Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Dear Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

The Government are not wrong to pursue the principle of direct election, nor are they wrong to pursue the principle of improving democratic accountability, but it is important that they get the mechanism right. I am happy to support the amendment because it provides an opportunity to pause and look in more detail at how these mechanisms might be made to work effectively. The Government are in danger of weakening the principle of accountability and of making visible answerability disappear. Under the circumstances, the principle of British policing based on consent, where people can see that the police service is operating in their interests and those of the whole community, is in danger of being thrown away. That is why the amendment and the discussions that we will be having in Committee are so important.

[Lord Dear]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister to her place and look forward to working with her on this Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, has proposed this amendment and I have to say, up front, that I do not support it. The argument that seems to underpin it is that there is nothing much wrong with the current system. I shall address that in a moment. It is an oversimplification, I know, of what she said, but that seems to be the core of the argument which supports the amendment.

I was surprised to hear the noble Baroness say that we are here to prevent power going into one set of hands, or words to that effect. It seems to me that power is already in one set of hands—the hands of the chief constable. That is properly and legally constrained in ways we all understand. We are trying to find in your Lordships' House the way in which other powers, matching, mirroring and supporting that, can also be so constrained so that they work in harmony or in balance.

I agree with almost everything that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, who is not now in his place. As a chief constable and a very senior officer in the Metropolitan Police for many years, I worked with police authorities of various political complexions and persuasions. One or two of those were good; most were indifferent; and at least one that I served as the chief officer was downright bad. So I can tell your Lordships in all honesty that not everything in the current situation is correct.

One should also reflect on the fact that the current Chief Inspector of Constabulary found that only four police authorities out of more than 20 that were recently inspected were fit for purpose or “up to scratch”, as I think he put it. As an inspector of constabulary for more than five years, one of the first things that I did was to respond to a request to take on an inspection of Derbyshire Constabulary. I knew little about Derbyshire except that it was a moderately sized police force of no great significance in the pantheon of policing and that it was not an innovator of policy so much as a follower. But I took myself off to Derbyshire in the very early 1990s and found the most appalling situation. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, asked us to dwell on the hypothetical case of Derek Hatton being chairman of a police authority. Derek Hatton never was chairman of a police authority, but a man called Councillor Bookbinder got his hands on the chairmanship of the Derbyshire Police Authority, with substantial party support behind him. To put it frankly, he brought the Derbyshire Constabulary to its knees. It was in the most appalling state, starved of funds, chivvied about by a thoroughly capricious chairman with a thoroughly capricious committee behind him.

I discussed that with Councillor Bookbinder and his colleagues. I gave them six months to put things right and they did not. From memory, I gave them a further six months, saying “Please get it right because an axe will fall”. They still did not and in fact tightened the screws yet more. I declared Derbyshire Constabulary inefficient. That was the first time in nearly half a century that an Inspector of Constabulary had deemed a force to be inefficient.

Changes came about, one of which was the interposition into police authorities of the independent element, but an independent element in Derbyshire would have made no difference. Such was the political majority in power, they would have swept over the independence come what may. Change came and Derbyshire is now a very different place in policing compared with 15 or 20 years ago. I make that point to say that the current system can in extremis fail. The risks are still there with the current system and, of course, as many noble Lords have said today, there are risks in the system that we are invited to look at in the Bill.

At this very early stage we should reflect on the fact that in the other place this Bill was passed with a substantial majority. On the back of six years’ experience in your Lordships' House, I suggest that we owe it to the parliamentary system to give this Bill fair scrutiny from start to finish. I, too, am concerned about checks and balances. I want to see what I guess most of us in this House want to see and that is two individuals—the chief officer of police and the police and crime commissioner—working together in harmony for the benefit of the population, not as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said earlier, somebody who is a boss. That may have been a loose use of that term. I do not see a boss in this relationship at all. The chemistry is important.

I am concerned about a number of things. I pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, about size. He mentioned Kent. I could mention the West Midlands, where I was chief officer. It is the biggest police area in the UK outside London with a population of 4 million and more than 30 Members of Parliament. I am not sure how one individual can adequately represent an area that stretches from outside Coventry through the west virtually into Shropshire, taking in bits of the surrounding counties and seven huge cities and boroughs. That will be very difficult. That is one issue to which we should pay particular attention.

On the whole, I am saying to your Lordships that I shall oppose the amendment if it is put to the House. This is such an important issue, which has already been passed in another place with a big majority, that we should look at everything in the Bill and give it a fair trial before we come to a conclusion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords—

[Lord Dear]

My Lords—

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

The noble Baroness has given way to me. Does she accept that there are some very deprived areas in our inner cities where the police do not patrol at all?

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

That is not my experience of Lancashire or of the other authorities that I know well. I know that there are areas where the police service is stretched to breaking point by the circumstances that they face on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, but my experience in Lancashire is that the service is provided without fear or favour to all the communities there.

[Lord Dear]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way so quickly for a second time. For the avoidance of doubt, when I referred to Derbyshire and Councillor Bookbinder, I was making the obvious point that things go wrong under the present system, or something approximating very closely to the present system. The main thrust of what I said, as I am sure she will agree, was that, if we are to have police and crime commissioners, we must work very hard indeed to make sure that the checks and balances are sufficient so that we get an exact balance between the chief officer and the PCC.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

I think that we can agree to a degree that the conclusion the noble Lord reaches is not the same as the one that I reach. My main point is the importance of incremental change, taking the police service and the communities with us.

My other point is a very strong one and concerns the importance of the relationship between the police service and other services in local authority areas. In my experience, we had one difficulty during my first period on Lancashire County Council when the chief constable left, not totally willingly. However, beyond that, our chief constables wanted to talk to and be part of the community that was discussing social services problems and education problems, in which they had an interest. To argue for separately elected police authorities and police panels ignores the importance of that relevant link.

Noble Lords have asked why this should be party political. Has anyone sat down and thought about the cost of an election covering a huge police authority area? Has anyone thought about the fact that, if someone is well known in one town or city in Lancashire or in one part of one police authority—I refer to Sir Peter Soulsby, who was elected very recently as mayor of Leicester—they will not be known across the whole area? Therefore, one will need total back-up to run an election campaign in those circumstances.

My final point is that I fear, even more than political bias or political clash, community disaffection as a result of one person from a small area of a police authority being in charge. Communities want to feel that they have a representative. Noble Lords have said that some people do not know the names of members of their police authority. In my experience, if they had a big problem they found them out pretty quickly and came to us. I suspect that quite a lot of people cannot remember the name of—please forgive me—the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister or the Home Secretary. People find out when they feel strongly. We must ensure that when people look to change our police service, they build in an evolutionary way on experience and judgment.