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Lord Dixon-Smith: I have some sympathy with the questions that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, asks. That said, I am not sure that I have a great deal of sympathy with the solution that he expounds.
I have always assumed--and I hope my noble friend the Minister will assure me of this--that the current funding for NCIS will be transferred initially to the normal Home Office police grant. To that extent the existing funding will not affect the present situation with regard to funding for current police authorities. The regional crime squads are already funded through the central police grant, so to that extent what is happening here is that the funding is being clawed back from the police authorities and going to what will be a national crime squad instead of to a regional crime squad. So the actual changes in service funding levels probably will be very small at the operational police authority level.
If this is the way it is to be done, it is effectively top slicing. Even if the police authority is required to send its levy back it is effectively top sliced off it. Given that that is happening, to expect that that money can be taken back without any impact on the services provided by a particular police authority at all times is an unreasonable expectation.
I have some experience in dealing with police authorities from time to time, and there are, as the saying goes, police authorities and police authorities. They all try extremely hard--and I defer to none in my admiration for them--but some are better than others. It may well be that from time to time an individual authority could find itself marginally embarrassed by its levy in one particular year. It should be noted that the levy is subject to a great deal of consultation with the police authorities before it is finally agreed, but an individual authority could well find itself marginally embarrassed. We are not talking about a vast sum of money in relation to the totality of the budget, but it may find itself marginally embarrassed at some point as a result of the particular way it chooses to allocate its resources. We should not deny the police authorities that right.
I agree that the whole question of funding needs further definition and tightening, but I do not accept that this amendment is at all appropriate as a way of taking the matter forward.
6.15 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: I am grateful to my noble friend who again speaks with enormous experience, not only at local government level but as having been chairman of one of the local authority associations.
I can see that the intended purpose of Amendments Nos. 27 and 63 to Clauses 17 and 61 is to protect police authorities from excessive increases in the costs of NCIS and providing the services of the current regional crime squads.
I recognise that police authorities in England and Wales are justifiably concerned that they may face levies for these services which reduce their ability to fund necessary local policing. But the Government are not persuaded that these amendments are necessary for the purpose and indeed they could have undesirable effects.
The Bill already safeguards the interests of police authorities and makes provision for an informed decision about the split between funding for local policing and these two national services. First, paragraph 1 of Schedule 3 gives the police authority members of the two service authorities the dominant voice in determining the levies. Secondly, paragraph 2 requires the Secretary of State to consult representatives of the police authorities before deciding whether to approve the proposed levies. In practice, the provision in paragraph 2 will be implemented by creating a tripartite body to advise the Home Secretary on what level of levy is appropriate.
In view of this I believe that the proposed amendments are unnecessary. Not only are they unnecessary but they are impractical and they have undesirable consequences. The amendments to Clauses 17 and 61 would require the Home Secretary to reach a judgment on whether or not a single police authority could fund the policing services it intends to provide out of the resources it had left after the levies for NCIS and the National Crime Squad had been deducted--a point made very well by my noble friend, Lord Dixon-Smith. This means detailed central examination of the policing plans for the 43 police authorities in England and Wales. Not only is this impractical--the result would be immensely bureaucratic--it also usurps the role of police authorities and would result in direct intervention in local policing by the Home Secretary. This attacks the very foundations of the local policing structure in this country. It is potentially a move in the direction of a national police force.
The amendment to Clause 61 would have a further undesirable effect. It would tie the level of funding of the National Crime Squad for all time to the current level of funding. It would also mean that the costs of the National Crime Squad would have to be distributed to police authorities as they are now. Under this amendment the police authorities in an area served by
an existing regional crime squad would be charged the same proportion of the National Crime Squad's costs as they currently pay for their regional crime squad. This cannot be right. For instance, what happens if crime patterns change over time or the tasks the police service ask the National Crime Squad to undertake within the remit we give them develop or alter? Under this amendment to Clause 61 the service authority would be unable to respond.It is clearly right that the process of deciding on the levies for NCIS and the National Crime Squad should take account of local policing needs--that is absolutely fundamental. The Bill already provides for the interests of local chief officers of police and their police authorities to be taken into account. That is consistent with our tripartite system of policing. These amendments would create more bureaucracy and affect the role of police authorities in a way which we do not believe would be helpful or feasible.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, asked a number of questions, first about the size of NCIS and the National Crime Squad, the size of the budget, and would it be the same as is currently spent on those services. The NCIS and the National Crime Squad budgets will be based on the current levels of expenditure on these services. That also answers the question that my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith posed.
The provisions in the Bill are not for top slicing, as the noble Lord, knows, and I would like to write to him on the other points of detail that he raised in speaking to this amendment.
There are arguments both for and against top slicing. I will not rehearse them. We have set our face against top slicing. We believe that the levying principle avoids the direct principal control that flows from top slicing. It means that the recipients of the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad services pay directly for the services they use. We believe that is a good discipline. The levy is more transparent than top slicing and will appear on council tax bills.
Lord Knights: To clarify things in my own mind, will the Minister say if I am right in thinking that the costs of the regional crime squads at the moment are met by the police forces of the regions which they serve, and that those expenses will no longer be payable because the regional crime squads will have gone? Presumably that is roughly the same amount of money as they will be called upon to pay for the central squad?
As to NCIS, I was under the impression--perhaps wrongly--that that was funded as a common police service. That means that each force is already paying a common police service contribution and, therefore, that money will equate roughly with what they will pay under the new arrangements?
Baroness Blatch: The best way for me to answer the noble Lord, Lord Knights, is to say that the money that is in the system, both for NCIS and the regional crime squads, will remain and be available through a levying process which will be heavily influenced by
consultations and negotiations between the local authority members of the two service authorities. That money will not disappear; it will remain available. As I said, in the early stages--and as my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith observed--the levels of payment to those bodies will be based very much on the costs that apply at present. The situation may develop differently over time.
Lord Knights: I thank the Minister for that response; but, unfortunately, I must persist in the matter. Am I right in thinking that police authorities already make a contribution to NCIS and that they do not get it for free?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Can the Minister clarify her answer of "Yes"? Does it mean that they get it for free? All the £25 million comes out of the Home Office Vote, does it not?
Baroness Blatch: I am told that it does not come off the Home Office Vote. I shall write to the noble Lord on the matter. The important fundamental point here is that the money that local police authorities will be expected to pay for both NCIS and the National Crime Squad will be made available to them from the moneys that are in the system at the moment for NCIS and the NCS.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I shall turn to another subject so that the Minister will be able to avoid writing to us and may, therefore, be able to give an answer now. Of course the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, is right to say that the regional crime squads are at present funded by police authorities and that will continue. However, I hope that the cost of the NCS will be greater than the combined cost of the regional crime squads. After all, the whole intention of the exercise is that the NCS will be able to fight crime more effectively and do more than the regional crime squads have been able to do. To me, that means that the new system may well cost more money. If it provides better crime busting, I do not believe that we will begrudge the money involved.
There is a combination of money at present paid by local authorities for the regional crime squads and money which is at least largely paid by the Home Office for the NCIS. We shall no doubt receive more precision in that respect in just a moment. If the Minister thinks, as she clearly does, that my amendments are technically defective, clearly I cannot pursue them to a Division. However, I was fascinated and enormously impressed by what the noble Baroness said regarding the need to leave the decisions about expenditure to the local police authorities and for the Government not to get involved. Indeed, that seems to apply not just to expenditure but also to "needs".
The Minister may have been out of local government for some time, but my understanding is that every local authority has its standard spending assessment determined by government who presume to decide what is the proper amount for each local authority to spend not only on its police services but on all its services;
and that government grant to local authorities is based on that SSA. Therefore, all the criticisms that the Minister is making of the intervention of central government in local government expenditure as it affects the police should also apply to the use of the SSA and universal capping which is the practice in the rest of local government. I shall treasure the Minister's words. I shall probably have them picked out in needlepoint and make sure that they are used effectively when we come to the next local government spending round. The analogy will be of great help.
If the amendments are defective, we may well be driven back to saying, as some people would wish us to say, that the costs of the National Crime Squad and NCIS should be paid for by central government and not by local police authorities. I hope that is not the case because I do not wish it to be so. However, we shall have to find a way to protect the rest of police expenditure if we are to travel the route proposed in the Bill; namely, a levy. I understand the point that the Minister is making regarding the difference between a levy and top-slicing. I am sure that the Minister is right to say that the transparency of the levy has certain advantages, but there are still profound difficulties about the proposals and we shall have to return to the matter at a later stage.
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