Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, as ever, I listened with interest to the arguments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, on Amendment No. 24, and with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, on Amendment No. 25. It will not have escaped your Lordships’ notice that we have tabled amendments to paragraph 11 of Schedule 2, which deals with the policing plans. That set of amendments return some of the detail on the functions of police authorities into primary legislation, which we shall come to in due course. I recognise the importance of preserving key principles in primary legislation, and we have made that plain previously. The primary police authority functions of maintaining an efficient and effective police force and holding the chief officer to account for the way in which he or she discharges his or her functions will remain in the Police Act 1996. In amendments to come we are also restoring to the 1996 legislation the functions relating to the issuing of policing plans. It is entirely appropriate therefore that, having set out in primary legislation the core functions of police authorities, there should be some flexibility to add other functions by secondary legislation. Amendment No. 24, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, would remove the new order-making power inserted by paragraph 10 of Schedule 2. It would also remove paragraph 9 of Schedule 2, which includes the new function of holding the chief officer to account. These new functions, as we have heard this afternoon from the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, have been welcomed by the Association of Police Authorities—rightly and understandably so. Indeed, the association offered them up as propositions. I cannot believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, really wishes to deny police authorities that enhanced role, which would be the effect of her amendment. I have listened carefully to the important rhetoric of new localism from all parts of your Lordships’ House. If we were to go down the route of the noble Baroness, we would fundamentally undermine that. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, described his Amendment No. 25 as helpful, and I see the measure of help therein. I understand his argument to include a duty in the Police Act on police authorities to secure arrangements for their police forces to co-operate with other forces whenever necessary or expedient. We are certainly in the same policy ballpark, and operating with a similar intent. It would be hard for me to disagree with the sentiments behind this amendment, given that he has lifted the wording from new Section 6ZA(2)(b) of the 1996 Act. It is essential, in the absence of mergers—the noble Lord said they had been kicked into the long grass; one might say that they have been placed in deep freeze—that forces co-operate more effectively to narrow the protective services gap and secure greater efficiencies in the provision of back-office functions. While I wholly endorse what my noble friend seeks to achieve—we have a similar view—our intention is to use the new order-making power in new Section 6ZA to confer such functions on police authorities. It is perhaps worth reiterating that the Delegated Powers Committee had no difficulty with that order-making power. I ask my noble friend not to press his amendment on the basis that we seek the same end—a shared policy objective—albeit that the Bill takes a slightly different path to the one he proposes. I hope that noble Lords will take some encouragement from those comments.