Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I am sure that if the noble Lord were to move to Lancashire, that could be arranged. Although I think that that would be an interesting and enticing prospect, and no doubt incredibly scary for the chief constable of Kent, I wonder whether the damascene conversion that the noble Lord, Lord Howard, has described to us several times would not have been made easier had his original proposals for police authorities been subjected to a series of pilots. He could then perhaps have discovered at an earlier point that the model he initially favoured was flawed.

[Lord Wasserman]

My Lords, as a former professional social scientist I welcome the enthusiasm in this House for pilot studies. However, like so much else in life, there is a right place for pilots and a wrong place. I am afraid that the circumstances we are discussing are very much the wrong place for pilots. I hope that your Lordships will allow me to explain why I say this and to do so by reference to the findings of academic experts.

The use of pilots in political or social research is discussed at some length in a book which I commend to your Lordships which can be found in the Library entitled, Research Methods in Politics. The book begins by pointing out that,

“there are times when … a trial run or pilot has considerable advantages. In particular, to test the data collection instruments such as the questionnaire and the sample design”.

Indeed, the Home Secretary herself is a great believer in the use of pilots in the appropriate context. In a speech that she gave about two months ago—I am sure that some noble Lords will have seen it—she announced not one but two new pilots. The first was related to her wish to allow the police to charge more offences themselves. She said:

“We will pilot doubling the number of charges transferred to police officers”.

She added that if the pilot was successful and the scheme was rolled out fully, it could save up to,

“40,000 hours of police officer time”.

In the same speech she announced that the Home Office was working with ACPO to ensure that best practice on domestic abuse processes was effectively shared by all forces. She said that the next step was to pilot these new proposals, and that if the pilots were successful they would be rolled out across the country.

However, the circumstances we are discussing are nothing like those mentioned by the Home Secretary or the academic experts. They are classic examples of circumstances where pilots are not appropriate and lead only to a waste of time and money. According to the experts, the classic example of the inappropriate use of pilots in a political or social context—that is what we are talking about—is to compare jurisdictions over time and/or space, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Howard. The experts state:

“There are a number of reasons why comparisons can turn out to be meaningless. Most famously, the condition known as ‘too many variables, not enough cases’. This is a reason why experimental control is rarely an option in political science. Additionally, comparative research is affected by two manifestations of the so-called travelling problem: that is, neither theoretical concepts nor empirical measurements are consistent across temporal and/or spatial settings. In other words, they do not ‘travel’. This diminishes the possibility of controlling for the effect of variables other than those of primary interest”.

Translating the jargon, what these experts are trying to say is that it is impossible to make meaningful comparisons between different times and places because there are simply too many factors in play. However, your Lordships do not need academic experts to tell you that the sort of governance arrangements such as those that we are discussing cannot be subject to scientific evaluation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, to what does the noble Lord attribute the huge reduction in crime in this country during the previous Government’s administration?

[Lord Wasserman]

There were many factors, including effective policing. I do not deny that, but the limit in the reduction in crime has not been reached. Many larger reductions—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, all the indications from preliminary figures are that police authorities are reporting that crime is starting to increase.

[Lord Wasserman]

I have seen that, and I am sure that we will discuss it on another occasion. However, there is plenty of evidence for the changes that individual elected mayors in crime-ridden cities in America have been able to make when they put their mind to it, and when they provided their police chiefs with the political cover and resources to do the job.

[Lord Beecham]

How does the noble Lord distinguish the examples that he has given from those that he said would not be appropriate in the varying conditions in this country? He has just told us that there are too many variables to allow pilots to take place, yet he is citing New York and America as exemplars, and therefore effectively as pilots, for the system that he wishes to introduce to this country. Is that not correct?

[Lord Wasserman]

This is not about using a particular bit of legislation in particular areas and comparing them in an academic research environment. The examples that I am giving noble Lords are of real change achieved by real chiefs with real mayors in real cities.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The core of the noble Lord’s argument against pilots is that he is cautioning us against the spatial differences between different parts of this country and the temporal differences—because this is a different time. Now he is saying that you can draw from experience 3,000-plus miles away, which is quite a big spatial difference, under a different legal system and so on. The temporal difference is that the improvement under Mayor Giuliani happened a number of years ago. I am not quite sure where this argument is taking your Lordships.

[Lord Soley]

In a circle.

[Lord Wasserman]

This is not taking us in a circle. There are lessons that can be learnt from experience everywhere. We know this. We are talking now about piloting, as a series of limited experiments, a particular bit of legislation that is to be reviewed by an inspector of constabulary under research circumstances. That is quite different from learning lessons on general principles from experience around the world, rather than from particular bits of legislation.

The main point that I want to make about the proposed pilots is that any change—even change 3,000 miles away—takes time to take effect. It very much depends on relationships between individual PCCs—a point that has already been made—and individual chief constables. These changes and these relationships will take time to develop. One of our issues is with the time it will take to put these pilots into effect. Your Lordships will remember that, some time ago, in a debate in this House about fixed-term Parliaments, many noble Lords made the point that four years was far too short a time to judge the success or failure of the Government. Now we are saying that four years will be sufficient to judge the effect of these new governance arrangements on the level of crime and anti-social behaviour in this country. I am sure that at the end of the four years, people will say that there has not been enough time to judge the changes. Also, some people will talk about the Hawthorne effect: the fact that the pilots have been successful simply because others have studied them. That is another example of how pilot studies can reach misleading conclusions.

For all those reasons, I do not think that, at this stage, a pilot is an appropriate way to judge the effectiveness of the changes. I suspect that what some noble Lords really want is not a programme of pilots but a staged roll-out programme. That is quite different. Although I have serious practical concerns about that, it is not the same as pilots, which are bits of political or social science research. We are now talking about pilots which must be evaluated before rollout begins, which might, as my noble friend, Lord Howard, pointed out, be as long as six years. We are discussing pilots. That would lead to a waste of time and money. It will prove nothing but will lead to dangerous uncertainty in an area of our national life—policing and public safety—where there is a well recognised and overdue need for change.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Browning)]

My Lords, as the Bill no longer contains the Government’s model for directly elected police and crime commissioners, the effect of accepting the amendments would be to delay implementation of that policy until after long and unnecessary pilots and the completion of a review by HMIC. As we do not support the new model, and will seek to overturn it when the Bill returns to another place, we cannot support the amendments. I have always been very clear with the House during Committee that the Government intend to overturn the deletion of the publicly elected police and crime commissioner from the Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, referred to the number of speakers from the government Benches. I have had many conversations with colleagues on the government Benches. Having now been in the House for nearly a year, I appreciate that on both the Benches behind me and those in front of me there is an independence of spirit, regardless of party affiliation. I am convinced that if Members on the government Benches felt strongly opposed to what the Government are doing, they would certainly be standing up to speak. One cannot judge the number of speakers as a reflection of support or otherwise for the Bill. When a Division has been called to date on the Bill, government Members have turned out through the Lobby, as they did earlier tonight, expressing their support for the Bill.

I shall spend some time explaining why we do not support the amendments on directly elected police and crime commissioners. We have heard many speeches throughout the course of the Bill so far saying that this is a radical change; that we should pilot it before rolling it out; and that we need to ensure that we all understand how it would work in practice before we roll it out nationally. We still are not clear what happens if some forces go ahead as pilots, leaving the remainder behind. Put another way, on what basis will we decide who will be denied democratic control of their policing—in other words, on whom do we experiment? What about issues that arise across forces? Serious crime does not only occur within the force boundary. Interoperability across forces is key to tackling those issues, but with pilots, there would be two different forms of police governance running alongside each other, likely to cause confusion and delay in working across force boundaries. This would be confusing for police officers and for the public. It would also be unnecessarily costly.

For many changes in policy or process a pilot can be a good thing, as we have heard from some of the contributions tonight. However, it is clear that a pilot cannot work effectively when we are talking about policing governance and democratic accountability, as my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne pointed out. Equally, we know that senior police officers share our concerns about pilots. We heard from the noble Lords, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington and Lord Dear, who described this as a risky business. It is a risky business, and I believe that it would create an unequal situation that could potentially be quite damaging. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, also spoke for the noble Lord, Lord Condon, in setting out his concerns to the House. I recall that in Committee the noble Lord, Lord Condon, said that this change needed to be,

“resolved in the quickest and best way possible”.—[Official Report, 24/5/11; col. 1698.]

Also, when evidence was given to the Public Bill Committee in the other place, the Assistant Commissioner, Lynne Owens, said:

“My nervousness about pilots is on how you would choose what those pilots are. One of the concerns of the chief police officers at the moment is how it aggregates to the whole. If you were to choose all large forces or all small forces, you might not fully understand the impact”.—[Official Report, Commons, Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill Committee, 20/1/11; col. 106.]

Questions have been raised about the whole philosophy behind the Bill and about the concept of democratically elected police and crime commissioners. I shall not rehearse the strong evidence base for these reforms, having spoken to them at earlier stages of the Bill. They are based largely on HMIC findings, and I set out in Committee that HMIC has already provided more than enough information to justify them. Therefore, I believe that we should not delay these urgent reforms and distract HMIC from its already difficult and important task of inspecting the police by asking it to use valuable and finite resources to evaluate government policy.

To my noble friends who have spoken on this issue—and I understand that people hold very strong views about it—I point out that it was made perfectly clear in the coalition agreement that we would have PCCs during this Parliament. A pilot goes against both the spirit and the letter of the coalition agreement.

However, it is not just Conservatives and Liberal Democrats who have identified the need for reforms to policing governance; I believe that the Opposition support this concept. Only two years ago, when the shadow policing Minister in the other place was the policing Minister, he said that,

“only direct election, based on geographic constituencies, will deliver the strong connection to the public which is critical”.

He went on to say that,

“under the current system, 93 per cent of the country has no direct, elected representation. This is why we have proposed the Green Paper model; so that people know who to go to and are able to influence their policing through the ballot box”.

I fully accept that the former Labour Government, in presenting this Green Paper, were thinking of a different form of direct accountability from the one that we are considering in this Bill. However, the principle of direct accountability was there. In fact, the previous Government twice proposed a form of direct accountability for policing but they did not proceed with it. They encountered opposition, so I am sure they will understand that we have taken this policy forward with the knowledge that this matter has for a very long time been considered to be necessary by Governments of different political hues. This Government have brought it forward and now intend it to proceed.

The coalition Government share the view that police authority governance needs to be changed and that our democratic form of accountability is important. Change is needed and it is needed now. That is why we do not intend to be derailed by the suggestion of a pilot. I have to put it to the House that the real reason for these amendments is opposition to our preferred model.

The bottom line is that pilots would not be a helpful way to road-test the policy. My noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne used the words “wrecking amendments”, although he was cautious in suggesting that that was the motivation behind them. I do not suggest that these are wrecking amendments, but the outcome of such amendments if passed would have the same effect. You cannot have two systems of police governance running side by side. You cannot say to one area that they have a voice in democratically electing a PCC but say to another that they do not. It cannot be said that there is no mandate for these changes; it is set out quite clearly in the coalition agreement.