My Lords, before I speak to Amendment 174 perhaps I may remind Members of the Committee of my interests around policing in the register. This amendment seeks to insert the rank of superintendent, and indeed to prescribe it, in legislation. The reason for doing so is to track around the leadership review which the College of Policing has been asked to undertake. It has been looking in part at the ranks structure but has come up against the National Police Chiefs’ Council. It cannot agree to the changes in the ranks structure within policing that the college recommends.
I understand that it had been proposed to introduce a new structure. It was to be a sort of mirror of best practice and management within both the private and public sectors, thus operational level, supervisory level, middle management, senior management and executive level. The NPCC does not rule out the possibility of moving to this model in the future but feels that policing is facing more important issues at the moment than looking at changes in the ranks. It also says that there is no compelling evidence to support them. My contention is that there most definitely is, that it is imperative to modernise the ranks structure now, and that this Bill provides the ideal opportunity to do so.
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I pray in aid the views of Michael Zander QC, emeritus professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science and an acknowledged export on PACE, who stated in legal advice on 11 February 2016:
“That certain PACE decisions have to be taken at a senior level was recommended by the Phillips Royal Commission and has been accepted by every government since PACE was implemented thirty two years ago. The difference between superintendents and chief inspectors is not primarily one of training or even experience. A person is promoted to the rank of superintendent because of a capacity for leadership, responsibility and effective and sound decision making. Requiring a small number of decisions to be made at that level was part of the Royal Commission’s fundamental concept of finding the right balance between the needs of the
service, the public and the suspect. Neither the passage of time nor changing circumstances have altered the balance on this important issue”.
The rank of superintendent was introduced at the foundation of the Metropolitan Police in 1829. Officers who hold the rank are senior operational leaders of the police service. They provide vital roles, such as gold commanders, public order commanders, strategic firearms commanders, authorising officers and senior investigating officers. Those officers of superintendent rank work, or are immediately available, 24 hours a day in any force area. They take responsibility, as the principal and final decision-makers, of serious, major or critical operational incidents to protect the public.
The rank of superintendent is fully recognised and relied on in law throughout previous Acts of Parliament, providing superintendents with significant additional powers to fulfil their roles for the police and society. One or two examples come to mind, such as PACE, under which they have powers to detain a suspect for an additional 12 hours; to delay access to legal advice; to authorise an urgent interview of vulnerable suspects; and to conduct road checks for indictable offences. Another example is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, or RIPA. It contains: powers to authorise the use and conduct of covert human intelligence sources; powers to authorise the direct surveillance of an individual; and powers to acquire communications data. Another example is the Terrorism Act 2000, which contains: power relating to application for warrants for terrorist investigations; power to authorise an application to a circuit judge for a financial institutions order; power to delay a person or solicitor being informed of an arrest; and power to authorise the taking of fingerprints and intimate samples. I could go on.
Further, there are numerous policies and procedures embedded in the police service, and widely accepted and understood by partner agencies, that rely on the decision-making and authority being made at the rank of superintendent. This wider understanding and acceptance of the role of superintendents as departmental or functional leads relates directly to other organisational structures in the public and private sectors. This Bill is the ideal opportunity for us to do some of the modernising that is so desperately needed to help the police service restructure to face the very real challenges of a changing policing environment. I beg to move.