Police and Justice Bill

moved Amendment No. 26: Page 83, line 21, at end insert- ““( ) After subsection (3) there is inserted- ““(3A) In discharging its functions under subsection 6(1) above, a police authority shall monitor the performance of the police force maintained for its area in carrying out any policing priorities and shall make arrangements to secure continuous improvements in the performance of that force.”””” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this amendment describes a function of police authorities that is so important that it should be in primary legislation; the job of monitoring the performance of a force to ensure that it is carrying out its duties to deliver the policing priorities and objectives that have been set for it. The amendment also includes wording that would ensure that police authorities were responsible for ensuring improvements in force performance. It is particularly important that this should be in primary legislation as it is proposed in the Bill that police authorities are to lose many of their best value powers. I will speak about best value under later amendments. For now, I commend this as an alternative to those provisions. It would enable police authorities to secure improvement—which is what best value does—without the bureaucracy that best value involves. A police authority is there to ensure that local police are accountable to local people. A key element of that is ensuring that the local force is delivering against the priorities that are important to local communities. The ability to provide a level of independent monitoring of performance is vital to reassuring communities about their own safety, and demonstrating that they have a voice in deciding what their police should focus on and also ensuring that the police are tackling the issues that are of most concern to them. It is a function that underpins the relationship between the police authority and the people that it serves, and it deserves to be in primary legislation. I beg to move.