Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I, too, am very grateful for the Government’s clear change of heart in answer to the strong feelings expressed by this House. I admired the Minister’s necessary performance asSt Sebastian, as arrow after arrow was fired in with, unfortunately, no support from anywhere. The question of motive was raised. I believe that the Minister sincerely and profoundly believed in what she was putting before the House and in what she was saying, and that she sincerely and profoundly believes in what is now being put in substitution. If I make some criticisms or probe the matter, it is in no sense an attack on her motive or sincerity and I hope that she will therefore forgive me more readily than she might otherwise have been prepared to. I tend to see things visually, as my St Sebastian image might have indicated. If one thought of the Times cartoonist Peter Brookes, one might see two cartoons. The first shows what the Home Secretary and the Home Office originally designed for the Bill: complete control from on high, with all the chief inspectors subordinated in the manner against which this House rebelled. The second cartoon, I am afraid, now shows the Home Secretary as a spider—but not the Minister, I am sure, unless she is a smaller spider—who, having been frustrated in the original objectives, has now been determined to tie up the inspectorates in red tape. I heard with pleasure the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, say today that it was the Government’s objective to strip away bureaucracy in the Bill. I also heard the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, say that the object was to minimise additional work, and that the Government remained committed to a simplified inspection landscape. I have to confess that when I read the amendments that we are discussing and saw the enormous amount of consultation that is supposed to take place—although some distinguished commentators doubt that it will ever actually do so—I thought that this is not a simplified landscape at all, but an incredibly bureaucratic one. Perhaps the Minister will tell us what costing the Government have made of the extra bureaucrats who will be needed to carry out all this consultation and response to consultation. I am concerned that the power of the Home Office to give directions remains very great. I hope that the Government will not seek to put back, through the ping-pong process, any power for the Crown Prosecution Service to become judge and jury in their own cases and to impose penalties and level of penalties. I hope that has gone for good, at least as far as this Bill is concerned. Whether or not that is the case, it is extremely important that the inspectorates should remain independent. I hope that that will be acknowledged. I wish to make one or two points of detail. If we are to have a framework of consultation, we should bear in mind the fact that the Crown Prosecution Service, the whole prosecuting process and the Attorney-General are not the Government. Prosecutions are not carried out by government; they are carried out by the wholly independent prosecuting authorities. It is the absolute constitutional duty of the Attorney-General to ensure that that is the case and that it is protected. None the less, the Crown Prosecution Service must very properly work extremely closely with the police and the courts. I notice that at present there is no requirement for the Attorney-General, the DPP or anybody in the Crown Prosecution Service to be consulted in relation to inspections. That may be deliberate or it may be an oversight. Perhaps it could be thought about and the views of the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General inquired into. I fear that we are going down a wrong road, but I know that the noble Baroness sincerely believes in what she is doing.