Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

In turn, I am delighted to hear that. I am merely making a few remarks in the hope that my noble friend the Minister will discuss this matter to try to make it possible because it is clear that we have an unsatisfactory situation. I believe that it is possible, when the Government decide to disagree with us in that fundamental amendment, for them to make some additional comments, as it were. I hope that that is what will happen.

This is not a situation that I or the noble Lord would have wished to see. The dilemma is that the problems have been compounded by the events of recent days and weeks. The Government have time during the Recess in which to look at this, and I hope that they will be able to do so. Then, when a police and social responsibility Bill goes on to the statute book, it is legislation that is truly adequate for policing in the next quarter of the 21st century. That is because we do not want to be, as the Americans say, continually revisiting this situation over the coming years.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

My Lords, as the instigator of that infamous amendment right at the beginning of the Committee stage, I welcome what my noble friend Lord Cormack has said. I want only to make the briefest of interventions on Amendment 3, to which I have added my name. My noble friend is absolutely right to say that more work needs to be done on this Bill in the light of what has happened recently. I urge my noble friend the Minister, having given us some comfort in her amendments today, to take a further step.

I will have a little more to say about recent events and their relevance to this Bill when speaking to a later amendment, but I want to support this amendment for the reasons set out by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. What we seek is to draw out the strength of the panels so that they are able to send a strong message to the public. That is what we want.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that her amendment, which I certainly would not describe as infamous, was the result of concern in the House that the model being proposed did not contain the strict checks and balances that most of us wish to see? Therefore, picking up the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, it would be entirely proper for the Government to come back on ping-pong with proposals reflecting, beyond Clause 1, the strict checks and balances which led to the original amendment.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

I support my noble friend in her comments. The whole point of tabling the amendment was to try to persuade the Government to bring on the strength of the checks and balances. That has not been done, and I cannot imagine what they could come up with at the ping-pong stage. But I hope they do come up with something because it is the strength of those checks and balances that this House, which voted so strongly in favour of my amendment, supported. I therefore urge my noble friend the Minister to see what she can do.

[Lord Soley]

I rise to speak in support of Amendment 3, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, because I can now abbreviate what was already going to be a small number of comments. I agree with what he said, and believe that the only danger the noble Lord faces is that he is likely to win the award for parliamentary understatement of the year when he says that he thinks the Government will be minded to reverse the amendment in the other place. I think we all know that they will.

The position is exactly as he has said: recent events have emphasised the importance of the checks and balances. The particular word that I picked out of my noble friend’s Amendment 3 is “impartiality”. The problem, as we have seen recently, is how a senior police officer can be impartial not only when dealing with the Government, but also when dealing with large organisations. In the recent case, of course, the organisation is News International. That is a profoundly important point.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, we come to a matter which has been discussed both in Committee and on Report. This relates to the proposal in the Bill that, if for whatever reason the police and crime commissioner has to give up office or is indisposed, the police and crime panel can appoint an acting police and crime commissioner who shall be a member of the staff of the police and crime commissioner. Noble Lords will know that I have been very concerned about the possibility of a staff member of the police and crime commissioner assuming such great responsibility. The noble Baroness said that she was still considering this matter, and that we could bring it back at Third Reading. I am hopeful that she will be able to accept my amendment, which ensures that the acting police and crime commissioner has to be a member of the panel and an elected politician. This follows on from the amendment that the noble Baroness moved at Report, which allows for independents to be appointed to police and crime panels. I do not think it appropriate for those people to become acting police and crime commissioners, which is why I have drafted the amendment in this way.

If I may say so, this is meant as a helpful amendment, to find a way through. I have detected some considerable support around the House for my view that it is not right for a staff member to assume such great responsibilities, including issues around the hire and fire of chief constables, in my understanding, and the precept. Surely it is better that an elected politician member of a police and crime panel fulfils that role. I beg to move.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

My Lords, I want to say a few words in support of this amendment. I find it completely incomprehensible that anyone would think that it was acceptable to put a politically restricted person in charge of making political decisions, which is the effect of the current proposals relating to deputy and acting PCCs in this Bill. Quite apart from the fact that this would give such a person an impossible technical conundrum to resolve—because a politically restricted person must be politically neutral, and therefore cannot by definition make political decisions—it completely undermines the Government’s own arguments about greater public accountability. It is particularly important that an acting PCC must be able to make decisions as if he or she were the PCC. This includes the key decision about what precept to set if the PCC is absent at that particular time of the year. The PCC’s office cannot not make a decision about this, whether or not the PCC is present, because the police service would be missing up to half its funding the following year if this was so. Not for the first time, I have thought that we were creating an Alice in Wonderland world in this Bill—it is all somehow upside-down.

It is clear to me that an acting PCC cannot be politically restricted. That means that an acting PCC cannot be drawn from the members of the PCC’s staff—which bizarrely now include the deputy PCC, although that is another issue. The obvious place to look is therefore among the members of the police and crime panel, and particularly among the elected members of the panel, if we are serious about a commitment to democracy and accountability. This is exactly what the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, stipulates, and I am very happy to support it.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, at the last stage, both the noble Lord, Lord Boswell of Aynho, and I made rather impromptu suggestions about other possibilities which the Government might look at. Mine was that the commissioner should make the choice, because it seemed to me that there would be a logic in that. I hope that the noble Baroness, who sounded very open to the different possibilities, might be able to respond to the menu that was suggested last time. However, I retain my concern about it being proper that the person who acts up is a person who has been elected. I do not think that the fact that the appointment is made by the panel meets the concerns; it is the object of the appointment that I am concerned about. Indeed, there is almost an irony in suggesting that the appointment is made by the panel—the elected people—as the logic of the Government’s model is that the commissioner is an elected person. I hope that the Minister can help find a way through this.

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[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

My Lords, I think that my noble friend the Minister would be disappointed if I did not rise to support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. Like her, I acknowledge and welcome many of the government amendments, minor though I believe them to be, including this one on the protocol. However, I am still concerned that the checks and balances on PCCs remain inadequate. While they remain inadequate, chief officers are very vulnerable. I am concerned about the impact this could have on the confidence of senior officers, so I commend this amendment because it would afford at least a minimum level of protection. While this is a start, as the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, pointed out, we need to consider seriously whether in the light of recent developments, this is the right time to be implementing major reforms.

I have consistently expressed my concern that the powers of the panel are not strong enough to act as a proper check on PCCs, but I am also concerned that the wider checks and balances are not strong enough either. This includes checks and balances between PCCs and chief officers, and regulating their relationship effectively. So the amendments dealing with this aspect are welcome because they are helpful up to a point.

All this brings us back to the fundamental problem of the Bill: it puts too much power in the hands of one person and places too little emphasis on good governance. My noble friend the Minister has said on several occasions that she will ensure that the principles of good governance are strengthened in the Bill, so the amendment concerning the protocol is helpful in that it defines roles and functions clearly. However, I would ask her to explain exactly which other principles have been addressed and strengthened. I am particularly concerned that a fundamental weakness of the Bill remains the reliance on individuals rather than embracing a more corporate approach.

Corporate bodies have well-established rules of governance and self-regulation which are well understood and thoroughly tested. We have discussed at length both in Committee and on Report why this is not true of corporations sole. Indeed, other amendments at Third Reading are related to this point. It also means that if there is no internal system for regulating a corporation sole properly, because it is comprised of an individual rather than a collective, that regulation must come independently from outside if it is to be credible. The Bill is seriously flawed in this respect, and particularly in relation to senior officer appointments and dismissals, audit and who will check how public money is spent, complaints and the conduct of both PCCs and senior officers. The Bill sets out only very limited external regulation for all these functions.

The Bill’s proposals are particularly worrying in respect of complaints about conduct. So far as PCCs are concerned, it is lamentable to suggest that they should be regulated only by reference to a criminal standard of behaviour; everything else will be down to informal resolution between the PCC and the panel. It is not clear what that will mean in practice because it will be subject to regulations which have not been developed. This is not an adequate way of handling matters which so clearly impact on public confidence. The Bill is also inadequate in relation to conduct issues among senior officers. I have argued consistently that giving chief officers powers to deal with disciplinary matters in relation to their immediate senior team is a recipe for corruption. Recent events have demonstrated that public confidence is critical, so this must be changed.

Even under the current, much more robust regime, public confidence is badly dented—and that is without these new provisions which say in effect that the police should investigate themselves. We should ask what the public perception of the recent scandals would have been if the decision to suspend and discipline senior officers other than the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police had been left entirely up to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I am in no way impugning the integrity of Sir Paul Stephenson. Like other noble Lords—I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Henig—I believe that he has been an outstanding officer. He will be a very sad loss to policing in this country. However, it is a matter of public perception and what they will make of this arrangement if there are accusations about police corruption.

At present, the Bill manages to combine too much lassitude for individuals with too little regulation. This is a direct consequence of the inadequate corporate and governance structures. I am also inclined to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, that the events that we have seen in recent days are also a direct consequence of politicising policing and a stark warning about the dangers of the press influencing policing in a political environment. This will make all senior officers—particularly chief officers—vulnerable to the winds of political fortune in the new world of directly elected police governors. For this reason it is essential to improve protection for chief officers to enable them to exercise their operational responsibility without fear or favour as the noble Lord, Lord Dear, told us earlier.

If we must take this Bill forward, it is surely now evident that these flaws must be resolved. I join with the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, in urging the Government to think again. We need to strengthen internal as well as external checks and balances, which means implementing a more corporate approach to guard against the dangers of putting too much power in the hands of one individual. We need a model that is more transparent and effective at self-regulation; this includes a stronger role for the panel. We need to ensure that the principles of good governance are applied to embed this more rigorous approach. We need a proper misconduct regime as a key plank of monitoring effective behaviour and governance.

Arguments to pause and reflect on this Bill are now overwhelming. We need to ensure that chief officers are properly protected from political inference but we also need to learn and apply lessons that will be learnt from the review that HMIC and the IPCC have been asked to undertake before the Bill is finalised. I am also conscious that there will shortly be another police Bill this time dealing with the national landscape.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are at Third Reading. We are dealing with a specific amendment. I ask the noble Baroness to be as brief as possible, since we have a Statement to follow on some of the other issues with which she is dealing.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

And finally, I cannot resist asking the Government why they have resisted making the protocol statutory until now. It certainly does not deal with what would have happened in similar circumstances under the proposed new regime where the chief police officer would have been in charge of dealing with allegations against his senior team.

This has been my last main speech in this debate. I have found it profoundly the most debilitating, distressing and appalling police Bill that has ever been my misfortune to have dealt with in the 12 years that I have been in your Lordships’ House. I regret deeply that there has been no real concern placed on looking at what my noble friend earlier called, “the very important checks and balances”. They are not here.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

I speak particularly to subsection (6) of the proposed new clause, which presents a very neat way out of the issues of the British Transport Police and the British Transport Policy Authority that I raised on Report. In doing so, I thank the noble Baroness, not just for the way that she has conducted this Bill through the House, but also with the speed with which she, the Secretary of State for Transport and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, responded to the points that I made and had a meeting to discuss them. In subsection (6), it describes the police protocol as,

“a document which sets out, or otherwise makes provision about, ways in which relevant persons should … exercise, or refrain from exercising, functions so as to … encourage, maintain or improve working relationships (including co-operative working) between relevant persons, or … limit or prevent the overlapping or conflicting exercise of functions”.

That seems to be precisely at the heart of the very long delay—10 years’ delay—in bringing the jurisdiction and powers of British Transport Police constables and the definition of their chief officer’s role together with those of the Home Office police.

At Second Reading, I mentioned that there was a certain urgency in this because the transport police have a key role to play not just in anti terrorism but in the run-up to and progress of the 2012 Olympics. Therefore, as I say, something needs to be done quickly. There is a way out if you accept that the British Transport Police and the British Transport Police authority should be included in the protocol to the extent that the annual police plans, which have to be drawn up by the police and crime commissioners, should include the operations of the British Transport Police. You thus get over all the problems associated with them because they have to be resolved with the measure. For example, the licensing issue, which particularly affects transport hubs and is a matter of concern, and the proper licensing of firearms rather than requiring every constable to get an individual one, would have to be done not as separate issues but as part of a plan in every area. I was disappointed to hear that when the British Transport Police raised this at the meeting with the Secretary of State, officials said that it was inappropriate because the protocol applied only to the Home Office police. That is precisely why it presents the ideal vehicle. I hope very much that the Minister will assure the House that that approach will be followed.