Police and Justice Bill

I intend to speak briefly in support of Amendments Nos. 23, 31, 33, 36 and 38, to which I put my name, and to Amendment No. 37—to which, if I did not put my name to it, I meant to. The principle has been made extremely clear. There is an importance in having these matters in primary legislation, not because we have any doubts at all about the present Home Secretary’s benign intent in how police authorities operate, but because, several successors down the road, if these matters are dealt with in secondary legislation, it will be that much easier to make changes that could seriously disrupt the tripartite arrangements and the balance of membership of the police authorities. On Amendment No. 23, it is important that there is political proportionality among the elected members—those who are councillors or, in the case of the Metropolitan Police Authority, who are members of the London Assembly. People need to understand that there is a choice between having political balance and representing areas, and guaranteeing that every district or local authority will have a seat on a police authority. You cannot do both without having enormous police authorities that are far larger than anything we are contemplating here. If each one has one representative, then that representative would be from the majority party there, and that is likely to mean that the smaller parties are not fully represented. Furthermore, sizes may differ greatly. In the West Midlands, for example, some authorities are very much larger than others. This is a serious dilemma and a choice has to be made about whether we are looking for political balance or for every local authority to have a representative. Simply providing for every local authority to have a representative will make it more difficult for the authority to take a strategic overview of the direction of the force and will not improve matters. There is a choice. I think that Amendment No. 23 goes correctly in the direction of political balance. The other part of the provision also is critical. It ensures that there is some representation of the diversity of the communities and the range of people who need to be represented on a police authority. It is largely through the independent members on police authorities that the vast majority of black and minority ethnic members of police authorities have been appointed. That is not universally so, but largely so. The points have all been made about the importance of police authorities owning the election of their own chair. I shall refer briefly to Amendments Nos. 33 and 38, which require that if there are changes in any of these provisions, the Association of Police Authorities should be one of the bodies consulted. Other than that, I think that all the points have been made on these amendments.