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Standing Committee D
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Chairmen:
†Derek Conway, Mr. Greg Pope
†Barlow, Ms Celia (Hove) (Lab)
†Blears, Hazel (Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety)
†Brokenshire, James (Hornchurch) (Con)
†Carswell, Mr. Douglas (Harwich) (Con)
†Fabricant, Michael (Lichfield) (Con)
†Featherstone, Lynne (Hornsey and Wood Green) (LD)
†Flello, Mr. Robert (Stoke-on-Trent, South) (Lab)
†Gwynne, Andrew (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
†Herbert, Nick (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
†Horwood, Martin (Cheltenham) (LD)
†McDonagh, Siobhain (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
†Mactaggart, Fiona (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department)
†Morden, Jessica (Newport, East) (Lab)
†Pound, Stephen (Ealing, North) (Lab)
†Pritchard, Mark (The Wrekin) (Con)
†Ryan, Joan (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury)
†Wyatt, Derek (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)
Mark Egan, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee
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Tuesday 21 March 2006
(Morning)
[Derek Conway in the Chair]
10.30 am
Schedule 2
Amendments to the Police Act 1996
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD): I beg to move amendment No. 30, in schedule 2, page 64, leave out line 17.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 31, in schedule 2, page 64, line 36, leave out paragraph 11.
No. 32, in schedule 2, page 65, line 36, leave out paragraph 12.
No. 33, in schedule 2, page 65, line 41, leave out paragraph 13.
No. 34, in schedule 2, page 66, line 3, leave out paragraph 14.
No. 35, in schedule 2, page 66, line 11, leave out paragraph 15.
Martin Horwood: The purpose of this group of amendments is to tackle the level of power given to the Secretary of State to direct the activities of police authorities—in particular, policing objectives, policing plans and policing reports. The central amendment is amendment No. 31, which would omit paragraph 11. During our last sitting, the Minister accused Opposition parties of having a conspiracy theory about Government interference in local decision making. It is difficult to reject the idea of such a theory, however, given the extraordinary interference allowed by paragraph 11. Proposed new section 6ZB(3) states:
“An order under this section requiring plans to be issued”—
on the direction of the Secretary of State—
“may contain provision as to . . . the periods to be covered by plans . . . the matters to be dealt with in plans . . . persons who are to be consulted . . . persons to whom copies of plans are to be sent.”
That may not go so far as to direct the page numbers or type-faces in which the plans and reports are to be designated—not yet—but it is clearly going in that direction. I do not know who in the Home Office will be given the responsibility to vet the plans and objectives, the consultation, and the circulation lists of all the reports and plans to be issued by local police authorities, but it will clearly be a job for life.
That provision gives the Secretary of State extraordinary powers of interference in the activities of police authorities. Legislators in countries such as the United States or Australia have more seriously devolved government, where federal governments traditionally mind their own business. If we told them
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that legislation would give Ministers the right not only to interfere in local policing priorities but even to determine the circulation lists of the reports that are produced, they would be speechless.
It is important to note that policing priorities are a matter of local knowledge and local expertise. There are major differences between Arundel and South Downs, Cheltenham, and Hornsey and Wood Green, and the constituencies represented by Labour Members, and policing priorities will vary from place to place. For instance, in Cheltenham there are differences between areas such as Hatherley, Springbank, Whaddon and Hester’s Way, but I doubt whether the Secretary of State even knows where those places are. It is extraordinary that that level of interference can be allowed.
The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety (Hazel Blears): The amendments seek to remove the flexible arrangements that the Bill will introduce in relation to police authorities’ responsibilities for setting local police objectives and issuing policing plans. The core functions of police authorities—to maintain an efficient and effective force and to hold the chief constable to account—will continue to be those set out in the Police Act 1996. However, I genuinely believe that second-order functions such as determining objectives, and issuing plans and reports should be set out in secondary legislation, because it will allow flexibility.
There have been too many cases in which it has been necessary to amend primary legislation because the world has changed. If we cover everything in primary legislation, we remove the flexibility that the use of regulations allows us. The hon. Gentleman has taken issue with some of the detail of the regulations, but it is right in principle to cover such matters in secondary legislation.
I have to reassure the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), as I have before, that this is not part of a sinister plot to centralise power in the Home Office. Responsibility for determining local policing objectives and issuing a force-wide business plan will rightly remain with police authorities; we are not removing those functions. The provisions in schedule 2 simply recognise that modern policing is a rapidly changing sphere, and that we need the flexibility to amend legislation if we are to streamline the planning process rather than making it more bureaucratic.
In particular, the provisions will enable us to merge the existing annual policing plan and the three-year strategy plan to produce a single rolling three-year plan, which can be renewed every 12 months to take into account—as the hon. Gentleman said—the changing policing priorities that are apparent in different communities. Different communities will have different needs, so rolling three-year plans will be important.
The Bill also gives us an opportunity to take another look at whether it is necessary for police authorities to continue to produce old-style annual reports. Many of them do at the moment, and some are very good. However, I am not convinced that a thick annual report is the best means of getting information across
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to local communities. The local policing summaries that we are introducing will be much more user-friendly and direct and will give people information such as who their local officers are. The Bill will enable us to consider whether it is better to ask police authorities to continue to produce big annual reports every year or to enhance the local policing summaries. That is what I want to be able to do.
James Brokenshire (Hornchurch) (Con): I am interested in the Minister’s line of argument. Last week, she emphasised that the Secretary of State would give high-level, strategic direction. There is a distinction between that and the wording of the schedule, which refers to objectives rather than strategic objectives, which appear elsewhere in the Bill. Can the Minister explain the difference between a strategic objective and an objective? This wording suggests that the objectives mentioned here are at a much lower level than the strategic objectives that she mentioned previously.
Hazel Blears: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should look at paragraph 11, which would insert, in proposed section 6ZB(1):
“The Secretary of State may by order require police authorities . . . to determine objectives”.
The strategic objectives are those of the Home Secretary, who will set national policing priorities. Clearly, police authorities will want to set objectives that relate to their local circumstances, which is exactly the point that I was making. This is not about Ministers setting objectives; it provides a framework within which police authorities will set their own objectives for their communities and ensures that that framework is consistent, so that people in each area go through a similar process in drawing up their local policing objectives. It is not a substitute for the Home Secretary’s decision making; it is part of the tripartite organisation of policing. That gives the lie to contention of the hon. Member for Cheltenham that this is somehow a move to the centre. We are trying to put in place a consistent framework within which there is a rigorous and effective partnership approach to deciding the future of policing. On that basis, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
Martin Horwood: I am afraid that I am not persuaded by the Minister’s argument that this does not give the Secretary of State extra powers, because the Bill sets out a raft of extra powers. However, I am content at this stage to beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con): I beg to move amendment No. 133, in schedule 2, page 67, line 5, at end insert—
‘Requirement to conduct cost benefit analysis of alterations
28 In section 32 (power to alter police areas by order), after subsection (3) there is inserted—
“(3A) Before exercising his power under this section the Secretary of State shall commission from an independent body a cost benefit analysis, including the financial costs and benefits of the proposed alterations.
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(3B) The Secretary of State shall publish the cost benefit analysis commissioned under subsection (3A).
(3C) The Secretary of State shall not exercise his power under this section unless the cost benefit analysis conducted under subsection (3A) above concludes that the benefits of the proposed alteration significantly outweigh the costs.
(3D) In this section “independent body” means a body which is wholly separate from central Government, police forces or police authorities.”’
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 82, in schedule 2, page 72, line 5, at end insert—
‘Objections to alterations proposed by Secretary of State
28 In section 33 (objections to alterations proposed by Secretary of State), after subsection (3) there is inserted—
“(3A) Police Authorities shall, before the end of the period of four months specified in subsection (3) above, make provision to obtain the views of every registered elector in the area which their authority covers by way of a referendum.
(3B) Where a majority of electors vote against the proposed alterations in a referendum initiated under subsection (3A) above, the Secretary of State shall not proceed with such alterations.”’.
Nick Herbert: The amendments relate to the Government’s powers under the Police Act 1996 to amalgamate police forces. They are, therefore, very relevant to current debate and to yesterday’s announcement, yet again by way of a written statement, that there will be a further round of police force mergers in the south-east and east midlands. Amendment No. 133 would require that a proper cost-benefit analysis be conducted to assess whether the benefits of amalgamation outweigh the costs, before that amalgamation takes place. Amendment No. 82 would require that a local referendum be conducted, and that unless a majority of the public voted “Yes”, the amalgamation would not take place.
I shall speak first to amendment No. 133 and the cost-benefit analysis. We know, because we have had sight of a document published in July 2004 by the Home Office and the Downing street strategy unit, that both warned of the dangers of restructuring, and in particular, of amalgamations. The final report of the joint project proposed that,
“major reform emphasis should be devoted to achieving best practice at current scale”—
in other words, without amalgamations—
“and that any proposal to merge forces is based on proper analysis of costs, benefits and risks recognising consequential costs for the rest of the criminal justice system.”
As I said on the Floor of the House yesterday, the report continued:
“Evidence from other sectors suggests that merger can be a costly, protracted exercise which does not always deliver expected benefits and inevitably causes distraction for management and staff.”
The section concluded:
“Any case for merger would need to show that the likely benefits outweigh these risks.”
My amendments seek to put into statutory force what the Downing street strategy unit and the Home Office themselves have said—the simple proposition that the costs of a merger should be outweighed by the benefits.
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Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): Was my hon. Friend as surprised as I was during Home Office questions yesterday to hear so many Government Back Benchers attack the Home Secretary and Home Office Ministers? Was he also surprised at their frustration when the Home Secretary said that he would not allow any local referendum and would rule that idea completely out of hand because local democracy was unimportant?
Nick Herbert: I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. Concern has been expressed on both sides about the Government’s amalgamations, including by Labour Members, who expressed concern yesterday. Shortly, I will turn to referendums and the Home Secretary’s inadequate reply to the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) at Home Office questions yesterday.
I turn to whether it is necessary to have a measure that puts into statutory force the Government’s own proposal that there should be a proper cost-benefit analysis of the amalgamation procedures. I have no doubt that the Minister will say that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has undertaken such an analysis. Is that really the case? None of the financial assessments that the Government say they have done on the costs of amalgamation have been made available to this Committee or to those of us affected by the Government’s proposed amalgamations. Yesterday, the Home Secretary’s statement said:
“I now have the professional policing and financial assessments to enable me to identify which options will be of the greatest benefit to three more regions”.—[Official Report, 20 March 2006; Vol. 444, c. Column Number 6WS.]
The Home Secretary has professional policing and financial assessments, but we, Members of the House of Commons, do not. We have not been given those financial assessments.
10.45 am
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con): Is there not a fundamental inconsistency in the Government’s position? On the one hand, when the police ask for more powers and give professional advice about terror legislation, the Government are happy to give way to the professionals. When it is a matter of local policing in Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire, however, they choose to ignore professional advice. Is not that inconsistent?
Nick Herbert: Of course it is inconsistent. The Government rest their case on the fact that they have received advice from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary. My point about that advice is, as I said on Second Reading, that the analysis in the inspectorate’s report of the costs and benefits of amalgamation, particularly in relation to the financial costs, which is the subject of the amendment, is very weak.
Only nine of the 113 pages of the O’Connor report, plus two slender appendices, are devoted to finance. That report estimated that mergers would facilitate long-term economies of scale of about £70 million a
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year, but there was no study and no supporting evidence to show where those economies would be found. Police authorities have, as we know, undertaken their own costings of the proposed amalgamations and arrived at a figure of more than £0.5 billion for the costs of restructuring.
The Government keep telling us that those figures are wrong. If so, they should publish the costings. They cannot simply rubbish the police authorities’ professional costings and claim that they have carried out their own financial assessments unless they are willing to publish their own costings of those amalgamations, so that we and the public can judge whether it makes financial sense for the amalgamations to proceed, and whether costs will fall to the local taxpayer.
The fear, of course, is that the money that the Government have so far made available to cover the costs of amalgamation is far less than the costs that have been estimated. The Government have said that police authorities will have to borrow. Inevitably, that borrowing will fall to local taxpayers, with implications for rising council tax.
There have been numerous criticisms of the quality of the “Closing the Gap” report and, in particular, its statistical analysis. I remind the Committee that the report was not peer reviewed. It has been criticised by Professor Darlington, a professor of statistics at the university of Warwick, and by Professor Seifert, who described it as
“poorly written and riddled with inconsistent and unclear use of critically important terms”,
and criticised the use of
“randomly selected benchmark activities”
and of false extrapolation
“from the atypical to the typical.”
Indeed, the North Wales Police Federation went so far as to describe the report as a “dodgy dossier”.
The Minister will need to persuade us that the O’Connor report, or the Government’s own work, have produced a robust cost-benefit analysis of the proposals and, even if that is true, she will need to show us what is wrong with a provision requiring that an independent body should produce the costings before amalgamations can proceed. What confidence can we have in the Government’s proposals unless such independent costings are undertaken or the Government are willing to publish their own?
James Brokenshire: Much of the debate has centred on whether proposals in the Bill would have a centralising effect. The Minister argues forcefully that it is not a matter of centralising and is all about localism, whereas Conservative Members have reservations about that line of argument. Does my hon. Friend agree that a proposal of the kind that he suggests could help the Minister, by producing an objective justification for changes? The impression from the outside is that the grouping has more to do with centralisation than localism. The amendment might help the Minister.
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Nick Herbert: I agree. If the Government want to demonstrate that the Bill is not a centralising measure, the obvious thing to do is agree to provisions that will clearly inject some local input into the consideration of police force amalgamations. I strongly suspect that the Government do not wish to subject themselves to any test of British public opinion in addition to those they will face in the near future, but we shall see.
Michael Fabricant: Does my hon. Friend recall that during an earlier debate on amalgamation, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Paul Goggins), estimated from the figures available that the cost of amalgamations would be between £600 million and £800 million? It was also made clear that only £150 million would be available centrally to fund it. As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, that £400 million deficit will have to be picked up by the council tax payer.
Nick Herbert: My hon. Friend is entirely right. The deficit will have to be picked up by local council tax payers. In some areas, the situation will be worse because of unequal precepts. When my own police authority merges with Surrey, which has a higher police precept, there will be a problem in West Sussex unless some mechanism is introduced to equalise the precepts.
That is a separate issue, however. The real question is whether, overall, the costs of proceeding with police amalgamations will be justified by the benefits. As amendment No. 133 makes clear, I do not mean just the financial costs but the overall costs and benefits of amalgamating police forces. In my view, they have not been properly assessed.
Amendment No. 82 would introduce a requirement that local referendums should be held when amalgamations are put through by the Home Secretary without the consent of police authorities. Let us remind ourselves that at the moment, only two police authorities, Cumbria and Lancashire, have agreed to amalgamation. All the other police force mergers are being contested. It remains to be seen whether the ones announced yesterday will be contested, but I suspect that many will be. My amendment proposes that where amalgamations are contested, local referendums should be held. I am certainly open to the argument that local referendums should be held whether or not police authorities have agreed to the amalgamations.
Mark Pritchard: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is rather wrong that the Government will ask local communities what they would like new amalgamated police forces to be called, yet will not seek local people’s opinion through referendums on whether they want amalgamations in the first place?
Nick Herbert: I shall deal with all those matters a little later, if my hon. Friend will bear with me.
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In July 1994, in a debate on the Police Bill that now provides the statutory basis for driving forward amalgamations, the Prime Minister, who was then the shadow Home Secretary, pointed out:
“When the previous settlements were formed in the Police Act 1964, it was preceded by a royal commission. It was discussed, debated and properly consulted on. Where amalgamations occurred, they occurred as a result of public agreement.”—[Official Report, 5 July 1994; Vol. 246, c. 273.]
He suggested, and he was surely right, that public agreement is important on fundamental constitutional changes, and the O’Connor report admits that the proposals are of constitutional significance.
The question, therefore, is why the public should not be properly consulted about the arrangements. So far, they have not been. One might think that the Government would be sympathetic to that suggestion, but it is clear from the Home Secretary’s response yesterday that they are not. After all, when the Government consulted on their proposal for elected regional assemblies, they published a document called “A New Voice for England’s Regions”, which said:
“For 17 years the Conservatives have governed in a rigid, centralised and topdown manner. A constant stream of legislation has been imposed from above with little real consultation or local involvement . . . Labour has no wish to govern in this way. It is in no-one’s interest that we impose unwanted new structures of government on areas of the country that have no great wish to change. We are determined to work in partnership with the people—with their active support and understanding”
and continued:
“Our advocacy of referendums to measure popular support for elected assemblies is not intended to be a blocking device to prevent progress, but rather is a means of ensuring that these assemblies have their own legitimacy amongst local people.”
That statement was of course wrong in one material respect: it was the most unfortunate blocking device to the Government’s intentions because, on 4 November 2004, 78 per cent. of those polled voted no in the north-east referendum.
The Government have proposed referendums on many other matters, none of which has been held. They proposed them on proportional representation, the euro and the European constitution. However, the substantive issue before us is whether it is right that local communities should be formally and properly consulted before amalgamations can happen.
In the foreword to the precursor to the Police and Justice Bill, the 2003 Green Paper, “Policing: Building Safer Communities Together”, the then Home Secretary said:
“But we want to see a deeper, stronger connection between the police and communities . . . We want to strengthen that local connection and we are clear that communities must be at the heart of reform . . . We understand that public services, including the police, can no longer be seen as services ‘done unto’ people; they can only be successful if they are conducted with people.”
If that rhetoric is to mean anything, it is surely perfectly reasonable to consult people about changes of real significance to their local police forces.
The Home Secretary appeared to suggest in the House yesterday that he did not want to consult people because they might come up with the wrong answer and might not properly understand policing needs in their area. However, if the case that the Government are putting for amalgamation is so robust and
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convincing, why cannot we trust local people to make the right judgment about what is in the interest of dealing with serious crime, terrorism and other matters in their area? Why are the Government so frightened of trusting people to make the right judgment?
I think that I know one of the reasons. In every local opinion poll conducted so far on police amalgamations, people have shown that they do not want change. In Cleveland and in Essex 70 per cent. of the public said so. In Lincolnshire 79 per cent. expressed fears and concerns about the merger proposals. In West Mercia, 88 per cent. of people expressed their hostility towards or concerns about amalgamation. The roll call goes on. That, surely, is the real reason for the Home Secretary’s rejection of the proposal yesterday.
I suggest that there is no respectable argument at all for rejecting the idea that local people should at the very least be formally and properly consulted about the changes. In my view they should be given a block on amalgamations, unless a majority of local people are happy with them. If the Minister intends to reject the proposal, in line with the Home Secretary’s response yesterday, please will she at least spare us any future hyperbole about the localism that is at the heart of the Bill, about the way in which it empowers local communities and about making policing more responsive to local needs. That is the doublespeak that I mentioned in the Committee last week.
The Government should by all means reject the proposal, but only if the Minister recognises in doing so that the reason is that the Government have a view about the structure of policing that is out of tune with the view of local communities, but the Government think that they know best.
11 am
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