Police (Complaints And Conduct) Bill

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

The amendment seeks to make express provision, on the face of the Bill, for sanctions in relation to a failure to attend an interview. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) and other members of the all-party group for tabling it. As the shadow Police Minister has just said, it airs an important issue. I am happy to assure my hon. Friend and the Committee that such a provision is not needed because the Secretary of State already has the power under the Police Act 1996 to make regulations about misconduct. The effect of the amendment, were it put into law, would be to duplicate a regulation-making power that already exists in the 1996 Act.

I absolutely support the need for an effective sanction for non-attendance. Various suggestions have been made about how we should convey this to those who will have to operate the sanction. I am fairly sure that this discussion will be important in conveying the will of Parliament to those who do that. I must resist the temptation of the suggestion from the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) that I should write to chief constables telling them in detail what they should do. That would be the classic interference in operational matters that we seek to avoid, for obvious reasons.

I am satisfied that, in relation to serving officers, an effective sanction for failing to comply with the witness attendance requirement in clause 1 already exists. The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2012 include a provision to the effect that misconduct means a breach of prescribed standards of behaviour. A failure to attend an interview, where required to do so, would be a breach of one or more of the prescribed standards, with the result that the officer should become the subject of misconduct proceedings. Those would be serious misconduct proceedings and could result in the officer’s dismissal.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I am glad that the Minister has explained the procedures. If he will not write to chief constables to tell them what the disciplinary action should be, I take it that they will be made aware of exactly what is intended and what he has just said.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

The police and crime commissioner is there to hold the chief officer to account. If they believe that the chief officer is behaving wrongly, they will have a discussion about it, and because the commissioner is elected, as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester rightly said, any sensible chief officer would inevitably wish to avoid a public dispute. The point is that the chief officer takes the operational decisions and the police and crime commissioner holds them to account for their effect. His basic question was who was responsible for enforcing the discipline and misconduct regulations, and the answer is the chief officer.

[Bill Esterson]

I do not want to stray too far into the role of police and crime commissioners, but if a police and crime commissioner has a conversation with a chief constable because they are unhappy about that, or anything else for that matter, what power will the commissioner have to enforce that provision?

[Damian Green]

Police and crime commissioners have very significant powers in relation to chief constables. Their ultimate power is to dismiss the chief constable if they believe that they are behaving so badly that that ultimate sanction is necessary, so the legislation provides considerable powers.

My main point is that the effect of this change will simply be to replicate powers that are already provided for in statute, but it is also important to note that clause 1 places a witness attendance requirement on different categories of individuals. It applies not only to serving police officers, who are members of police forces and subject to the conduct regulations, but to police staff, who operate under a different conduct regime and are outside the scope of the conduct regulations. As such, it would be neither appropriate nor effective for the Secretary of State to make regulations for a universal sanction applying to those two very different categories of individual.

In clause 1, we have been careful to mirror, as far as possible, the existing provisions in the Police Reform Act 2002 relating to the interview attendance requirement for those who are subject to investigation by the IPCC. As such, the two powers should be similar. The existing provisions in the 2002 Act relating to those under investigation do not include any provision for sanctions. To provide expressly for a sanction in primary legislation in relation to witnesses but not to those who are subject to investigation by the IPCC would be anomalous. Such a provision would suggest that the new power relating to witnesses is somehow of greater importance and should be more robust than the existing power relating to suspects, and that position risks falling into confusion, as the right hon. Member for Delyn rightly warned, when we want clarity. That, I am afraid, would be the effect of the amendment; there would be more confusion than clarity. In any case, the Secretary of State has the power to do that.

Let me address the issues raised by the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). If a serving officer refuses to attend an IPCC interview, they should be subject to sanctions, which are serious and could result in dismissal. If the officer continues to refuse to attend, they can still be investigated by the IPCC and, where appropriate, charges can still be brought regardless of whether they attended an interview or refused to do so. Therefore, failure to attend the interview is not a way of avoiding the decisions of the IPCC. Such a failure would be a breach of prescribed standards of behaviour, and the officer would rightly become the subject of misconduct proceedings.

The final, overarching point in reply to the hon. Lady’s questions is that the IPCC is an investigatory body. It has not asked for the power to impose sanctions, nor is it particularly well-equipped to exercise that power; it is there to investigate. Having said that, I recognise that we are all anxious to ensure that there is clarity on the availability of an effective sanction.