Police and Justice Bill

moved Amendment No. 69: Leave out Clause 18. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 69 I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 71, 72 and 74. If passed, they would have the effect of deleting Clauses 18, 19, 20 and 21. While that might seem like radical surgery to the Bill, it is proposed with the intention of being entirely helpful to the Government. In your Lordships' House we all know that the Home Office is in the vanguard of progressive government thinking and that the way in which government operate is totally seamless, that different government departments talk to each other and that proposals emerge having been considered by all the relevant parts of government and parts of the government machine. That is the normal process, but I have the suspicion that on this occasion that process was perhaps not as perfect as would normally be the case and that the vanguardism of the Home Office has gone away at a slight tangent from some of the other thinking that I understand is going in the Government. We have been waiting for some while for a White Paper on the future of local government, and it may have been that we would have had that White Paper in advance of our detailed consideration of these clauses if things had gone according to plan. However, that has not yet happened, although one understands that the White Paper is imminent. I am told that drafts of it may exist and may shortly be considered by the Cabinet. Perhaps we are being slightly premature in bringing forward changes in the way crime and disorder reduction partnerships, scrutiny committees and co-options work, in advance of knowing with clarity what the Government will be proposing more generally for the future of local government. For example, we have just heard some points being raised about the position of county councils and the Corporation of London. It may be that those matters are dealt with effectively as part of the forthcoming White Paper. I assume—because it would be very surprising if a White Paper on the future of local government did not consider such matters—that we will be looking at the function and role of the local elected representative. Implicit in these clauses is the new community call for action. I think this could be a useful step forward, in terms of giving a new explicit role to local councillors as advocates for their local communities, working with communities to move along public services. If that is to be the case, however, and if the stories that are emanating about what may or may not be in the White Paper are true and similar community calls for action are to apply to other aspects of public services, we need to see whether the arrangements proposed in this Bill for the way crime and disorder matters will be treated can be read across effectively into the other areas of public services that might be affected by similar powers. Perhaps the Government are being premature. It may be that in a week’s time the Minister will be able to stand up and tell us what will be in the local government White Paper, but my understanding is that it is unlikely that will happen in the next few days. Given that the purpose of the White Paper, we are told, is that there may be substantial legislation on the future of local government and its precise internal arrangements in the next Parliamentary Session—although obviously we cannot prejudge what might be in the Queen’s Speech—it would surely be sensible to round up all these provisions as part of that at the same time. For example, there are some provisions in these clauses for co-options, and apparently there will be regulations to specify what those might be. At various times noises have emerged from the Home Office suggesting that police authorities should have a co-opted place on overview and scrutiny committees dealing with crime and disorder matters in the various local authorities in their area. Passing over for a moment the workload implications of that for police authority members, you then have to consider the relative status of a co-opted member of a police authority—or, for that matter, a co-opted county councillor sitting on a district council overview and scrutiny committee. What will be the relative status of those individuals compared with the sitting members of that principal council’s role in terms of overview and scrutiny? Are you not diluting the representative, community advocacy role that we understand the Government want to create as part of the local government White Paper? Those matters have to be thought through very carefully. No doubt there are officials in government departments who have had towels around their heads and considered all these matters, and are coming forward with proposals of an intellectual clarity and brilliance that we will all wonder at when we hear them. In advance of seeing those proposals, however, it seems strange to set up a process that involves unspecified co-options with unspecified status. It is unclear where they will fit in. We have here some convoluted, rather obtuse wording that does not work well. It is trying to fit square pegs into round holes, and they do not really fit. It is hard to see how the clauses will operate. There will clearly have to be reams of regulations afterwards to try and turn them into something that will work at an operational level. In the interests of trying to help the Government out and avoid a situation where we legislate in the next Session to unpick bits of this Bill because the prevailing thinking on local government has moved on in that time, would it not be better for the Government to wrap all this up together, to think again and not to press these clauses at this time? I beg to move.