Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill Debate
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Baroness May of Maidenhead
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Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I start by thanking the hon. Members who sat on the Public Bill Committee for the scrutiny they have given this important piece of legislation. I thank in particular my ministerial colleagues, the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), for their work in Committee. I also thank all hon. Members who contributed on Report, when we had further detailed debate about the impact and implications of the Bill. In addition, I thank all the officials and Officers and staff of the House who have enabled the Committee’s work to take place.
The Prime Minister recently said that we had the best police force in the world, and I agree, but that does not mean that there is no room for improvement. The Bill will help our courageous police in the fight against crime, and police and crime commissioners will reconnect the police with the public they serve. An overhaul of the licensing regime will help the police and local communities to crack down on problem drinking premises, and temporary banning powers will stop the harm from so-called legal highs. Powers to deal with permanent encampments will give Parliament square back to the British public and a fairer process for universal jurisdiction arrest warrants will allow Britain to engage properly with prominent international statesmen.
Chris Bryant
Those words will not do her any good I am afraid, but I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way.
I am sure we all agree that we have the best police force in the world. Has the Home Secretary come across Chief Constable Steve Finnigan of the Lancashire constabulary, who has said that
“we can do an awful lot of work around back-office, around efficiency, around bureaucracy and certainly in Lancashire, in my force, we are doing a lot of that, but we cannot leave the frontline untouched and that is because of the scale of the cuts”?
Will the Home Secretary be straight with the British people and say that there are going to be front-line cuts because of what she is bringing in?
Mrs May
Many chief constables have made the point that what is happening will not mean that there will be no change to front-line services but that they can protect front-line services. That is exactly what chief constables such as the chief constable of Greater Manchester have made clear. There might need to be reform in front-line services, but that does not mean a reduction in the front-line services available to members of the public.
Directly elected police and crime commissioners will bring real accountability to local policing. They will ensure that the police focus on what local people want and not on what the national Government think they want.
Yvette Cooper
I want to follow up that point with the Home Secretary. She is right, I have the full quote to which my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) referred, which was from the “Today” programme. Chief Constable Finnigan was asked:
“You are chief constable of Lancashire which has a bit of both”—
meaning urban and rural areas—
“are you going to have to reduce frontline policing in order to meet the budget cuts that the government wants to see?”
His answer was: “I absolutely am”. Faced with that categorical statement from a chief constable, will she admit that front-line services are being hit as a result of her decisions?
Mrs May
I have to say to the right hon. Lady that her intervention and that of the hon. Member for Rhondda betray the difficulty that the Labour party has had, both in government and in opposition, with this issue of front-line services. Chief constables such as Chief Constable Steve Finnigan have said that they are determined to protect the front-line service that is provided to members of the public. There is a difference between the service that can be provided and the number of police who are there, and the trouble with Labour is that it has always focused on numbers. What we have seen recently is that there are great variations in, for example, invisibility and availability of the police who are out there on the streets being seen by members of the public. Percentages can vary from 9% of police being available and visible to the public to 17%, as in Merseyside. If that highest figure was followed by every force, then just under 8,000 more officers would be visible and available to members of the public. This is about the efficient use of resources. Police and crime commissioners, as I have said, will bring accountability to local policing.
Mrs May
I might be able to help the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Gentleman in a few minutes, as I am going to make a specific comment in relation to Wales. I suspect that they are going to ask me about Wales, so it might be in their interest to wait until then before they intervene.
Penny Mordaunt
I have been through police numbers with my chief constable in Hampshire, and there is not going to be any change to police numbers in community policing and in the policing of serious crime, or in the number of police who deal with sex offenders.
Mrs May
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is a good example, and there are other examples of forces such as Gloucestershire, where the number of officers visible and available has been increased by the chief constable as a result of what he has been able to do in other ways to deal with his budget.
We have already given communities across England and Wales access to detailed street-level crime and antisocial behaviour data. Only two months after launching the country’s first ever nationwide street-level crime maps, the website has received over 400 million hits, so we are already giving power back to the public. The Bill takes that local accountability to the next stage. The Association of Chief Police Officers has been fully engaged in the process of refining our proposals. We have listened to its suggestions, and to those of hon. Members. We have responded and been able to accommodate some of those suggestions.
We have included provision for each chief officer to become a corporation sole, which will allow them to employ staff and will give them greater control over their own force. We have strengthened the proposed oversight arrangements by including provisions for candidates to be subject to confirmation hearings by police and crime panels, who will be able to veto an appointment with a three-quarters majority. We have amended the Bill so that anyone who has been convicted of an imprisonable offence at any time will be unable to stand as a PCC. Any PCC convicted of such an offence would automatically be disqualified from office.
We have made a commitment with ACPO, the Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Police Authority Chief Executives to develop a protocol setting out the distinct role and powers of chief officers, PCCs and other bodies in the new policing landscape. It will be my responsibility as Home Secretary to issue a strategic policing requirement for the response to national threats. These are all sensible and constructive changes that will give us a better Bill and ultimately an even better police service. I thank ACPO and hon. Members for their help with that.
I am delighted that in Committee, the Opposition conceded the principle of democratic reform in policing. Unfortunately, they are still suggesting the wrong type of reform. Only 7% of people have even heard of police authorities, and only 8% of local authority wards in England and Wales are represented on their police authority. Police authorities are not effective at doing what they are supposed to do. Fewer than one in three police authorities inspected last year were found to be performing well. They have neither the democratic mandate to set police priorities nor the capability to scrutinise police performance, so tinkering at the edges of police authorities, as the Opposition spokesmen seemed to suggest in Committee, will not do.
Geraint Davies
On democratic accountability, does the Home Secretary accept that voter turnout is likely to be much higher in low-crime, leafy suburbs than in high-crime, poorer areas, so the democratic mandate is likely to contradict directly the need to prioritise the focus on crime? What is more, people will lose access to the interface with MPs, Assembly Members, councillors and so on, so there will be less democracy, less crime prevention and more cost.
Mrs May
I completely reject what the hon. Gentleman says, particularly the idea that people who live in high-crime areas will somehow have less incentive to take an interest in the way in which their local area is policed or in going out to vote for PCCs. It is in precisely those areas that people are concerned about what is happening to local policing. We need a properly elected and accountable individual, with the mandate, the capabilities and the powers to set police priorities locally and to hold their chief constable to account for police performance.
Mrs May
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I am conscious of time and wish to make a little more progress.
The Opposition’s scepticism about the merits of directly elected police and crime commissioners will be tested when it comes to deciding whether to field candidates for the elections next year. Indeed, according to media reports, the former Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, intends to run as a candidate. Before moving on, I would like to make it clear that responsibility for policing and policing governance in Wales is reserved to this House. This House has determined that the provisions for police and crime commissioners should be implemented in Wales and in England. There cannot be two tiers of governance for a police service whose officers and assets so regularly cross the regional boundary between England and Wales in tackling crime.
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman may wish to intervene after I have completed my point about the vote that took place in the National Assembly for Wales. I think that it is regrettable that the Assembly did not agree to the legislative consent motion that would have allowed police and crime panels to reflect the unique nature of local government in Wales, as we wanted. That would have included giving the Welsh Assembly Government a seat on the police and crime panels in Wales.
Mr Llwyd
The reason why Assembly Members did not endorse it is quite simply because they do not believe in the idea of a directly elected police commissioner. They did not want the panels and so voted against the proposal. Unfortunately, this place decided to ride roughshod over their wishes and the wishes of democratically elected people in Wales, thus showing little of the respect agenda and acting in a hugely undemocratic way.
Mrs May
That is not correct. It is precisely because we respect the Assembly’s decision that we are removing police and crime panels from local government structures in Wales. The Assembly had the opportunity to put in place a legislative consent motion that would have enabled that to take place. Such a motion was tabled by the Welsh Assembly Government, but they then chose not to support it, even though they had put it forward. As a result, the view of the Welsh Assembly was that police and crime panels should not form part of the local government structure in Wales. Instead, the PCPs will be freestanding bodies.
I want to make it clear that in taking a power to appoint those freestanding bodies I will not be telling, instructing or forcing any authority to do anything. I will invite local authorities to nominate a member to the PCP for each force area, and if an authority fails to nominate a member, I will invite members directly while having regard to the political balance within the force area. I think that the amendments will ensure that the appropriate checks and balances on police and crime commissioners can apply in all force areas in England and in Wales.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am listening carefully to the Home Secretary, who has given way generously, which is appreciated by the House, but I gently point out to both Front Benches that there are some Back Benchers who would like the chance of a snippet as well if the opportunity presents itself.
Mrs May
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
We have also taken the opportunity in the Bill, as Members can see, to make improvements to the police complaints system. There are of course other important aspects to the Bill, notably those relating to licensing. I think that Labour’s disastrous Licensing Act 2003 made the problem of binge drinking in this country worse, not better. Far from giving us the continental café culture that we were promised at the time, the Act did nothing to help police and local communities in their ongoing fight against alcohol-fuelled crime and disorder. That is why the Bill will help to turn the tide by ensuring that all those affected by licensed premises have a chance to have a say in the licensing process, allowing early morning restriction orders and the late-night levy on licensed premises opening after midnight to help pay for late-night policing and other services, such as taxi marshals or street wardens.
We have brought forward an amendment to introduce locally set licensing fees so that the fees can achieve what they were intended to, which is to recover fully the costs of licensing authorities in discharging their duties. I think that local government will feel that this is long overdue. We have also repealed the previous Administration’s legislation on alcohol disorder zones, and there was overwhelming support in our consultation for doing that. Those measures, together with a number of others, show that we are committed to stopping the harm caused by alcohol abuse.
As well as measures to tackle alcohol abuse, we will be providing powers to crack down on the damage caused by so-called legal highs. The Bill introduces the power to make year-long temporary class drug orders, which will allow us to take swift action to ban temporarily substances that have been specifically developed to get around existing drugs legislation but that can still cause significant harm.
I hope that the whole House will agree that for too long Parliament square has been subjected to unacceptable disruption and damage from the long-term encampment.
Mrs May
No, the whole House does not agree, and I should have pointed out that the hon. Gentleman made his views very clear in our previous debate and through the amendments that he spoke to.
The Bill contains, I think, a tough but proportionate package of measures to deal with encampments and other disruptive activity, and we have responded to Members’ concerns about the powers for authorised officers.
The Bill also makes sensible changes to the procedures for obtaining an arrest warrant for universal jurisdiction offences. We have heard the objections from a small number of hon. Members on the matter, but the Government continue to believe that the requirement to seek the agreement of the Director of Public Prosecutions that a case has a realistic chance of success is a fair and proportionate measure.
The Bill is a balanced package of measures to tackle real problems in our society. It includes directly elected police and crime commissioners, to give people back power over policing locally and to help to cut crime; tougher rules on licensing and drugs to help stop the harm that alcohol-fuelled disorder and legal highs can cause; and appropriate powers to restore the right to peaceful protest outside the mother of Parliaments, while removing the long-term encampments that cause so much damage, disruption and distress. We have had very good scrutiny of, and good debates about, the Bill. I believe that it is a very good Bill, and I commend it to the House.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
After 50 hours of debate and evidence, the Commons stage of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill has come to a close. The Members from all parts who endured the Committee stage will doubtless be delighted that in 19 minutes they will be released from custody. The Policing and Criminal Justice Minister will, I am sure, be relieved to have reached the end of this round of interrogation and hope to be released without charge, with his DNA destroyed and his fingerprints wiped.
I thank all Opposition Members for their work, but I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), aka Station Sergeant Coaker, who has ably led our investigative team, and of course to my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), Custody Sergeant Tami, who has granted but few bail applications and always on the toughest terms.
Members have had the pleasure of debating the details of pub drinking, the definitions of a duvet and whether a toothbrush counts as sleeping equipment, and during the passage of the Bill we have welcomed some of the Government’s measures to which the Home Secretary referred, such as those on supporting local government, on licensing and on universal jurisdiction.
Other measures still have us baffled, however. The last time the Home Secretary spoke in the House on legislation she told us that the Government offered
“a chance to roll back the creeping intrusion of the state into our everyday lives, and to return individual freedoms to the heart of our legislation.”—[Official Report, 1 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 205.]
Today, she has defended a Bill that lets councils leap to the barricades when their byelaws are breached. She will support them in confiscating dogs that foul verges, guitars that are played near churches and even shoes that leave mud on the pavements. More importantly, she has supported a Bill that puts at risk centuries of independent policing, free from political interference, and concentrates considerable policing powers in the hands of one individual with hardly any checks and balances. That is hardly a defence of traditional British liberties.
Mrs May
I hesitate to interrupt what started as a comic turn by the right hon. Lady, but she knows full well that throughout the debate on the Bill we have been at great pains to ensure that there is operational independence for chief officers and for forces. We will defend that operational independence. The police and crime commissioners do not have policing powers; they have powers to ensure that the police are accountable, and respond to local people.
Yvette Cooper
That is what the right hon. Lady says, but where is the protocol? Time and again we have been told that there will be some sort of code of practice or some kind of protocol to reassure people that there will be operational independence, but where is it? We have not yet seen it, and the House is being asked to let the Bill go through without being given the opportunity to vote on such a protocol or agreement when it is reached. A draft has been given to the Association of Chief Police Officers, yet this week ACPO still raised some serious concerns about the way in which impartial policing will be protected, and that leaves us with considerable suspicions that she is not yet close to reaching an agreement with ACPO about how the operational protocol will perform. I have to say to the Home Secretary that asking the House to give consent to this Bill without providing crucial reassurances about the operational independence of our police is frankly irresponsible in the light of the traditional and historic British liberties that she has previously been so keen to defend.
During these 50 hours of debate, the Bill has not changed in its fundamentals. This period follows one in which crime fell by over 40%, public confidence in policing went up, and substantial improvements were made in the fight against crime. Yet instead of building on those improvements made under the Labour Government, this Government instead want to launch a massive experiment in governance alongside the steepest cuts in many generations.
The Government are putting considerable policing powers in the hands of individual politicians without any of the serious safeguards or checks and balances that are needed. We do not support the approach of elected police commissioners. During the passage of the Bill, we have tried to suggest ways of limiting the damage and providing additional checks and balances, yet each time they have been rejected. People want responsive and accountable policing, but they also want impartial policing that is accountable to the rule of law—a tradition secured in Britain since Peel. The Government face a grave challenge from the most senior police officers in the country, who have argued this week that that tradition is being put at risk by the Bill. ACPO said that
“the developing framework of safeguards is too undeveloped and uncertain, and in several respects too weak, to be confident that it will effectively ensure that this Peelian principle will not be compromised.”
That is a very serious charge.
We still wait for the protocol and for other explanations of how this will work. This is about the impartiality of our police force and the public perception of that impartiality. For the first time, policing powers will be concentrated in the hands of individual politicians, with hardly any checks and balances on what they do. The Home Secretary at least has to answer to Parliament. She has to persuade her Cabinet colleagues. She can be scrutinised, she can be challenged, and she can even be sacked if she makes a real mess of it—which I am sure, of course, that she will not—but a police and crime commissioner is there for four years, with just a toothless watchdog to keep guard in between.
Mrs May
The right hon. Lady is continuing to use the term “policing powers” in relation to the responsibilities of the police and crime commissioners. That is inaccurate and wrong. These individuals will not be “policing”—they will be elected to hold the chief constable to account to ensure that the local voice is heard and that what local people want in policing is being undertaken. There will be checks and balances through the police and crime panels. She talks about politicians having a relationship with the chief constable in relation to operational independence. Politicians already have a relationship with the chief constable through the police authority.
Yvette Cooper
Unfortunately, none of those reassurances has been enough to convince the most senior chief constables in the land that their operational independence will be safeguarded. That is the primary issue that this House should be worried about. We do not think that the Home Secretary has done enough to, for example, provide enough powers for the police and crime panels to allow them a stronger role as checks and balances in the system. Time and again, she has not provided enough safeguards for national policing. She will know that some experts have raised concerns about corruption, too. Of course, the public do not want this either. A YouGov poll commissioned for Liberty found that 65% of people preferred to have a chief constable reporting to a police authority, compared with 15% who wanted her reforms.
Then, of course, there is the cost: £100 million to be spent on elections and bureaucracy at a time when 2,000 of the most experienced officers are being forced into early retirement. If she ditched the police and crime commissioners and put that money back into policing, she could save almost a third of those jobs.