Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Howard of Lympne Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

My Lords, I speak in support of the Bill. In the interests of brevity, I shall confine my remarks to Part 1. It is hardly surprising that I should be in support of Part 1 since I can claim a modest share in the paternity of that proposal. The proposal for elected police commissioners was in the 2005 general election manifesto of the Conservative Party, which I had the honour to lead at the time. I appreciate that that claim, judging by the speeches that we have heard so far, is not likely to endear me to all of your Lordships, but nevertheless that is the case.

At least that claim enables me to rebut conclusively one of the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Blair: this proposal does not originate in any attempt to emulate some model transported across the Atlantic from the United States of America. Rather, it is designed to remedy a weakness in the present arrangements in this country. That weakness can be summarised in one question: what is the name of the chairman of your police authority? That is the question to which, if you ask the ordinary man and woman in the street, not one in a thousand would be able to give you the right answer; indeed, most of the people you asked would not have the faintest idea what you were talking about. Your Lordships will have noticed that I posed the question in terms of the chairman of the authority. If you ask the man or woman in the street the names of the members of the authority, you would have an even more minuscule response.

[Baroness Henig]

Would the noble Lord be able to guess how many members of the public out of a hundred would know the name of the present Police Minister? Is that then an argument for the Police Minister to be directly elected?

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

Not at all. The whole point, as I am about to explain, is that the reason why this single question contains the nub of the case for change is that police authorities should be the means by which citizens hold their local police force to account. That is the point of police authorities, and the anonymity of those authorities is an insuperable obstacle to the achievement of that objective. The point of Part 1 of the Bill is to sweep away that obstacle to provide the basis for true accountability.

The election of the police and crime commissioner will attract a great deal of attention. I would not go so far as to say that everyone in the local community will know the name of the commissioner when he or she has been elected; after all, not everyone knows the name of their Member of Parliament, nor does everyone know the name of the Prime Minister. However, a large number of people would know the name of the commissioner, many more than know the name of the chairman of the police authority. That would provide the transparency that is necessary—this proposal is about transparency—if the holding to account of the police is to become more meaningful, more effective and much better understood by those on whose behalf that accountability is being exercised.

This, however, is a big change, and I recognise that inevitably it gives rise to some concerns. There is a concern that the change will have an impact on the operation and independence of the police, and I accept that it is essential that that operational independence is preserved. As has been pointed out, though, the language in the Bill, which provides that the chief constable has direction and control over his force and officers, is identical to the language in existing legislation. The Government intend to publish a protocol, which I understand they hope to have available by the commencement of the Committee stage in this House. As the right reverend Prelate said, the devil is in the detail, and it is right that that protocol should be exposed to great scrutiny by this House in Committee, as I am sure that it will be. However, I do not accept the view of the noble Lord, Lord Blair, that chief constables, with the command that they have too of access to the media, the ability that they have too to put their case, will be so pusillanimous as to give way to any police and crime commissioner who oversteps the mark.

There are other concerns, including that someone dangerous or wholly unsuitable might be elected. I think it was Benjamin Disraeli, among no doubt many others, who said, “Trust the people”. That is not a bad watchword. With great respect, we in this House should be particularly cautious about casting doubt on that watchword. As my successor as Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, put it—admittedly in a different context—in an excellent article in yesterday’s Times:

“There is a patrician tendency among the British political elite that asserts that some issues are too serious to be informed by the vulgar instincts of the common people”.

It is a tendency that we in this House should particularly guard against. His words were, as I say, in a different context; he was criticising some of the policies of the current Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary—criticisms that I wholly share. I assure your Lordships that I am not invariably a supporter of all the policies of the Government. However, his words are equally apposite when applied to those who distrust the electoral process that the Bill would put in place.

The provisions of the Bill are consistent with the localism that is such an important part of the coalition Government’s approach. They create transparency, which is also at the heart of that approach, and so essential if true accountability is to be asserted. There are many points of important detail that will certainly merit careful attention and scrutiny on the part of this House. I wholeheartedly support Part 1 of the Bill and I commend it to your Lordships’ House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, I will confine my remarks to Part 1 of the Bill. I declare a past interest: some 43 years ago I was appointed a Minister in the Home Office responsible on a day-to-day basis for policing. When I look back at that period, it seems almost a distant pre-incarnation.

The central reality that one should regard as a template for all matters that one considers in the context of the police is that the police service represents two things. In the first instance it represents a disciplined service with a disciplined hierarchy. In that regard, it has much in common with the armed services. However, unlike the armed services, the police force comes into daily contact with the citizens of this land. The idea of a disciplined force is central, because it raises the question of whether a civil commissar can overlook any part of the functions of a disciplined force. The second point, which is equally valid, concerns the force’s independence. The independence of the police is as crucial to the rule of law as the independence of the judiciary. Any tampering with those twin pillars—the disciplined hierarchy and the independence of the police—jeopardises the future of the police service. Whatever the temptation may be to pander to any whim, caprice or populist trend, it must be resisted.

The Government’s case has not been made in the slightest. Three cases have been put forward. The matter was debated in the other place on 13 December last year. I will not quote the exact words of the Home Secretary; they appear in col. 707 of Hansard. She gave as the main reason for the reforms the fact that the police had failed the public when it came to curbing crime. We heard nothing of that today—and understandably so. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, reminded us—the figures are slightly broader than those that he mentioned—from 1994 to the present, under successive Governments, the spectacular fact is that crime has fallen by almost 50 per cent. That is a huge diminution. Therefore, obviously, the main plank of the Home Secretary’s case disappears there and then.

Today we are told by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, that there has to be a transfer of authority from the Home Office—from Whitehall—to local bodies. Nothing of that is proposed in the Bill. Indeed, one could well argue that the police panels would be utterly without identity, as compared with the police authority. We heard from the former Home Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, whose main case was that people do not know the name of the chairman of the police authority. I do not suppose that those people know the name of the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls or the head of the Family Division, but one does not impose a civil commissar on them.

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

Is the noble Lord suggesting that the Lord Chief Justice or the Master of the Rolls exercises some local accountability on behalf of the community? That is the difference between the two. Surely that difference must be apparent to the noble Lord.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Boateng]

My Lords, let me at the very outset, in the presence of the noble Lords, Lord Stevens, Lord Condon and Lord Imbert, put my hands up and say, “It’s a fair cop Guv, I’ve got form as long as your arm on police accountability”, because I have. I have had the pleasure of working with all three of those noble Lords in different capacities over the years as a civil liberties lawyer campaigning for the reform of the police, as chair of the GLC’s police committee campaigning for the political accountability of the police in London, and as Minister of State for Police in the Home Office. In all those various capacities, I have supported and campaigned for directly elected political oversight—I stress “oversight” as opposed to “control”—of the police. Therefore, I am bound to say that I cannot oppose as a matter of principle the proposal that is put forward in the Bill—and I do not. However, I am also bound to say that I share the very real concerns that have been expressed in the debate about the proposal that the Bill envisages and the way in which it is being introduced.

I cannot but recollect the vehement opposition of the then Home Secretary to the very modest proposals that were put forward by my colleagues in the Labour Party in 1994 when we proposed directly elected police authorities. That modest proposal—modest in comparison with this reform—was met with the following words of the then Home Secretary. He said:

“I reject entirely the view long held by members of the Labour party that there should be directly elected police authorities. That would be a recipe for politicising the police service. It would also mean removing all magistrates from the work of police authorities. I believe that that would be a retrograde step”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/4/94; cols. 112-13.]

The noble Lord is in his place. He knows whose words those were. They were the words of the then Home Secretary.

[Lord Howard of Lympne]

When circumstances change, I change my mind. What does the noble Lord do?

[Lord Boateng]

I very much welcome that almost damascene conversion. I would be the last person to oppose the conversion that the noble Lord has evidenced in his remarks today in support of the Bill. However, I should counsel against the sort of zealotry that often comes with conversions of that nature—the zealotry that cannot find any place in its heart for piloting or the modest proposals for safeguards that have come from noble Lords not only on this side of the House but on his own side. I hope that the Minister, in her response and during Committee, does not exhibit quite the same degree of zealotry that has been exhibited in the noble Lord’s speech, because this will be an occasion when the House will need to come together to improve the Bill and try to find common ground where we can find it, while accepting the principle of directly elected political oversight of the police.

I return to stressing the word “oversight” because the bottom line for all of us—certainly for me, as someone who has sought to exercise in the best way that I could the role and responsibilities of Police Minister—is that we must safeguard at all costs the operational independence of the police. That is the bottom line. That is absolutely vital if we are to maintain the best traditions of British policing and to uphold the rule of law.

As we do so, we need, of course, to understand that political oversight brings with it some real advantages, because we would not have seen the reforms that there have been in policing in this country over the past 20-odd years if politicians on all sides of the House and of all political parties had not been pushing and working for the sort of reforms that have made our policing now so much better than it was 20 years ago. I pay tribute to the police, and to a number of noble Lords who sit in this House who have exercised responsibility as operational chief officers of police, for the way in which they have taken the police forward in the course of some very difficult times and in the face of some difficult and hard cases that have exposed real failures on the part of the police. It would be a tragedy if we were to go backwards as an inadvertent result of the proposals in the Bill.

I want to make two remarks on matters to which we will need to return in Committee, and I pay tribute to the two maiden speeches that we have heard this afternoon—those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Berridge and Lady Newlove. They have touched on two areas in which policing has been found to have failed: diversity and ethnic minorities, and victims and their families. The two speeches were exemplars, in their different ways, of what maiden speeches should be, and were a timely reminder of the need to ensure, as we debate the Bill, that in the exercise of the functions of police commissioner and the composition of the panels, victims and ethnic minorities have their concerns taken into account. I certainly hope that we will return to that issue in Committee.

The other issue that we will have to explore with real care is operational independence. It is a matter of concern that we have not, to date, seen the protocols. We will want to see them, examine them carefully and see what the interplay will be between the panels, the police commissioner and the chief constable. As to getting that balance right in the budget, policing policies and priorities, we need to make sure that all three constituent parts of that arrangement are properly equipped, able and resourced to carry out their responsibilities. I do not accept the assurances that we have heard from those on the government Benches that the whole exercise is cost-neutral. If it is cost-neutral, it will be unable to deliver what the Government hope for, because you must resource properly the panels and the police commissioner. If you do not do that, this will be a sham exercise or an exercise that is designed purely to pander in some way to the notion that we have a form of direct accountability, when in fact we do not.

What matters above all else is the principle that Sir Robert Peel sought to enshrine in his version of policing—to recognise always that:

“The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it”.

Those words are worth repeating. Those of us in this Chamber who have been politicians know that for us the test is always visible action. That is, frankly, the great danger of some of what is proposed, unless you properly resource the role of panel and commissioner alike, because all our officers—those noble Lords who have had operational responsibility for the police—will tell us that the real test of efficiency is the test that Robert Peel set out. We need to ensure, as we take this matter forward, that it is the Peelian concept that is supported and upheld rather than any other.