Police and Justice Bill

I apologise to the House, especially Front Benchers, for missing the opening stages of the debate. As I explained to the Chair, I was unavoidably detained. I shall study tomorrow’s Hansard with even greater rigour than usual. I have problems with the Bill because it is a centralising measure. It will centralise control over our police and criminal justice system. That is ironic, given that the Minister of Communities and Local Government has spoken about the need for localism, passing powers to local communities and ““double devolution””. Since the Police Act 1964, the police have been run on the basis of tripartite local accountability. Responsibility for overseeing local policing has been shared between the chief constable, the Home Office and police authorities. There has therefore been an effective system of local police accountability, which has been gradually eroded by Governments of both parties. However, the Bill, especially part 1, marks the stage at which policing becomes the responsibility of the quango state, which will now take on top-down responsibility for running policing in this country. Part 1 allows the Home Secretary to give directions to police forces and authorities without the need for a negative inspection report. The Government claim that the directions will be used as a ““last resort”” but hon. Members have been rightly sceptical about that. Such provisions set a precedent for further top-down management. Part 1 also moves provisions that govern the structure and functions of police authorities from primary to secondary legislation, partly in preparation for force restructuring. It gives central Government—the remote élites—the power to shape and restructure our local police forces at will. I also have a problem with part 3, which contains provisions superficially to deal with antisocial behaviour. I welcome any initiative to tackle that, but I do not believe that the Bill does it in the right way. It refers to local accountability, especially two models of greater local accountability: a new role for local authority oversight committees in scrutinising crime and disorder reduction partnerships, and a new mechanism called the ““community call for action””. Those models of local accountability are more corporatist than democratic. I have difficulty in accepting that they enhance local accountability. Part 4 covers merging the different inspectorates in the criminal justice system. The inspectorate that inspects the Crown Prosecution Service has a good record of revealing that institution’s incompetence. A significant proportion of cases that the CPS handles are abandoned every year in error. Many hon. Members who have spoken know about the frustration that the police feel when they successfully pursue criminals through the streets only for the CPS to fail to pursue them as vigorously through the courts. The inspectorate has been good at revealing those failings, and the Government should focus on them, rather than restructuring the inspectorate. A letter written by a serving police officer and submitted anonymously appeared in last week’s Clacton Gazette and Harwich and Manningtree Standard. It is touching because it shows the sense of frustration experienced by a professional police officer who feels unable to change things and deal with the top-down management. Indeed, he or she concludes the letter by writing:"““Believe at your peril the rhetoric from the top. If you want the truth, we at the bottom know what it will mean to you.””" That brings home the sense of top-down micro-management. The Bill should provide for genuine local accountability and direct democracy. It should go in the opposite direction from the one that it takes. Power should be shifted from the Home Office to the locality. We should replace existing police authority structures, which lack effective accountability, the ability to scrutinise chief constables and, increasingly, legitimacy, with directly elected police chiefs. Some people use the term ““police commissioner”” but I prefer ““sheriff””. We should have directly elected sheriffs instead of police authorities. It is all very well for police authority members to have a cup of tea with the chief constable. That may be nice for them, even if the chief constable is Sir Ian Blair, but it does nothing to enhance local accountability. If we had a directly elected sheriff instead of police authorities, we would experience genuine local accountability.