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Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, there are no plans to use the provision in the way the noble Lord suggests.
Lord Elton: My Lords, the noble Lord places me in a difficulty, which can be resolved only by another place or by taking your Lordships through the Lobbies, which I am anxious not to do, as we have much more work to do. Therefore, with some regret and in the expectation of receiving a letter, perhaps, to be placed in the Library, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 not moved.]
Clause 36 [Community safety accreditation schemes]:
Lord Dholakia moved Amendment No. 4:
- Page 35, line 38, at end insert "and the principal local authority for that area"
The noble Lord said: My Lords, Amendment No. 4 is grouped with a large number of other amendments. Amendments Nos. 4 to 20 and Amendments Nos. 22 to 27 are tabled in my name and those of my noble friend Lady Harris, the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, and the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman. Amendment No. 21 stands in my name and that of my noble friend, Lady Harris.
I speak first to Amendment No. 4. It is about community safety accreditation schemes. It is important to recognise that we do not object to the establishment of such schemes. However, we believe that such schemes should be restricted to local authorities. The Bill allows chief constables to accredit local authorities or other employers, such as security firms, to run schemes involving accredited wardens with certain police powers. These are specified in Schedule 5 to the Bill.
Our amendments seek to provide safeguards by limiting accreditation to local authority-led schemes. To avoid any confusion about the status of those not employed or engaged by local authorities, we would expect employers to be sub-contractors of the local authorities when these schemes are running.
We do not dispute the need to establish and maintain a community safety accreditation scheme. We accept that that will contribute to community safety and security; assist in combating crime and disorder; and it will also help towards diminishing public nuisance and other forms of anti-social behaviour.
We believe that a chief constable has a duty not only to consult the police authority but also the principal local authority in his area. Local authorities play an important role in crime prevention. That is ably demonstrated by many of the CCTV schemes which are run in co-operation with them.
We cannot and should not exclude local authorities from this important function. For the purpose of clarity, in Amendments Nos. 8 and 20, we have defined the local authorities both in England and in Wales.
Policing is about partnership. One cannot exclude one of the key players in a crime prevention strategy. The amendment is designed to make that possible.
There are a number of issues with regard to other amendments. They all relate to local authority functions. Amendments Nos. 4 to 8 are designed to ensure that local authorities are involved in this process. Amendments Nos. 9 to 20 deal with accreditation under the community safety accreditation schemes. All the amendments seek to ensure that local authorities are involved. Amendments Nos. 22 to 27 make similar provision in Clause 38 of the Bill. That leaves Amendment No. 21. It specifies that any,
- "person who exercises or performs any power or duty . . . [under the accreditation scheme] shall be known as a community safety warden".
In conclusion, we believe that a clear distinction has to be drawn between police officers and those who are designated under the community accreditation schemes. That would avoid confusion in the minds of the public. More importantly, our amendments would also ensure that local authorities become part of the process of supplementary provision relating to designations and accreditations. I beg to move.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Bridgeman and I both have our names to this group of amendments with the exception of Amendment No. 21. The reason for that exception is very simple: we did not consider that the name for these people was important. Therefore, we did not add our names to that amendment—a rose by any other name, and so on—although there is some virtue in having one single name for them.
So far as concerns the other amendments, it is absolutely essential that local authorities are deeply involved in accreditation schemes. That is all the more important because we do not operate in a country where police authority boundaries are congruent with local authority boundaries. They are not. There are some relatively convenient police authorities, such as my own in Essex. It represents the existing geographic county of Essex. Within that county there are unitary authorities which do not acknowledge the remit of the county council. If the Chief Constable of Essex wanted to set up an accreditation scheme in any part of the county he would need to go to the relevant authority in order to do so. Indeed, if he failed to do so, however much he wanted in principle to set up such a scheme, he would be endangering a project that one would hope would be successful.
We tabled amendments at an earlier stage in the Bill to try to get full police powers for these people. I have given up that argument; but I am sure that it was the correct one. The Bill contains—if it contains anything—an admission of failure by the Government properly to resource the police. We are establishing these groups of people with limited police powers
because governments of long time have not been prepared to do the job properly; therefore, we cannot have people on the streets with full police powers. That is the only way in which one should reasonably interpret what lies behind the Bill.Furthermore, the Government, the police authorities and/or the system have failed to reduce the administrative burden on constables in particular. We know about the diary of a policeman. It states that a constable must spend 40 per cent of his time in the station. That is necessary for administrative and legal reasons. Indeed, if we are to achieve greater conviction rates for criminals, that time must be sacrificed for the needs of the law. It is a desperate situation because if that time could be reduced then more policemen would be available on the streets. It is not a straight arithmetical calculation. If that 40 per cent could be halved to 20 per cent, the number of police available on the streets would not increase by 20 per cent, it would increase by 33.3 per cent. If anyone sat down and did the sums, which I shall not bother to do now because trying to explain arithmetical formulae would take an unnecessary few moments, he would see that that is so.
I return to the acceptability of these schemes. They must be put into effect in local authority areas and not in police authority areas, which are much too big. In any event, I strongly suspect that they will largely be used to try to resolve specific problems relating to particular localities. Therefore, these amendments are important. They have our wholehearted support.
Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, the 24 amendments which are cobbled together are a strange mixture. Some of them are clearly sensible. For example, in introducing such a scheme one should like to see consultation with the local authorities as part of the exercise carried out by the police authority in deciding whether or not this is a sensible action by the chief officer concerned.
What I find surprising is the proposal, as I understand it—the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, did not say much about this—to limit the power to propose schemes to be approved for accreditation to local authorities. I wonder about the wisdom of such a restriction. In London, for example, a scheme is run and administered by the Central London Partnership, an organisation of businesses working with local government in central London, that uses wardens to carry out the community safety tasks that we are discussing. Presumably, if the amendments were passed, it would not be open to the Central London Partnership, a business-led organisation, to make proposals for accreditation.
Similarly, it would not be possible for a local chamber of commerce or local businesses to combine to provide a community safety scheme in their area. Equally, it would not be possible for a major tenants' organisation or housing association to make such proposals.
There may be good reasons for such exclusions, but I am not convinced of them and I did not hear them articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia. There
may well be circumstances in which it would be appropriate to propose for accreditation schemes run by a housing association, a business organisation or some other consortium. As I understand it, the amendments would forbid that.There is a simple solution. I know that my noble friend the Minister has abiding love and support for police authorities and I am aware that he recognises their significance and power. If it were required that, before an accreditation scheme was approved, it had to be approved by the police authority, it would be for the police authority in its area to say whether or not it was appropriate for accreditation to be extended beyond local authorities to business organisations or others. That would be a better way to resolve the issue. It would provide an opportunity for flexibility; it would provide an opportunity to meet local circumstances; and it would ensure local accountability for decisions.
The proposals for accreditation are an important and valuable part of the Bill. They recognise what is already taking place in many local areas. For those reasons, I should be sorry to see them restricted in the way that some of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, provide.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Harris mentioned—obviously genuinely—that I have come to have an abiding regard for police authorities during the passage of the Bill. I spent an hour and a half this morning meeting the Association of Police Authorities. I met five different groups briefly and then met them collectively for a while. So I had my ears bent, as it were.
The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said that we would be unable to implement this by police areas; it would have to be done by local authority areas. I submit that that is up to the chief constable, not us, under the Bill. That is the whole point of the exercise; the Bill is enabling legislation.
As far as I know, police forces in this country are basically constructed from county council areas—either a single county council, or two in Devon and Cornwall, three, I think, in West Mercia, and I do not know how many in Thames Valley. However, none crosses or divides a county council boundary and local authorities are contained within those boundaries. So the police know with which county councils and local authorities they are dealing. They may want to do so on a local authority or smaller area basis, but I submit that that is up to the chief constable.
I appreciate that, as is their right, noble Lords have returned to the issue on Third Reading; and I have no doubt that it will be debated at length in the other place. The group of amendments is large. In summary, they would exclude from accreditation schemes a wide range of organisations already involved in community safety and regeneration and increasing public safety. Their effect would be to slow down any withdrawal of accreditation that a chief officer might wish to make. I now turn to the detail.
It is ironic that the Conservative Party is signed up to the idea of "public sector good; private sector bad". There will be a few wry smiles in the other Chamber if such an amendment is tabled down there. We have this incredible operation of the Tories in the Lords—if I may put it that way—ruling out the private sector from accreditation schemes in any way, shape or form and restricting them to local authorities. My, how things have changed in the past few years! Perhaps that suspicion is unfair.
I am uneasy about accepting the amendments. I do not really have any new arguments; but I have a few more examples to add to those that I have given previously. The amendments would fail to harness what is already taking place and the goodwill that exists in both the voluntary and private sectors—along with local authorities, of course. Town centre, shopping centre and shopping mall security staff would be ruled out because invariably they are not run by the local authority.
Policy Action Team 6 is a group asked by the Social Exclusion Unit of the Cabinet Office to consider the concept of neighbourhood wardens as part of the national strategy for neighbourhood renewal. It gave examples of 50 neighbourhood warden schemes around the country serving their communities and reducing the fear of crime. Many were not being run by local authorities and so could not be accredited under the amendments. That would be a great pity.
Other organisations that would be excluded from accreditation under the amendment would be all of the non-local authority-led neighbourhood and street warden schemes, church housing associations and registered social landlords. For example, a local authority could employ accredited persons using money from the rent account, but if the housing were transferred from the local authority to a registered social landlord, it could not use the safety officers and tenants would be denied those services.
I mentioned shopping centre security staff. Hospital security staff employed for the protection of hospital staff and patients do vital work. It is terrible that these days we have to employ security staff in and around hospitals, but they are a necessary fact of life. Invariably, they are employed by or contracted to the hospital, so they could not be accredited under the amendments. Neither could warrant enforcement officers employed by magistrates' courts committees, sports stewards, concert hall stewards or mosque and synagogue security staff.
So we would rule out great tranches of existing staff—I am not inventing those examples. Such work already takes place. It would be good as a comfort blanket for the public to know that such uniformed people were OK'd by the police or the chief constable. That would give them some comfort. At present, 208 street and neighbourhood warden schemes have been set up using funding from the neighbourhood and street wardens programme. Just over a third or them—72—are not led by the local authority. Communities in those 72 areas would not be able to take comfort from the provision.
I turn to Amendment No. 21—which, of course, the Conservatives do not support—under which all such staff should be known as community safety wardens. I repeat what I said in Committee and on Report: I have no hang-up about that; nor do the Government. I think that that is a matter for local communities and the police to discuss locally; we should not prescribe that in the Bill.
I turn to Amendment No. 22—an idea we have already discussed, which would require the chief officer to consult the local authority before modifying or withdrawing accreditation. That would hinder the chief officer. If he needs to take quick action because a scheme has fallen apart or the employer has for some reason caused the police difficulty, he should be able to do so. At the end of the day, under this enabling legislation, the chief constable is responsible for the concept and accreditation of wardens.
While I understand that this issue will be revisited, I think that it would be wholly demoralising for all those bodies—the voluntary organisations, private sector companies and housing association staff, as well as others that I listed earlier—if we were to agree to this form of amendment. I understand the reasons why it has been brought forward, but I sincerely hope that noble Lords will not seek to press it.
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