Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington]

My Lords, I declare my interests: I was a serving police officer for 43 years, and my various other interests are in the House of Lords register of interests. I have concerns in relation to the Bill. I will be going through them, but your Lordships will be glad to know that I will be as quick as I possibly can.

I pay tribute to the noble Baronesses, Lady Berridge and Lady Newlove. If ever there was a description of why we have to get policing right in this country, the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, was it. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. The reason why he is so positive about HMIC is that he was an excellent Police Minister and we in HMI at the time used to take him to the local pub and regularly paid for his drinks. One of the greatest things that people do not know about him is that he was offered a Cabinet post but, because of his devotion to the police service, turned it down. We were glad about that then and we are delighted to see him in the House now.

In my view, the timing of the Bill is extraordinary. We stand at a stage when the police service in this country is facing some of the biggest changes in relation to conditions, wages and pensions that it ever has. We are also standing at a stage when—although hopefully I am wrong—there could be grave public disorder in the streets in the next 12 months to two years, and we have the Olympics around the corner as well. Morale has been quoted as being at its lowest levels; some of us have been downstairs to talk to police officers from Northumbria and other places, and certainly morale is not good. Why are we bringing in the Bill in the way that we are?

I know that in policing people will say that morale is always low. I remember a very good chief constable of mine saying, “John, if they weren’t moaning, I’d be very worried indeed”, and I suppose there was something in that. However, policing over the past 15 years has been highly successful. This was started by the noble Lord, Lord Howard, who as Home Secretary decided that police could actually affect crime and disorder in this country and created one target all about reducing crime, which he pursued as well. Policing has been a success story over the past 15 years and continues to be so. Anything that gets in the way of that success story has to be considered in other than a positive way.

I have a real problem. I was chief constable of Northumbria for five years and I cannot see one model fitting all the forces that I served in—Northumbria, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire and the Metropolitan Police. I was also an HMI for two years, inspecting some of the major forces in this country. I was also present at the appointment of 17 chief constables, the head of the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the head of the National Crime Squad. What worries me about one model fitting all is a problem that relates to Northumbria in particular. Northumberland, to the north, is a county on its own, with the boroughs that we all know so well—Newcastle and Sunderland. For one person to try to deal with the complexity of that would be extraordinary.

There is another thing with which I have a slight problem. I do not often disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Howard—we usually agree on most things, do we not? The people whom I inspected and for whom I was chief constable were not shrinking violets. I know I was a pussycat, Lord Harris. We have heard some of them today: the noble Baronesses, Lady Harris and Lady Henig, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, to name a few. There was also George Gill. All those people were and still are known in their areas and respected. That argument is perhaps not as persuasive as it should be from my experience, which may be limited.

I have a problem with the elections as well. The election of the PCCs will be conducted under the supplementary vote system, which could, through the transfer of secondary preference votes, result in a candidate being selected without having secured a clear mandate from the electorate. That in itself is worrying, bearing in mind all the comments from my colleagues and, far more eloquently, from some of the people here this evening.

Here we come to the real crux. There are two issues. One is the impact on the national policing priorities. I was lucky enough to chair the police border review. The noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, was generously part of that for the Conservative Party under David Cameron. All of its recommendations were taken up by the Conservative Party in opposition. What we discovered on border policing was that there was a mismatch between what was being delivered nationally and what was being delivered locally. One of the weaknesses has to be the question of whether the reforms to local delivery, under one person, will have an effect on national policing and its resources. Clause 79 states that PCCs and chief constables must,

“have regard to the strategic policing requirement”,

which is set out by the Home Secretary. However, this is not binding. As such, it does not go far enough in mitigating the risk of local issues being prioritised at the expense of national policing matters. That means that the local policing commissioner or chief constable will have priority over national issues.

Very quickly, on the role of chief constable, we have not seen the protocols. I am sure that the Minister is working hard on those. We were promised them by Second Reading. Some of those of us who are privileged enough to speak to the Home Secretary and the top teams have a problem with that. How can we decide about the independence of policing, and where the chief constable or the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police sits in this structure, unless we know that we have independence for the police officer who is involved in crime?

If I may, I shall end by talking as a senior investigating officer. Some time ago I looked into and investigated the National Criminal Intelligence Service; I have now been in Northern Ireland for 20 years, investigating some very difficult issues; and more recently I investigated Princess Diana’s death in Paris. The real power and confidence that I enjoyed in carrying out those investigations and the dedication of the people around me were related to one thing—that I was answerable to the law and the law alone.

Finally, this Bill is the biggest change to the constitution of policing in 150 years. It is absolutely our responsibility tonight and in the following months to ensure that we get it right even if it is carried through in a certain form, which it probably will be. If we get it wrong, we will never sleep soundly in our beds in the future.