Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, it is a late hour, but that is not anyone’s doing, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has sustained greater insults than that in his career.

I am not sure, either, what Amendment 155 is doing in this group. It was in another group. I observed that it should be in a group on London and this is where it ended up. It is one of a number of amendments that say that the London Assembly should be able to decide its own procedures and how it works as a policing and crime panel. However, we will debate that point in another group.

I have considerable sympathy with these amendments on the City of London. I am asking myself why there is a separate force and why the issue has not been brought within what seems entirely the right vehicle for addressing the matter. I can only assume that it is in the filing tray that has “too hard” written on it and that the Government are unwilling to take on the City. But it is an important issue. If we are being asked, as we are, to look at inserting democracy into the governance of our policing arrangements, the City should not be exempt from that. They have a lot of experience of elections in the City—there is no problem in carrying that out.

There are so many anomalies, with the separate precepting arrangements and what has always seemed to me unnecessary bureaucracy and complication because of the division. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, referred to expertise, and I accept that there is enormous expertise, but it is transferable and needs to be so, because whether or not the City likes it London’s financial centre is not only where it used to be. It has moved eastwards, and the expertise in fraud and other matters specific to business are no longer, in the 21st century, relevant only to the Square Mile.

This Bill is the right context for this debate. There is a considerable distinction between this issue and that of teachers’ salaries in 1944, and I am sorry that the Government have not felt able to extend the new governance arrangements to the whole of England.

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, this is clearly a perfectly legitimate amendment and this is clearly the time when the issues that this amendment raises ought to be discussed. They ought to be discussed as part of this Bill. Having listened to the complaint that this is not a matter that should be discussed late in the evening, I am not sure whether that means—if the Minister is not going to accept the amendment—that if it appeared at Report stage at five o’clock in the afternoon it would be universally welcomed and supported. I was not quite clear on the significance of the comment about the time of day.

Clearly, the purpose of the amendment is to bring the arrangements for the City of London in line with the proposals for the rest of England and Wales—and one looks forward to the explanation that we will receive from the Minister as to why, one assumes, the Government are not entirely enthusiastic about going down this road. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made the interesting and relevant point that, if the argument is that you need a separate police force for the City of London because it is a financial centre, it should be taken into account that we now have around Canary Wharf another financial centre. Presumably, it is under the Metropolitan Police, unless I am to be told otherwise. If the Metropolitan Police is considered to have the expertise to handle the issues that might arise there, why is it not considered that it could encompass, by taking over or by merger, the City of London Police as well? The Metropolitan Police force has considerable expertise which is recognised internationally and which is used on a national basis in England and Wales, not simply confined to its area. Yet the inference through having a separate force for the City of London is that somehow the Metropolitan Police, despite the expertise that it has, would just not be able to cope.

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[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

Would the noble Lord care to answer one thing? Will he comment on why the previous Labour Government, against what I would have thought were all their natural instincts, chose to confer on the City of London Corporation the right to have elections for democratic representation in the City, in which all businesses in the City were allowed to have a vote that was calculated in a particular way? Indeed, they pressed the Corporation to go down that route. Was it really not because there was a recognition that the City at large worked extraordinarily well and that fiddling around with it was not a very profitable use of time, not least in the context of the City of London's success?

[Lord Rosser]

I do not know specifically what the reasons were. They may well have been those that the noble Lord has said. However, I am not sure that that necessarily applies to an argument about the City of London Police, which is what we are discussing, particularly in the context of the expertise which the Metropolitan Police has—and in the context that the City of London is no longer the only financial centre in London. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, the financial centre has moved further east to an extent and nobody has said that those responsible should set up or extend the powers of the City of London Police to cover those new centres, which presumably come under the Metropolitan Police.

It is not irrelevant for this question to be asked when we are talking about a major reorganisation of our police forces, with a major change in how they are run and in governance. Maybe there is a good answer, and I am waiting to hear what the Minister has to say, but the question should be asked: did the Government look at the issue of the retention of the City of London Police and was it justified? If so, what were the reasons for coming to the decision that they did, bearing in mind that they think that all other police forces should be covered by the changes that they are putting forward in this Bill?

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate. I am very grateful to noble Lords for the history that has been contributed. Not much of it appeared in my notes but it has helped me to put into context the City of London and the role of its police. I hope noble Lords will not mind if I begin by paying tribute to that police force. It is a small force but it has in recent times dealt with significant investigations and major incidents. It has dealt with them and acquitted itself extremely well. Because of its position it has a national role. I hear what has been said about the movement of financial services around not only the country but the globe. None the less, the force has taken a lead in tackling white-collar crime that continues today.

When the noble Lord, Lord Harris, began, I thought this would be one of those sublime moments when, as a politician, one could sit back, listen to two arguments and make up one’s mind as to which was the more persuasive. As a Minister, I do not have that luxury, as Members will know, more is the pity. It would be very nice to do so. However, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, lost me when he mentioned motoring offences in comparison with what my noble friend Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville said about the much more significant and recent role that this police force has played. Neither the Mayor of London nor the Metropolitan Police Authority has a role in the governance of the City of London Police.

The position of the Common Council as the police authority for the City of London Police has, as we have heard, remained essentially unchanged. It was not altered by the Police Act 1996, which created the police authorities that currently exist outside London. Nor, I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, was it changed when his Government introduced the Greater London Authority Act 1999, which created the Metropolitan Police Authority. Therefore, when he asked me why we are not doing this and said that the amendments are reasonable, I noted that he did not refer at all to what his own Government did. I assume they, too, when they were legislating for London would have looked at this issue. There was no offering or crumb there to persuade me that the previous Labour Government looked at this and decided that it was an appropriate thing to do.

[Lord Rosser]

The Minister’s argument is that she has been so overwhelmed by the decision of the previous Labour Government that it cannot possibly be challenged or questioned. Is that the argument for keeping the City of London Police?

[Baroness Browning]

Not at all, my Lords. We studied very closely the actions or lack of actions of the previous Labour Government. I assure the noble Lord that they are on our radar screen all the time. However, we have this situation not just because of the many years that the City of London Police has been in place but because of the exemplary way in which it conducts itself. The size of the population of the City of London has been mentioned. There are 8,000 voters but one must put that in the context of there being 25 wards in the City, of which only four have residents. To translate that into representation would be quite complex. The City of London is unique and has unique policing governance to recognise that fact. I suspect that various Governments down the years have looked at this and probably all came to the same conclusion. It operates on a non-party political basis through its lord mayor, aldermen and the members of the Court of Common Council. The governance is tailored to the particular institutions and traditions of the City of London. I am sorry to disappoint your Lordships, but it is not my intention to change that tonight. I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

I intervene very briefly. When I am attending your Lordships' House, I stay in a club in my former constituency. In the 1930s, a Duke was slumbering in that club after lunch one day when he became conscious that a man and a woman had entered the room. He waited until they had left and then pressed a bell. The club servant arrived and said, “You rang, your Grace?”. The Duke said, “What was that?”. The club servant said, “That, your Grace, was the club secretary and Her Majesty the Queen”. “Thin end of the wedge”, said the Duke, shut his eyes and went to sleep again.

I will not expand on the point at this hour of the night, but I wanted the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, to know that I have noticed, as the thin end of the wedge, that the City of London again creeps into his Amendment 50.

[Lord Rosser]

One reads with interest the amendment, which, as my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey said, provides for the deputy mayor for policing and crime to be elected, on the basis that it ought to be done on the same terms as the Government proposed for everywhere else in the country under the Bill, namely, for the police commissioner to be directly elected. Clearly, as long as the Bill remains as it is, where there is no elected police commissioner, we will not press for the deputy mayor for policing and crime to be elected. We will be consistent and say that we will stick with the same arrangement in London as the Bill currently has, having been amended by your Lordships' House.

If the Government are to make an effort in future to restore elected police and crime commissioners to the Bill, it would appear rather odd if they did not also say that, if that is what is to happen outside London, Londoners should also be able directly to elect the person who in reality will be responsible for policing. The arrangement that we appear to have at present is for an elected mayor to appoint a deputy mayor, who takes over the role that, if the Government get their way, an elected police commissioner will have elsewhere. I suppose the only parallel—although it is hardly a parallel—is that, if we had elected police commissioners and one were suspended or otherwise unable to operate, that elected police commissioner would, as the Bill stands, appoint someone from their own staff to act in their stead. The arrangement that we appear to be moving towards in London is not that of the mayor waiting to be suspended or otherwise unable to act before appointing someone, but that the mayor, immediately he or she comes into office, appoints someone else to act as the deputy mayor responsible for policing and crime.

We look forward to the Minister’s response on this. As I said, as long as the Bill remains as it is without elected police commissioners, we do not wish to be inconsistent by saying that the deputy mayor for policing and crime in London should be elected. However, if the Government intend to try to restore elected police commissioners to the Bill, we look forward to their explanation of why they think Londoners should not be able to elect the person responsible for policing as well.

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, these amendments would prevent the mayor holding the mayor’s office for policing and crime and would instead create an elected deputy mayor for policing and crime to hold that office.

This Government’s policy is to introduce a directly elected police and crime commissioner in every force area in England and Wales outside London but, as your Lordships are only too well aware, these provisions have been removed from the Bill. It therefore seems rather odd that your Lordships should now be debating whether those self-same provisions should apply to the Metropolitan Police Service. I noted the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, about wanting to remain consistent. However, having struck out from the Bill the part that proposed elected police and crime commissioners, your Lordships now seem to be applying the same arguments to elect the deputy mayor for London.

The Government had not intended to introduce a new elected person to hold the police to account in London for the very simple reason that the whole of London already elects a single person to take responsibility for strategic issues such as policing, and that of course is the Mayor of London. The mayor is in the unique position of having responsibility for a whole force area and, as such, it seems sensible for him to have overall responsibility for holding the police to account as well.

The amendment would create a situation in which both the mayor and the deputy mayor had a direct democratic mandate across a whole force area, although they might have different ideas about what should happen. I do not think that that could work. It is right and fitting that the mayor should take on formal responsibility for holding the Metropolitan Police to account and, in turn, the mayor should be directly accountable to the public for how that is done. I am tempted to say to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, “Nice try”, but I regret that I am not able to accept his amendment.