by the application of the Nolan principles, but it is a matter of significance.