Policing and Crime Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

May I start by saying, genuinely, that this Bill has progressed with the will, respect and the help of Members on both sides of the House? As there are several new Government amendments in this group, I thought it only right and proper that I address some of them. I will also address some of the amendments tabled by the shadow Secretary of State. We have had numerous meetings, and we have tried to work our way through all of this, so let us see whether we can carry that forward as best we can.

It is our intention to introduce a robust and independent inspection regime for fire and rescue authorities in England. New clause 48 and new schedule 1 will support that objective by strengthening the inspection framework currently provided for in the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. The amendments provide for the appointment of a chief fire and rescue inspector, who will be required to prepare a programme for the inspection of fire and rescue services. The Secretary of State will have the power to require inspections outside the published programme if necessary.

Fire and rescue inspectors will be required to produce reports on their inspections, and the chief inspector will make an annual report to Parliament—something that does not currently take place. We will enable fire inspectors to carry out joint inspections with Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary. That will be particularly important where police and crime commissioners and metro mayors take on the responsibilities of fire and rescue authorities.

Finally, these provisions will ensure that inspectors have access to the information they need to undertake a rigorous and independent examination of fire and rescue authorities and the persons employed by them. That means that no door will be locked and all information will be available to the inspector.

Although we believe that the vast majority of inspections will be undertaken by consent, we need to be alert to the fact that additional powers might be needed. If inspectors do not feel that they are getting the access that they deserve and need to produce reports, they will have the power to ask for such things. These amendments will help fire and rescue authorities be more transparent and more accountable.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

May I say to my right hon. Friend that, as a former holder of this part of his post, I entirely welcome and support these amendments? The inspectorate is a thoroughly good idea, but may I raise one technical issue? There is provision for delegation to another public body. Many of us think that it would be much better if new schedule 1 were phrased so as to permit the use of external contractors to carry out certain elements of the inspection on behalf of inspectors where outside expertise may not be readily available in a public body. At the moment, the wording of new clause 48 and new schedule 1 does not appear to permit delegation to external contractors, who may well have expertise in operational audit, which is precisely what we need to make inspections robust and independent. Will he reflect on that?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. No one could accuse the hon. Gentleman of excluding from his intervention anything that he thought might at any time, in any way, to any degree be material, and I have a sense that when he practised law regularly he operated in a similar vein.

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[Mike Penning]

I am conscious that I am in the hands of experts who were Ministers long before I was, but as an ex-firefighter, I was really quite surprised to see how the inspections took place when I came into the role. They did not take place as envisaged by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) when he introduced the relevant legislation. There was a genuine feeling that we had to address the costs and how the inspections were done. To be perfectly honest, the system has not worked. We cannot continue with the situation where one fire and rescue force inspects another and they tell each other what they can and cannot inspect.

This proposal is separate, which is why we have put the new inspector alongside Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary. They will tell us exactly what expertise they require. As ex-firefighters, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) and I can assume what they will need to look at, but I accept that some fire and rescues services will need to draw on financial expertise from other areas.

[Robert Neill]

I promise to try not to trouble my right hon. Friend anymore, but will he clarify something? I agree with his response to the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), but is he saying that if evidence is presented, Ministers will not rule out making an appropriate arrangement whereby commissioning can take place if the chief inspector thinks it appropriate in relation to any inspection without us being required to make further legislative arrangements in the House? I am sure he will understand that the need for further legislation would defeat our objective.

[Mike Penning]

Absolutely. I can say categorically that we do not want to handcuff the inspector. If an inspector needs to bring in further expertise, whether from UKAS or others, they will be able to bring that to the attention of the Ministers responsible. There will not be a requirement to come to the House.

This is a really positive move for the fire service, and the chiefs have welcomed it. They have been supportive in the meetings that I have had with them. I am not sure whether they all support the proposal, because the ones who do not support it might not have been banging on my door quite as hard as the ones who do. Naturally, I will come back to the issue in responding to the debate if we have time.

I will touch briefly on DNA and fingerprint retention, which is an extremely important and sensitive topic. New clauses 49 and 50 will help the prevention and detection of crime by enabling DNA profiles and fingerprints to be retained on the basis of convictions outside England and Wales, in the same way as the material could be used if the offence had taken place in England and Wales. We are trying to protect the public. The measures, which have been requested, will apply specifically to offences committed outside England and Wales that would be offences in England and Wales. The amendments made by new clauses 40 and 50 to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and the Terrorism Act 2000 will enhance the effectiveness of the national DNA and fingerprint databases and help our police keep us safe, which we all want, especially in the light of the heightened threat.

New clauses 51, 52 and 53 and new schedule 2 will strengthen the existing cross-border powers of arrest provided for in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and appear to be supported across the House.

I want to listen to the shadow Home Secretary’s comments, so I will touch only briefly on the new clauses that he has tabled, which we have discussed together with the shadow Policing Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). I know that the Home Secretary, too, has discussed them with the shadow Home Secretary. It may assist the House if I say a few words about them now. As I said earlier, we welcome the constructive approach from the Opposition, and in particular from the Hillsborough families and the campaign group. We would not be discussing these issues now without their bravery, for which I praise them. The work carries on; it will not stop, whatever happens today.

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In a highly unusual move, with the Scottish National party acting as the honest broker between the Government and the Opposition, the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless), who has left the Chamber, came up with a form of words that the shadow Home Secretary was prepared to accept. How wonderful! I do not know whether there will be discussions behind the Chair, but there is an opportunity to avert a vote if the Government say, “We are going to have it, but we are not going to have it yet.” That is all they need to say. Judging by what the shadow Home Secretary said, the Government will accept that, and we can proceed with Report and Third Reading without dividing the House on the important changes in policing law that the Government are proposing, many of which we accept—I certainly do—as being part and parcel of modernising our police force.

[Robert Neill]

It is appropriate that I follow the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, as I am conscious of the fact that my predecessor as Chair of the Justice Committee was present when those assurances were given. I do not doubt the good intentions of the Minister and I am prepared to cut the Government slack over the matter, but there is an important point that the right hon. Gentleman has just made: it is not purely the high profile cases that are of concern to many professionals in the criminal justice system.

The shadow Home Secretary spoke movingly and passionately about the impact of Hillsborough and other such scandals, but of equal concern to lawyers such as me—I have had 25 years in the criminal courts—is the long-term day-to-day cosiness of relationships that, I am sorry to say, develop between police officers, not necessarily at the highest level but at an operational level, and reporters. Unless something is done to deal with that, there is a risk of miscarriages of justice. However these things are done, they do not come purely on the back of headline catching; there is a more insidious culture in some ways, which can be dealt with only through very firm management by the leadership of the police service, and if that is lacking it needs to be looked at appropriately.

I accept the concern about outstanding cases, but there is no doubt that this issue is potentially important. Any practitioner at the Bar will know of any number of occasions where the local press—this is not just about the nationals—has been aware, surprisingly, that a particular person was going to be arrested or that a particular search was going to be carried out. I am afraid that that cannot happen accidentally, so there is an issue here of general concern.

Let me turn briefly to new clause 23, to which I am a signatory. Again, I accept that the Minister wants to take the issue forward, but I agree with the sentiments expressed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier). There is inevitably a reluctance among officials—I used to find that as a Minister—and senior officers to complicate regulations if they think that what they have got will do. I do not doubt that the advice the Minister has been given was given in good faith, but I say as a London MP who speaks to officers on the beat—on the frontline—in my constituency that their concerns about the inadequacy of the current provisions are genuine, and their experience perhaps does not mirror the advice the Minister may be getting from some of the top brass in the service. That advice may also not always mirror the concerns of my constituents, who go up to London to work and who are sometimes caught in these particularly unpleasant and intimidating demonstrations. My right hon. and learned Friend therefore makes an important point in his new clause.

Let me turn now to the main issue I wanted to raise, which I hinted at in my two interventions on the Minister: new clause 48 and the fire inspection regime. As I said to the Minister, who was generous in his responses to me, I welcome the change. In some ways, I wish I had been able to bring it in when I was the Minister responsible for the fire services, but the political and administrative climate was not there for it to be done, so I genuinely congratulate him on introducing it. He has more front-line experience of the fire services than I do, having actually done the job of putting fires out. My involvement with the fire services goes back to my involvement with the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) some—I hate to say it—30 years ago, when I was the leader of the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, immediately after the abolition of the Greater London Council. I would like to say that I lied about my age to join up, but that was not quite the case. However, I have been involved with the fire services in one way or another ever since.

At the time, we had the old-school inspectorate. Then we moved to an arrangement with a chief adviser. I think we all hoped that peer review and the work of bodies such as the Chief Fire Officers Association and others would achieve improvement from within. However, the Minister is right to have concluded that that arrangement is not delivering all that we want, and the recent evidence in the Public Accounts Committee report sets that out very clearly. It is therefore right to move to the inspectorate, and I warmly support it.

The reason I have raised what seems an arcane and technical point is this. I have taken on board what the Minister has said, but I want to amplify why I think it is right. One problem with the old inspectorate was that it tended to be a bit of an old boys’ club for retired senior officers. Almost invariably, the inspectors and the assistant and acting inspectors came from a very narrow group of retired senior officers, and there was a bit of a revolving door. There were therefore real questions about the inspectorate being up to the minute in its knowledge and about the degree of independence that it would bring. An inspector can have to say pretty hard things to a chief officer and his management team, and that is not too easy if someone has come fairly recently from within the ranks of a fairly close-knit service.

That is why there should, where appropriate, be greater flexibility to bring in a contractor with expertise in the appropriate fields. That may not be for the whole of an inspection, but it could be for a specific part. The obvious example is in relation to financial matters, but this would also work in relation to things such as the assurance of operational resilience, because there is now expertise in the private sector, as well as in the public sector, that can appropriately be brought to bear.

[James Cleverly]

In the new environment where we are encouraging greater collaboration between the blue-light services, might the fire inspectorate not also want to lean on senior members of the other uniformed blue-light services to add their expertise and to support the inspectorate as part of this multi-agency working?

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is also the former chair of a London fire and emergency planning authority, and he makes an important point. All of us who have taken an interest in fire services over the years favour greater collaboration between the blue-light services, and I know that that is where the Minister wants to go. We all want a formula that will achieve that, but my concern is that the current wording of the Bill might make that harder, although I have absolutely no doubt that that is not the intention of Ministers. The reason I raise this concern is that, as it reads, proposed new subsection (A5), which will be placed in section 28 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, does not seem to cover the use of contractors.

[Mike Penning]

I will look very carefully at this issue during the Bill’s passage from this House, should it get a Third Reading this evening, to the Lords. If I need to clarify the position, I will do so by means of a Government amendment in the Lords.

[Robert Neill]

I am immensely grateful to the Minister for that. That shortens greatly what I have to say. To fortify my right hon. Friend in what he says, let me say that the Public Accounts Committee found evidence that the Chief Fire Officers Association and the Local Government Association did not regard the peer review process as an adequate self-improvement tool. If he is happy to continue to talk to those with an interest in the sector and to deal with what might be an unintended lacuna, I and many others who wish him well in this endeavour, and who wish the fire and rescue services well, will be very happy to work with him to achieve that objective.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

New clause 12, which stands in my name, would amend section 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. It would scrap the distressing rules that provide that dementia sufferers who die in care homes while subject to a deprivation of liberty safeguard are classed as being in state detention.

I first took this issue up after being contacted by families who told me of their distress at having to wait to bury their loved ones because inquests are required into the deaths of dementia sufferers who are subject to a DoLS, irrespective of the circumstances of their death.

Councils were inundated with DoLS applications from care homes after a Supreme Court ruling in 2014, which effectively lowered the threshold for what constitutes deprivation of liberty in care. Guidance issued by the Chief Coroner to local coroners following the Supreme Court judgment said that all persons who died subject to a DoLS order must be the subject of a coroner’s investigation, whether or not their death was from natural causes, because such persons are deemed for the purposes of the 2009 Act to be in state detention.

The new clause was suggested by the Chief Coroner himself in response to, and in recognition of, the distress caused to relatives. The Chief Coroner indicated to the Law Commission and the Government that a simple amendment to the 2009 Act might solve the problem of unnecessary cases being reported to the coroner, at least in the short term. The amendment proposed by the Chief Coroner said:

“For the purposes of this Act, a person who dies while subject to an authorisation granted under Schedule A1 to the Mental Capacity Act 2005 depriving that person of his or her liberty and detaining him or her in a hospital or care home does not die while in custody or otherwise in state detention.”

Constituents have contacted me, including one woman who wrote after her mother died in a nursing home. She told me:

“My mum suffered from dementia and other health problems and we sat with her for four days and nights before she passed away. Within one hour of her death, uniformed police arrived and we were asked to leave the room.”