Police and Justice Bill

There have now been three, but the comments that I make are equally applicable. I remind the noble Baroness that we are doing a number of things in the schedule that do not centralise but go quite the other way. For instance, we are abolishing the statutory national policing plan; reducing the Home Secretary’s role in the appointment of police authority membership; removing the requirement on police authorities to send three-year strategy plans to the Home Secretary; removing the requirement on crime and disorder reduction partnerships to send an annual report on their performance to the Home Secretary; and transferring a number of operationally focused functions of the Home Office to the National Policing Improvement Agency. The noble Baroness has applauded all these moves and I hope that she will accept that they are decentralising in nature. Moreover, we are empowering local communities by strengthening the effectiveness of police authorities and CDRPs, introducing the community call for action and ensuring that police community support officers and local authorities have the powers that they need to tackle anti-social behaviour. All these measures give more power to those who wish to take action. I therefore cannot accept the charge that the measures in the Bill undermine the tripartite relationship between the Home Secretary, police authorities and chief officers, through which policing in this country is governed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The tripartite relationship is founded on the respective roles and responsibilities of each of the partners. The Bill does not fundamentally alter the balance of these responsibilities, nor does it tip the scales in favour of the Home Secretary. Indeed, we are strengthening the functions of police authorities and taking steps to ensure the resilience of the command structure in strategic police forces. I take as an example the membership of police authorities. The Bill simply confers a power on the Home Secretary to prescribe the membership of police authorities in secondary legislation. There is nothing particularly unique or remarkable in that. Legislation in the health and education spheres provides for the detailed arrangements for appointments to primary care trusts and school governing bodies to be similarly set out in regulations. Moreover, it is already the case that certain aspects of the arrangements for the constitution of police authorities are subject to secondary legislation. For example, the size of a police authority may already be varied by order. The key point is that councillor members should constitute the majority of the membership; this principle continues to be provided for in primary legislation.