Police and Crime Commissioners

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I fundamentally support the proposal for a review of police and crime commissioners but I would argue that it does not go far enough and would end where the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, started.

The fundamental question is whether the police and crime commissioners were worth the political capital expended upon them. There are some good examples. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is one of them but others have also achieved things. Frankly, the same could be said of police authorities. I do not agree with the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, that police authorities were not engaged in the public. Often there were more of them, for a start—there were at least 70 members. In the Metropolitan Police there were 23, from memory, and in London they had a chance to engage with more people because there were more of them. They did not cover everyone, of course, but they certainly had a significant opportunity to represent different parts of a great metropolis.

The commissioners have not used the two great powers that they have had well. First, in human resources, they had the power to select chief constables. As the noble Lord, Lord Blair, has said, sadly, because potential candidates believe that the outcome of the selection process is already decided, they have not applied. The referral to two or three applicants is well short because in many large forces of significant power they have had one applicant, the sitting deputy. That is not a healthy position if the reason I have offered is why that has occurred. The second power they had was to use the budget wisely. For example, they could have devoted more than two-thirds of the budget to community policing, but it has never shifted over the past several years. The budget has remained exactly the same and the priorities remain the same. That is not an interference in operational policing but that type of power has not been well used.

The removal of chief constables has not been well handled either. There have been at least five cases where employment tribunals have concluded that the process followed and the evidence offered by PCCs has been so flawed that the individuals have been reinstated. That is not a healthy position.

The selection by PCCs of their own advisers has at times been rather opaque, to say the best, because they have not followed normal public procedures for the selection of such people. That gives rise to the fear that they have been appointed for their political interests and purely political purposes rather than for their skills. That is not a healthy position either.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that we need to look at the selection criteria, particularly the one that he mentioned around police officers. First, there should at least be a time bar of a certain length. In South Yorkshire, the chief constable applied to be a party’s candidate for PCC and would have overseen his own legacy, which is entirely wrong. That is one example, but there are many more.

Secondly, there used to be a convention, if not a rule, that officers could not become a chief constable in a force if they had not had two years in another force at the rank of chief officer. That was a healthy thing. It put in separation and removed too much home-grown affiliation to local political people or whatever. That type of rule should be looked at very seriously.

My final point—I am speaking in the gap so I have only one minute—is that the proposal in the debate is not radical enough. I support the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. It is time that policing had a review. I walked in one day with the Lord Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, who reminded me that we had our last review in the 1960s. He named the person who created it. We now observe the 1974 local government boundaries. Criminals do not. We spend £1 billion on police IT in 46 packets. This is not a credible way to deliver a public service that demands to be of high quality rather than anything else. I take the advice that I have been offered. I support the point of the review.