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Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: I am grateful to my noble kinsman on the other side of the committee room for having addressed the subject in the context of Great Britain, because I regard the amendment and the clause as extremely important.

The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis referred to the CPLCs. We took evidence from one such in the Select Committee report on the RUC in the last Parliament. In seeing them, one was comparing them with the police community liaison committees in one's own constituency. There were four in Westminster, so I had plenty with which to compare them. It was noticeable that in the context of Northern Ireland, paramilitary considerations, to which I do not propose to refer in my speech, were quite clearly affecting the working of the CPLC, which was from north Belfast, in a way that would not have applied to the very good committees that we had in my former constituency.

I do not want to talk about Sinn Fein or the paramilitaries, although I realise they may come into the debate at a later stage. I am concerned to establish by what means and process over the past two and a half years we have reached the point at which we now are. There seems to be a mild discontinuity in government policy. If I have misunderstood it, I am confident that the noble and learned Lord will correct me.

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My first item is the remarks of the Secretary of State on 19th January 2000 on the Patten commission. He said,

"Patten proposed the creation of district policing partnership boards to provide an element of local accountability". He envisaged that they should have a primarily consultative role, with an ability to monitor police delivery against an agreed local plan; I endorse that. He also proposed an additional community safety role, with powers to purchase services on top of normal policing. The latter activity is currently being considered by the criminal justice review. Until decisions are taken on the review, which will be published shortly, I do not intend to extend the function in that way. It will be better, in any case, to concentrate initially on building up relationships at the local level, in what I propose to call district policing partnerships. I also intend to consider further the arrangements proposed for Belfast. I am not satisfied that it would be right to have four separate partnerships".—[Official Report, Commons, 19/1/00; cols. 846-7.]

That was the matter to which the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, drew attention.

It was my impression from my noble kinsman, who has now left the Committee, that the DPPs are not yet operational. The Secretary of State, on Second Reading in January this year, referred to their role in the future rather than to something that was currently ongoing. As I said, the then Secretary of State suggested in January 2000 that it was important to,

"concentrate initially on building up relationships at the local level in what I propose to call district policing partnerships".

I have to say that today is precisely 29 months since the Secretary of State made that remark. If establishing those relationships at the local level was of the importance that he attributed to it, the Government have not actually been hurrying to gain the advantage of it.

After 34 paragraphs of background and 10 paragraphs of analysis and argument, the Committee will recall that the Criminal Justice Review Group recommended that, rather than district policing partnerships, community safety and policing partnerships, chaired by local authority-elected members, should be established. That argument was developed.

I remark neutrally that the Government have, on a number of occasions in the course of the proceedings on this Bill in both Houses, used as their amulet what was said in the review. This is, of course, a case in which its recommendation has been discarded.

Recommendations on the Bill came out in March 2000 and the Bill became law in November 2000. There were five pages of very precise advice on what the DPPs were to consist of, which is contained in Schedule 3.

The fourth item is the implementation plan of November 2001—a month later—in which the Government stated their intentions. I realise that by only quoting a single sentence, I am not using the argument that led up to the word "accordingly". It stated:

"Accordingly, the Government believes that it would be premature to make firm decisions now on the future shape of local community safety arrangements".

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The fifth item is the statement by the Secretary of State on Second Reading in the House of Commons in January. He said:

"Another subject on which we have received a number of submissions is community safety. There was widespread support in the local government sector for a provision in the Bill to give councils clear statutory authority to undertake community safety work. I very much welcome the councils' intention to play an active role in community safety, which will contribute to reducing crime and the fear of crime in their localities. In order to facilitate that, I am minded, subject to consultation with the Northern Ireland Executive, to bring forward an amendment on those lines.

The Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 sets out the crucial role of the Policing Board in the development of district policing partnerships. It will have an important role to play in ensuring that the police contribute effectively to the partnerships necessary to deliver community safety.

We do not envisage that the district policing partnerships will have the lead role in community safety, as that is not an issue for the police alone, and the other organisations which contribute to the delivery of community safety, such as housing and social services, are not included in the membership of those partnerships".—[Official Report, Commons, 21/1/02; col. 646.]

I have to say that the Criminal Justice Review Group, in the 10 paragraphs that led up to its recommendation that these activities should in fact be conflated into a single one, dwelt on those considerations—and, incidentally, on the possibility of paramilitary activity.

The sixth item is the response of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in another place on 12th February to a debate on this subject. Again, I take only a single sentence. I realise the hazard, but I am trying to be brief. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary said:

"In the interim, community safety will be supported from the centre but that will be an interim measure. Detailed proposals will be set out in the draft community safety strategy to which I referred and which is referred to in the clause".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee F, 12/2/02; col. 371.]

That is where we have got to, 29 months after the Secretary of State made his original comment on Patten in January 2000. I do not want to be cynical, but I must say that, in respect of the equality provisions, the Select Committee in the last Parliament had the greatest difficulty in getting decisions out of the Government on a several matters that related to Section 75. There was an embarrassing debate in Westminster Hall in which the Minister—in the previous government rather than the present one—was clearly adrift and astern of the agenda that the Select Committee had set.

It is also possible that the philosophy of Mr Micawber prevails and that people are waiting for something to turn up. I said that I would not refer to paramilitaries and Sinn Fein, and I have not. My reference to Mr Micawber was generic, rather than particular. The issue of community safety partnerships, however, is one of great importance. It was worth giving five pages of primary legislation to the district policing partnerships. I understand what the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Mr Browne, said about community safety being supported from the centre but on an interim measure and that, therefore, anything done on community safety would be done by order by the Secretary of State at a later date. However, the issue is sufficiently important that it

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ought to be dealt with in primary legislation. The delay—29 months—means that we are not very far forward in getting that primary legislation.

6 p.m.

Baroness Park of Monmouth: That was an admirable speech. I direct the Committee's attention to subsection (3) and to subsection (7), which says:

"The Secretary of State may by order—

(a) amend subsections (4) to (6)"—

covering practically everything that the partnership will do—

"or

(b) confer or impose on local community safety partnerships other functions relating to the enhancement of community safety in their areas".

That would be a useful umbrella provision for removing or dissolving the DPPs and transferring what they do to these partnerships. As the Secretary of State—not for the first time—will nominate all the people, he will have immense power without any serious explanation of what it is for. The Bill states blithely, at subsection (4), that the partnerships must ascertain the issues, prepare plans, provide financial support, identify targets and goodness knows what else. However, the Secretary of State may, by order, amend those subsections or confer or impose on the partnerships other functions.

This part of the Bill is vague. It would be nice to see it a little more precise.

Lord Fitt: Over the many years that I have been in politics in Northern Ireland, I have noticed a great onrush of words and sentences into the political lexicon. I had never heard, until this Bill was published, of community safety. Safety from what? Safety for whom? I would like to see that analysed, so that we might know exactly what we are discussing. I have never heard of such a set-up in any civilised society. It must mean safety from the activities of paramilitaries, safety from those who would endanger people living within the area. The Secretary of State must devise a strategy for enhancing community safety. How is he going to do that? Who is he going to talk to about community safety in the given areas? He has to talk to people who live in that particular community. The communities we are thinking of now are readily identifiable. There is west Belfast, north Belfast, and now east Belfast and Crossmaglen—all areas where there has been very heavy political activity over the past number of years.

Who will speak for those areas? Who will elect the people there to act on whatever the committee for community safety may be? In Crossmaglen it will undoubtedly be pro-republican. In west Belfast it will undoubtedly be pro-republican. In the Short Strand area of Belfast it will be the Catholic republicans, and in east Belfast—the other side of the confrontational area we have seen this last week—it will be Unionist, UVF or UDA. So it will be the paramilitaries who will be talking about community safety.

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Outside those areas, in the rural communities, I do not foresee any great difficulty because people are living together quite happily. I can see them co-operating to a great extent outside the paramilitary areas.

On looking at this, it immediately springs to my mind that Northern Ireland is one of the most over-governed areas in the United Kingdom. We have 108 Assembly Members and they are very happy with that Assembly going. If there is one success out of the peace process in Northern Ireland it is the 108 people who are getting salaries in the Assembly. They will do whatever they can—and I know many of them personally—to keep that going.

The next stratum is the councillors. There are six councillors and six Assembly Members for a constituency with 60,000 people. That makes 12 people. Then we have the forum, with another lot of people from that constituency. Now we are to set up another stratum of government called community safety committees. Who will finance them? It will be the Government, because I cannot see anyone else doing so, unless the paramilitaries are going to prove themselves to be extremely personal about the whole thing and finance their own activities. So here we have another stratum of government.

What all this boils down to is that not a single sentence of these provisions on community safety will become effective unless we have some success in policing those communities. That is the answer to the whole thing. If the paramilitaries decide to accept the Policing Board and their position on it and take an active part in enhancing community safety in those areas, this provision may work. If not and if the police are not acceptable in the areas that I have mentioned, it is a waste of time putting the provision into the Bill.

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