Police and Justice Bill

I will come to the question of amalgamations shortly. In Committee, many hon. Members accepted the principle that powers of last resort to intervene should exist, providing the Secretary of State with the means to take remedial action where significant and enduring performance failings had been identified. These revisions are about ensuring that the powers are quickly usable. Sometimes a measure of speed is essential if the public are to secure the protection that they need, and that they pay for. Intervention powers are, and will remain, powers of last resort, and the revisions are not intended to change that. The amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green—who is not in her place—seek to insert a number of unnecessary obstacles in the legislation. For example, amendment No. 14 seeks to remove all the proposed changes to the intervention powers. This overlooks the key role that intervention powers play in driving up police performance, and the changes needed to make them fit for purpose. Amendments Nos. 15 to 18 seek to reinsert the requirement that intervention will only be undertaken following a recommendation from the chief inspector for justice, community safety and custody or, as the new legislation provides, a recommendation from the police authority responsible for maintaining the police force. Enabling the Secretary of State to draw on the advice of a wider range of sources when considering intervention will mean that a wider base of knowledge on which to base an intervention decision is possible. That might include a recommendation from the inspectorate, for example, but experience has shown that a wider range of sources of information exist, such as a public inquiry—on Second Reading, my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) mentioned the Bichard inquiry. There is every expectation that the inspectorate’s opinion on whether to intervene would remain a central consideration. It is right, however, that other sources of information are not precluded from informing that decision. Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 seek to remove the Secretary of State’s ability to intervene without delay when he is satisfied that the chief officer or chair of the police authority has been given sufficient information and time to remedy those failings. When a police force or police authority has failed to address problems of which it has been made aware, and it has already been given time to address them, surely a different solution needs to apply. Where a long-standing and known performance issue has persisted and gone unresolved, we therefore feel that it would be illogical, and possibly irresponsible, simply to hand back the problem to the force or authority without any stronger or more immediate requirement for its resolution. I therefore hope that the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green will not press her amendments on those provisions. Amendment No. 82, tabled by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), requires that referendums are held before an order can be made under section 32 of the Police Act 1996 altering police force areas. I appreciate that a process of permanent revisionism is now taking hold on the Conservative Benches, but the amendment ignores the adequate provisions already in the Police Act for merging force areas. Indeed, those very provisions were substantially revised by the previous Administration in the Police and Magistrates’ Courts Act 1994, when the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was Home Secretary.