The effect of these amendments is to give the director-general of the Office for Police Conduct a power to create regional directors, including a national
director for Wales, and that as a minimum four of the regional director positions should be excluded from having a former police background, with a similar bar on the national director for Wales.
The Bill provides a specific bar on the director-general having previously worked for the police and creates a power for him or her to apply that bar to certain specified roles. Currently, all the IPCC’s commissioners—who are both its governing board and its senior public-facing decision-makers—can never have worked for the police. That has delivered a diverse group of people with senior experience in other fields in those roles to complement the policing experience of other staff and senior managers. As I understand it, the IPCC’s clear view is that this should continue to be the case for those who, like commissioners, are the public face of the organisation in the regions and its senior decision-makers. Obviously, the point of tabling the amendment is to seek the reasons for the decisions the Government appear to have made on this point and which are enshrined in the Bill.
6.30 pm
The IPCC considers that moving away from the present arrangement in relation to the commissioners would detract significantly from public confidence, if this were not the case, as well as from the operational effectiveness of the organisation. Many senior people in the IPCC are former police staff. They contribute their particular skills and expertise which one assumes will be equally crucial to the future organisation, but their work and the public perception of it is surely strengthened when it is overseen by senior decision-makers who by law can never have worked for the police. Up to now, this has apparently proved to be invaluable in securing the confidence and constructive engagement of communities and bereaved families in IPCC investigations, and in seeking to overcome the perception that exists in some quarters of the police investigating the police.
The Drew Smith report proposed that there should be regional heads and that they should play a “vital and significant role” as the main visible point of contact in that area. They should have “strong personal credibility” and have,
“sufficient seniority and experience as well as being independent”.
Schedule 9 to the Bill provides for the setting up of regional offices in England and Wales—hence the nature of the wording of the amendment I am moving. In the response to the Government’s consultation on reform of the IPCC, almost two-thirds of the respondents considered that people with prior police experience should be restricted from occupying senior positions within the reformed organisation, and that figure included both police and non-police respondents.
The Bill as currently drafted appears to represent a significant move away from the current position in which all of the governing board of the IPCC and the senior public-facing decision-makers can by statute never have worked for the police. To restrict the statutory bar to only the head of the organisation carries risks, both in what it signals about the new organisation as well as to the impact on public confidence in it. The new organisation will almost certainly have a regional
dimension, as the IPCC has always done. The amendment seeks to provide that those likely to be representing the work of the renamed organisation in the regions or nations—regional directors and a director for Wales—should be subject to the same bar as the director-general on having previously worked for the police, in line with the current practice in the IPCC for those who are the public face of the organisation and its senior decision-makers. I beg to move.