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Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 2:
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 2 I should like also to speak to Amendment No. 6. I have left out Amendment No. 3 not merely because of
Both of these amendments refer to an issue which took a great deal of debate at the time of the passage of the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill, in which this House distinguished itself by winning the principle of the right of a body to elect its own chairman against the imposition of a chairman by a Secretary of State. That was done for local police authorities, but the argument is as strong for the National Criminal Intelligence Service and for the National Crime Squad.
The fundamental argument in all of this is that the chairman of a body of this kind has to command the confidence of the members of the authority of which he is the chair. That is the purpose of these amendments. Amendment No. 2 proposes that the section which states that the Secretary of State shall appoint the chair shall be removed and be replaced by a new provision which states that the chairman of both the NCS authority and the NCIS authority shall be appointed by the core members appointed under this schedule from among their number.
It will be noted that this is a modest amendment. It does not include the additional members--who are largely local authority members--of the two separate authorities. It includes only those members who are the core members of the two authorities. It does not follow, the Committee having expressed its view in the Division on the last amendment, that the chairman will be elected from among 10 people, five of whom--and let us not get back to the word "independent"--are appointed by the Secretary of State, however independent they may turn out to be in practice.
The discussions that we had at the time of the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill were generally thought--not only by Members of this House but also by the outside world--to be an issue of considerable constitutional importance. The Government wanted the right to appoint the chairmen of all police authorities. I accused the Secretary of State at that time of wanting the ability to sit his chairmen around his table in his Home Office and to tell them what to do, which would have resulted, via the back door, in a national police force.
The Government disclaim the desire to create a national police force through the provisions of the Bill, and I believe them. I agree with the Government that the Bill does not create a national police force comparable to the FBI. I accept what the Government say: that there is no equivalent here of federal crimes and that the only activity of these two organisations is to be in support of the operations of individual police forces. There is nothing comparable in the way in which they operate to the operations of the national police forces of the United States, France, and many other countries in the developed world. But, at the same time, the recognition which is implicit in that understanding of the importance of the tripartite system in the control of our police needs to be preserved and enhanced as we consider the Bill's provisions.
What we have had for many years in the control of our police force has been a tripartite system between local authorities and police authorities, which has sometimes been more complicated because of the existence of magistrates on police authorities, and the Home Secretary. That has been the tried and tested method of control of police forces. Remarkably few scandals and intolerable disagreements have resulted from what appear on the face of it in "management theory"--if I may appeal to the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, in the matter--to be a recipe for self destruct. It does not actually happen that way.
Whatever management theory may be, all of these people--and they are all non-executive directors, by the way--have managed to work together and to control police forces. They have managed to pursue coherent and yet flexible and responsive policing in all parts of this country. Surely we can do the same today for the NCIS and for the National Crime Squad. Surely we can do so by upholding the tripartite system and saying that those core members, wherever they come from and whether they are appointed by the Secretary of State, by chief officers of police or by local authorities, can be trusted to get together and to agree on the best person to act as their chairman; and then to elect that person to act as chairman. That does not need the heavy hand of the Home Secretary; it is a continuation of a well-established and well-proven system of the control of policing in this country. I commend the amendment to the Committee. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: With great respect to the noble Lord, I think, on reflection, that he should not have made the speech that he has. The noble Lord introduced the concept of local democracy, referring, quite rightly, to the way in which police authorities have been chosen mainly by local authorities since the Police Act 1964. Here, on the other hand, we have two national bodies which are largely of an advisory character. In order to ensure better democratic control over them, we have to engage the responsibility of the Home Secretary. That is what the schedule and the clauses which introduce it aim to achieve.
The Home Secretary's responsibility is surely much more closely and more strongly engaged if he is to appoint the chairman. I believe it will cause a little confusion if we start borrowing the concept of local democracy and try to apply it to these two national bodies. It just does not follow.
Lord Knights: At one time the concept of a national criminal intelligence service would probably have been regarded with extreme suspicion--suspicion based on the perceived activities of organisations of that kind in other parts of the world. I suggest that it is a measure of the trust and confidence with which the police service of this country is held that, so far as I am aware, anyway, no hint of criticism has ever been raised at the system which was set up some four and a half years ago as, I understood, a common police service by mutual agreement of chief constables, local police authorities and the Home Office. I repeat, no hint of criticism has ever been levelled at it during that period. Indeed, the
However, if that trust and confidence is to be maintained, I believe that it is essential that there should be no breath of political influence about its activities and that the NCIS service authority should be clearly seen as a true partnership of the three tripartite bodies which are responsible for the totality of policing in this country at present. I do not believe that that will be possible if the chairman is to be appointed by the Home Secretary and from one of his three appointees to that authority.
Given the power which is vested in the authority to call upon the director general to resign in the interests of efficiency and/or effectiveness contained in Clause 7, I believe that it is imperative to ensure that there can be no suggestion of undue influence being brought to bear on the authority by way of the Home Secretary's appointment of the chairman. There may well never be any such influence, but the possibility of alleging it should be removed. I shall support the amendment.
Baroness Blatch: When speaking on the previous amendment, I made clear that our approach to the membership and to the chairmanship of the service authorities has been to strike a balance between our tripartite system of policing and the need to reflect national and multi-agency interests in these new arrangements. I entirely accept that the question of the chairmanship is of particular importance in that context. The amendments do not challenge the proposal that there should be a single chairman for both authorities. I welcome that measure of agreement. Such an arrangement will be of crucial importance in building the shared strategic vision and close working relationship which will help to achieve the best from both services. But the amendments will have two other results which I am unable to welcome so warmly.
First, and I believe most importantly, they will mean that the chairman will not necessarily be one of the independent members. It could be one of the police authority representatives or it could--although perhaps less likely--be one of the police service representatives. I would not wish in any way to undervalue the particular skills and experience that such members will bring to the service authorities, but I do not believe that it would be right for either of them to be the joint chairman of both service authorities. That is particularly true in the case of the National Criminal Intelligence Service. I have already mentioned its United Kingdom and multi-agency remit. A chairman drawn from representatives of police authorities alone or police forces in England and Wales could not, in my view, properly reflect that wider remit. An independent member is best placed to do so and to provide the impartial leadership which these new authorities will clearly need.
Secondly, the amendments would mean that the core membership rather than the Secretary of State would appoint the joint chairman. This place has in recent years taken a close and influential interest in the arrangements for the appointment of police authority chairmen. But service authorities for national and multi-agency services raise rather different issues. I have already explained why the Government believe that those differences constitute strong arguments for the joint chairman being an independent member. We also believe that the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Northern Ireland, is best placed to take account of those national and multi-agency interests by appointing the chairman from among the independent members. If the appointment was not to be made by the Secretary of State, it would be necessary to give further careful thought to the question of whether the appointment should instead be made by the other core members or the wider membership of both authorities. We believe that this would create unnecessary complications and that the best approach, and a reasonable one given the nature of the bodies involved, is for the appointment of chairman to be made by the Secretary of State.
Reference has been made to the powers that the Secretary of State would take. First, the Bill has been before the Delegated Power Scrutiny Committee. We shall be responding positively to the recommendations of the scrutiny committee. However, it did not query the numbers of powers in the Bill for the Secretary of State. Secondly, all the powers are similar to those for the police authorities. The service authorities will also have many of the powers; for example, to set objectives.
The noble Lord, Lord Knights, clearly is concerned. First, he gave examples of the kind of malevolent activity of a chairman which could go undetected if undue influence were brought to bear either on the director general or on members of the board. I should like to think that there are safeguards set out in the Bill. I refer to the rather exposed way in which the service authorities will work and the accountability through Parliament by the Secretary of State for appointments that he makes. Clearly if appointments go wrong those are public issues and at least one can hold a Secretary of State accountable for them. Therefore, I do not believe that some of the noble Lord's concerns will be borne out in practice. Nevertheless, I take them seriously.
For the reasons that I gave, we are not persuaded that these amendments would make better provision for the appointment of a joint chairman. They would leave open the possibility that the service authority could be chaired by one of the police representatives. I do not think that that would be appropriate. Alternatively, one of the police authority representatives might be appointed but he would be representative of police authorities in England and Wales only. We do not believe that this is the best approach given the United Kingdom and multi-agency remit of the National Criminal Intelligence Service. In the circumstances, although I recognise again that
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