Police and Justice Bill

moved Amendment No. 2:"Page 1, line 9, at end insert—" ““( ) 15 per cent of the Agency’s funding shall be provided by police authorities.”” The noble Baroness said: I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 3 to 11. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, for their support for Amendments Nos. 2, 10 and 11. It is a fairly substantial group. I put the amendments together because they probe the accountability and governance of the new National Policing Improvement Agency. Amendment No. 2 inserts a new subsection after Clause 1(2). As we have discussed, Clause 1 sets out provision for the creation of the new agency. My new subsection sets out that the police authorities should provide 15 per cent of its funding. Amendment No. 11 inserts the same principle into Schedule 1; it is merely consequential. Fifteen per cent is no magic figure to which I am necessarily wedded. It is simply put forward to ask the Government to justify the manner in which they have established the governance of their new agency. Throughout the progress of the Bill in the other place, the Government stated that:"““Police service buy-in will be fundamental and critical to the success of the new Agency””" and it has been repeatedly stated that the agency should be police-owned and led; in our first debate, the Minister alluded to that. My amendment would hope to cement that principle into the Bill. It was a recommendation made by the agency steering group and was particularly supported by the Association of Police Authorities. At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey—he is no longer in his place; I am sure it is only momentary—made the criticism that:"““The proposed arrangements for the ownership of the new agency are also deficient””.—[Official Report, 5/6/06; col. 1061.]" To date the Government have rejected the proposal. In correspondence to the Association of Police Authorities, they stated that:"““Ministers rejected the recommendation on the ground that although the Government will provide 100 per cent of the Agency’s funding, we want the APA and ACPO to have full say, through their representation on the Board and more widely, in how the entire budget is spent to deliver the agency’s priorities. A proportion of direct funding from the APA, or indeed other stakeholders, would only allow influence over an arbitrary portion of the budget and would detract from, rather than enhance, the police’s collective ‘ownership’ and leadership of the agency””." Those comments miss the point. The aim of the suggestion in the amendment is not to imply ownership over a defined 15 per cent of the budget; it really means that the 15 per cent contribution would show a commensurate level of influence over the running of the whole agency. It would give an opportunity to show collective ownership. While that aspect of what the Government are doing easily feeds into a central theme of more government control, I hope that they will step back from that. It is important that local accountability is shown to have a real role by having local contribution to the budget. The Association of Police Authorities also recommends that the agency and not the Home Secretary should appoint and determine the remuneration of the chief executive, subject of course to agreement afterwards by the Secretary of State. My Amendment No. 10 proposes such an arrangement. If the agency is to be truly owned by the police forces, which is what the Government say that they envisage, it would make good sense to allow the expression of that ownership by letting the board appoint the chief executive. Amendment No. 9 would ensure that a majority of members of the agency were non-executive. That is perfectly sensible and in tune with the principles of corporate governance. The Government have said that they intend there always to be a majority of non-executive members, but that they do not want to put that into the Bill. If that is the intention, why not simply achieve it now? Amendments Nos. 7 and 8 simply change the number of members to be appointed under paragraph 7(4) of Schedule 1 from a minimum of one to a minimum of two. Again, there is no virtue in the number; it is simply there to ask the Government to explain what size of board they anticipate should be appointed, and what they consider the optimum working size to be. The interests to be represented on the board as listed in the Bill are police authorities, chief officers of police and the Home Civil Service. My amendments increase the minimum for the first two categories but leave the Civil Service minimum at one. I do not intend to antagonise the Civil Service; this is just a device to stimulate discussion. One person who is broadly representative of the police authorities will, of course, sit on the board, but does that really amount to a proper role in the agency’s governance? The remaining four amendments in the group are intended to ask the Government to explain why they have selected certain groups as statutory consultees but not others. Thus, Amendment No. 6 raises a question about the procedure for appointing the chairman of the agency. Paragraph 7(2) of Part 2 of the schedule requires the Secretary of State to consult,"““persons whom he considers to represent the interests of chief officers of police””," and of police authorities, before he appoints a chairman. Why is there no reference to consultation with those who represent the interests of ordinary police officers? Amendments Nos. 3, 4 and 5 examine the consultation process that surrounds the production of the agency’s annual plan. Before finalising the plan, the agency is required to consult the Home Secretary, the police authority for the relevant area and those who represent the interests of the chief officers of police. Again, why leave out those who represent the interests of ordinary police officers? Finally, Amendment No. 4 would require consultation of the Police Federation and the Police Superintendents’ Association in that group. ACPO’s briefing points out that the Bill does not recognise it, in particular, since it states that the Home Secretary, in determining the strategic priorities for the agency, will consult,"““persons whom he considers to represent . . . chief officers of police””." While I recognise that that has usually meant ACPO, I understand that the former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, agreed that the national role of ACPO was too important to allow that potential ambiguity to remain. ACPO understands that Mr Clarke was supportive of amending the Bill to recognise it by name as a statutory consultee. That is what my Amendment No. 6 does. ACPO believes that the rationale for that has, if anything, been strengthened by recent events and it asks that the verbal commitment given by Charles Clarke should be honoured by the current Home Secretary, Dr John Reid. I beg to move.