Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, this group contains government amendments and I shall address those and the issues which the noble Baroness touched on at an earlier stage. Government Amendments Nos. 98 and 100 in this group are essentially technical in nature, although they raise issues similar to the amendments to which the noble Baroness referred. Paragraph 12 of Schedule 9 already places a requirement on the chief inspector to act jointly with the Audit Commission—in Wales, the Auditor General—when inspecting police authorities and crime and disorder reduction partnerships. We consider it important that in these areas, where there is a substantial overlap between the interests of the two inspectorates, there should be no doubt about the expectation of joint working, so that expertise is shared and duplication of activity avoided. However, the inspection powers of the chief inspector are not mirrored precisely in those of the Audit Commission. Our amendment prevents a situation arising where the chief inspector might be required to act jointly with the Audit Commission, but could not do so because the Audit Commission had no power to inspect the matter in question. It also ensures that joint action is required only where the Audit Commission considers it necessary or desirable to act jointly in the interests of sharing expertise or avoiding duplication. We believe that our amendment will ensure that the joint working requirement functions as intended. Amendment No. 94 seeks to provide for an element of peer review in the inspection of police authorities. I confess sometimes to being ambivalent about the case for peer review, but noble Lords have not been slow to express their concerns about the perceived lack of independence of the Inspectorate for Justice, Community Safety and Custody. The amendment could be seen as compromising the very independence that noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches are elsewhere seeking to reinforce. If we take the amendment to its logical conclusion, the Association of Chief Police Officers should be able to peer review the inspection of the police service and the Prison Governors Association peer review the inspection of prisons. It could be argued, as the noble Baroness has done, that police authorities are a different beast and therefore a special case. In the spirit of wanting to enhance the independence of the inspectorate, we should leave it to the judgment of the chief inspector to determine how inspections are carried out. It may be that the chief inspector concludes that there is scope for some form of peer review, but we should not mandate this and thereby tie the hands of the chief inspector. Amendments Nos. 99 and 101 seek to remove the role of the Audit Commission in the inspection of police authorities and crime and disorder reduction partnerships. I know that this matter has exercised the noble Baroness, but I do not agree that the Audit Commission does not have a valuable role to play. We can—perhaps outside the debates around this inspectorate—all agree that the Audit Commission can be proud of its record in the inspection of the quality and cost-effectiveness of a whole range of local-authority-run services. It regularly works with other inspectorates; for example, it works with Ofsted to deliver comprehensive performance assessments and joint area reviews of children and young people’s services, and with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to deliver community safety inspections. Our contention is that, with the wealth of experience that the Audit Commission can bring, it makes sense for it to continue to have a role once the new inspectorate is established. If I heard the noble Baroness correctly, I think that she was asserting that the Audit Commission should just look at matters relating to money. I have considerable experience of dealing with local and district auditors. To understand where the money is going, they have to understand the management processes and the way in which services are run. With that broader wealth of experience, those conducting audit inspections are very well suited to carrying out joint inspections and work in support of other types of inspectorate. The joint action provisions in the Bill ensure that the inspected bodies are inspected in a joined-up fashion, where more than one body has a role to play in inspecting them. The area covered by the new inspectorate will necessarily overlap with the remit of the Audit Commission. Given the experience, role and duties of the commission, it is important that the two bodies work closely together to ensure that inspected bodies are not burdened with repeat inspections by one organisation and then another. Finally, I should mention now, by way of advance notice, that we expect to bring forward at Third Reading a minor technical amendment to the provision for transfer of staff to the new chief inspector in Schedule 10, to ensure that it covers all the personnel of the existing inspectorates. I cannot agree with the noble Baroness’s rather narrow view of the role of the Audit Commission and we cannot lend our support to her amendments. I urge her to think long and hard about what she is trying to do with the inspectorate and not to press the amendments this evening.