Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I have put my name to the amendments to which the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, referred. It is extraordinarily anomalous that two Bills that we will be considering at the same time in your Lordships’ House have such very different provisions for the role of the London Assembly and the strategies of the mayor. It seems sensible that they are made consistent. The proposal that the London Assembly has the power to reject—or, when it comes to the Localism Bill, perhaps even amend—the plan is extremely important and it would be sensible if the power was consistent across the two pieces of legislation.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We have another complex and technical set of amendments here. I listened with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, although I was not quite sure when he came to his conclusion whether he was referring to organising crime prevention or organised crime prevention.

[Lord Soley]

Organising crime prevention.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We are all clear, and it is clearly the intent of the Bill, that the police and crime plan will be one of the core documents which will govern the relationship between the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable and will provide the basis for scrutiny by the police and crime panel. It is a core document. However, we insist that it should not be governed by an absolutely fixed calendar that, on 1 April every year, there must be a new annual crime plan, which is what is suggested in the amendment.

The intention behind the Bill is that, on being elected to office, a new police and crime commissioner should prepare and publish, in consultation with a range of others—including the chief constable and the police and crime panel, of course, but not exclusively them—a police and crime plan which may last for the full term of office but which may be varied. That is to allow a degree of flexibility. It is not intended that he should vary it every week; indeed, it states clearly in Clause 5 that, in variation, a number of people have to be consulted, including the chief constable. If you wish to vary the plan, you naturally again consult the appropriate people, including those whom you expect to carry it out.

[Lord Soley]

Can the Minister clarify one question I asked him? Does the crime plan mean crime prevention plan or is it something else? If so, what does it mean?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is clear throughout the Bill that the reduction of crime, which involves the prevention of crime, is core to everything. Clause 7(1)(a) states that the plan must include the PCC's police and crime objectives. Later, Clause 7 defines police and crime objectives as including objectives for crime and disorder reduction. In Clause 102, crime and disorder reduction is defined as,

“reduction of crime and disorder (including antisocial and other behaviour and adversely affecting the local environment) … combating the misuse of drugs, alcohol and other substances, and … reduction of reoffending”.

I recognise that part of what the noble Lord, Lord Soley, wants to get at is the range of other agencies involved in crime prevention beyond the police. We all recognise that crime prevention in the broadest sense, as well as the reduction of reoffending, is not a matter for the police alone and involves much of the work of community safety partnerships working with a range of other agencies, some public and others in the voluntary sector. That is a problem we have in all aspects of government: however you draw the line for the number of the tasks that you wish to perform, you must always co-operate with others.

We had not anticipated that the question of funding would come into the debate on the amendment but, as the noble Lord is well aware, crime prevention is funded partly through the police, partly through local authorities and partly through the Ministry of Justice and Home Office budgets through a range of channels, in which community and safety partnerships play a large role. In recent months, I visited a number in Yorkshire. They are examples of different agencies, including the police, working together to reduce inner-city crime, burglary, drugs-related crime and alcohol-related crime and so on. That is very much part of what has been practised over the past 15 or 20 years, and much of what happened under the previous Government contributed to that. As we all know, alcohol and drug-related crime is a very serious problem, and we will touch on some aspects of that during later stages of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley]

My noble friend anticipates me because I was going to finish on this. It is a relevant point. Leaving aside some of the wider issues of accountability, election and so on, my fear is that we will lose what has been gained over many years by many groups, including local authorities under different party control. We will lose that if we do not have a clear requirement for a crime prevention plan. This is when amendments from Back-Benchers are not as good as government amendments. We must address the issue of crime statistics in the area, not simply rely on the electorate to tell the chief officer what they want done. Does the Minister not see the problem that the loudest voices will determine the priority, instead of the statistics of the crime perhaps determining the policies towards reducing those crime patterns? Do I make sense?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I can half see the problem but I am not fully persuaded that crime is quite so pocketed in one area. I am conscious that in West Yorkshire every weekend, very well off young people pour into the middle of Leeds, Wakefield and elsewhere and there is quite a lot of alcohol-related crime, which is focused in one area. It is not where they live, so things spill out from one area to another. The reduction of crime in some of the rougher areas of the region has benefited areas elsewhere. People do not always carry out burglaries in the places in which they live. They move to other areas as well. The noble Lord may be exaggerating the problem that the level of co-operation that we have among different agencies and between local authorities and the police is likely to be severely damaged by this development. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, adds, as a sort of conspiracy theory, that the Government are trying to shovel off responsibility. I suggest that neither of those things is correct.

[Lord Soley]

I ask the Minister to sit down and talk with his own noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond, who does understand this. I agree that patterns of crime are widely varied and that is why you should work on the basis of statistics. If your main aim is to please an electorate you deal with the loudest voices. That is the reality of elections. It is not just in inner-city areas. You get a pattern where people are worried and set up Neighbourhood Watch—a good thing which nobody is against—and do all these other things, such as coming to meetings with the police to ask them about a particular burglary, or whatever. In the poorer crime hotspots, where burglaries are more common, there is little addressed on that unless you have a very good local authority which then does a range of things, such as putting in caretakers, and all the other things that go with that. What we are doing here is saying that there is a crime plan and that we will fund some of the things, as indicated in Clause 9, but giving no indication of what will happen when other organisations, most notably the Home Office—or a local authority, for that matter—withdraw the funding and say that it is over to the crime plan to replace that.

As my noble friend on the Front Bench said, I would almost predict that crime goes up again and continues to go up if we do not give a clear direction to those organisations to take on crime prevention in a very clear way, based on statistics of crime. An MP in an area can then look at the different aspects, not just in relation to the election of the police commissioner but focusing on those statistics and reducing them in each area. If you do not do that, it will be the electorate who are most interested in the issue, in middle-class areas where crime is lower. In working-class areas with high rates of crime they may rattle the bars of councillors but they will not necessarily get the same crime prevention plan. That is what has happened in the past—we do not need to look in a crystal ball—and that is what we must avoid. I ask the Minister to look at this again. If he wants crime prevention to be done by another body, or to keep it as it is, we need to be clear about that. The alternative is to give it to these bodies but recognise the financial implications.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as it happens, next week I will be taken round one of the poorer areas of Leeds by the head of the neighbourhood police. The police there are extremely proud of what they have achieved through the neighbourhood police forum and through neighbourhood policing. It is absolutely what we need to continue. I will reflect on what the noble Lord has said, both before and after my visit. We are all aware that neighbourhood policing, and working with local communities—poor as well as better off—are very much part of the future of policing and what we all want to do. I do not see the problem at which the noble Lord is gnawing, so to speak.

[Lord Soley]

I will wait to see what happens. I simply say to the Minister that crime prevention policy should be based primarily on the statistics of crime and should not depend on who votes for whom and when. I urge the Minister to be aware of the danger in the Bill of not having a clear policy on crime prevention. It is extraordinary that the Bill does not mention crime prevention as a core issue. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.