 House of Commons |
Session 2008 - 09 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Policing and Crime |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Chris
Shaw, Andrew Kennon, Committee
Clerks † attended the
Committee Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 3 February 2009(Afternoon)[Hugh Bayley in the Chair]Policing and Crime BillClause 1Duty
of police authorities in relation to public
accountability 4
pm Question
(this day) again proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
The
Chairman: I remind the Committee that with this we are
considering: new clause 2—Composition of police
authorities— ‘For
section 4 of the Police Act 1996 (Membership of police authorities etc)
substitute— “Composition
of police authorities (1) Where
a police authority has the same boundary as a local council, that
council will be the police
authority. (2) Each police
authority established under section 3 shall consist of 17
members. (3) Where a police
authority boundary and a local council boundary are not coterminous,
two-thirds of the members of the police authority shall be directly
elected by Single Transferable
Vote. (4) The members of the
police authority subject to clause (3) above shall be elected once
every four years on the same day as all or most of the local government
elections in the force
area. (5) Elections per clauses
(3) and (4) above shall be voted on by all members of the population
over the age of 18 who reside within the relevant police authority
boundary and whom are eligible to vote in local government
elections. (6) Where subsection
(2) above applies, one-third of the members of the police authorities
shall be nominated from local councillors within the police force
area. (7) Under subsection (1)
or (2) above, police authorities may co-opt extra members to ensure
diversity, experience and
expertise. (8) In subsection
(4) above, co-opted members may
be— (a) magistrates,
or (b) any person deemed
appropriate by the existing members of the police authority to which
outside members are being
co-opted.”’.
New Clause 4Responsibilities
of police authorities ‘(1)
Each police authority will have the ability to determine its own local
precept agreement with the relevant local council or councils as
appropriate to its individual
requirements. (2) Each police
authority will have the ability to determine its own fiscal priorities
in accordance with its individual
requirements. (3) The Secretary
of State may not give unsolicited directions to police authorities on
local precepts, minimum budgets or fiscal
priorities. (4) Each police
authority has a duty to consult with the Secretary of State, and to
take account of national policing authorities.
(5) The Police Act 1996 is amended as
follows. (6) In section 6(2)
(general functions of police authorities), leave out paragraph
(a). (7) In section 6(2)(c)
leave out “whether in compliance with a direction under section
38 or otherwise”. (8) In
section 6 subsection (3) is
omitted. (9) For section 37A
(setting of strategic priorities for police authorities)
substitute— “Policing
objectives Each individual
police authority must determine objectives for the policing of their
own local area.” (10)
For section 38 (setting of performance targets)
substitute— “Where
an objective has been determined under section 37, the relevant police
authority shall establish levels of performance (performance targets to
be aimed at in seeking to achieve the
objective).” (11)
Section 39 (Codes of Practice) is
repealed. (12) Section 41
(Directions as to a minimum budget) is
repealed. (13) Section 44
(Reports from Chief constables) is
repealed. (14) The Local
Government Act 1999 is amended as
follows. (15) In section 31(9)
(major precepting authorities: further recognition), after
“1992”, insert “, but excluding police authorities
and the Metropolitan Police
Authority”.’. At
the time we broke, we were in a middle of the debate, and Julie
Kirkbride had the floor.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Jim
Fitzpatrick): Will the hon. Lady give way on that
point?
Jim
Fitzpatrick: I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. She
raised a small point in her comments before we broke that niggled me at
lunchtime. She referred to some Welsh forces’ obsession with
dealing with speed. I know what point she was trying to make, but does
she agree that when investigations show that speed was clearly a
contributory factor in the deaths of 700 people in 2007, resources must
be directed to ensure that we save lives by restricting something that
can be
restricted?
Miss
Kirkbride: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I am
glad that he has got it off his chest, if it was troubling him during
lunch. I have a great deal of sympathy with his point. My own family
has experience of a fatal road traffic accident, so I know only too
well how heartbreaking they can be. I am glad to put it on record that
resources certainly need to be applied to traffic and speeding
enforcement.
My point, to
reprise quickly what I was saying, is that there is a democratic
deficit in police representation of all the views in the community. My
concern involves exactly such cases as when a chief constable has a bee
in his or her bonnet about a particular issue. Accountability from the
public’s point of view as to whether that is the correct
priority is somewhat unclear. It must go through the police authority,
which may be happy with how precious, scarce resources are being spent.
Despite the speech made by the hon. Member for Chesterfield, who called
for communities to be allowed to raise as much of
their own resources as they see fit, resources will always be limited,
because the public have only a certain appetite for paying taxes and
have other priorities. Policing must live within its means and decide
on its priorities. The question is, how do the public make those
priorities their priorities, and what accountability is there in
respect of the police having to ensure that that
happens? As
all parties have agreed that there is a problem of democracy and
representation, it is disappointing that the Government have come up
with a damp squib after they had suggested that they would do something
more exciting. To be fair to the Government, I agree that it is a
difficult and complicated area of public services to reform and that we
need to proceed with caution. Democracy is highly desirable, but it
could have some malign consequences if reform does not proceed as we
would like it
to. One
of the questions brought out in this morning’s debate was,
“If we were to democratise police accountability, how would we
organise that?”. The first problem is the police force area. In
some places it is very distinct and clear-cut: it is a county force,
there is already a county council, everyone sees a community of
interest and it becomes much clearer to administer. In my constituency,
it crosses county boundaries. It is not obvious that people in
Bromsgrove have a community of interest with other parts of the West
Mercia force area. It is therefore more difficult to find one person
who can speak for everybody and in whom everybody has
confidence.
Similarly,
that one person who might seem to represent a police force area could,
in foreseeable circumstances, be encouraged to inflame incidents to
attract votes come the all-important election. That leads to the
question of when the elections should be. Should they be tied to other
local authority elections? What turnout would we expect, hope or desire
to achieve? Were they to be stand-alone elections, turnout would be a
worry to anyone interested in democracy, because there is often a
disappointing turnout at local authority elections and occasionally
even at general elections. If the public had not bought into the idea
of electing their police representatives, would they have a proper
mandate? How would one try to increase the
turnout? Those
are difficult issues. I was interested in the arguments advanced by the
hon. Member for Chesterfield. I am sure that he will not be surprised
to learn that I do not agree with all of them, but I did think that
there was something in the idea of an elected representative
representing a smaller area, where there is a more obvious community of
interest. Having more than one elected representative in control of a
police area reduces the prospects of what the hon. Member for
Stourbridge talked about—a single BNP candidate, who has been
elected and therefore is sacrosanct, taking charge of one of our
primary police forces. That would be an area of interest if we were to
proceed down the democratic road. It is disappointing that the
Government did not have more ideas. As I said, I sympathise with the
reasons why. We might all have to wait for a general election to hear
more elucidation from all sides of what we might do with police
forces. Mrs.
Nadine Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con): I speak as a
representative of a constituency that is ranked next to bottom in a
national rating of forces, so it will come as no surprise to the
Minister that constituents
in Bedfordshire feel very strongly about this issue. We do not like the
fact that our police force came next to bottom, in terms of all its
rankings, in the UK. The one thing that disappointed me more was that
when the chief constable was held to account for the reasons why we had
come next to bottom, there was nothing but total support from the
police authority for both the chief constable and the force. There was
no questioning of why we were in that position, just closed ranks and
total support of the chief
constable. In
clause 1, we have missed a golden opportunity to allow people, and
particularly my constituents in Bedfordshire, to pass judgment on the
person whom they see running their police force and delivering policing
in their area. When people go to the ballot box, they know exactly
which MP they are voting for. If the incumbent MP is a bad MP, people
will go to the ballot box and vote them out. Exactly the same would
happen if we had an elected chief constable as opposed to an
authority. I
do not think that the residents of any of our constituencies would
flock to vote for a police authority. I do see them flocking to vote
for the person who, along with their MP and councillors, be it a
unitary authority, county council, district council or whatever, will
make a difference to how efforts to tackle crime are delivered on their
streets. Surely if we had one person, a directly elected chief
constable, which the Green Paper hinted at but which the Bill fails to
provide, policing budgets would also be far more assiduously examined
by the person responsible for delivering the services that the budget
was to pay for. I am not sure that an authority would have the same
attention to detail as there would be under an elected chief
constable. Will
an authority be accountable in the same way? There will be no members
of the public on it, so it will be a quango. They will all be elected
by the senior appointments panel. Will the authority be accountable to
the people and, if so, in what way? I ask that because I do not see
anyone who wants to make an issue of policing on their streets using
this route to do that. They will do it in exactly the same way as
residents do it at the moment. They will come to their MP or go to
their councillor. They will not think of going to their authority
because it will not be giving regard to their views. The regard will be
given to the elected person—the MP or the councillors. I fail to
see how this clause takes note of anyone who lives in 16 Russell street
in Bedfordshire. I cannot see how it takes account of that person being
concerned about the fact that knife crime on their street has gone up
over the past 12 months.
How will
people’s views be taken account of in this clause? Will people
have the opportunity to go and stand in front of the people who should
have regard to their views? Will the general public have a chance? Will
all my residents in Russell street be able to go and stand in front of
this authority and say, “Take regard of our views because we
want more visible policing on our streets. We do not want you bringing
speed cameras to the end of our street when there are knife crimes
taking place there.” Is that what the clause will do? I fail to
see how it will. We have missed a golden opportunity here
and I fail to see why the Government have not grasped it.
When I saw
the Green Paper, I could envisage the voting booths. I could see a
voting ballot with the councillors, with the MP and the directly
elected chief
constable. Everyone knows who my chief constable is and one of the
reasons for that is that our police force performs so badly. People
have no regard to his views at the moment and I cannot see how this
clause will change that. At the moment, our chief constable is
protected by the police authority and the general public can only go to
councillors or the MP. Where does the clause change that? Where does it
change the route by which the general public can go to change this
particular disregard? Where does that
apply? One
of the reasons that we have been given is that if any other method, or
mechanism, were in place, it could politicise the police. The police
are politicised; every one of us was lobbied about 42-day detention.
Every one of was lobbied over various other issues by our local police.
The police have their own representatives who lobby us, politicise the
issues and come to speak to us. We want democracy, not politicisation.
We want our police to be accountable. They are politicised anyway, so
if the Minister’s response is that we do not want to politicise
the police force, what does he think about the fact that the police
came here to lobby us on 42 days? Is that not politicisation? My police
came to lobby me over the fact that they were one of the worst police
forces in the country and about what is happening in their police
force. Are they not politicising the issue by involving me in it? They
are already politicised; we want to make them less politicised, more
independent, less accountable to us and more accountable to the
individual that people may get the chance to vote for to represent
their particular views in their area.
I am sad that
this clause is going to stand. I hope that the views of the people will
be known through the media and all Members of the House when the Bill
comes to its final stages. It is a golden opportunity missed and I fail
to understand why the Minister has done
that.
Mr.
Ian Cawsey (Brigg and Goole) (Lab): I was not going to
speak in the debate, but I was sparked into doing so by the last
contribution. I mentioned to the Committee earlier on that I chaired a
police authority for four years before coming to the House. People
should be cautious about running down the road of directly electing the
chief of police.
I pray in aid
just two simple points. When I chaired my police authority, the chief
constable was a chap called Tony Leonard. He was an extremely good
chief constable and is now retired. When he came to our area, one of
the things he did was to discover that there was a practice going on in
our force area—it was going on in lots of other force areas as
well—which was to pretend that they were solving crimes that
they were not. They were getting police officers to go around jails to
persuade already convicted people to cough up to crimes that they
almost certainly had not committed, in order to make the figures look
better. Our chief constable thought that that was wrong and that we
should record the crimes that people report and then the ones that are
solved.
4.15
pm
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