| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Lord Rooker: I shall not repeat myself. Everything that I could say about this group of amendments I have said to the previous group. I shall just add another statistic. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, is not living in the real world. I shall give another example of variation. If all was OK, the powers would not be needed. The figures are for BCUs in urban areas for violence against the person—another offence—during the same years. The best detection rate was 89.6 per cent; the worst was 54.9 per cent. Think about that. Do not tell me or anybody else—particularly the people living in the area where it is only 54 per cent—that everything is fine, everyone is doing everything that they should and there is no reason for further action. Of course there is reason for action if a comparable area has a detection rate of 89.6 per cent—virtually 90 per cent, compared to 55 per cent.
Someone is doing something about it—but ineffectively. The existing processes are not working all over. That is the point that I am making. That is why it is a last resort. If, fundamentally, noble Lords do not accept that variation in performance is a central pillar in our reasons for taking action, I have a major problem on my hands. If we do not consider it and accept it as a serious factor, we will never understand why the Home Secretary feels obliged to do something. He is held responsible at the court of opinion for those massive variations.
We are out to improve police performance, not to make all the forces the same. We were told earlier, almost as a little joke, that there would always be a bottom quarter. Of course there will. The point is that the gap in performance between the bottom quarter and the top quarter could be 1 per cent; it could, on the other hand, be 70 or 80 per cent. It is the difference in performance, not where they are in the ranking, that matters. They could all be very close together but some would be at the bottom. On the other hand, there could be massive variations in performance. Those massive variations are unacceptable, and they are the reason why we want to take further powers to do something about it, as a last resort, after all the other management practices and monitoring have failed.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: It is difficult for us to react to the statistics when we do not know to what they relate or have any background facts. Having done a bit of criminology, I think that anybody who has would say that the differences in the problems of different policing areas are extraordinarily wide and divergent.
All the Minister's remarks are posited on the assumption that the Home Office can do it better. That is where there may be a lot of disagreement on this side of the House.
Lord Rooker: The question is, "Could the Home Office do it worse?". I am painting a picture of the status quo. There is no secret about the variation in figures; plenty of statistics have been published. This evening I have used comparison figures for a group of 30 comparable basic command units, all in urban areas. Those are the comparative figures that I have used tonight; I have not been comparing apples and pears. That is my information, and it covers a group of 30 urban areas, including the best and the worst and considering the changes in the rates.
We want to make improvements. We will be held accountable all right if there is no improvement. Police officers, chief officers and police authorities are working their socks off to raise their game, to raise their performance. That is going on all over the country, and we understand that. However, there are still massive variations in performance in like-for-like authorities. We simply cannot ignore that. We want to help: if you like, we are the man from the Home Office, we have come to help. Help is required.
We do not have all the answers at the centre; no one argues that. My answer to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, is, "Can the Home Office do it worse?". We need to raise our game and make improvements. That is the purpose of the clauses.
Lord Bradshaw: Some of the figures need careful examination. There is such a thing as ethical crime recording. Some police authorities record crimes, visit prisons and knock crimes off against people. Others rely entirely on primary detection of crime. That is the sort of difference.
Recently in Westminster Hall I saw an exhibition by the Audit Commission of various performance indicators. The figures for Thames Valley seemed poor. However, when we probed deeply, we found that our performance was not poor. In fact, our performance was not measured very well. There are big differences and I am quite certain that in large part the Home Office will not know the answers.
Lord Elton: The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, speaks with greater knowledge than I am able to do; nonetheless I am anxious to support his point. I recall two things from my time at the Home Office. The first was the wide variations in the levels of the recording of crime and the second was that there are some areas in which it is very much more difficult to persuade anyone to give evidence. In some areas it is impossible.
The noble Lord has so often rested so much on these figures that I do think that we need to know more about them.
Lord Rooker: Plenty of information has been published on variations. I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, was making an accusation about the ethical counting of figures, but we have other published research. The Audit Commission has gathered figures. If the root cause of the issue here is that noble Lords do not believe that there is a wide variation in like-for-like police authorities and if they question the rationale of why we say that these levers need to be made available to the Home Secretary, then I shall do what I can to provide an encyclopaedia of figures to all noble Lords—all legitimate figures that I shall test them on the next time the Committee meets.
Lord Elton: Before the noble Lord bombards us with too much information, I should make clear that we are not questioning that there is a wide variation. That is common knowledge. What we question is the matter of "like for like". That is the kind of point that can be completely obscured unless one knows the methodology.
Lord Condon: In compiling the statistics, did the Minister include the very recent research undertaken by the totally independent Police Foundation? It looked at over 300 basic command units. When it took out the genuine demographic differences, it found that in almost 90 per cent of the performance indicators, the variation in performance was less than 5 per cent.
Lord Rooker: I shall be happy to have all the available figures put to noble Lords. I do not have any problem with that. The answer to the noble Lord, Lord Condon, is yes.
Lord Elton: It is not a question of the figures; it is a question of the methodology. The noble Lord, Lord Condon, has just explained to the Committee how that can be done.
Lord Dixon-Smith: I think that we are in danger of glaring at each other across an open ditch. No one disputes the fact that there are perhaps—I say "perhaps" because the methodology is significant—unacceptable variations in performance. In my view, the Minister did not listen to my opening remarks with sufficient care, because the question here is whether this, as it were, local nuclear option of last resort for the Secretary of State is necessary.
By the time the Secretary of State receives those statistics, the local people will have been aware of them for some considerable time. The CPTDA, in its capacity of working across the country as a standards unit, will also be aware of those units which are
performing well and those which are not. The Audit Commission will have been working in detail with the forces, churning the information out of its computers, again for some considerable time.The question is whether statutory action is appropriate at that stage. We should bear in mind that the men on the ground will want to improve their performance because no one wants to be on the bottom of the heap for a minute longer than they have to be and they will work hard to get off it. Even if the result of that is that the bottom of the heap rises with them, they will work to get off it. The question is whether this action is necessary.
The Minister said that the Secretary of State needs the power. We believe that he already has the levers. He has created the mechanisms; he has got the inspectorate; he has got the Audit Commission; he has got the police standards unit; he has got the CPTDA; he will have a highly-motivated group of chief constables across the whole country; and he will have 49, or whatever is the number, of police authorities which certainly will not want under-performing units. If all those people have that ambition, by the time the Secretary of State gets hold of the figures he will not need to act.
The Minister could respond by saying, "If I am never going to need to act because they are all so good, what are you worried about?". As we have said before, the problem is that we do not only have to consider the Bill in the hands of reasonable men; we also have to
consider it in a wider context. We have had quite enough of this. We are going to disagree but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Elton: Before the noble Lord sits down, as one can speak only when there is a Motion before the House, I do not think that I can dispose of my amendment in three minutes. I hope that I shall not be asked to attempt to finish it before 11 o'clock. I shall go on talking for a moment longer because I believe that this is in transaction between the noble Lords on the Front Benches. I cannot make my point and get it answered in less than three minutes and I hope that what they were discussing is whether we should adjourn the House at this stage.
Next Section
Back to Table of Contents
Lords Hansard Home Page