Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Lords Chamber

Since the role of the panel is to be expanded in a situation where the PCC takes over responsibility for a fire and rescue service, it seems that there is a need for an assessment of how effective and relevant these bodies are in holding the PCC to account in any meaningful way, and to look at their relevance in relation to the activities of the PCC and the kind of decisions that a PCC has to take in the course of their duties. I would be grateful if the Minister could address the points that I have raised about the reasons for excluding the reference to “rescue” in the renamed PCC and, perhaps rather more significantly, whether there is to be any examination of the effectiveness of police and crime panels, particularly bearing in mind that they are to take over more responsibility in relation to the expanded role of the PCC.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, no doubt there was extensive consultation about the name that the new commissioners should have. No doubt, in typical fashion, that was conducted over the summer months when there was perhaps not a huge response. It more or less must have been then because this amendment was brought in at a late stage, at the tail end of the Commons consideration. I would be interested to know exactly how many responses there were and the substance of those responses.

Lumbering the commissioners, who I suppose we will have to get used to calling PFAC commissioners, is not necessarily the most helpful of things. My noble friend Lord Rosser has pointed out the omission of “rescue”.

Look at the order of the words: police, fire and crime. One might have thought that crime sat more comfortably near police than with fire, and while the Government are about it, they are compounding the problem that the original Act created of having somebody whose responsibility is to commission crime. They are making it worse because now this person commissions fire. If they said that this person was the police and rescue commissioner, it would make sense. It would be their job to commission people to do policing and rescue, but at the moment there is this strange amalgam which loses half the role of fire and rescue and at the same time manages to imply that the commissioner is responsible for all fires and crimes in their area. This is frankly not sensible. Rather than embark on another intensive consultation that perhaps nobody knows about, perhaps the Home Office might want to think again.

While it is thinking again, perhaps the Minister could give us a little more explanation about the proposals to have a police, fire and crime panel. Noble Lords will be pleased to know that I shall not rehearse the same set of arguments about why the various things should be bundled together and in what order the words should be, but my noble friend Lord Rosser raised an extremely important and pertinent point. Police and crime panels were bolted on to the legislation that created police and crime commissioners, I think probably because of some rumblings on the Liberal Democrats Benches at the time. It was a half-hearted gesture in the direction of creating an accountability mechanism, but it is a gesture that does not work. The panels have created a mechanism whereby people are brought together from different local authorities, perhaps three or four times a year, to carry out the statutory functions. It is not a cohesive team. The budget available for servicing them is microscopic, which means that there is no staff work which supports that work. It is not surprising that the learned study which my noble friend referred to is quite so scathing about them. I also wonder why it has been decided that this scrutiny function is best located in a single body. Why would you not have a body which focused on policing matters and one which focused on the fire matters, given that the Government keep telling us that these will continue to be separate functions with separate streams of funding? Perhaps the Minister can enlighten us.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank noble Lords for the points they have made. On using the word “rescue” in the title, apart from the fact that it is a bit of a mouthful, chief fire officers in the Chief Fire Officers Association do not have the word “rescue” in their title. I think that is the reason. I take the noble Lord’s point, but too many words can be a bit cumbersome. We consulted police and fire stakeholders between the amendment being made in the Commons and our suggestion to change the name.

On whether the panels are effective, I was on the police authority for a year. At that time there was a lot of criticism of police authorities being remote from people and questions about whether they were fulfilling their function of bringing police authority to account. The police and crime panels under the Bill have clear powers to scrutinise the actions and decisions of each PCC and to make sure the information is available to the public. The meetings are held in public, so not only is the information available to the electorate but they can watch these meetings, which are often recorded. For example, the meeting of Sussex PCP is broadcast, and members of the public can submit questions to the panel for the commissioner ahead of the regular scrutiny meetings. I will not disavow what the noble Lord said—I have not read the book—but their powers are clear, and the decision-making and the scrutiny process is transparent. The scrutiny meetings are often available for broadcast, and members of the public can ask questions ahead of them.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

112: Schedule 2, page 206, line 2, leave out from “not” to end of line 5 and insert “apply to a person appointed as the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime or to a person appointed as Deputy Mayor for Fire.”

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I move on to a series of amendments that relate to London. I remind noble Lords of my interest, in that I am in the process of completing a review for the Mayor of London on London’s preparedness. I should make it clear that the amendments in my name are not sanctioned by the Mayor of London or by any of his staff or colleagues— I doubt whether he is aware of them.

The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act, in its wisdom, created a mechanism whereby there were two routes to people being appointed as deputy mayor for policing and crime in London. One route was that the mayor would appoint a member of the London Assembly. Obviously, if the mayor appoints a member of the London Assembly, who has been elected, that person is clearly a politician. The second route is that the mayor might appoint another person who was not a member of the London Assembly—and, if they did so, there was a confirmation process that the London Assembly had to conduct before that person became the deputy mayor for policing and crime. However, that person was then treated as an employee of the Greater London Authority and therefore was politically restricted, which was, frankly, rubbish and stupid. Here was a deputy mayor, deputising for a political mayor and appointed as such, who was then politically restricted. So far, on the two occasions when successive mayors have appointed deputy mayors for police and crime who were not members of the London Assembly, the two individuals concerned have been London borough councillors, and have had to resign forthwith.

It may well have been sensible for them to resign as London borough councillors if they were taking on the role of deputy mayor for policing and crime. But they were politically restricted, which means that they could not hold office in or speak on behalf of their political party. I am not suggesting that anyone launch an investigation or criminal process or anything, but the last deputy mayor for policing and crime ran for his party’s nomination for the mayoralty of London, against Zac Goldsmith. That is a very strange position for somebody who is politically restricted—although I do not think anybody batted an eyelid or was in the least bit concerned.

What we have is legislation that is palpably nonsense. Depending on their route of appointment, the deputy mayor for policing and crime is, in one case, politically restricted but, in the other, if they are a member of the London Assembly, they clearly cannot be politically restricted because they are an elected person. When this legislation, the then Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, was going through the House, it was clearly not an issue that anyone either understood or felt was worth resolving. It does not work; it does not make sense. I would be interested to know why it is still well regarded—so much so that we now have legislation creating the new role of deputy mayor for fire, who can also be appointed by two routes. One route is where the mayor appoints a deputy mayor for fire from among the members of the London Assembly; that person is clearly not politically restricted, because they are an elected person in their own right. However, the mayor might appoint a deputy mayor for fire who is not a member of the London Assembly, in which case they would have to go through a confirmation process through the London Assembly, but they would then be politically restricted.

This amendment seeks to remove this nonsense altogether and to state that the deputy mayor for police and crime and the deputy mayor for fire, whatever their route of appointment—and I am not suggesting that it be changed—should not be politically restricted, because they are de facto acting in a political fashion. They are representing and carrying out functions for the Mayor of London and they are doing so in a political way. Why should one, through accident of appointment, be politically restricted when, if the accident of appointment went the other way, they would not be politically restricted? It is a stupid anomaly and I cannot see any conceivable justification for it. I look forward to hearing from the Minister why the Government are going down this route and whether she is prepared to remedy it on this occasion.

While the Minister is waiting, if she is waiting, for guidance to arrive on these matters, I should say that I think—I cannot recall precisely and I have not done my homework at this stage, though I reserve the right to have done it by Report stage—that a similar set of anomalies are created for deputy police and crime commissioners. Again, it is pretty ridiculous. Having allowed for there to be deputy police and crime commissioners, which was a sensible change during the passage of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill through Parliament, why create a situation in which the person whom the police and crime commissioner creates as their deputy is politically restricted? As I say, I have not checked this point; it may turn out that I am wrong about it, but I am pretty certain that I am right that they are politically restricted. This then presents a whole series of issues. There was at least one instance in the recent round of elections of a deputy police and crime commissioner running to be the police and crime commissioner. I do not know whether they had to resign their position as deputy or whether, as in the London case, everybody pretended not to notice.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, in replying to the noble Lord, I hope that I have the right end of the stick as to what he is saying; I will give it a go anyway and I am sure that he will intervene if I am wrong. The amendment relates to the rules on political restriction in Sections 1, 2 and 3A of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, in so far as they apply to the deputy mayor for fire and the deputy mayor for policing and crime. Those rules do not apply to the deputy mayor for policing and crime. I therefore put it to the noble Lord that they are not applicable or relevant for this amendment.

The provisions for appointing the deputy mayor for policing and crime are set out in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. The Bill does not seek to change those provisions. The 2011 Act does not restrict a member of the Assembly from being appointed as the deputy mayor for policing and crime, and for that member to continue to be a member of the Assembly.

The purpose of paragraph 8 of Schedule 2 to the Bill is to enable a person who is an Assembly member to remain a member of the Assembly or to become one despite having been appointed or designated as the deputy mayor for fire. The amendment would remove the political restriction rules completely for that position, which is perhaps what he was seeking. I did not think that was what the noble Lord intended, but it may be. If I have misunderstood his purpose, I will be very happy to reflect on what he has said and write to him.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I will certainly be grateful to receive a letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. However, I think she has slightly missed the point—namely, that, under the current legislation, if the deputy mayor for policing and crime is not an Assembly member, he or she is politically restricted. It is just conceivable that, because of the convoluted way in which legislation is frequently drafted, the political restriction is derived from something other than those particular clauses in the Local Government Act, but I rather doubt it. Therefore, we are talking about those people who are not already Assembly members who are appointed as either deputy mayor for policing and crime or deputy mayor for fire. The Bill seeks to apply that provision to the deputy mayor for fire if they are not an Assembly member, so they are politically restricted. As I have said before, I think that is a nonsense. Therefore, I hope that the noble Baroness will check precisely how the legislation applies to them. But it certainly has applied to the last two deputy mayors for policing and crime in London, because both of them have been obliged to resign their council seats as a consequence not of any disqualification laid down other than the fact that they have become politically restricted, so clearly the measure has applied under those circumstances. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, no doubt has encyclopaedic knowledge on this.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I absolutely do not have any encyclopaedic knowledge. However, I am very glad that the Minister has agreed to look into this in more detail because, as the noble Lord describes the situation, it is a farce. As I recall, there was a sort of evolution of thinking about deputy mayors and the use of the 10-plus-two people in the original Greater London Authority Act, and their position. Originally, they were thought of absolutely as the mayor’s creatures. Will this be borne in mind in looking at the position because I think that some of this comes from the original ideas on what the structure would be and how the mayor might structure his or her office? Perhaps things have just moved on a bit from there. I suggest that this is part of a slightly bigger jigsaw.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for her remarks. I could have included in this the other deputy mayors. I thought that was probably outside the scope of the Bill, but, what the hell, I might have gone for it, because, among the crop of deputy mayors appointed by the current Mayor of London, and, indeed, by his predecessor, were people who were serving borough councillors or, in one case, a borough mayor. They had to resign their offices for those other positions. However, I have confined this amendment to the specific positions of deputy mayor for policing and crime and the deputy mayor for fire, possibly to make it easier for the noble Baroness to look at it. The situation is that, if they are not Assembly members, they are politically restricted. If they are Assembly members, obviously, they cannot be. That is a stupid anomaly which I hope the Government can remedy. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 112 withdrawn.

Moved by

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

113: Schedule 2, page 210, leave out lines 32 and 33

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, this is a completely different point, which relates to the role of the proposed fire and emergency committee of the London Assembly. I was interested that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, moved Amendment 72 a few minutes ago, which said that police and crime panels should become the “police, fire and crime panel” outside London. In London, the parallel structure for the police and crime panel is called the Police and Crime Committee. Confusingly, London has a PCC, but it is not a commissioner. The parallel structure which is therefore created is that a committee of the London Assembly meets—unlike police and crime panels elsewhere in the country—on a very regular basis, comprising politicians who know each other from the same authority. That works better than police and crime panels elsewhere.

The parallel structure created in the Bill is that there should be a fire and emergency committee which would be set up by the London Assembly and carry out the functions of scrutiny with regard to the deputy mayor for fire. That is fine—there should be a scrutiny structure. However, the Bill specifically says that the fire and emergency committee cannot carry out any other functions of the authority. It is saying to the Assembly: “You have to create two separate committees: one to look at policing and one to look at fire”. I would not suggest merging the two committees, but everywhere else in the country the Government are saying that the same panel must do it, even though it will be much less well resourced and much less able to do an effective job. But in London you have to have two committees.

Why can it not be left, in the spirit of devolution and localism, which the Government so espouse, to the London Assembly to decide how it wants to organise these functions? If it wants to have one, two or even three committees, as long as it carries out the functions set out of scrutiny of the respective deputy mayors, surely it should be allowed to decide how it organises to do that. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Harris, on this. I remember quite clearly, during the passage of the Greater London Authority Act, the then Minister—or the government representative at the Dispatch Box; I think it was a Whip at the time—saying firmly, on the basis of notes coming to her from the Box, that the London Assembly should be allowed to sort out its own procedure. I think we were debating an issue around a quorum. The same applies here, probably in spades. It is also interesting that the Government, who are concerned about efficiency, effectiveness and economy, should insist on procedures that must have the potential to be less efficient and more expensive.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, explained, the amendment would delete the provision which prevents the assembly arranging for any of its non-fire and emergency committee functions to be discharged by that committee. The role of the fire and emergency committee will be to review how the London Fire Commissioner exercises his or her functions and to investigate and prepare reports on the commissioner’s actions and decisions. The committee will also review draft documents presented to it by the London Fire Commissioner and make a report or recommendations to the mayor. The committee will also undertake confirmation hearings in respect of the appointment of the London Fire Commissioner and the deputy mayor for fire. In addition, it will have the power to require the deputy mayor for fire, the London Fire Commissioner and any officer of the London Fire Commissioner to attend proceedings of the committee to give evidence.

The functions are set out in the Bill so that it is clear that the fire and emergency committee has a specific fire-related purpose. It follows that the committee should not be used for any non-fire-related business of the assembly. This is clearly different from everywhere else in the country, as the noble Lord said—and I am sure that other places in the country will argue for what London has. The position in London is different. There will be two separate functional bodies and no move to a single-employer model, so in that sense it is not the same as elsewhere. I apologise for doing it again, but I compare Greater London to Greater Manchester—it is four times the size.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

Four times as good.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I would not agree with that, but with that explanation I hope that the noble Lord will feel happy to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, to be honest, I do not think that it was really an explanation. The issue is not that London is more complicated even than Greater Manchester, nor that there will be two separate functional bodies headed by the deputy mayor and so on—although I have to ask: if the Government are enthusiastic about such a model everywhere else in the country, why would it not make sense for the two functions to be brought together in London, or for there to be a single employer? I am not advocating that, by the way, because I do not think that it would be a good idea, but I find it inconsistent with everything else in the Bill.

As the noble Baroness says, the Bill specifies in enormous detail exactly how the Assembly will have to organise this:

“The Assembly must arrange for the functions”—

the noble Baroness listed them—

“to be discharged on its behalf by a particular committee of the Assembly … The Assembly may not arrange for the fire and emergency committee functions to be discharged on its behalf otherwise than in accordance with subsection (1)”,

which sets up the committee.

“The Assembly may not arrange for any of its other functions to be discharged by the fire and emergency committee”.

This is really laying it down—“You have to have a fire and emergency committee. It can do only this, it mustn’t do anything else, and nobody else must do it”. It really is not very much of a statement in favour of localism. The Bill then goes on to say that:

“The special scrutiny functions may only be exercised at a meeting of the whole panel”.

I do not know where “panel” comes from; the rest of the new section talks about a committee; no doubt that is a technical issue that I do not understand, but officials might want to look at whether the Bill should say “panel” or “committee” at that stage.

Had I been really malevolent, I would have taken out all that and just said, “These are the functions that the Assembly must consider how to administer”. Laying things down in that detail and limiting the discretion of the Assembly to decide how it wants to organise itself seems a nonsense. Although I am happy not to press the amendment to a vote tonight, I hope that I am getting an assurance from the noble Baroness that she will look at it again and come back on it on Report, otherwise I will.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

By the sounds of it, my Lords, we both will.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 113 withdrawn.