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Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the work of our police services. We must never forget that every day they put their lives on the front line to protect society and they deal with a difficult job with dedication, professionalism and purpose. They have been highly successful in their role, particularly in bringing down burglary and vehicle crimes, with an overall fall of 12 per cent in recorded crimes last year. We on these Benches are delighted to hear that it is to be recommended that Her Majesty award the Queen's Jubilee Medal to the service. It is wholly appropriate and timely.
I must declare an interest in these matters. I have worked alongside the police for 20 years as a member and latterly as chair of my local police authority. I have seen many changes throughout that time. These proposals are but another stage in the process of the reform that the police service has recognised that it must address.
Police numbers have been a major problem. We commend the work the Government have sought to do to improve the numbers of officers but it is still an issue with the police and the communities they serve. The latest figures, released in June, show that while numbers were up 1,350 on last year, after four years of a Labour Government who came to power promising greatly improved policing services, numbers were still 1,639 lower than those inherited from the previous government. At this rate it would take at least another year to get back to the number inherited from the previous government and two years to reach the proposed target levels. In some forces the numbers have decreased.
The number of special constables is also a great cause of concern us. Their numbers continued to fall dramatically, with 1,609 fewer than last year. We are very pleased that the Government have recognised that and will act to stop this haemorrhage.
Let us now try to be positive, because that is what the service needs from us. Liberal Democrats support reform of the police but we need to be clear about the aims of that reform and about the principles by which it will be underpinned. I know that talks are under way within the Police Negotiating Board about pay and conditions of service. The Minister referred to that in answer to my recent Question. But we must not underestimate the difficulties ahead and we must carefully weigh every proposal in consultation with all the partners who have an interest in policing.
It is frustrating that it has taken a perceived crisis in the service in relation to recruitment and retention, not to mention morale, before action has been taken. For a long time I worked closely with others on the police reform programme. It has been a long and laborious process to get to this stage. For rushed decisions to be made now will not do the service any good.
The fundamental aim must be to improve the service, to make it more effective at tackling crime. That will be in partnership with others. It will not be achieved without taking hearts and minds with us.
The removal of outdated regulations is essential in order to increase flexibility in the service but not at the cost of damaging recruitment and retention. It is right to consider such issues as giving BCU level commanders more flexibility over use of staff and shift patterns. But, as I pointed out recently, it is also essential to consider how the pension system can be improved in order to encourage people to stay in the service and not be penalised if they wish to do so after they have reached retirement age.
Controversial issues about the use of wardens and other police support agencies must be addressed. We on these Benches have been supportive of expanding the use of a second tier to support the police. We
propose that local authorities should be able to create community safety forces. However, we must be clear what we mean. We do not mean that those people will replace police officers. Police officers have a distinct and unique role. They must be freed up to undertake the fight against crime. We think that they need additional support to undertake those areas of their work which have historically been more about visible reassurance. However, while encouraging that area of work we must also ensure that there is local and democratic oversight and accountability of the service.Finally, perhaps I may make this plea to the Government. Please do not rush this reform. It has been a number of years in gestation and the perception now is that everything has come quickly to a head. A great deal of work has been going on behind the scenes and good will and commitment are being shown on all sides. I urge the Government not to spoil that by putting a firm deadline on negotiations at this stage in order to fit into the parliamentary timetable. Policing reform is far too important to rush through. Let us try to work together to get this reform right. The Home Secretary has committed himself to a dialogue not a diktat on these matters. From these Benches we would seek to help him with that and to keep him to his word.
5.59 p.m.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the warm response from the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond. We shall not be rushing to parliamentary deadlines. We need to obtain an agreement with the police negotiating board. We want a decision, we hope an agreement, by the end of this month. I understand that there will be a meeting on 27th December. That is why we cannot go into the details of pensions, pay and all the issues which have been raised in parliamentary Questions asked in this House since I have been a Member. They are a most important part of the package.
Some aspects of the plans contained in the White Paper and whatever comes forth from the Police Negotiating Board will require legislation. A police Bill is planned for this Session which will be introduced on the back of the proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, welcomed the recognition that we are all part of the same community and the proposal that we must return to the family and community ethos so that we are all responsible for our own security.
We want to encourage best practice in police forces. It will not be a one-size-fits-all proposal. Comparisons will be made between forces. We are not planning league tables, but comparisons will be made on a like-for-like basis. It would be wrong to compare one police force with another in terms of sick rates, detention rates, action on robbery and street crime if they were not like-for-like forces policing similar areas.
There is diversity in performance and the public are entitled to expect to have answers for the massive variations in performance. It is not as though there is
a narrow window through which performance is measured. It is extremely wide, as was made clear in the Statement.In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, no attempt is being made to introduce a national police force. There will be 43 chief constables and each is responsible for operational matters in their area—not the Home Secretary, not Ministers, and not politicians. It is the responsibility of the local police forces working with their communities and police authorities.
The standards unit will fill gaps and I draw your Lordships' attention to the extensive White Paper. According to the executive summary, the standards unit has been in embryonic form since the summer and announcements will soon be made about its detailed structure. If there are critical gaps in the system, it will engage the service at basic command level to identify the most successful approaches for plugging them. That is important and it is a tried and tested practice in the health service and local government to see what works in different areas and to discover where it can be used elsewhere.
I was not sure whether criticism had been made of the occupational health facility. There needs to be such a facility for the police as there ought to be in every occupation. There should not be any no-go areas. There have been some remarkable examples of good use being made of occupational health facilities in order to stop the police, if they are injured or ill, having to wait for the necessary treatments, and in the mean time being off duty. That is most important, given the need for skilled police officers to be on the job.
However, although the occupational health facility will be national it must be delivered at local level. It is important that it takes account of the locality. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, referred to the relationship between the police and the Specials; in other words, the police family. As regards the accredited community safety organisations, accreditation will be given at the discretion of the chief constable. A bullet-point list is set out at page 88, paragraph 5.15, making it clear that it will be for the local chief constable to take it up; the schemes must be consistent; and there will be an annual review.
Many of those organisations will be local authorities, but that is not necessarily the case because there can be a role for the private sector. There will be proper training and their powers will be limited. I caught the end of a recent XNewsnight" interview with the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie. I arrived home just in time to see it after dealing with the anti-terrorist Bill. He spoke of a matter which used to be raised with me a great deal in my former role as Member of Parliament; that we have lost the Xparkies". We have lost much from the days when I was a youngster; for instance, people to keep a bit of order and keep you in check. For various reasons, good and bad, we have lost all that.
The fact is that there is a role for that kind of operation, but it is much better if those engaged in it are working under and in co-operation with the police with proper training and accreditation from the chief
constable. There will be no vigilantes. That idea can be killed stone dead. This is not an operation involving vigilantes and I believe that it will be warmly welcomed by the police and local communities.The noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, mentioned police numbers. I freely admit that we have to get them back up. There is no secret about the numbers; they are on the way up but they did fall after 1997. When any party leaves government, it leaves more police officers than it inherited. I know that there were more police officers in 1979 than in 1974 and that there were even more in 1997. The numbers then fell, but they are now rising and our projections are as I gave in the Statement. Having brought forward the target of 130,000, we estimate that we can meet that a year earlier than expected. The noble Baroness is right that there has been a dramatic drop in the number of special officers from 19,000 to 12,000 over a four-year period. We must take action in that respect.
Spending on the police service is rising dramatically from #7.7 billion in 2000-01 to #9.3 billion in 2003-04. There is a large role to be played by support staff because, as police diaries show, 40 per cent of an officer's time is spent in the station. We can use technology and expert civilians—perhaps former police officers—to help the police by beefing up this area in detection and forensic work.
There is much work to be done and nothing will happen overnight. The Government have published their White Paper and although we will not be seeking to rush through change, we want to drive it through and to take the police with us. We want to change or eliminate certain practices, but I repeat that there is no attempt to build a national police force. However, we want some national standards for the citizens of this country. They are all paying their taxes at the same rate and they are entitled to have their communities looked after to the same standard.
6.7 p.m.
Lord Condon: My Lords, I declare an interest as the former Police Commissioner in London. I congratulate the Minister and the Government on bringing forward this exciting and long-overdue package of reforms for the police service. I hope that the Minister will confirm that many past and present members of the service will welcome the measures and have lobbied for them for many years.
I hope that he will also acknowledge that there will be some residual anxieties and I predict that they will probably centre on three or four main issues. I hope that he will confirm some of them. First, the rank and file of police officers will feel some disguised attack on their overall pay and conditions. They will need to be assured that that is not the intention and that, in moving forward in the public interest, the police interest will coincide with the public interest on these issues.
Secondly, there will be anxieties around some of the performance regimes. Some police officers will have lived through the bad old days when detection rates were massaged to the point of almost being crimes
themselves. I am aware of police forces whose detection rates were halved overnight because police authorities realised that integrity was being compromised dramatically in the name of performance. I welcome the moves to push up performance, it must not be at the expense of integrity.Thirdly, chief constables will have some anxieties that units within their long-term command will be micro-managed by transient members of standards units who are here today and gone tomorrow and who have no long-term accountability for policing those areas. I do not share that anxiety, but it will be a real one that will need to be addressed.
My fourth concern involves auxiliary police officers. I congratulate the Minister on the proposals to extend the police family—that debate is long overdue. I predict that within my old service there will be a widespread concern that auxiliaries will be a smokescreen for reducing the number of trained police. Again, I do not share that reservation, but it will be a source of debate and anxiety.
The Minister used the word Xconsensus"; I encourage that approach. There is a happy coincidence in the interests of the police service and those of the public in terms of advancing the reforms, which I shall certainly support.
In my maiden speech to your Lordships' House a few weeks ago, I expressed my profound disappointment that my former colleagues were not to be awarded the Queen's Jubilee medal. Let me say how excited I was today to hear that they will now be included in the list.
The final measure that I pick out as being of critical importance is the creation of an independent police complaints commission. I have lobbied for that for many years. It is the final piece in a long overdue jigsaw and it will encourage public support for the police complaints process. I congratulate the Minister on these reforms and I hope that he will comment on some of my anxieties.
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