Police Reform

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right: we must ensure we have extremely good support, via the police service, for improving the quality of senior officers. If he looks and the Crime and Policing Bill in detail, he will see that there are measures to improve training, support, promotion opportunities, quality, vetting and other mechanisms, in relation to improving the quality of police officers.

Again, it is important that the policing individual for the mayor’s office, or the police board, holds the chief constable to account. In the case that he mentions, it is arguable that that did not happen to the extent that it should have done. There is an important distinction between budget, holding to account and agreeing a plan versus day-to-day operational activity. Improving the quality of staff is absolutely important, and that is what our new proposals in the Crime and Policing Bill are designed to do.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, the Government have done the right thing in removing PCCs. That said, some of them were very good and they sometimes made some good decisions. However, interestingly, as PCCs came along, we ended up with selections for chief constables with one applicant: the home candidate. Unsurprisingly, they ended up with people who agreed with them. So, I am afraid that some change was necessary, and that is a good idea.

I am less convinced by the Government’s solution in other respects. First, the move to mayors may be a good idea, but I worry about the rest. The Minister said that, at the moment, it is a patchwork. I am afraid that the alternative solution to a mayor looks like a hodge-podge. I include in that the City of London, which appears to be keeping its own committee, for reasons entirely beyond me. Why does the City of London, the smallest force in the country, need a committee that nobody else can manage?

Finally, I am not sure about these savings. I can almost guarantee that the council leaders who take on this responsibility will want their own people to support them, so will absorb that saving immediately. The Government may want to look at what arrangements will be in place and whether there will be any cap on the expenditure for the new governance, which frankly has gone through the roof. As the Minister has just explained, that saving will be gained by the new arrangements.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I first echo what the noble Lord has said. This is not in any way directed at the performance of individual police and crime commissioners. There are many good people who have given a lot of commitment and time and, in many cases, have made significant changes. However, at the end of the day, we are looking at the governance model. In my view, it needs to move towards the mayoral model. Where we can do that, we will.

The genuine problem is that not every area is seeking to have a mayor at the moment and not all police authorities are coterminous with mayoral authorities. Those are issues that we will have to look at downstream, but the general presumption is to build on the models we have now, in London, Greater Manchester and the Yorkshires, to ensure that we firm up that mayoral accountability.

The police White Paper—which, as I have just confirmed to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, will be published before Christmas—will look at issues such as efficiency, a range of matters to do with the improvement of training, going back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Swire, and how we can improve performance outputs in policing. I will bring that back to the House before Christmas but, at the moment, I cannot stray too much into that area.