Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Wednesday 26th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

My Lords, in drafting this amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, and I spent many happy hours trying to determine what exactly the “public interest” is, as she has said. It can mean a whole lot of different things to different people and its interpretation is interesting in the context in which it is presented in the Bill.

As we have heard, the Police Federation has followed the recommendation—I emphasise “recommendation” —of Sir David Normington’s review into how to improve itself. It decided that it would establish an independent reference group. At Second Reading I gave your Lordships a full account of how that independent reference group, which I chaired, had been treated. After we were set up as a fully functioning group in January this year, the Police Federation decided it did not want to use us to help it realise its stated purpose of reforming. This was in spite of the membership of that group having within it people with more than 100 years’ experience of working with the police, a very senior and highly respected retired civil servant and the first woman to run a fire authority—so not all of us were politicians, to whom the present chair of the Police Federation was vehemently opposed anyway. Yet all of us were committed to helping the Police Federation improve its image. We were, effectively, sacked in May this year, having been unable to do anything meaningful to help.

I am quizzical about just where the “public interest” fits into this scenario. It is bandied about, as the noble Baroness suggested, but nobody can actually pin down what it means. Is the Police Federation in denial of its obligations to the public interest by behaving in the way it has? If so, what is the meaning of the phrase now? Will the public be pleased at how the organisation has conducted itself—in their interest—or will they be as puzzled as we were about the behaviour of the management of the Police Federation arbitrarily to interpret that interest in this particular way? The phrase needs removing from the Bill unless the Minister can convince me that it is at all meaningful. I would be grateful if she could give me some examples.

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the amendment. It deals with an issue I raised in the Second Reading debate on the Bill in your Lordships’ House. As I said at that time, and repeat for the sake of maintaining the highest standards of conduct and transparency, I was, until a few months ago, an unpaid adviser to the Police Federation of England and Wales and had been acting in that capacity for the best part of the previous three years.

I hope that I also made clear in that debate that the line I was about to take in respect of Clause 48 had not been prompted by the Police Federation. Indeed, it was not even supported by the leadership of that organisation. That position has not changed. My views on Clause 48 and, in particular, on the four words which this amendment seeks to omit, remain as they were in July—that is, mine and mine alone. Indeed, it is a cause of some regret that not even my noble friends on the Front Bench are likely to agree with me.

I say that this is a cause of some regret because my views stem directly from my experience as an official in the Home Office—an official doing very much the same job as those who prepared the Bill. The rule in the Home Office at that time was that, when preparing legislation, every effort had to be made to avoid giving hostages to fortune, or making rods for one’s own back—or any number of similar clichés. In practice, this meant that one’s seniors and betters were constantly on the lookout for words which they could strike out of draft legislation because they were not absolutely necessary. Every word in every Bill, we were taught, could be used by clever, rapacious lawyers as a stick with which to beat the Government—or at least a stick to beat other clever and rapacious lawyers. For this reason, every word in a piece of draft legislation, particularly primary legislation, had to be justified as being absolutely necessary and not amenable to misinterpretation or exploitation for purposes other than those directly related to the main purpose of the legislation in question.

I regard the words “protect the public interest” in Clause 48, as the noble Baronesses who spoke before me said, as precisely the kind of words that are amenable to misinterpretation and exploitation. They certainly are not necessary to achieve the purposes of this particular part of the Bill. I therefore regard them as prime candidates for omission.

The same problems do not arise with the words in the other two paragraphs. I believe that it is very sensible to place a duty on the federation to maintain high standards of conduct and transparency. Everyone understands what those words mean. More importantly, I believe that they are quite sufficient by themselves to achieve the Government’s aims for the federation. In fact, they are probably more than enough.

All of us who take an interest in policing know very well why the previous Home Secretary felt moved to introduce these words into the Bill. I for one strongly supported her doing so. But the words “protect the public interest” are quite different. The federation is at bottom a staff association and its job is to represent its members. It is clearly in the public interest that it should do so effectively—that is why it was established. And it is clearly in its own interest that it should act, as Sir David Normington said, to maintain exemplary standards of conduct, integrity and professionalism and to retain public confidence.

To require the federation to act to “protect the public interest” is quite another matter. I fear that these words are tantamount to giving the federation a licence to interfere in policing matters well beyond its expertise. For example, I see the federation deciding that it is in the public interest that it should monitor and make recommendations on the type of equipment and systems which police forces purchase and deploy; on the leadership qualities of candidates for chief constable rank and other operational matters; or on issues of police governance such as the size and composition of police and crime panels.

Of course, individual members of the federation will have views on all these matters and on many more besides. But what we would be doing by including the words “support the public interest” in this Bill is to give the leaders of the federation grounds for spending their money on studying these matters and publicly advocating for changes in them. Indeed, I believe that these words would permit the federation to extend its remit almost indefinitely and to employ clever, rapacious lawyers to justify this on the grounds that it has a statutory duty to protect the public interest.

The federation has more than enough on its plate in carrying out its core mission. Placing on the federation a duty to “support the public interest” may sound good, as the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, said, but it does not pass the test of being essential to the purposes of the Bill. In fact, I believe that it falls squarely into the category of words which could come back to bite the Government in very unpleasant ways.

That is why I strongly support this amendment and urge the Minister to agree with me that omitting these four words would in no way weaken the motivation of the federation to operate in the public interest but would minimise the opportunity for it to make trouble for itself and others in due course.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hamwee and I have given notice of our intention to oppose the proposition that Clause 48 stand part. The reason is that all officers of the federation hold public office. They are therefore all subject to the Nolan principles—the seven principles of public life. Can the Minister explain what is to be added by the clause, over and above the Nolan principles?