Police and Justice Bill

First, it has been drawn to my attention by my Front-Bench colleagues that I did not pay appropriate tribute to the Mayor of London for his contribution to the improvement in policing in London, so I shall fill that gap by dutifully so doing. On the matter raised by my hon. Friend, the key point for me is the independence of the inspectorate, which must be spiky, particularly when considering the conditions of detention and the circumstances that can arise there. That is a fundamental issue, even compared with performance management more generally. I know my hon. Friend heard me pay tribute to the current chief inspector of prisons, but I also paid tribute to her predecessors in the role, and I do so again now. I have met them and discussed some of those issues with them as well. It is critical that that integrity of inspection of prisons, and indeed places of detention generally, is maintained, and I believe that our arrangements will do that. I know the concern that my hon. Friend is expressing—I understand it—and as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), the former Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, it is an appropriate matter to take further in Committee as we take it forward centrally. Perhaps I shall end comment on this point by saying that it would be a great shame not to acknowledge the very tight interrelationship, particularly on our agenda to reduce reoffending, between what goes on in prison, what goes on in probation and what goes on in the rest of the criminal justice system, including the courts. We have missed the opportunity of trying to achieve coherence for decades, and may have missed it for ever. That includes important subjects such as information technology and data on various people. A single inspectorate may help us to achieve that coherence, but I take my hon. Friend’s point about the independence and prickliness—if that is the right word—of an inspector. It is important to consider the role of all the national organisations. We have already legislated to establish the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which from this April will take the lead in tackling national and international drug-smuggling and people-trafficking, but there is a complex web of national support agencies. We have the Police Information Technology Organisation, the National Centre for Policing Excellence, Centrex, the Police Standards Unit, the Association of Chief Police Officers, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and the Home Office—a range of forces providing an array of services from the development of good practice to procurement, training and operational support. There is wide agreement, especially among the police, that the present configuration of overlapping support agencies is an obstacle to the promotion of improvement in the service, and that it needs to be simplified and clarified. That is what the Bill sets out to do. Following proposals from ACPO, it will establish the national policing improvement agency. The agency will drive improvement in policing. It will create a rationalised and more dynamic national landscape, and will give the police service capacity to deliver on the critical priorities set out in the national community safety plan, including the roll-out of neighbourhood policing. The existing organisations Centrex and PITO will be abolished, and some of their functions will be transferred to the NPIA. A number of the Home Office’s policy development and operational support activities will also be transferred to the new agency, along with some of ACPO’s policy functions. Its work will not, however, focus on the provision of day-to-day services, important though that may be. It will focus on the longer term, by helping to embed a culture of self-improvement in terms of performance, and of identifying and responding to the opportunities and challenges that the service will face over five or 10 years. We must recognise that in an increasingly interdependent world, work with international partners to tackle terrorism and serious organised crime will be increasingly important. We have therefore included a number of measures to strengthen policing at international level. Computer misuse—the continued threat posed by computer hacking and denial-of-service attacks—is one of the growing new threats that can be tackled only through extensive international co-operation. To that end, the Bill takes up a private Member’s Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris) to amend the Computer Misuse Act 1990. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his initiative. The Bill provides a suitable opportunity for review of the Extradition Act 2003. As many Members will recall, the Act carried a complete overhaul of extradition law, some of which dated back to the 19th century. It also implemented the European arrest warrant. Following such a major reform of complex law, minor lacunae and operating difficulties have emerged in the first year of operation. The amendments in the Bill are intended to clarify and correct, and are essentially technical.