Lord Soley
Main Page: Lord Soley (Labour - Life peer)Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Lord Soley Excerpts
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, I will speak also to Amendment 58. I begin by saying that I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, for his support for the amendment. I understand that he is still abroad. The rapid pace with which we have gone through the first two days of Committee has confounded our original expectation that this amendment might not be dealt with until the third or fourth day. That is why he is not here to speak to the amendment.
Amendment 24 deals with police and crime commissioners, police and crime commissions or whatever else we might have. Amendment 58 is a parallel amendment that deals with the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime. The principle behind both amendments is to ensure that arrangements are written into the Bill that will ensure that there is good governance. The amendments follow the principle that we should use the best practice that we know exists in other sectors for the appointment of non-executive directors to support the general direction that is being set.
Amendment 24—and Amendment 58, which is exactly parallel but applies to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime—requires each police and crime commissioner to appoint a non-executive board of between four and seven members. In the context in which we are operating, in which we are talking about police and crime commissions, a duty would still be placed on the police and crime commissioner, as constituted under Amendment 31, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, to appoint these non-executive board members. The task placed on those board members would be to work with the police and crime commissioners to ensure that there was good governance.
In the amendment, three areas are set out in which it is important that there is a very clear and transparent mechanism to support good governance in respect of the work of the police and crime commissioners or commissions, or of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime in London. The first area is that of financial decision-making. Again, this will depend on the ultimate balance that is struck in each case between the commission or commissioner, or the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, and the chief officer of police. I am working on the basis that the police and crime commission or commissioner, or the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, will be corporation sole and will have responsibility for major decisions such as the placement of contracts, financial allocation and a number of other serious financial matters. They will also be responsible for receiving audit reports and will carry out the functions that in a private sector company and on many public boards would be fulfilled by audit committees. In a series of areas where financial decisions are made, it is important that they are seen to be made not by an individual but in a good governance context in which other people are involved.
The issue of staffing is similar. Again, there will be appointments to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime or to the commission office where it will be important that the approach taken will be one of best practice and that there will be no question—as my noble friend Lord Hunt described—of someone appointing his or her chum to an office where they could end up setting the precept for a particular area. Again, it is important that there is a transparent and clear process with good governance. I suspect that there are many other staffing and human resources issues where the existence of non-executive board members who can deal with grievances, appeals and so on will be extremely valuable.
The third area that I identified in the amendment relates to the equality responsibilities that would be placed on the police and crime commission or commissioner, or on the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. I refer to equal opportunities responsibilities and diversity. Again, this responsibility obviously could be exercised by an individual, but would be much better exercised with the opportunity for challenge by others, including non-executive board members. Some equality issues would involve looking inwards within the organisation of the commission or commissioner's office, or within the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, but some would be external and would involve looking at how the police service operates in that area.
In this respect, there are a number of ethical questions where having non-executive board members would be extremely valuable. The Human Rights Act places obligations on all public bodies to act in a way that is proportionate, appropriate and so on. Again, if this is left solely to an individual, the only outcome if there is a dispute is recourse to the courts. Having an ethical challenge mechanism built into the structure is important and helpful. The amendment also states that non-executive directors would be responsible not only for good governance, but could support the police and crime commission or commissioners, or the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, in their functions. That is deliberately phrased in a wide way, not in a way that requires things to be done in a particular fashion. It would enable certain functions or responsibilities to be delegated to support the work of the policing and crime commissioner or commission. It would enable individuals to be asked, for example, to investigate particular matters, issues or concerns from local communities, or perhaps to take an overview of particular concerns affecting those communities. An individual might be delegated on behalf of the commission or commissioner to oversee the way that stop and search is being used by the police force; or one or more non-executive board members might be tasked with looking at other specific issues. It is a way of ensuring that the workload of the person charged with this responsibility, whether the commission, commissioners or mayor’s office, could be spread and managed effectively. For that reason it is extremely important.
The amendment also makes arrangements that would ensure that these appointments, and the arrangements for remuneration of expenses, are subject to approval by the relevant police and crime panel. That could also apply in the Government's original model of the Bill. It would ensure that the other members of the policing and crime commission in the model envisaged in Amendment 31 would have responsibility for the oversight of the mechanisms by which these non-executive directors were appointed.
The reasoning behind the amendment is a desire to ensure that individuals do not act on their own. Clearly, if we have the model envisaged by Amendment 31, the policing and crime commissioner will act in accordance with a policing and crime panel and together they will form the commission. However, that does not remove the desirability of a requirement to have a non-executive presence in that structure. It would ensure that the elected members who are part of the policing and crime panel are leavened with other individuals who would act in a non-executive capacity. In circumstances in which a single individual fulfils this role—the Government’s preferred model—the amendment will ensure that that individual does not act alone and is not in a position where they can act capriciously. It does not undermine the principle that that individual is elected to fulfil a particular role in the Government’s model. However, it does address some of the concerns expressed by Members of your Lordships' House in this Committee and at Second Reading about ensuring that there is a structure around that individual which ensures that they cannot act capriciously. If you like, it is a bit like the Roman emperors who had around them someone to remind them that they were mortal. There is the danger that individuals who have this huge responsibility for perhaps very substantial areas of the country may lose sight of what is or is not reasonable. This is part of a structure of ensuring that they act reasonably, appropriately, proportionately and with the widest interests of the public at large.
That is not to say that I believe that if there was a directly elected policing and crime commissioner, they would automatically act capriciously; nor am I suggesting that the mere fact of being directly elected prevents it, or that your judgment automatically disappears because you are directly elected. I have been elected too often in the past to various bodies not to have that view. However, if you are a single individual whose checks and balances are remote and in arrears, you need that governance structure around you. If I were in that position, I would want to have it. I know of individuals who may find themselves in this position in future who would want to have that arrangement around them simply to ensure that there can be no question about the nature and quality of the decisions that they take, and that there is a structure around them that good governance follows.
That is the process that is envisaged in this amendment. The purpose is to make this work better and to avoid the concerns about the single individual. Even in the context of Amendment 31 and a police and crime commission, this is designed to ensure that that system works better. We all know of examples of organisations with executive members where the value of the non-executives who sit with them is extremely important in making sure that decisions are taken properly and that the right degree of external challenge takes place before those decisions are finalised. My noble friend Lord Hunt is very experienced in the health service—as am I at a slightly greater distance—and there are plenty of other examples. Even government departments these days have non-executive directors supporting the management board of the department concerned. Indeed, I believe that that was made a priority by the new Government, who perhaps wanted a different style of non-executive director from those which existed before, and who brought in some leading figures from the business community to fulfil the role. It is a concept with which the Government are familiar.
Again, the amendment is put forward to try to assist the Government to make whatever system emerges at the end of the strange sausage-making process that is our legislative system in this country work better. I hope that the Committee will support me in my belief that the presence of non-executive directors in this context will be extremely helpful. I beg to move.
Lord Soley
I rise briefly to support my noble friend who has brought forward a thoughtful amendment. I like this approach which is very much about good governance. He has picked the right numbers of between four and seven, and the right topics, those of finance, staff and equality issues. The only thing I am a little uncertain about, and which we might need to flesh out if the amendment is accepted, is how these non-executives would be appointed. I have some reservations about the commissioner being able to appoint all of them and I am not sure how the process would work.
At this stage I want simply to say that my noble friend, who has a lot of experience, has also thought carefully about the good governance issue. On these topics, non-executive directors can be very good at blowing the whistle and spotting problems as they come up. They are also good at taking some of the pressure off the commissioner, particularly on staff and financing. In that role, non-executive directors can be very productive. I wish to support my noble friend.
Lord Dear
My Lords, since 1997 I have been continuously engaged as a non-executive director or a non-executive chairman, so I understand the environment we are talking about. It is difficult to argue against the principle that has been put forward by the noble Lord in proposing his amendment. However, I have a number of reservations. It seems that four to seven non-executive directors plus a panel is getting a bit cumbersome. I understand the principle of the non-executives arising from the Cadbury report, the Hampel report and others. Businesses quite rightly find themselves almost being pushed into the mode of having to have non-executive advice.
It is the word “shall” in the amendment that bothers me. I assume that it is a paving amendment and I hope that it will be withdrawn, but perhaps it is a proposal for the Minister to take back. In short, I applaud the principle of non-executive advice, but I am not sure whether four, five, six or seven non-executives should be in place at any one time. It could be that the non-executives advise the panel rather than the PCC. In short, the whole principle of the non-executive is one to look at closely. I am not sure that it should be mandatory.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in my name in this group. In so doing, I point out that this clutch of amendments effectively relates to local government, as did the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Harris. In that context, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I am in excellent company. My noble friend Lord Harris is a vice-president, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is a vice-president and the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, is a vice-president. Even the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is a vice-president—for the time being.
I shall just refer to the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who spoke eloquently and aptly about what we might call the tactical level of policing. My amendments address the slightly more strategic level and the need for local government to be involved there. Both levels are of course very important. Amendment 68A seeks to require the police commissioner, or perhaps the police commission, to,
“consult local authorities in the police area and have regard for their views”,
in relation to police and crime plans before they are published, thus involving the local authorities in the policies of the commissioner or commission. Amendment 80A concerns the Secretary of State’s powers to consult before issuing guidance on a range of matters. This would again include,
“consultation with the relevant local authorities”.
Amendment 86A is concerned largely with information. It seeks to add “the relevant local authorities” to those bodies to which the annual report should be sent. Amendments 86B and 86C would enable the chief constable to attend public gatherings alongside the commissioner or commission and give a personal response to reports, in addition to any response given by the commissioner.
Amendment 91A contains a requirement to obtain the views of relevant local authorities on the police and crime plan and the precept. That is not an inconsiderable matter given that, as I have pointed out before, the precept in England will amount to 11 per cent of council tax and a higher proportion—15.5 per cent—in Wales. Therefore, it seems legitimate and, indeed, important that local authorities, among others, should be consulted about the precept. Moreover, who should be regarded as ratepayers’ representatives? It seems sensible to suggest that local authorities should at least be consulted about who should be regarded as ratepayers’ representatives. Incidentally, the Government are a ratepayer in various manifestations. It will be interesting to hear from the Minister how it is envisaged that the Government might play a role in this process, whether through the National Health Service or some other government agency.
Amendment 167A also seeks to involve local authorities in determining what neighbourhoods are in the relevant police area. It does not seem plausible that that should be determined by the Secretary of State without consulting the very body that is best able to determine what constitutes a neighbourhood, or that, given the size of force areas, it should be left to the police authority, however it is constituted. I am suggesting that local authorities should be consulted on that issue, not that they should just be the sole voice in making that determination.
Amendment 226A concerns representative bodies that the Secretary of State is required to consult on a range of issues. The amendment suggests that he should be required to consult also the Local Government Authority, the Welsh Local Government Authority—that should be “association”, not “authority”; it is a typographical mistake—and,
“any body representing police and crime panels; any other body the Secretary of State deems appropriate”.
Therefore, the amendment would not restrict the Secretary of State’s consultation but would encourage him to consult representatives of local government. It is impossible to consider an effective crime and community safety agenda without looking at the responsibilities of local authorities across a range of services which they provide. Whatever may emerge from this legislation, we will still have relatively small bodies of people, with or without executive responsibilities, covering very substantial areas in terms of geography and population. Those areas have local authority services ranging from housing to planning, transportation, environmental issues and education. Most of those services impinge in one way or another on the crime and safety issues with which the relevant authority, however constituted, will ultimately be involved.
This group of amendments is designed to ensure the closest collaboration between the different agencies involved, local government and the policing agencies, in conjunction with the powers of the Secretary of State, so that we have a holistic approach. Surely that is consistent with the policy of community budgeting, which used to be called Total Place, which envisaged looking across an area at all the relevant public services. In that context, it is surely important for local government to have a strong voice and, to a degree, to hold accountable the police service at the relevant strategic level of the local authority as well as at the lower neighbourhood and district levels, as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, pointed out, which may be the concern of most people on a day-to-day basis.
Lord Soley
I give strong support to this group of amendments. I regard them as particularly important. The reason why they are important will become clear if we think about our recent history, by which I mean policing in the 1970s and 1980s, and not just in London. My noble friend Lord Harris referred to Broadwater Farm. I went to Broadwater Farm. I saw the late Bernie Grant there before he was an MP and afterwards. I went to Brixton when the town hall there was virtually surrounded and the fires were burning; the councillors were trapped and almost prisoners. But it was not just in London. I went to the Meadowell Estate in Newcastle, where Lord Scarman also went. It was not about racism there. Clearly, racism in the police force was a particularly serious problem at that time, but Meadowell had no black people. The Meadowell Estate system had broken down. There were different problems there.
When I went to speak to one of the groups there, they were all women; not a man was there. When I asked where the men were, they became defensive and said, “Remember, there are no jobs here; there is nothing for them”. The women had taken over running the locality in that sense. At the time, I had an involvement in policing generally and was at one stage the shadow policing spokesman for the Labour Party. The message I got from going to many such areas, leaving aside the issue of police racism, was that there was an almost total breakdown between local authorities and the police. That had happened not just in London or other areas of high ethnic diversity but other areas.
If we go back to newspapers of that era, we read stories about concern among the police and the Conservative Party that if police and local authorities were forced to get together, there would be the very danger that we have been talking about under the Bill: that local authorities would somehow exert political control. That was the worry and the debate. As I said when the noble Lord, Lord Howard, was in the Chamber, that was when the Labour Party took the view that there ought to be elected police commissioners. I was very doubtful about that theory, and I still am, but it came about because of the breakdown between the local political structures and the police. We found in various areas, including mine at the time, that the police were very reluctant to talk to local authorities and, when the local authorities talked to them, it was often done in a conflictual way. The local authority would say, “Why don’t you do this?”, and the police would say, “This is our business, not yours”.
We will come later in the Bill to the other area that troubles me greatly, which is the lack of clarity about crime prevention. The key here is that we must never again go back to the situation that we had in the 1970s and 1980s—indeed, even in the 1960s, if we consider Notting Hill—where the relationship between the police and local authorities was, at best, non-existent and, at worst, hostile. If we go back to that system or that situation, we will get big problems again. It may be, as it was in Meadowell, a rundown out-of-town estate which has no jobs or it may be on the basis of ethnicity, but something will be the trigger for a breakdown. The lack of co-ordination between the police and local authorities will aggravate that, or indeed almost create it at times. It did create it in certain areas.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Clearly this is a question on which we need to reflect further. As regards priorities and different stakeholders, my limited experience of community safety partnerships is that they bring together people from the local council and from other services in a way that works extraordinarily well. That is part of what has contributed to the reduction of crime in our cities.
Lord Soley
On this point, the danger is not that commissioners will certainly say, “I am not going to talk to them”; it is that we will drift back into a situation where they just do not do so. This is the case for putting this in the Bill. If we allow that to happen, it will not be that the relationships necessarily will be bad; I suspect that if one went back to the 1920s or 1930s, they were quite good at various times when those sorts of contacts were happening. However, we need to make sure that we do not go back to what was happening in the 1960s to 1980s.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I simply add, in response to an earlier comment by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that in the Bill the duty on police authorities to consult ratepayers is exactly the same as the current duty. There is no new dimension.
The role of police and crime panels is important here. They will include representatives of all the local authorities in the police area: district authorities as well as top-tier authorities where there are two-tier local government arrangements. The panel will have the power to require the police and crime commissioner to provide information and to attend a meeting of the panel to answer questions, to make reports and recommendations to the police and crime commissioner, and to require the police and crime commissioner to respond in writing to those reports and recommendations. These strong powers would be sufficient to allow local authorities to scrutinise and inform the ways in which the police and crime commissioner carries out their duties.
This is part of what we will be discussing: how the police and crime panel will relate to the police and crime commissioner, and the checks and balances between them. That will be part of the way in which we ensure that local authorities continue to play a useful and central role in representing local communities. However, I think that everyone accepts, as with community safety partnerships, that we have gained by including not only local authorities but other stakeholders in the local community. For these reasons, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.