Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Imbert Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Imbert]

My Lords, like other noble Lords this afternoon, I must declare an interest. I was attested as a constable in the Metropolitan Police in the year that the current commissioner—the real commissioner—was born and I served in every rank in the police service, from constable to chief constable and commissioner. We all know the expression, “like the curate's egg”. It is an appropriate way to describe the Bill. It has some good bits and there is potential for the reform proposals, such as the new strategic policing requirement and national crime agency, to be forces for good. Yet I hope that the new national crime agency will not be just a cheaper, remodelled and less effective SOCA by another name. Like the curate's egg, however, if you swallow a bad bit it is likely to prove fatal to the whole. Your Lordships will not be surprised to know that I, too, consider the fatal bits to be the proposals that there should be elected party-political commissioners for crime and policing.

To call him or her a commissioner is deliberately misleading. We have two commissioners in this country: the Commissioner of the City of London Police and the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. This newly elected politician is not a commissioner. Despite the Bill being littered with assurances that the operational decisions will remain in the hands of the chief constable—methinks they doth protest too much—let us be realistic. This will not be so in practice. A visiting politician to your Lordships’ House recently said to me, “Of course we will become involved in the operational decisions—that’s why we’re politicians; it’s our nature and purpose to be involved”. To call him or her a commissioner will imbue him or her with the king’s clothes, as the final arbiter of the chief constable’s decisions. The correct definition is not “commissioner”, but—as my noble friend Lord Elystan-Morgan said this afternoon, either on purpose or by accident—“commissar”. If you look at the dictionary definition of that, you will see that it is an official charged with political education. That is who it will be.

ACPO, with which I have naturally spoken, is determined not to get involved in an unseemly political argument with Government as to the election of PCCs or the disbandment of police authorities. As to the proposed system of PCCs or alternatives, however uncomfortable it might be with the proposal it is clear in acknowledging that it is Parliament's decision who holds the chief constable to account, and how. Despite its widespread doubts—and indeed there are widespread doubts—about the current proposals, it will accept them because they will, of course, work in some areas. That is what police do. If Parliament commands it, they will do their best to continue to give their public the highest level of impartial policing they possibly can.

Noble Lords will be only too well aware that police, like all other public services, will be facing a severe cut in their resources—a 20 per cent reduction. They will of course grumble, but they will get on with it; that is their nature. Many different estimates have been voiced about how many front-line personnel will be withdrawn. Again, despite the cutbacks and their present low morale—because of the danger to their public service pensions for which they have paid and continue to contribute at an incomparably high 11 per cent of their salary—they will get on with it, because that is what they do. We should value that, rather than kicking them again and again.

What are we all worrying about? I am grateful to the Minister for correcting my information in a question that I posed recently; I had understood that the Government would be spending more than £200 million on a system provided for an elected politician to set the police budget and hire, fire and suspend the chief constable as he or she might decide. Are we not fortunate—as the noble Baroness assured me—that it is not £200 million but only £50 million? That is only the beginning, as my noble friend Lord Condon said earlier this afternoon. There is accommodation and other paraphernalia that will go with it. The commissar in every force in the country is likely to receive a salary of something well over £100,000—after all, he would need to be well above the chief constable, would he not? The Bill also makes provision for a well qualified staff for this individual, and the commissar and his staff will want acceptable office accommodation and furniture: carpets, desks, chairs, telephones, headed stationery, computers and printer equipment. That is every force in the country. It is beginning to sound a bit more like £200 million, is it not?

Is it not ironic that we can find all this and much more to ensure that we can introduce this discredited American system, at the same time as we accept that London will lose 700 ambulance drivers to make up a similar amount, a £52 million shortfall? My Lords, do not have a heart attack or a stroke or a sudden illness in the Palace of Westminster after the end of this year, or you will have to get a bus or a taxi to take you to St Thomas's. And who will be there to attend to you? I am told that there will be a severe shortfall of nurses because we cannot afford them. May I be forgiven for thinking that if only we had that £50 million that is planned to be spent on mending something that is not broken and calling it reform—a new definition for reform—we might have enough nursing and ambulance personnel to continue to provide their vital, life-saving work?

I shall leave the incredible costs of this idea to one side for a moment. The originators of this Bill have undoubtedly missed the most important point: that police are not government or political appointees or agents. The office of constable is a Crown appointment, and all officers take an oath at the beginning of their service which begins:

“I (full name) do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve the Queen”—

yes, the Queen—

“in the office of constable, with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality”.

I emphasise that they are not civil servants but Crown servants, who discharge their duties impartially according to law and not according to a political instruction, preference or whim.

Those who are of the same political persuasion as the Bill's originators will, understandably, no doubt vote for this part of the Bill, but how will they feel when we have the first National Front, British National Party or other extremist party-political commissar? Please let us not put our heads in the sand. Let us not ignore that; it could, and no doubt will, happen. How will the chief constable respond if he believes or has information that a planned march or demonstration is likely to result in very serious public disorder, but it is also known that the commissar is of the same political persuasion as the march organisers?

It has already been mentioned this afternoon by noble Lords that a recent YouGov poll showed that 65 per cent of those polled did not want any change from the present system, 15 per cent agreed with it, and 20 per cent did not know. The poll was commissioned by Liberty, which I admit has not been my comfortable bedfellow very often. It is difficult to ignore a poll like this, which shows that a large and representative section of our society is against this proposal, with only a few in favour.

If the Bill is to go through unamended, will we next find a proposal using similar arguments—that we do not know the name of our High Court judges—for the election of High Court judges on a party-political basis? It might sound dramatic, but we would be failing in our duties if we did not remind ourselves that in Germany in the 1930s political direction and action took precedence over real policing of society, as it did in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, 1960s and very early 1970s. I emphasise that I am not saying that that would happen here, but we must beware of the opportunities for an insidious and subtle political creep into ordinary daily even-handed policing decisions.

The Bill as it stands will be the valedictory address for the global reputation of the British police service—the final eulogy for British policing as the world has come to know, admire and emulate it. No longer will we be asked to travel the globe to help and train foreign police forces in the traditional way laid down by Sir Robert Peel in this country.

As I went through the Bill I made some comments in the margin. Against the election of PCCs I put two comments: one was “dangerous” and the other, if your Lordships will forgive the expression, was “daft”. I realise that to use “daft” is discourteous and would upset many of my Conservative friends, and I have many—at least, I did have until today. Instead of using “dangerous and daft”, I turned to my thesaurus and decided that it would be better to say “dangerous and ill advised”—in fact, grossly ill advised.

Do we cast Peel’s concept of an impartial and entrusted system of policing to the dustbin, and accept that something that has been an example to the rest of the world must now imitate a failed and untrustworthy system from across the Atlantic where another culture prevails? If we want real and well thought-through reform let us do what the Police Federation has, over the past 10 years, been asking for and have a royal commission. Do not let us legislate in haste and repent in future.