My Lords, in drafting this amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, and I spent many happy hours trying to determine what exactly the “public interest” is, as she has said. It can mean a whole lot of different things to different people and its interpretation is interesting in the context in which it is presented in the Bill.
As we have heard, the Police Federation has followed the recommendation—I emphasise “recommendation” —of Sir David Normington’s review into how to improve itself. It decided that it would establish an independent reference group. At Second Reading I gave your Lordships
a full account of how that independent reference group, which I chaired, had been treated. After we were set up as a fully functioning group in January this year, the Police Federation decided it did not want to use us to help it realise its stated purpose of reforming. This was in spite of the membership of that group having within it people with more than 100 years’ experience of working with the police, a very senior and highly respected retired civil servant and the first woman to run a fire authority—so not all of us were politicians, to whom the present chair of the Police Federation was vehemently opposed anyway. Yet all of us were committed to helping the Police Federation improve its image. We were, effectively, sacked in May this year, having been unable to do anything meaningful to help.
I am quizzical about just where the “public interest” fits into this scenario. It is bandied about, as the noble Baroness suggested, but nobody can actually pin down what it means. Is the Police Federation in denial of its obligations to the public interest by behaving in the way it has? If so, what is the meaning of the phrase now? Will the public be pleased at how the organisation has conducted itself—in their interest—or will they be as puzzled as we were about the behaviour of the management of the Police Federation arbitrarily to interpret that interest in this particular way? The phrase needs removing from the Bill unless the Minister can convince me that it is at all meaningful. I would be grateful if she could give me some examples.