Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, the purpose of my two amendments in this group, which are Amendments 25 and 59, is to place a requirement—a must requirement—on the police and crime commissioner, or in the model of Amendment 31 the police and crime commission, and in respect of Amendment 59 the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, to meet representatives of each local authority in their particular police area,

“at least twice a year to discuss the policing needs of those authorities”.

The purpose of the amendment is to add to what is already envisaged on public engagement, while talking about the specific relationship with the local authority. Ever since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 was passed, and in many instances before, there has been a recognition of the importance of the police service working with local government to deliver more effective policies in the local area against crime and disorder. We are all well aware that partnership on these issues works better than one service simply operating in isolation.

I have fond memories of my time as a local authority leader when I led the London Borough of Haringey, which covered Tottenham and in particular the Broadwater Farm estate. I become leader two years after the riots on that estate. I remember that there was a ritual when every summer the police commander for the local area would come and see me and say, “We are very concerned about what is going on on the Broadwater Farm estate”. I would say, “Well, we as the local authority are very concerned about what is going on in the Broadwater Farm estate”. Both parties—or both agencies, as this is not a party-political point—covered their backs in the event of something terrible happening in future. The police had raised it with the local authority and we had raised it with the police. What of course was necessary, which was where we got to even before the requirements of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, was to have a proper dialogue. There was collaboration between the local authority and the police to identify what needed to be done to resolve particular issues. Some crime and disorder issues can be very serious, like some of the issues around the Broadwater Farm estate, but sometimes they are much more mundane—they are about the quality of street lighting or about recognising that there is a particular issue on a particular street corner, where the local authority and the police can make a contribution to reducing the risk or fear of crime in that area. It is about partnership and working together. I know that is implicit in what this contains but we are in a slightly different environment, particularly if the Government’s preferred mode of operation goes ahead where we have a single individual.

My noble friend Lady Farrington of Ribbleton talked in far more detail than I possibly could about the arrangements in Burnley, Blackburn and Blackpool and the conflicts that might arise, and how one would not necessarily assume that the interests of those communities would coincide. I simply recall, from my time as chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, instituting a process of what we called borough visits to meet with each local authority’s leader and chief executive to talk about the policing needs of those areas. That has been carried on by my successors as police authority chairs. The current incarnations are called JEMs, or joint engagement meetings, but the principle is the same. It is about the importance of meeting the local authorities, not collectively but individually, to address the policing needs of those local areas.

I particularly recall the interesting experience when I attempted to do two of those borough visits on the same day. One was in a borough which was very much inner-city and faced all sorts of major inner-London problems. The other was in what I would regard as a quieter, less pressured area of London—very much a suburban area. In the morning, we spent a lot of time dealing with knife crime, gang-related violence and all the issues that were uppermost in the local authority world as well as in the policing world. In the afternoon, I was told that the biggest issue affecting that area was shed crime, with people breaking into garden sheds. I suspect that if you were in the inner-city part of London, you would be considered completely mad if you put anything of value in a shed at the base of a block of flats or even at the end of a garden, if you had such a thing. However, that was not regarded as the situation in a suburban area. You had very different approaches to what was needed from the local police service and what were considered as local priorities.

Setting a single set of priorities across the whole of London—I expect this would apply in Thames Valley, Lancashire, Northumbria or wherever else you might choose to be—needs to be informed by the concerns of local communities, and in particular by the contribution that individual local authorities can make where that series of activities is concerned. One debate we have had in this House, both on Second Reading and last week, has been about how to ensure that a single, elected individual, in the Government's preferred model, pays appropriate attention to all the areas for which they are responsible. In any event, whether it is a commission or an absolute paragon elected for a large area but who none the less recognises the importance of listening to every part of their area, that will be facilitated by a requirement to meet regularly with representatives of the local authorities concerned.

In many policing areas, I think we will find that there is a real problem of coherence. People describe London as being somewhere where everybody knows their part of it—as I understand it, there are one or two bits of London which would rather not be part of it; there are other parts which would be perfectly happy if those areas were not part of London, but I do not want to talk about that. The point is that London is enormously diverse; so is the Thames Valley. Even that strange entity, West Mercia, is a diverse area. This requirement to work with each local authority in an area is an important safeguard to ensure both that those communities are not forgotten and that whoever is in charge, whether it is an individual police and crime commissioner, a police and crime commission or, in London’s case, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, is seen to be not only listening but collaborating and co-operating with all the local authorities in their area. Only through that collaboration and co-operation will you be able to make a real difference to crime and disorder in those areas. I beg to move.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, my noble friend has raised an important point. My title in your Lordships’ House is Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton, which is a district—a ward—within the city of Preston. However, in Ribbleton there are not exactly uniform views about what the priorities are. As a county councillor for that division of the county, I had to judge between different issues being raised by different parts of the community. I well remember a heated meeting where those who were aware of where drug dealers were operating were being asked to give the police access to their homes in order to watch and catch people. That applied to residents who did not live in the immediate area, but those who lived in the immediate area were, frankly, quite frightened about getting involved. It is very important that we recognise the local issues in terms of what the priorities are for local communities.

I am so grateful to my noble friend for raising this. It is critical that we allow a mechanism that is not top-down, where someone being elected on a manifesto based on A, B and C precludes people locally from raising issues that are of critical importance to their daily lives.

[Lord Bradshaw]

I wonder if I might follow that by bringing your Lordships back to policing as it actually happens. We now have the benefit of neighbourhood policing. People are invited to meetings with parish councils. They come along, identify their policing priorities and then take a vote among those present about which are the most important of, say, 10 priorities. That is then reflected in the way that the neighbourhood policing team is built up. The teams take their priorities from the bottom upwards.

Given the vast areas that we are talking about, even if the police and crime commissioner visited each district council twice a year, he would not have much time to do anything else—he would have to prepare for those visits and then act upon whatever he learnt. We are ignoring the fact that at district council level there is regular contact between the police superintendent for that area—or in some cases the chief superintendent —that those meetings are regular and that the police have learnt an awful lot about how things really happen. In addition to that, members of the police authority visit every district council, taking with them a superintendent and some officers, and they examine the patterns of crime in those areas in great detail. It is not a question of their not knowing where crime happens; they know exactly where the crimes are. This is then exposed to the elected members, who are able to answer questions. Any idea that this needs oversight from above and lots of activity departs from what happens on the ground. It would be worth people appraising what is going on now, rather than talking in somewhat abstract terms.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the fear of crime in neighbourhoods is also a dimension? This may be unrelated to the actual level of crime. It is a factor that local authorities are able to bring to the attention of the local community. It is a two-way thing between the community and the police service. It is important for people to realise that their behaviour may be informed by lurid descriptions of crime in the popular press, which do not represent the reality in their locality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, does the noble Lord also agree about the importance of the two-way communication that is part of the local government scene? I recollect that, following the Toxteth riots, I talked to the chief constable after a police authority meeting. I said, “My children have heard that there is going to be trouble in Preston on Friday night”. He said, “You are the fourth parent from the locality who has come to tell me that”. It is a two-way flow of information. I also explained to my sons that, as a member of the police authority, I would be watching what happened and would therefore see whether they defied me and turned up. The fact that it is a two-way flow of information is a very important point. Local authority members gain information which they can pass on to the police service to help it in anticipating and therefore preventing crime.

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, this group of amendments deals with the need for close working between the police and crime commissioner and the local authorities within the police and crime commissioner’s area. Of course, the case for such close working was made at Second Reading, in Committee last week and again by my noble friends Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Beecham and others in the debate this evening, and I certainly do not intend to repeat it.

I only add that the Government say that they want influence over decision-making, if not decision-making itself, devolved down the line as far as possible. That is the claimed intent of their Localism Bill. A new police and crime commissioner with considerable and largely unchallengeable powers covering an area as extensive as, say, the West Midlands could hardly be regarded as the standard-bearer for the Government’s claimed concept of localism and local accountability. One way of at least partially addressing that deficiency would be to go down the road of these amendments and place a requirement on the commissioner to meet representatives of each local authority in the relevant police area at least twice a year.

As has been said, local authorities and their elected representatives have a key role to play in reducing crime and articulating the policing needs and concerns not only of the local authority but also of those they represent. One would hope that police and crime commissioners would want to meet all local authorities in their area on a regular basis and work in partnership. However, perhaps based on our own personal experiences, we do not necessarily share the Minister’s view, expressed earlier this evening, on the principled approach that will be adopted by all those who are elected or appointed to positions of considerable power and responsibility.

These amendments not only seek to address that point but, as my noble friend Lady Henig said, by providing for such contact between the commissioner and local authority representatives in the Bill, they also seek to emphasise and highlight the importance of working together to reduce crime and reoffending rates and to achieve the goal of ever-safer communities. I hope that the Minister will be able to give a supportive response to these amendments.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I begin by apologising profusely to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, because I had temporarily forgotten that paragraph 233 of Schedule 16 to the Bill clearly spells out that PCCs will be subject to the Audit Commission Act 1998, so that is part of the definition of “external audit”. I am sure that the noble Lord has already noticed that.

Many of us have been recollecting policing problems of years past. The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, led me to have a flashback to when I was a university teacher in Manchester and used occasionally to lecture at the Lancashire police training college in Preston. The chief constable of Lancashire, as I remember him in 1969, was more politically incorrect in his language than would be acceptable for a police constable nowadays. That is part of the transformation in policing since then.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, the noble Lord may have forgotten that there was a slight cloud when that chief constable left the service. Since then, we have been served by a plethora of superb chief constables who would not have said a word that would have offended the most politically correct Member of your Lordships' House.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am glad that that is all part of the improvement in policing.

The Government will reflect on this debate and the sentiment behind the amendment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, said, the issue is what needs to be spelt out in the Bill. The amendment seeks for police and crime commissioners to consult local authorities in the police area before issuing or varying the police and crime plan, and to send a copy of the annual report to local authorities in the police area.

When I saw these amendments, I thought of my own limited knowledge of local authorities, local communities and the police. Clause 14 lays a requirement on the police and crime commissioners to obtain the views of the community on policing. It seems to me self-evident how they move forward. I have often attended the Shipley neighbourhood forum where local councillors and various people from the local community, including the likes of me, and local police officers talk about the problems of those communities. I should add that shed crime is a real problem in Saltaire. My allotment shed has been broken into twice in the past nine months. We are much concerned about it, although I am sure the police will not find the offenders. Stealing stone from walls and pavements is also a major problem in Saltaire, and as a World Heritage Site that really matters to us. However, more serious crime is not an immediate concern.

Neighbourhood forums and community safety partnerships are part of what brings local authorities together with others concerned with safety and order in their districts. My wife and I spent Friday afternoon at the Drugs and Offender Management Unit in Leeds, which is part of the Safer Leeds partnership. This is very much part of what we have all learnt to do, and I pay tribute to the previous Government for their efforts to build community safety partnerships and to encourage neighbourhood forums. Therefore, I start from the assumption that a police commissioner will naturally go first and regularly to those bodies when he or she is consulting the local community.