Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 10A to 10D to Lords Amendment No. 10, Amendments Nos. 11A to 11F to Lords Amendment No. 11, Amendments Nos. 12A to 12E to Lords Amendment No. 12, Amendments Nos. 13A to 13F to Lords Amendment No. 13, and Amendments Nos. 14A to 14I to Lords Amendment No. 14. The House will recall that at Third Reading we withdrew the provisions to establish a new criminal justice inspectorate and, in their place, applied to each of the existing inspectorates the provisions in Part 4 for delegation of functions, inspection programmes and frameworks, ““gatekeeping”” in respect of inspections by other inspectorates, co-operation, joint action and assistance for other public authorities. That will provide the statutory underpinning for the more efficient and effective joint working to which the inspectorates are committed. As I then emphasised, those amendments have not changed the existing remits of the five inspectorates, nor have they in any way compromised their independence. They simply provide ways in which the inspectorates can exercise their current functions more co-operatively and flexibly. At Third Reading, the House welcomed the amendments but expressed concern that the paragraphs relating to inspection programmes and frameworks would create too burdensome a duty on the chief inspectors to consult. As I foreshadowed at that time, due to the speed at which the amendments were prepared, technical adjustments would be forthcoming. I assured the House that we were in dialogue with the five inspectorates to refine the consultation process in an appropriate way. Having had that very constructive dialogue, we have added provisions to enable each chief inspector, by agreement with the consultee, to waive the consultation requirement in agreed cases or circumstances. So, for example, if an inspectorate on the consultee list had no interest in seeing inspection programmes relating to a particular area of business, that could be agreed on a case-by-case or standing basis. This will enable the consultation process to operate sensibly and without unnecessary bureaucracy, and ensure that it includes all elements that need to take part, without going too far. Concern has also been expressed about the power of Ministers to specify the form that the inspection programme and frameworks are to take. I reassure the House that this is an administrative provision that relates only to the form of the documents in question. This is necessary for consistency and ease of planning. It could not be used to specify the content of the programme or frameworks. During our consultation with the inspectorates, it became clear that a specific statutory endorsement of joint working would be both welcome and desirable. We have therefore provided that each chief inspector shall prepare a joint inspection programme with the other four justice sector chief inspectors in relation to matters on which they propose to exercise their functions jointly. This gives statutory force to the agreement made by chief inspectors to move towards enhanced joint working. I should emphasise, for those who may be concerned that this means more red tape, that the chief inspectors will be able to make use of a joint secretariat in preparing joint programmes, and that we are hopeful that the benefits that joint programmes will have in focusing inspections and eliminating duplication will mean a simplified landscape, rather than an increasingly bureaucratic one. In conclusion, we will keep all these changes under review and expect to see early progress. As part of this, we intend to keep under active review the option of reintroducing merger legislation. Meanwhile, we are confident that, with the reaffirmed support of the chief inspectors, we can now press ahead with work already begun to achieve our policy aspiration of a more joined-up inspection regime for the justice system by April 2008. Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 10A to 10D to Lords Amendment No. 10, Amendments Nos. 11A to 11F to Lords Amendment No. 11, Amendments Nos. 12A to 12E to Lords Amendment No. 12, Amendments Nos. 13A to 13F to Lords Amendment No. 13, and Amendments Nos. 14A to 14I to Lords Amendment No. 14.—(Baroness Scotland of Asthal).