Police: Independent Police Commission Report

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, for initiating today’s debate on the much-heralded and long-awaited Stevens report.

I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, on managing to persuade 38 distinguished individuals, including 11 Members of your Lordships’ House, to put their names to a single document. Given what I know about some of the members of his commission, that was no mean achievement, but then I have known the noble Lord for a very long time and have always had the highest regard for his extraordinary leadership skills.

The noble Lord is, however, much more than a great leader. He is also a man of integrity and that, too, is evident in his report. Instead of the usual bromides about Britain having the best police service in the world, this report paints a worrying picture of a police service with serious problems. These include:

“organisational failures and scandals that have badly damaged public confidence in the integrity of the police”,

a system for dealing with competence and misconduct that, the commission says,

“suffers from both a lack of clarity and a lack of transparency to the public”,

and a laid-back attitude to diversity that has led to a situation in which,

“37% of local police forces do not have any women officers of ACPO rank”,

and an even larger proportion of forces—the exact proportion, interestingly, is not specified in the report—does not include any black and minority ethnic officers in their top management teams.

Sadly, the report does not tell us how to solve these problems, despite the fact that it concludes by stating that its recommendations,

“seek to set out a programme of radical reform”.

That must have come as a great disappointment to the Labour Party, which no doubt expected, when it established the commission, that it would be getting a clear, coherent and comprehensive policing policy that it could slot easily into its next manifesto.

Instead, what the report gives us is an extraordinarily interesting and well researched document full of fascinating historical insights and illuminating discussions of constitutional, organisational and other matters. I was particularly taken by the discussion of the challenges and dilemmas in police governance; by the review of the academic studies on the relationship between the size of a police force and its effectiveness; and by the reports of the latest changes in the structures of police forces in the Netherlands, other European countries and elsewhere.

I am sure that anyone who takes the trouble to read this document carefully will share my admiration for its erudition, historical perspective, theoretical underpinnings and thoroughness. This should come as no surprise, given that the document is based not only on the testimony of expert witnesses—including five former Labour Home Secretaries—public hearings, attitude surveys involving members of the public, police officers, PCCs and others, but on 31 position papers produced by 47 academics from 29 different universities in the UK and abroad.

Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, did not produce this document as an academic exercise. As he says of the commission’s recommendations in his closing remarks:

“We hope they will offer a clear steer as to what changes are needed to ensure that the police service is able to meet the demands of the twenty first century”.

I very much regret that on this count the report falls short. Despite the efforts of 47 eminent scholars, or perhaps because of them, the report is strong on options but weak on practical solutions.

For example, the key issue of the structure of the police service of England and Wales has been a matter of contention for as long as there have been police forces in this country. The 1962 Royal Commission on the Police was unable to agree on it. The Stevens commission has done no better. It has no hesitation in saying that the present structure of 43 forces will not do because it is,

“no longer cost effective or equipped to meet the challenges of organised and cross-border crime”.

However, when it comes to suggesting a better solution, the commission leaves us with three familiar options: locally negotiated mergers and collaboration agreements, regionalisation or a national police force. As to which of these is to be preferred, we are told that the best way forward is for detailed proposals to be produced for each of these three options but not limited to these three, and that a wide-ranging consultation should be undertaken with a view to swift implementation. In short, it is the familiar academic proposal: further work needs to be done.

The same approach is taken to the contentious question of the governance of police forces. As noble Lords have pointed out, the commission is adamant that the PCC model is systemically flawed as a method of democratic governance, despite the fact that:

“In a democracy, it is right that the strategic priorities of the police are established by elected politicians not by unelected chief constables”.

Interestingly, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, pointed out, one of the six reasons listed for rejecting the PCC model is that the present crop of PCCs are overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged—that is, far too close in ethnic, gender and age composition to the present House of Commons. What does the commission recommend instead of PCCs? Except for ruling out police authorities, it cannot decide. Once again, we are offered three options and told that further work is required.

On diversity, the commission is again clear that the present situation is totally unacceptable, but it has no suggestion for a way forward other than to urge that:

“Greater use should be made of the powers of the 2006 and 2010 equalities legislation”.

Finally, I was particularly disappointed by the commission’s discussion of the present arrangements for providing forces with scientific and technological support—particularly forensic science, which was mentioned by my noble friend—and ICT. I declare an interest as the Home Office official responsible for these services between 1983 and 1995.

On forensic science, the commission is in two minds. On the one hand, it believes that the previous Conservative Government’s policy of,

“opening up forensic sciences to the market has achieved some notable successes in previous intractable cases, reduced turnaround times and eliminated backlogs and resulted in a reduction in pricing of services”.

Notwithstanding these benefits, the commission is unhappy about the present state of forensic science provision, largely because there is no integrated national strategy, as my noble friend has pointed out. What, though, does it recommend? Only this: something needs to be done. That is all it says.

As for the procurement of cost-effective IT, an issue with which the police service has been grappling unsuccessfully since the invention of the computer, the commission says that it is,

“disheartened and dismayed by the recurring criticisms of the police service’s inability to rationalise its procurement of information technology”.

It goes on to say that it,

“cannot emphasise strongly enough the urgent need to”,

attend to and solve these persistent problems. As for a solution, however, the commission comes up with a classic ACPO approach to intractable problems: ask the Home Office to develop a national IT procurement strategy. In other words, this problem is far too difficult for chief constables to solve, even though IT is an operational tool and therefore their responsibility. So let us hand it to the Home Office and watch it fail to solve it.

I am sorry to have ended on a rather negative note. As I have said, there is plenty of interesting material in the Stevens report, and on the whole it is a very good read. Sadly, however, it raises more questions than it solves. For those of us who are impatient to tackle the problems that it identifies, this is disappointing.