Police and Justice Bill

moved Amendment No. 63:"Page 83, line 2, leave out paragraphs 26 to 28." The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 63, I shall speak to the other amendments in the group that are in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Dholakia. The amendments would remove the extraordinary powers given to the Secretary of State in this Bill. Not only will he be able to interfere when he feels that a police authority is failing, but he will be able to interfere when he is satisfied that the whole or any part of a police force will fail to discharge its functions in an effective manner. It is extraordinary in a Bill to give the Secretary of State the power to act on a prediction of whether a police authority or force is going to fail. We need to understand more closely exactly what the powers of the Secretary of State will entail and how they will be used. We have several concerns about the power of intervention. The first is whether a new power is needed. The existing powers of intervention have not been used since they were introduced four years ago, in 2002. An agreed protocol is in place for forces that are in need of assistance, and it works well in practice. Indeed, in 2004 a previous Home Secretary directed Humberside’s police authority to sack the then chief constable, David Westwood. When the authority said that he should remain, the Home Secretary was able to show in court that he had exercised his existing powers properly to direct that the chief constable be removed. Given that, what is the need for new powers? The second issue is whether it is right for the Home Secretary to take new powers to intervene not just in the police authority but directly with the chief police officer without reference to the police authority. Such a provision might create direct accountability between the chief police officer and the Secretary of State, which might interfere with the operational independence of the chief officer and undermine the tripartite relationship. The creation of fewer chief officers runs the enhanced risk that they will be increasingly answerable not to their local police authorities but to the Home Secretary. Thirdly, there is the issue of whether the test that is applied is adequate. After all, the proposal relates to a serious principle, where a police force is failing to such an extent that it merits direct executive action through the Home Secretary’s intervention. The problem is that the Bill’s wording is effectively subjective; it is a subjective test. The Bill states:"““Where the Secretary of State is satisfied that the whole or any part of a police force is failing to discharge . . . its functions . . . he may direct . . . the chief officer . . . the police authority . . . or . . . both of them””" to remedy the failure. Such a provision effectively allows the Secretary of State to act as judge and jury in his own right. We seek either reassurance on this point or some mechanism to prescribe more closely the circumstances in which the Home Secretary would be able to intervene; otherwise we would be creating a sweeping power to enable future intervention. However, there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that these powers will be used only as a last resort. They could be used entirely according to the Home Secretary’s judgment about whether a force was behaving effectively. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on assurances given by Ministers that powers are intended to be used only as a last resort when they are drawn in such a way that they could enable significant additional intervention in circumstances that we could not foresee. The remaining amendments are intended to tighten up the current provisions in the Bill. They make it clear that a failure must be serious and permanent, and that the intervention must be an exceptional one. They further make it clear that such an intervention will be used only as a last resort. When a provision allows the Secretary of State to take powers directly to intervene in the running of police forces, not just police authorities, that gives rise to real concerns that it is effectively a centralising measure. We need to understand how those measures are intended to be used and we need to be reassured that the Bill will allow them to be used only in exceptional circumstances. I beg to move.