Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Condon Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, as my name is attached to Amendment 26, I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for the manner in which she introduced it. It is very much a probing amendment. I do not want to repeat my concerns about the election of police commissioners—my noble friend the Minister is well aware of those and has been most gracious in her recognition of them. She has already shown that she is indeed a listening Minister. We are in a slightly peculiar position, having passed the amendment that we passed a couple of weeks ago. I did not vote for that; I voted with my noble friend the Minister, because I felt that it was consistent with the role and responsibility of this House that we should accept the general principle from the House of Commons and then seek to improve what it had sent to us. It seemed to me that the most constructive way of seeking to improve it was to sanction pilot schemes.

This is in no sense a wrecking tactic; it merely says, “Make haste slowly. Make sure you’ve got it right and be aware that there are very real problems that Members in all parts of the House have already touched on”. I am concerned about the possible impact on national issues of the election of essentially local commissioners. I am very concerned about the party-political nature of the commissioners. It is almost beyond any doubt that unless we include in the Bill a provision specifically to say that those affiliated to a political party cannot stand, most commissioners will be affiliated to a political party. I am saying not that they cannot do their job but that I have real concerns about it, as does the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I think that many Members in all parts of the Committee would urge the Minister to discuss the strength of feeling with the Home Secretary and her other ministerial colleagues to see whether the pilot scheme cannot be accepted and adopted, or to come up with an alternative that meets some of the legitimate concerns and objections that have featured in debates so far.

I do not wish to detain the Committee further, but I think that, far from being a wrecking tactic, this is a constructive suggestion. I hope my noble friend Lady Browning will recognise that when she comes to reply.

[Lord Condon]

My Lords, I sympathise with the motivation behind the amendment. Although I realise that it is a probing amendment, I cannot support it. The perfect storm of change that understandably surrounds policing needs to be resolved in the quickest and best way possible. However, pilots might be an unnecessary delay for a number of reasons. A small number of pilots might tell you a great deal about the relationship between some individual police and crime commissioners and some individual chief constables in localised areas, but I am not sure that we would learn great lessons that could be extrapolated to the whole of the country in all circumstances over 40 police forces. Although I acknowledge that this is a probing amendment that seeks a way to test, explore and challenge some of the rationale behind elected police and crime commissioners, I am not sympathetic to pilot schemes. Having discussed them with serving chief constables, I know that not many of them are supportive either.

[Lord Dear]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Condon, has said, because my views accord very much with his. Normally, I am a great fan of pilots—they give you a step-by-step approach, they are often sensible, they lead to a sense of being sure-footed, and they hammer off the rough edges of what was proposed in the first instance. In this case, however, I submit that they would lead to a sense of great unreality.

I, too, have taken a straw poll of members of the police service, ACPO members and so forth, and I have met with the same result. So far as I can make out from a fairly detailed survey, the service wants a degree of certainty, certainly nationally. That is particularly so when one looks forward. One does not need much of a crystal ball to recognise that more is coming down stream towards us that has not yet reached your Lordships' House, such as the national crime agency, which relates to national issues. Today, we have been focusing more on the local, and issues of leadership that are bound to flow from what part 2 of the Winsor report will propose. All those things and others depend on a sense of certainty. If we get into pilots now and they overtake us, the service will not be in a position to handle the other issues that are bound to come before your Lordships' House in the next 12 months or so.

What I propose flows logically from the argument that we have just heard. We should make quite sure that the proper checks and balances surround the whole concept of police and crime commissioners and at that stage vote yes or no. We either have them or we do not, having given them due and appropriate consideration in your Lordships' House. We should not get into the business of pilots, which will be disruptive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

I support the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and my noble friend Lord Shipley. My first question is whether we need a deputy for the PCC. My contention is that it is absolutely essential and that that person must be chosen from within the police and crime panel, who will in the main have been elected by the local community. How utterly bizarre it would be for an elected PCC to appoint his or her deputy. That could be absolutely anyone from the PCC’s own staff, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has outlined. What a recipe for corruption that might be. How will that person be chosen and what criteria will the PCC use to put so much political power into the hands of an unelected person? We absolutely must ensure that whatever befalls a PCC during its term of office, it must appoint a deputy from a properly elected body—the police and crime panel or, as I would prefer, the police and crime commission.

[Lord Condon]

I support the amendment as well. I fear that the thinking behind this provision was like something that I explored at Second Reading. It is almost as if the police and crime commissioner will be contaminated, or his office will be contaminated, if he is in any sort of collaborative arrangement or anyone else is drawn into the ambit of the police and crime commissioner in any way. I, too, think it would be totally inappropriate for the police and crime commissioner to nominate his deputy. Therefore, I support the notion of a deputy, if there needs to be one, being drawn from a police and crime panel, or some other body with more legitimacy than just the touching of the shoulder—figuratively speaking—by the crime commissioner of someone who happens to be working within his office.

[Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington]

I also support the amendment, because if the argument is that police commissioners are elected, surely the deputy must also be elected if he acts in their place. There is nothing more bizarre than if someone was appointed to the power, bearing in mind that a commissioner might be ill for six or nine months. That surely would be a recipe for disaster.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we recognise that the whole question of checks and balances is a matter of much concern throughout the House and that a number of amendments which we will be discussing deal with the checks and balances built into these new arrangements, and with the relationship between the police and crime commissioner and the police and crime panel. We will be discussing those throughout several more groups from now on. The architecture of the Bill is in principle that one identifiable individual, elected and accountable, should be clearly responsible for oversight of the police. I think that noble Lords would all recognise the difference between an assistant commissioner appointed when there is a vacancy or due to incapacity, and a deputy commissioner who is appointed from the outset. That builds a very different relationship into the structure which we are designing.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, on the amount of care that he has put into these amendments but I am sure he also recognises that having a deputy—particularly one who comes from the PCP—also builds a potential basic tension into a structure which has been designed to do something rather different. The checks and balances should come between a separate police and crime panel and a directly elected police and crime commissioner, rather than blurring the relationship between the two. The panel is appointed by local authorities and, under our model, is clearly distinct in its origin and role from the police and crime commissioner.

The provision which we have put into Clause 62 is intended to provide a reasonable one for a temporary expedient when the elected police and crime commissioner is unable to act. We have conceded that, in such circumstances, as set out—

[Lord Condon]

If the Minister will forgive me for interrupting, he talks about a temporary expedient. Does he accept that it could be, in certain circumstances, many months or perhaps even more than a year?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Yes, we accept that and it is something which we will have to consider further and discuss with noble Lords who wish to pursue the issue. Nevertheless, we are concerned about blurring the relationship between the panel and the commissioner. We have conceded that the panel should make the temporary appointment, as the most suitable single body for an event that might arise from a multitude of different causes, but the principle of the Bill is that there should be a definite dynamic which depends on direct election and a high public profile. I am reminded that the Bill states that six months is the maximum for an assistant commissioner and that there would then be a by-election.