Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley]

I rise to support the thinking behind this amendment because throughout the passage of the Bill through the other place I think that the over -centralisation of power in one person was encouraged. That concern remains. What can be done to ensure that there is due probity, audit, equality of opportunity in appointments and so on given the powers that the Bill currently is going to give to the police commissioner?

The context is extremely important. It is not clear to me where the commissioner is to be based, in what kind of offices and with what level of staffing. A close reading of the Bill indicates that this is perceived to be cost-neutral, that the costs of salaries will be subsumed within existing budgets and that grants provided to the police will supply the additional resources required. But it would help to have a discussion about how big the staffing support structures for the police and crime commissioner are going to be. We note that there will a chief executive and a chief finance officer. The consequence is that underneath those chiefs there must be some other people, and those other people will cost significant amounts of money. There is a real danger that we are going to end up with an alternative structure of bureaucracy being created which actually is not necessary. At the moment, police authorities are housed elsewhere, and get their supplies and support in other people’s premises. For me, therefore, this amendment is extremely helpful in that it identifies the fact that we need to be clear what the support structures are going to look like in detail for the police commissioner.

I take absolutely the point about the nature of the appointments. Who are the people who can apply and how will they be appointed? Perhaps I may suggest that the obvious thing to do would be to use Nolan principles. Those are used in so many other places that that is the right approach. There is the question, too, of audit. It is not clear from the Bill exactly what audit requirements will apply in practice to the management of the police and crime commissioner’s office.

There are therefore many questions around this matter which make me believe that there has to be a further discussion about the size, powers and nature of the panels and about the nature of any non-executive board, be it of four members or seven members or whatever it turns out to be. The precise roles of those board members need to be made clear, because they will be different from those of the panel members. The non-executive board is to do with probity in finances, equality and the way staff appointments and so on are being made. They are not full-time appointments; I am not even sure that they have to be substantially remunerated, although, clearly, expenses would have to be paid. The boards are different from the panels, which are essentially about the nature of policing and supporting the police and crime commissioner in that aspect of their work.

I give a guarded welcome to the amendment but it is part of a broader discussion about the police and crime commissioner’s office.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, did the Committee a service before dinner in drawing our attention to Amendment 62, where there is a specific reference to the staff of the police commissioner. It would be helpful if my noble friend in responding to the debate were to fill in some of the detail of what the Government envisage this staff to consist of, so that the Committee can have a sense of what the structure will be.

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, in this amendment we are pursuing the issue of police and crime commissioners. Before I go any further, and in view of the doubts raised by two of the Minister’s noble friends earlier, perhaps I may ask the Minister to say whether the Government envisage the proposed police and crime commissioners being full-time or part-time positions.

The Constitution Committee of your Lordships' House in its report published on 6 May said that Part 1 of the Bill is,

“self-evidently of constitutional importance … From a constitutional perspective, the chief risk with Part 1 is that of politicising operational decision-making … In our judgement it is essential to ensure that any reform to the governance of the police does not jeopardise this principle”.

The committee also noted,

“the concentration of powers in the hands of individual police and crime commissioners”,

and said that the,

“Government must ensure that the values of pluralism, equality and diversity adequately inform the new arrangements for representation and engagement with communities by individual commissioners”.

The amendments that we are discussing would address some of those concerns by seeking to provide a police and crime commissioner, whether elected or not, with the help, advice, wisdom and support of a non-executive board of between four and seven members. One would hope that a police and crime commissioner would use the power to appoint suitable people of independent mind and approach, with differing backgrounds and life experiences, to ensure, working with the commissioner, good governance of financial, staff and equality matters, and to support the commissioner in respect of his or her functions.

The appointment of non-executives is an accepted part of good governance and common practice in both the public and private sectors. Indeed, the Minister has non-executives in her own department. They bring their own expertise to bear and should not be wedded to the ways and practices of a department, of an organisation or of an office. They are there to support but also to challenge, to offer advice, to question—including asking the questions that no one else is prepared to ask—to act as a critical friend and, in extreme, if they think that something is seriously wrong which the commissioner is not addressing, to make their concerns more widely known, or, as my noble friend Lord Soley said, blow the whistle.

The Government’s proposals put far too much unchallengeable power in the hands of an individual. They also, as was said earlier by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, put that same power in the hands of a member of the commissioner’s staff whom the police and crime panel would have to appoint in the event of the commissioner no longer being able to carry out his or her role. The panel would have to appoint them, apparently, even if it felt that there was nobody suitable from within what would presumably be a relatively small number of commissioner staff. That is an extraordinary state of affairs which the Minister has not so far maintained could not arise and which makes the need for a non-executive board even stronger.

I hope that the Minister will recognise the strength of feeling on this issue—about the lack of checks and balances and the weak governance arrangements—and accept at the very least the spirit and intention of these amendments which have been spoken to so ably by my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey.