Police and Justice Bill

I am grateful, to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise for sitting down too soon. Lords amendment No. 71 concerns intervention in a failing police force. When a police force is failing, people will indeed want to be protected by Government intervention to ensure that they are safe and have a police force that delivers. There is no dispute about that. However, although the Government talk of localism and local policing, the Bill proposes to centralise power in the hands of the Home Secretary by empowering him to intervene directly in any police force that he believes is failing, or—even more scarily—any police force that he believes may fail in the future. The critical issue for us is the lack of objective criteria by which such a power would be invoked. I acknowledge that the Minister has made some moves, but there is no actual commitment or specific detail. Gone is the need for a negative report cataloguing and evidencing failure, although there has been a marginal concession in that consultation, or the opinions of the inspectorate, will be published. The Government have gone a little way towards limiting the powers. The changes mean that an authority must be failing before the Home Secretary can intervene, or the authority must first request an intervention. However, the new relationship will change the tripartite balance, and given the constitutional implications, I do not think that the Minister’s offer goes far enough to provide adequate safeguards. The Home Secretary will direct the chief officer and/or the police authority to undertake specific measures to correct and address any failure that he perceives. That power goes beyond anything we have seen to date, and despite assurances in Committee that it would be used solely as a ““last resort””—that appeared only in the explanatory notes—or when forces were failing, the Bill still contains no explanation or definition of ““last resort”” or ““failing””. Not only can the Home Secretary intervene if he believes that a force is failing, but as I have said, he can intervene if he believes that it may fail. The Home Secretary may be very talented in many ways, but I do not think that he is a clairvoyant. I do not understand how he can predict whether a force will fail. According to what criteria will that prediction be made? The Liberal Democrats entirely support the idea of the police and police authorities being able to request help, but although the Government have moved somewhat and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary will now have some involvement, the Government have not said how, why or to what degree. The definition of that safeguard is far too unspecific, and the Government have given no commitments other than their commitment to publish the inspectorate’s opinions. Without independent scrutiny and examination, and without the oversight of a specialist agency making an assessment and a judgment, the way is still open for inappropriate intervention. The only rationale for such intervention—its sole basis— must be proper assessments of the performance and operational ability of a force. We are told that the triggers for intervention will be broadened, because the Home Secretary will be able to look at national performance assessments of police forces, or ask the new chief inspector of inspectorates for an opinion. I hope that that would happen in any case, but I am not reassured that it is in itself a safeguard. No one is saying that the Government do not have a duty to intervene when things are going wrong. What we want is a definition of ““going wrong””. We must have objective criteria in the Bill so that we can judge what ““wrong”” is, and there must be a genuine and evidential base for intervention. There is a danger that the Home Secretary will find himself micro-managing the police. It would be better to ensure that intervention occurs only when a force itself asks for help, or when a force is measurably and irrefutably failing to meet its performance and operational standards. It is a great shame that the Government appear to have so little faith in the professionalism of the police, police authorities, inspectorates and chief officers. Unless and until we can be completely assured that objective criteria will be used to evaluate ““failure””, and unless and until we have a definitive and measurable quantum for what constitutes ““last resort””, we still cannot support measures that would compromise the operational independence of our police forces.