My Lords, I support to an extent the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond and the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. Clearly, superintendents, as my noble friend articulated at length, play an essential role, which is recognised extensively in legislation.
Also in this group, I and my noble friend Lady Hamwee intend to oppose the proposition that Clause 46 stand part of the Bill. Clause 46 allows the Secretary of State by regulations to specify the ranks that may be held by members of police forces other than chief officers of police. A great deal of concern has been expressed in the public domain recently about the cost of, and the perks given to, chief officers of police. One would have thought that if the Government were going to legislate, that is an area that they might have turned their attention to. As the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, mentioned, we have been here before with the Sheehy report the last time that the Conservative Party was alone in government.
From memory, it was a decision of the Sheehy report and the Government to abolish the rank of chief inspector. At some stage before that was fully implemented, the decision was rescinded. The police service paid off a lot of chief inspectors to get them to retire because it had been told that the rank was going to be abolished, but it never was. That led to the mass recruitment of chief inspectors to fill the gap that had been left because the police service had pensioned off early a lot of the chief inspectors that it then needed.
My point, which the Minister has made continually over the issue of volunteers, is that it should be left to individual chief officers to decide. In the case of police volunteers, the flexibility should be available to chief officers to use them however they want and to give
them whatever powers they wish. Surely exactly the same argument applies here: it should be left to individual chief constables to promote officers to particular ranks—or not—depending on local need.
While I accept that, especially in legislation, the superintendent has a particular and pivotal role, similar arguments could be made for police sergeants as custody officers and so forth, or for police inspectors who are often operational team leaders. One could go through and make a case—perhaps not as compelling as that put forward on behalf of the superintendent—for each and every particular rank to continue to exist, given different scenarios in different police forces.
I appreciate that the legislation simply gives the power to the Secretary of State through regulations to specify the ranks but I would argue, for the reasons I set out, both that that is unnecessary and that it limits the flexibility of chief officers in designing a police rank structure that suits their local needs.