Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, this is an interesting amendment which, as the noble Baroness set out, seeks to confer an additional duty on police authorities; that is what it is. In principle, we would have no objection to the proposition, but our question is simply this; whether the provision as set out in the amendment is at all necessary, given that the ground is already covered elsewhere. Schedule 2(9) amends Section 6 of the Police Act to give police authorities an express function of holding the chief constable to account for the exercise of his or her functions. This is no more than a statement of what happens already, but it is as well to make such a function explicit. The amendment seeks to place a new two-part duty on police authorities. The first part requires a police authority to monitor the performance of the police force in carrying out any policing priorities. No one can argue with the aims of the amendment, but such monitoring is in effect a subset of the new function of holding the chief constable to account. No police authority will be able effectively to discharge this function without monitoring performance. Such monitoring is a means to an end, not an end of itself. As such, we are not persuaded that we need to write such a duty into the legislation. The second part of the new duty would require police authorities to make arrangements to secure continuous improvements in the performance of their force. Again, while I entirely understand and could wholeheartedly endorse the appropriateness of such a duty, it is our contention that there is no need to write this into the Police Act 1996. To do so would be no more than to repeat what we see as the overarching best value duty contained in Part 1 of the Local Government Act 1999, which I am sure the noble Baroness will be well aware of. Police authorities are, of course, already subject to the best value duty. While Clause 5 will be revising the application of the best value regime to police authorities, the overarching duty will be retained. In short, we see merit in the sentiments behind the amendment, but I put it to the noble Baroness that the ground is already more than adequately covered. I invite her to withdraw the amendment.