Policing and Crime Bill — House of Lords, 2016-10-26
Topic: Law and Crime
Ian Warwick Blair (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and to the noble Lord, Lord Dear. My response to the situation is quite close to that of the noble Lord, Lord Dear—to be honest, I am quite surprised at how close it is. It is complete dismay. My dismay is that these amendments have been tabled by four Back-Benchers when they should be the responsibility of the Home Office. Police leadership is in crisis not because of the men and women who are doing it now but because the structures and processes just outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Dear, have just been let go I will deal first with my response to the noble Earl’s amendments. I do not think that the international policing aspect works. It does not work, first, for the reason mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dear, that officers tend to go when they have already retired. The second reason is that many police officials across the world are effectively judicial officials and Governments absolutely hold tight to themselves that their nationals should perform those jobs. There is no embedding. The third reason, which is about United Nations or other peacekeeping arrangements, is that the UN, or whatever body, insists that officers should be armed. In our time only the RUC—now the PSNI—would release those officers. In the Metropolitan Police only 7% or 8% of its officers are armed. It will not send those away to police somewhere else under any circumstances. With the greatest respect to the noble Earl, I do not support that position On Amendment 177, about experience in different police forces, I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dear, who was an inspector of constabulary. At the time, I was the staff officer to the Chief Inspector of Constabulary and he, on behalf of the Home Secretary, controlled who was appointed to where in this sense: you had to have passed the strategic command course, you were then recommended on the decisions of the inspectors as to what calibre of officer you were, and sometimes you were specifically told by the Home Office that you were not to apply for a job because it was too small for you The best people were being sent to the best jobs. I really have expertise in this particular point because I administered that system for two years, as the noble Lord, Lord Dear will know. It was very brutal but it was very accurate. We have lost the rule that you could not do the top three jobs in any police force. You were not allowed to do that; you could not be an assistant, a deputy and a chief constable in the same force; you could not be the parish pump. You just would not get on to the list. Somehow, somewhere during the coalition, that disappeared The noble Earl’s amendment is about leadership. Somehow, we managed to sell the Police Staff College at Bramshill without replacing it. It is not a royal yacht, it is not just a generally good idea to have one; it was the absolute essential of what made the United Kingdom police service the envy of the world in the selection of its chief officers. We have lost it. Nobody knows where it has gone. Bramshill is sold. Why is the Home Office not bringing this matter forward rather than two, three or four Back-Benchers at 10 pm I now move to Amendment 178A, which is tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Condon, who will speak in a moment. I had the pleasure of talking to the Minister this afternoon about this amendment, and I am very grateful to her. I really hope that the Official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats will look at this amendment and perhaps by the time we get to Report we will have some coalescence around this position I am sorry to bring the Committee back to this, but I need to return to my speech at Second Reading, which went back to a debate during the passage of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill when it was suddenly discovered in this House that there was no longer a requirement for any senior police officer to have policing experience. It had disappeared somewhere in a lacuna in the different legal processes. The four noble Lords who had been commissioners of police were sitting and standing open-mouthed at the discovery that this had happened behind their backs without anybody noticing As the noble Lord, Lord Dear, said earlier, we are returning to the pre-Second World War situation. Most of us have seen "The Mousetrap", where the chap reaches for the telephone and says, "I’ll ring the chief constable. He was in my regiment". We stopped that after 1945 and said that it would be a good idea if senior police officers had police experience. I accept the ideas of deregulation and devolution, but somehow this Government, and, to be fair, particularly this political party, seem to be of the view that policing is unlike anything else and that it is not important for senior police officers to have had experience of doing middle-ranking work as the superintendents whom the noble Baronesses, Lady Henig and Lady Harris, reported on. I do not understand that. You would not do that in the armed services, law, medicine or accountancy This amendment would put back into statute that it would be a good idea—just a simple, good idea—if the beginning point was that it was likely to be useful if somebody had served in a senior police rank before they applied for a higher one. The amendment makes two separate provisions. It allows the exception that the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act put together which allows a foreign officer to do it if he or she has the right experience, and it certainly allows for the kind of transfer, if this is to be the case, in which fire officers become involved via the PCC, but it states that the Secretary of State on the advice of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary should agree that. The opening position is that you cannot be promoted to the senior ranks of the police service without having been at a middle or more senior rank beforehand unless the Secretary of State says so If something like this is not enshrined in law, I have to agree that the rather dismal predictions of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, will come true. This Government and their predecessor have created a thing called Police First, which is about bringing bright young men and women into the police service at the rank of superintendent. What is the point of coming in at the rank of superintendent if you can come in at the rank of chief constable? Why would you bother? What is this about? Why is it not the position of the Government, the Opposition and the Liberal Democrats that it is simply a good idea that policing should be like any other profession and that experience is a useful thing to have? That is the simple part of my amendment, to which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Condon, will speak in a moment.