Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, because when I had the great fortune to be chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee I saw at first hand what she had achieved. She speaks with a quiet authority—as, indeed, do the noble Baronesses, Lady Harris and Lady Henig.

Like other noble Lords, I congratulate and welcome my noble friend Lady Browning. I served with her in the other place and I know her to be a woman of calm judgment and true determination. Above all—and I saw this when she had high office in the Conservative Party—she is someone who truly listens. I hope the House will give her the opportunity of its views today and I know that she will reflect upon what she hears in this Chamber. For that reason, I appeal at the outset to some of those who I believe are considering breaching a convention of this House and calling a vote today. I would beg them not to do so, out of courtesy to the new Minister. I have learned in my brief time in this House—although I observed it for 40 years from another place—that the hallmark of this place is courtesy.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I wonder if the noble Lord would give way.

[Lord Cormack]

What I have learned in my time here is that the convention is that issues are thoroughly discussed in Committee and that when we come to Report, Ministers having had the chance to go away, think and come back with answers, we decide whether we will vote—as we did last night, when I found myself, for the first time in my time in this House, in the Content Lobby. I give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, the noble Lord comes to this House with great experience and we have all enjoyed his interventions. I would gently point out to him that there is no such convention. Votes do take place in Committee and any such vote would not be a matter of discourtesy to the Minister, whom we all welcome to her place today.

[Lord Cormack]

I am glad for that assurance but I still hope that there will be no vote today, because there will be proper opportunity both for my noble friend the Minister to reflect and for noble Lords in all parts of the House to put their points of view.

I have always been extremely sceptical about this policy. This is no new attitude; I remember having a vigorous discussion with Mr Dominic Grieve, when he was the shadow Home Secretary, telling him that I very much hoped that this would not form part of official Conservative policy. Although it has been rightly said that it is the official policy, many members of the Conservative Party are truly concerned about the implications, as I know well from my private conversations in this place and elsewhere. We are seeking to elect on a party ticket—it would be in almost any case on a party ticket—a man or a woman who we expect to have the pastoral wisdom of a bishop, while we give him or her the powers of a commissar. That is not a very good combination.

I speak as others speak, because we all talk from our own experience. For 40 years, I represented a Staffordshire constituency and have worked with six chief constables. I had the great benefit of a long discussion a couple of weeks ago with one of those, John Giffard, who said that I could mention his name in this House. I know that John Giffard was an exemplary chief constable, not at all afraid of accountability or of talking to a police authority and recognising its remit. Yet he is very wary of having an elected party politician as an immediate boss.

This policy is a very brave step indeed and if we are to take that step, we ought at the very least to have some pilot projects to see how it works and just how it reacts. There are other amendments on the Order Paper to this effect. I know that my noble friend Lady Browning will consider what is being said and I hope that she will discuss with the Home Secretary and others that to have pilot projects is in no sense to wreck the Bill. It is, rather, to make haste slowly, which is often the best way of moving forward.

If party politicians were elected, imagine a Derek Hatton being in charge of the police on Merseyside. One does not need to elaborate to realise that implicit in any election is a danger that that sort of thing can happen, particularly if it is a mid-term period when the Government of the day are excessively unpopular. We all know, from last week and other examples, that when people vote in elections other than a general election they are not always entirely motivated by the local issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, talked—I think I remember the number right—about 23 constituencies in West Yorkshire.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee]

Perhaps I will be not quite the last noble Lord to give a very warm welcome to the noble Baroness. I am not sure whether she expected a rerun of Second Reading. I hope that she has found it helpful, because there have been some very perceptive, interesting and thoughtful speeches. I cannot resist saying that she will have noticed that we are right behind her.

In view of the time, I will edit my remarks as I go, and I hope that they are not too disjointed. The longer the debate goes on, the more I wonder whether it will be possible to have sufficiently strict checks and balances on an individual, and the more we expose the nature of the position of an individual with so much power, with all the characteristics that are often intrinsic to an individual in a powerful position, some of which—but not all—need to be guarded against. I am in no position to comment on whether bishops may sometimes operate as commissars. However, I can see that the commissioner would be in a very distinct position from that of a chief constable, who has the eyes and ears of a police force on the ground.

Chief among my fears is that of moving towards the politicisation of the police. I fear that this will be difficult to avoid, not just because of the likelihood of candidates having a campaigning infrastructure of political parties behind them—as elected mayors have, with whom they may well be confused. That is perhaps an issue for another debate. The very nature of a democratic mandate involves policy, and one cannot separate policy from a budget because the money facilitates the implementation of the policy. Like other noble Lords, I fear that what is populist may sometimes be dangerous, and may not reflect the needs of those who can shout less loudly.

However careful and detailed the protocol—it seems to be a useful summary of the Bill which I wish I had had when I started reading the Bill—it is not a great deal more than that, and cannot change the statutory structural framework. Nor can it apply the governance. I was chair of the London Assembly budget committee when the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, was chairing the Metropolitan Police Authority. Who was the check and balance on whom, history may tell.

I wonder whether, ironically, this is a move against localism. I have a question for my noble friend. I very much welcome the fact that she has enabled the House to have a debate at this stage of the Bill. Democracy has rightly been mentioned often. Her proposed structure involves panels. Perhaps she can tell us how she envisages democracy being used in connection with the panels.

Lastly, I will be wary throughout the Bill of appearing to be either promoting or opposing the interests of a number of sectors, but particularly the police. I, too, would like to see us achieve the production of a collaborative framework. Most importantly, my noble friends and I are on the side of citizens.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, first, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, to her position. She will already have got the message from the House that we very much welcome her appointment. She comes from the other place with an excellent reputation and we very much look forward to working with her. Four years ago, I was appointed Minister for Health, and three or four days later I found myself on the first day of Committee in your Lordships' House, so I know a little of the challenge that she faces. I am grateful also to the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, for allowing us to have this very important debate.

I do not stand here pretending that our police forces are without blemish, or that there are no areas of performance that could be improved. I agree with the final point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I, too, have read the report of HMIC assessing police authorities' performance that was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dear. However, in the past 15 years we in this country have seen both a dramatic fall in crime and an improved relationship with the public and local communities. My noble friend Lady Henig gave many examples of this. More than that, there is in our police, with their political impartiality, tolerance and philosophy of policing by consent, something precious that we undermine at our peril.

Why is this being put in peril? The Government argue that police reform is needed because the current governance arrangements are not working, and because police forces look too much upwards to the Home Office. However, as far as concerns policing and crime, I do not think that the public really worry about police authorities or the name of the chairman. They are concerned about the performance of the chief constable and of the force. Surely it is right that that is where their focus is concentrated. I see no appetite among the public for this change, and certainly not for the perverse consequences that could come about. My noble friend Lord Harris described some of them. Perversely, accountability may be reduced and police forces in future may come with a political label. The noble Lord, Lord Hurd, said that there was a possibility of non-political people being elected police commissioners. Of course, that is entirely possible. However, the electoral areas are so large that it is almost inevitable that only those on party tickets, with the support of a party machine, will be successful. One should consider the cost of the elections. I suspect that it is only political parties which will be able to support candidates.

On the question of the Home Office and targets, I confess that I was once Minister for targets in the Department of Health. I once asked officials to add up how many targets we had set. By the time we got to 435, we thought we had better stop. However, some targets are important. We have drastically reduced waiting times because of targets, and I have no doubt that Home Office targets in relation to reducing crime have had a dramatic effect for the better on our communities.

Surely the role of the Home Secretary is balanced against the work of the police authority and that of the chief constable. We call it the tripartite relationship between operational independence, local accountability and national strategic direction. I have not yet heard any convincing argument that suggests that we should upset that relationship. The problem is that the Bill risks the politicisation of our police forces; conflict and confusion between the role of the police commissioner and that of the chief constable; the marginalisation of local government, and a loss of public confidence. I really regret that these proposals have not been subject to a Green Paper, a White Paper, pre-legislative scrutiny or even an assessment by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary.