Police and Justice Bill |
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James Brokenshire: My reading of the Bill suggests that it will not be the overview and scrutiny committee that sets those things; the Secretary of State will make regulations under subsections (3) or (4). Does the hon. Gentleman agree with my analysis? Martin Horwood: Not entirely. The hon. Gentleman is right that regulations to specify the time will be set by the Secretary of State, but it will be for the overview and scrutiny committee to request it. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong. In effect, the overview and scrutiny committee will be the immediate agent in deciding whether to impose that period on a councillor. That is the risk to which I draw attention. There is also the risk of a possible confusion of accountabilities. Many bodies are involved in the scrutiny of police strategy. We have crime and disorder reduction partnerships, overview and scrutiny committees and police authorities, which are all constituted for that purpose. The police are already accountable to the police authority and the Secretary of State. In a sense, the overview and scrutiny committees are accountable to the local population. That overlapping of responsibilities and
Even before the Bill has been passed, the Secretary of State reserves the right under proposed new section 21B to give himself extra powers to direct those bodies. Yet again, we have potential centralisation, with the additional powers of the Secretary of State beginning to creep into a Bill that has not yet been enacted. That is the reason for amendment No. 113, which would provide an extra level of parliamentary scrutiny for such actions being taken by the Secretary of State. I hope that the Minister will find that amendment acceptable. The clause has the potential to allow for more democratic involvement, with more accountability to the community. In general, we welcome the concept of a community call to action and of a crime and disorder overview and scrutiny committee. However, there is potential for confusion and frustration in the clause, which is the reason for our amendments. Nick Herbert: I am very glad that the amendment of the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) came before mine. He said fluently what I was about to say, and I agree with all that he said. My amendments address a slightly different but related issue. The hon. Gentleman spoke about the potential conflict and overlapping arrangements between the various committees. It is doubly problematic. It is potentially very bureaucratic—today’s favourite phrase—which is a danger with all such committees and partnerships. In addition, the purpose of the community call for action is to provide a clear and direct means for the public to achieve a response to their concern that crime or crime-related issues are not being addressed properly in their community and that a plethora of bodies may hinder the process. It will not be clear to the public who is responsible for what. It is barely clear to us. Introducing an additional committee is a confusing process. That confusion is underlined by the fact that, according to the Home Office, the local strategic partnerships will remain the top tier, and the operational functions that we discussed earlier will be executed by the crime and disorder reduction partnerships. They will be setting the local area agreements. However, the crime and disorder reduction partnerships will not be accountable to the local strategic partnerships that set the strategy. According to the Home Office, the crime and disorder reduction partnerships will be expected to account to the local strategic partnerships for their contribution to the delivery of the local area agreement, but crime and disorder reduction partnerships’ primary accountability will be to the new local authority overview and scrutiny committees. I can see some confusion there. One body is setting strategic objectives, and the line of accountability is to a different body. Martin Horwood: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words and his broad support for what I have been saying, and I am in general
Nick Herbert: That is absolutely right, but the Home Office says that the primary accountability mechanism for crime and disorder reduction partnerships under the Government’s proposals, which I assume are in the Bill, will be the local authority overview and scrutiny committees. That accountability is being changed, and it appears that there will be a double accountability, both to the local strategic partnership and to the overview and scrutiny committees. That is the kind of thing that will add to confusion and bureaucracy. Where people or bodies are accountable to a multiplicity of organisations, they have no real accountability at all. As the hon. Member for Cheltenham said, we are creating a number of different bodies in addition to the police authorities, which are steadily being emasculated and with which a lot of responsibility should lie. I accept that the purpose of the crime and disorder reduction partnerships is to bring together a wider variety of people than just the police, for whom the police authorities are responsible. Nevertheless, I do not think that enough clear thinking has been done about how all the measures will work. I look forward to the Minister’s reply. My amendment reflects a concern expressed by the Association of Police Authorities that the measures do not oblige councillors to consult first with their crime and disorder reduction partnerships when a complaint is made or an issue raised by somebody in the community. For our edification, the Minister kindly sent us the Home Office’s flow chart. I do not know whether it was available on the website, but I was grateful to be sent it, as I am pitifully grateful for all communications that she sends me. The flow chart says that in step 1, local people will report their persistent community safety problems to the ward councillor. In step 2, the crime and disorder reduction partnership and neighbourhood policing team will attempt to resolve the problem. That seems sensible, but I do not think that it is in the Bill. Proposed new section 21A(4) to the Local Government Act 2000 says:
It goes on to say that
but the relevant committee is not the crime and disorder partnership. It is the overview and scrutiny committee. Although the Home Office’s flow chart shows a step in which the councillor tries to resolve the matter with the crime and disorder reduction partnership and the neighbourhood policing team, that step is not written into the Bill. The councillor could bypass a discussion with the crime and disorder reduction partnership. Column Number: 202 At the risk of imposing further bureaucratic provision—I accept that that is the case, but it is not my fault that the amendments were drafted in that way—my amendments would require the councillor to raise the matter first with the responsible authority, by which I hope I mean the crime and disorder reduction partnership. He could go on to refer the matter to the overview committee if it was not resolved by the responsible authority. That places the initial burden of resolving the issue on the crime and disorder reduction partnership. It would be better if the matter was resolved there because it is an existing partnership involving the police. It is important that the partnerships are not, in effect, removed from the process and that there is a direct jump to the overview committee. That is the purpose of the amendment. Amendment Nos. 138 and 139 would amend clause 15. The Government tabled a new clause, so I have tabled mirror amendments, just in case the Minister is minded to accept the sense of those amendments. I hope that by the time we get to the end of the Committee, she will have accepted one of the Opposition’s amendments. They are important issues, and I look forward to her reply. [Interruption.] The Chairman: Order. Members of the public are not allowed in this part of the Committee, which is reserved for Members only. In future, I hope that that is clear. I am sorry to have interrupted you, Mr Herbert. Nick Herbert: I had finished, Mr. Pope. 2 pmJames Brokenshire: I shall speak to amendment (a) to new clause 9. In essence, it would amend what is currently clause 21B(5)(g)(i), which makes provision for the Secretary of State to fix a time period within which councillors must respond to a community call for action raised with them by a member of the public. The amendment is a probing one, intended to gain clarification on the expected period. That period is germane—if it is relatively short, there is a risk that a councillor might merely refer the matter to the relevant committee and add to bureaucracy, about which we have already talked, and if it is too long, the public will obviously be frustrated that nothing is being done. It is important that the Committee gets a feeling of where the Government are coming from. On Second Reading, the Home Secretary said that the power was intended to be a backstop, and that it should only be used when everything else has broken down. I take it that that is the approach. As hon. Members have said, the proposals appear to be very bureaucratic. I am grateful to the Minister for providing the flowchart, but it is not necessarily available to members of the public seeking to resolve antisocial behaviour issues. Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): It is on the website. Column Number: 203 James Brokenshire: It might be on the website, but, owing to social exclusion and other such issues, not everybody has access to the website, particularly those in areas most afflicted by antisocial behaviour and crime. I am confused also about how the process will sit alongside the safer neighbourhood teams. Surely, the first port of call should not be the councillor necessarily, but the safer neighbourhood team. As we know, the Government are instilling the approach of having mobile phone numbers and e-mail addresses for those in the safer neighbourhood teams. Surely, the new process will add to the confusion, because in some ways, the public should be contacting their safer neighbourhood team rather than thinking, “Ah, we have the community call to action, we will go to our ward councillor.” That councillor would have to think about how quickly to respond, to whom they must respond, whether it should go to the committee, and if not, whether it should go to the executive committee which would then have to consider whether to take it to the relevant committee, report on it, investigate the matter and make a further report. And what happens after that? Obviously, that process has limited teeth, whereas in practice, the safer neighbourhood teams should be proactive, and have public meetings to engage with the public. The direct link is with the safer neighbourhood team and not the rather bureaucratic and protracted process set out in the Bill. I am sure that the Minister will say that this is a backstop measure—one perhaps intended to be used in cases in which the relationship with the safer neighbourhood team has broken down or some other frustration has occurred. We could end up with the absurd situation in which people who are unhappy with what is happening in their locality through their safer neighbourhood team make a formal complaint about the police not through this mechanism but through the Independent Police Complaints Commission. A complaint could be made about a councillor if that person did not respond properly, so, again, there could be a bureaucratic mess. I know that that is not the intention behind the provisions. However, my fear is that the practical effect could be additional delays, whereas the most effective means of dealing with the matter would be to use the safer neighbourhood team and to build a relationship with it. Ultimately, on most low-level crime and disorder, the safer neighbourhood team, working in partnership with the local authority, will be responsible for remedying of the sort of issue set out here. That needs to be the focus, rather than a somewhat bureaucratic mechanism that might do nothing other than make recommendations to the safer neighbourhood team, so the process would go full circle. The safer neighbourhood team is the key; we have already heard the emphasis that has been put on it. I do not disagree with a community call to action, but the provisions before us do not add much to having a good safer neighbourhood team. We should
Hazel Blears: I am delighted that the proposal to introduce a community call to action appears to have widespread and all-party support, despite the final comments of the hon. Member for Brokenshire, which I shall come to in due course. The hon. Member for Cheltenham welcomed the proposals and referred to his experience, as a local councillor, of the effectiveness of overview and scrutiny committees. I, too was a local councillor for some eight years at a time when overview and scrutiny committees were just being introduced, and as a Member of Parliament, I find that my local scrutiny committee is very effective in holding a range of different partners to account. I am grateful for that initial welcome. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who is experiencing great frustration, was chair of his scrutiny committee and regularly held to account the CDRP as well as youth offending teams and the various partners involved in trying to tackle crime locally. He tells me—I cannot think of a way of saying this in parliamentary terms—that “we kicked butt on many occasions.” I am sure that he was very rigorous in his scrutiny of those organisations, but that he did it in a friendly and constructive way with his local partners. The Government amendments are fairly straightforward. They seek to ensure that we have the same provisions for overview and scrutiny and for community call to action in the small number of authorities that have not adopted the format of a local authority cabinet and a leader. Some councils still operate a traditional committee structure. Rather than seek lengthy drafting amendments to the Bill, we have drafted some all-encompassing new clauses that deal with authorities that are organised in a range of ways. Every community should have the powers set out in the Bill. We said in the respect action plan that we would introduce a community call to action to enable local residents to get action taken not just by the police but by a range of community safety partners if they had problems that had existed for a considerable time and had not been addressed. We are on record as having said that we view these powers as powers of last resort, not as a mainstream way of doing business. Where there is good, effective neighbourhood policing, local communities should not need to resort to the mechanisms that we have set up here. All of us want problems to be resolved at the earliest opportunity, but members of the public in some of the communities that I visit still sometimes experience problems such as abandoned cars, graffiti, gangs hanging around, and intimidation, and those problems are sometimes not properly dealt with by all the partners. The police also sometimes feel frustration because they do not think that the scrutiny to which they are subject is necessarily applied to all the other partners. Equally, other partners may say that the police need more accountability. At local level there is consensus:
I am a bit disappointed in Opposition Members, particularly the hon. Member for Brokenshire—[Laughter]—because of their lack of confidence and faith in local councillors. The thrust of the community call for action is ensuring that the councillor is the advocate for the community. That is what councillors are elected for, and that is their job. The Local Government Association was pleased that, rather than creating a different set of mechanisms to deal with the problems, we chose to put local government at the centre of the process of dealing with those problems in communities. That is why we want people in the first instance to go to their local councillor, who then has a duty only to respond. I remind the hon. Member for Cheltenham that the councillor can take a view that the matter in question is not one that it would be appropriate to pursue through the process. The Bill requires the ward councillor to respond, but not necessarily to resolve the issue. The response could be that the matter will not be taken further, if it is considered that the complaint is frivolous or vexatious, or not worth pursuing. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman. Martin Horwood: That gives me some reassurance, but under new section 21A(4)(b) the first thing expected of a councillor would be to
There is thus an onus, in law, on the councillor to take some action in response. Hazel Blears: The section states that the councillor
Therefore the councillor could respond, “I do not propose to take any action, because I think your complaint is frivolous or vexatious, or not worthy of a response.” As the locally elected member he or she would have the right to do that; it would be perfectly proper, which is why the provision takes that form. The subsection also provides that the councillor may refer the matter on, but it is perfectly proper for him to act as the gateway to the system. It has been put to me that making the local councillor the centre of the matter may be difficult if the relevant councillor is not as active as one might want. However, it is important to use the democratic process to get action. If other mechanisms are set up, bypassing local councillors, the importance of local government in our system is undermined. Many of the reforms in the Bill are to do with making a stronger relationship between the police and local government, because that is the way better to tackle the problems of crime and disorder. James Brokenshire rose— Column Number: 206 Hazel Blears: I give way with great pleasure to the hon. Member for Brokenshire. James Brokenshire: I thank the Minister for her creation of what I hope will be my new seat at the next election. Brokenshire sounds very good, and I am very grateful to her. Perhaps she could clarify a couple of points for me. What sanctions should apply to councillors who do not comply with the call to action? Does she agree that there could be a confusion in the public’s mind, given that the emphasis is on publicising the contacts with the safer neighbourhood team? Without denigrating the role of the councillor in the local community, surely the focus, including publicity, should be on the safer neighbourhood team, at least in the first instance. My understanding of the structure is that it is only if there is a problem that it should be necessary to rely on the mechanism in question. 2.15 pmHazel Blears: My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary makes the point that perhaps Surrey and Sussex might be Brokenshire. Maybe that is dangerous territory. My apologies to the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) for getting it so wrong. I have always thought of him as having a fiefdom in his own shire, like a lord of the manor. I am delighted that he is so supportive of the safer neighbourhood teams that this Government have implemented as part of our commitment to neighbourhood policing. I am delighted, too, that he thinks that they are doing such a good job. He is right: safer neighbourhood teams will receive publicity to build relationships and contact. I hope that the community call for action will not languish on the Home Office website, but be part of a proper communication with local people about the police’s new powers to tackle the range of issues that concern them. If we are genuinely to empower people, it is important to give them the information that they need to get the authorities they rely on to take action to tackle the problems that are important to them. I quote a statement by the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) on Tory aims and values:
Nothing empowers communities more than the kind of power that we have set out in the respect plan, particularly the community call for action. It is radical, innovative, new, creative and imaginative, and it is about shifting power from the institutions of the state—the local authorities and police—into the hands of local people, so that they can challenge and get action on the things that are important to them. The Government are doing something practical about the words “empower communities”. In marked contrast with the Conservative party, this Government are introducing practical mechanisms, so that local people who have been the subject of antisocial behaviour for far too long can get the authorities to respond properly. It is not a mainstream way of doing
Lynne Featherstone: The Minister said that some councillors might be more rigorous and responsive than others. What if a councillor believes that there is no action to be taken? What if they are not very responsive? What will the community member do who can get no action? Hazel Blears: There are two things to say about that. If the councillor does not take action, the local residents will have the right to refer that directly to the executive of the council. We will set that out in guidance, with time scales and periods in which they must respond. It is a democratic process. If the councillor, from whichever party, is not doing their job, the remedy lies in the elector’s own hands. Local authorities can also take measures. If people are not performing the duties that they are there to do, councils have internal mechanisms to deal with them. There is a series of ways to make it work. Several hon. Members have questioned whether the overview and scrutiny committees will be effective. A recent survey of health service scrutiny found that 71 per cent. of issues raised with overview and scrutiny committees led to policy or decision changes resulting from the committees’ input. Overview and scrutiny committees are not bodies without teeth. They will not simply be talking shops. In many cases, although not all of them, the committees’ ability to examine the performance of a service leads to performance improvements and changes how the service operates. Another recent survey found that 45 per cent. of people who raised issues felt a significantly higher satisfaction level as a result of getting in touch with the committees. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs said that the partnership in his area was initially sceptical about partnership working, but it has developed over a number of years and the people involved now feel that it is the best way—those are his words—to bring all the partners together at local level to tackle such issues. Equally, we shall have the same kind of scepticism about— Nick Herbert: Why are they going to be abolished? Hazel Blears: They are not going to be abolished. Nick Herbert: Why merge them, then? Hazel Blears: They are not going to be merged. The crime and disorder reduction partnerships will decide for themselves the most effective way to come together and to serve the local community. That is localism. I can tell the hon. Member for Cheltenham that overview and scrutiny committees were initially viewed with scepticism, but as they develop more capacity and as the system becomes more rigorous,
Amendments Nos. 138 and 139, tabled by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, would insert an extra step and allow the councillor to resolve matters with the responsible authority. Given the assurance that the guidance will include a provision that councillors should attempt to resolve the issue with the relevant responsible authority, the amendments are unnecessary. It is important that the councillor tries to deal with the matter informally and at an early stage. Amendment (a) to Government new clause 9 would remove the ability to specify the periods within which councillors would need to deal with a request. It is vital that such periods should be in place, otherwise a councillor could sit on an issue and not take action. It is important for the community that the councillor should act. Finally, I turn to the accountability of the local strategic partnership and the CDRP. For the sake of clarity—such matters can be full of jargon and technical detail—the CDRP will be accountable to the LSP for delivery of the commitments that it has made through its local area agreements. The LSP is the overarching partnership that considers local area agreements. Publicly accountability will be through the overview and scrutiny committee. It is not impossible to have a different set of accountabilities. There does not have to be simply one line of accountability. The police have direct accountability at force level to the police authority. Equally, with local government, they will make an important contribution to the community safety agenda. We do not want a silo of police accountability, which is simply about policing. We also want horizontal accountability, input into community safety policies and a much closer relationship, with local government, the elected member for community safety and the portfolio holder having a much more visible role, together with the borough commander. That system of accountability will give the public a sense that those groups are responsible for delivering crime and disorder policies. Such accountability and answerability will make the system stronger and more rigorous at the local level, and it will give the community the assurance that those people are responsible to them. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Cheltenham to withdraw the amendment. |
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