Ms Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 4, line 28, after 'may', insert

', after consulting the police authority responsible for maintaining that force about the remedial measures needed,'.

Mr George Stevenson (Stoke-on-Trent South, Labour)

With this it will be convenient to take the following: Government amendment No. 130.

Amendment No. 134, in schedule 1, page 90, line 18, after 'Ministers,' insert

'and the NCIS Service Authority about the remedial measures needed,'.

Amendment No. 135 in page 90, line 34, after 'State,', insert

'and the NCIS Service Authority about the remedial measures needed,'.

Amendment No. 136, in page 91, line 26, leave out from 'State' to 'as' in line 27 and insert

', after consulting the NCS Service Authority about the remedial measures needed, may direct that authority to take such measures.'.

Ms Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

We are pleased that amendment No. 2 may have provoked Government amendment No. 130. The amendment would provide a layer of consultation with police authorities about the remedial measures necessary for a force that might, unfortunately, be deemed not to be efficient or effective. That would mirror Ofsted, with which one would expect such consultation. As I understand it, Government amendment No. 130 places an obligation on the Secretary of State not to give any direction until there has been consultation and the police authority has been given the opportunity to make representations and proposals for remedial measures. That is important, and we are pleased about it.

Amendments Nos. 134, 135 and 136 are consequential on Government amendment No. 130. It is right to have equality of treatment not only for police authorities responding to any directions or suggestions from the Secretary of State, but for other national bodies—NCIS and the NCS. I note

Government amendment No. 131, which we shall discuss later, but we shall pursue our amendments, because they go further that that.

The amendments are important, because they would add an extra layer of consultation about remedial measures. They are more inclusive and entirely match the sentiments expressed in amendment No. 2 and Government amendment No. 130. We want the relevant service authority to have some input right across the board into the improvement of the service, because we believe that there must be a two-way exchange.

Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)

Like the hon. Lady, my hon. Friends and I were pleased that the Government responded to amendment No. 2. My hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire and I subscribed to it because we were working on the same basis. As the hon. Lady rightly said, Government amendment No. 130 deals with part of the same issue. We support her comments. These are important matters, and she is right to say that we shall come back to related matters when we have the big debate on schedule 1, Government amendment No. 131 and Government new clause 4.

We support the hon. Lady's thinking. She is right to say that relevant matters are raised by amendments Nos. 134, 135 and 136. It is appropriate that the Government are moving in our direction in Government amendment No. 130, so we shall listen with interest to what the Minister has to say.

Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)

Given the suggestions of support for Government amendment No. 130, I shall not detain the Committee too long. However, as we are introducing new material in the Bill, I should probably set out the case for the record.

Government amendment No. 130 reintroduces safeguards in respect of the power to direct police authorities that were implicitly rejected in another place when it voted to remove the parallel power to direct chief officers. I believe that on that occasion the focus of attention was on what was then clause 5 and the amendment to it. However, the proposals that we have included here were effectively lost at the same time.

The power to direct police authorities to take remedial measures to correct underperformance is not new. Clause 4 simply re-enacts, with modifications, section 40 of the Police Act 1996. The power was originally introduced by the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994. In putting the case for section 40, I can do no better than quote from the proceedings of the Standing Committee that considered the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill. The then Home Office Minister, Charles Wardle, said:

''New section 28D gives the Home Secretary the power to give directions to a police authority when an inspectorate constabulary has reported that, in his opinion, the relevant police force is, or is about to become, inefficient or ineffective. That aspect involves the power of last resort, which can be exercised only where there is an independent opinion from the inspectorate that the police authority is failing in its fundamental statutory duty to secure the maintenance of an effective and efficient police force for its area.''—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 24 May 1994; c. 268–269.]

Clause 4 is not breaking new ground, but section 40 of the 1996 Act as it stands includes few safeguards. We have already introduced a number of such safeguards in another place. New subsection (2) will restrict the direction-making power so that a police authority may only be directed to take remedial measures that are relevant to the shortcomings identified by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. New subsections (3) and (4) will require the Home Secretary to report to Parliament on the exercise of the direction-making power in any given case.

Government amendment No. 130 introduces further safeguards to ensure that the power to direct is a power of last resort. It places a duty on the Home Secretary to put to the chief officer and police authority the evidence that a force or part of a force is failing and afford them an opportunity to make representations. The Home Secretary is then placed under a duty to have regard to such representations.

If, having considered any representations, the Home Secretary remains of the opinion that remedial measures are required, he must afford the police authority the opportunity to put in place its own remedial measures before it is directed to do so. If the police authority identifies appropriate remedial measures that fully address the area of concern there will be no need for the Home Secretary to issue a formal direction.

The amendment also enables further procedural requirements to be set out in regulations subject to the affirmative procedure. Before making such regulations, the Home Secretary is required to consult the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities in the usual way. Such regulations would, for example, provide for further consultation with a police authority on the terms of any proposed directions. Those are powerful safeguards that were not included in the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994. The safeguards built into Government amendment No. 130 effectively supersede the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) and moved by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke), whom I urge not to press the amendment, because we are introducing the type of consultation that she seeks.

Further Government amendments will deal with the other issues raised by amendments Nos. 134 to 137. New clause 4 will introduce a parallel power to direct chief officers that will include a similar set of safeguards. I do not want to pre-empt the debate on new clause 4, but suffice it to say that the power to direct a police authority is not sufficient on its own to tackle underperformance. Police authorities have a variety of mechanisms by which to hold chief officers to account. In the first instance, we shall look to the chief officer in a police authority to address underperformance, but when a police authority has not been successful in working with a chief officer to improve performance, it is our view that the Home

Secretary must have the option of directing the person responsible for the control of the force.

The revised section 40 and new sections 41A and 41B of the 1996 Act must be seen as a package. Whichever power is used, it should be used only as a last resort after close consultation with the police authority and chief officer concerned. Amendment No. 130 will ensure that that happens.

Ms Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I thank the Minister for his comments. As I said, we want to withdraw amendment No. 2. I am heartened by his remarks on amendments Nos. 134, 135 and 136, and I emphasise that those points need to be picked up. I accept that there is some sense in waiting until we debate Government amendment No. 131, and I thank him for his reassurances on balancing the level of direction, because we all want to achieve efficient and effective policing. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Ms Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

I beg to move amendment No. 137, in page 4, line 30, at end insert—

'(1A) No police force, whether in whole or in part, or generally or in particular respects, shall be regarded as not efficient or not effective or about to cease to be efficient or effective under subsection (1) above, on the grounds that the chief officer has not—

(a) designated any persons under section 35 of the Police Reform Act 2002; or

(b) established a community safety accreditation scheme under section 36 of the Police Reform Act 2002.'.

We focus yet again on directions to police authorities, and we want reassurances and safeguards on the extent of those directions. The Minister has already hinted that the point made here may be covered elsewhere in the Bill and in other regulations, and I shall listen to his comments with interest. The amendment is nevertheless important.

We keep drawing parallels with Ofsted. The reports might contain strong recommendations on the balance of staffing. We want to ensure that CSOs are not imposed by the back door. We are genuinely concerned that the Bill might allow the Secretary of State—obviously not the current one—to use the power to take remedial measures and empower police authorities to adopt CSO schemes. I feel sure that the Minister will agree, given that he stated so forcefully this morning that there is no intention to force CSO schemes on police authorities. The amendment should be totally acceptable in that context.

Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)

We agree with the spirit of the amendment. I agree with the hon. Lady: the matter is very important. She also quite rightly cited what the Minister said before lunch: no police force will be absolutely impelled to go along with the various schemes that the Government are keen on, such as accreditation and CSOs. If that is the case, there is no reason why the Bill should not safeguard that position. We would be very uncomfortable if a chief constable and a police authority were penalised in any way because they felt from their expert knowledge of their area that it was not appropriate to have accreditation or CSOs.

It is extremely important that something along the lines of amendment No. 137 should be in the Bill. We are not tying ourselves to the particular wording, but we think it would be terribly helpful to have a provision that makes it clear that a force cannot be penalised for not going along with accredited schemes or CSOs. Like the hon. Lady, we will listen with interest to what the Minister has to say, but we consider this an important matter.

Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)

I shall not bore the Committee by repeating what I have said already about our intentions for CSOs. We need to be careful about the approach taken in the amendments. In debates such as this, a constant refrain asserts that the legislation might be all right as long as I and my colleagues are Ministers, but questions the future. There is equally a danger that an obsession with one issue, however controversial it is at the moment, can lead people to draft bad law and table poorly thought-out amendments. I am afraid that the amendment falls into that category.

There has been much discussion about CSOs. I had understood that the Opposition parties, at least in another place, welcomed the provisions in part 4 enabling chief officers to designate support staff as detention or escort officers. Forces are already civilianising their custody functions, and the Bill should provide a new impetus for that. We cannot be certain, but it is conceivable that in five years' time, civilian detention or escort officers could well be the norm.

If we look to the future, we cannot rule out the possibility that HMIC could undertake an inspection of a force that continued to employ only police officers in its custody suites. If other forces had achieved, for example, a 10 per cent. saving through civilianisation with no loss of effectiveness, the amendment would debar HMIC from commenting on the efficiency with which the police force uses its resources, or the opportunities taken to civilianise detention duties, even if established best practice across the vast majority of forces suggested that that was a good way of freeing up police officers for other duties. That is the practical effect of amendment No. 137.

Mr. Hawkins rose—

Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)

The amendment shows the difficulties of focusing in such a narrow-minded way—as in so much of the debate—on one element of the provisions, and trying to rule it out. Effectively, it is an approach that would hamper HMIC in drawing on the experience of good practice. We do not know that it is good practice today—let me make that clear. The use of escort or detention officers in an expanded role is new, so we have to wait until there is some evidence, but clearly there is a possibility that it will be shown to be efficient and effective, and it could be promoted by HMIC.

Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)

I am glad that the Minister added his parenthesis, because when I first alerted him to the fact that I wanted to intervene, he had not made it clear that the facts had not been established. I am glad that he has now made that concession. If he is relying on a judgment of what is best practice and what is not, will

there not always be the danger that a Whitehall judgment may not be accurate?

Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)

We are talking about HMIC. We have to trust someone. The hon. Gentleman is in danger of arguing himself into a corner. A person who is not from the police force could form an opinion on how it is operating. It has been recognised for an enormously long time that an independent inspectorate is necessary. The inspectorate accumulates a great deal of knowledge from forces throughout the country about what is efficient and effective. As we discussed earlier, its role has been extended under the Government. Far from saying that it is wrong that the inspectorate should be able to form a view about this or other issues, we consider it an important tool in support of the Secretary of State and value the advice that we receive.

Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)

We have made clear our enormous admiration for the work of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. We are not seeking to undermine it, but the amendment would protect a force that chooses on the basis of its local judgment not to adopt the particular extra practice of the CSOs and accredited schemes that the Government are introducing. Why should a force be regarded as ineffective or inefficient because it has not adopted such a practice? Surely that matter should best be left to local judgment.

Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)

We could be discussing traffic wardens in the 1960s. If a force chose to use its police officers to issue parking tickets, instead of traffic wardens, the hon. Gentleman would expect the inspectorate to say that that was ludicrous. We have established best practice throughout the country and we do not want our police officers to undertake such work. We are not in a position to say that it has been proved that the powers that we are introducing will produce efficiency and effectiveness. There is a huge consensus that the powers will achieve that, but that has not been proven on the ground. To say, however, in 2002 that we should introduce primary legislation that would prevent the body of evidence that builds up over the years from being used by the inspectorate to provide advice and make a judgment about efficiency and effectiveness would make bad law out of the current debate about CSOs. I strongly urge the Committee to resist the amendment.

Ms Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

There is a fundamental difference between advising on good practice and making that crystal clear, and introducing a power to force local police authorities to take certain action. I am sure that the traffic warden example can be dealt with by advice, guidance, good practice and publicity, without a power being forced on the police. After all, there are circumstances in which police carry out other jobs.

Ms Vera Baird (Redcar, Labour)

If the intention is to stop something being forced on the police, is not the amendment misguided? It would stop expert inspectors saying that in a particular part of the Redcar division in, say, Grangetown, the police are not dealing effectively with litter because they do not have CSOs. The amendment would stop that being declared. It may or may not be necessary to direct that the power must be introduced, but the amendment

would prevent inspectors from considering matters and reaching a decision.

Ms Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset & North Poole, Liberal Democrat)

The intention of the amendment is to avoid direction and tunnel vision, as much as anything. We want to ensure that a judgment is not made about deficiency or ineffectiveness simply on the grounds that the chief constable has not adopted a CSO scheme. If we examined a broader range of targets and outcomes, the point made by the hon. and learned Lady would be answered.

The adoption of CSOs must be voluntary and not in any way under duress from the Secretary of State. That is the bottom line. When I hear the justification from the Government it makes me increasingly nervous that the CSOs will be imposed. I endorse what Conservative Members have said. Although we generally welcome the Government amendments, my hon. Friend and I would like to press our amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 11.

Mr James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 78, in page 4, leave out lines 34 and 35.

The amount of power taken unto the Secretary of State in the Bill is the issue that separates Opposition parties from the Government. I apologise to the Committee for my short absence, and the point may already have been made, but clause 4 revises section 40 of the 1996 Act and describes powers to give directions to a police authority.

Section 40 has never been used, despite the Act's being in existence for the past six years. The existing power has not been used by the Home Secretary in the previous Conservative Government, who was in office for only a few short months after the legislation was enacted, by the present Home Secretary or by his predecessor. Why do we need the dramatically increased range of powers envisaged in clause 4, and especially subsection (2)(b), which the amendment would delete?

There can be no reasonable argument against the idea of the inspectorate producing a report identifying the strengths and weaknesses in a police authority or BCU, as the clause envisages, or suggesting that measures be taken to remedy those problems. With that there can be little dispute. The dispute is over whether the Home Secretary has complete freedom to

dictate what the remedial measures should be. Subsection (2) says that

''Those remedial measures must not relate to any matter other than''—

and the first bit is non-contentious—

''a matter by reference to which the report contains a statement of opinion falling within subsection (1)(a) or (b)''.

That is perfectly sensible; the remedial measures should address what the report says. The problem is that paragraph (b) follows, which says that the measures must also not relate to anything other than

''a matter that the Secretary of State considers relevant to any matter falling within paragraph (a).''

That gives the Secretary of State carte blanche to consider any matter relevant to the measures on which the inspector has passed opinion.

I have taken the liberty of looking at one or two HMIC reports. They are comprehensive, and it beggars belief that it should be necessary for the Home Secretary to have powers to go beyond what is in the report. I shall refer to two examples, both of which are relevant to members of the Committee. First, I shall quote the report of Hampshire constabulary's latest inspection—the latest one on the inspectorate's website, anyway—which was in 1999. That, of course, is the Minister's constabulary.

Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the most recent Hampshire constabulary report on the inspectorate's website is from 1999?

Mr James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

Yes.

Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)

I shall have to have a look at the website.

Mr James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

I take it from that that there has been a more recent inspection, but whether that is the most recent report is irrelevant to my argument. The fact is that it contains a series of recommendations, one of which is

''That the Force considers how to co-ordinate pre-existing projects, on the Force control room, on systems of core handling and on public safety radio communication. In so doing it should review the timescale for selecting the preferred option arising from the core handling project and match its implementation with the move to a single tier control room.''

That is a pretty detailed obligation on, or recommendation from, the inspectorate, and I should have thought that it was perfectly adequate as an issue on which the Secretary of State should require remedial measures to be taken. However, the Bill proposes that the Secretary of State should have powers to include anything else that he considers relevant. I find that prospect difficult to understand.

Secondly, I shall quote a report from my own constabulary. It is a report on a BCU inspection—I tried to get even closer to the ground—in the central Cambridgeshire unit, which only just touches my constituency but is obviously relevant. Its recommendations are even more detailed. For example, it asks that

''The existing arrangements in respect of custody facilities at Wisbech police station be urgently reviewed.''

Wisbech is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss). Such recommendations are the minutiae of policing issues. I am not suggesting that the recommendation is not important—it is, particularly if one is taken into custody in Wisbech. My point is, why should the Secretary of State have powers that allow him to go beyond even the recommendations in BCU reports? That is why I believe it necessary to delete subsection (2)(b).

The case is quite clear: the provision is an open-ended opportunity for the Home Secretary to decide of his own volition what he considers to be relevant. There is no challenge to that, and no opportunity for people to appeal against what he considers to be relevant. It would provide a Home Secretary—not necessarily this one—with an opportunity to get involved in minutiae. That is unnecessary and may carry a risk when the power falls into the hands of future Secretaries of State.

Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)

The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire has conjured up a worrying prospect, but let us consider the issue.

There are two parts to the process. First, HMIC conducts an inspection; secondly, the Secretary of State directs a response. The proposed change from the previous section 40—which I think that the Committee will agree to—is that the inspectorate should be able to report on part of a force, rather than only on all of it. Perhaps one of the reasons why the intervention power has never been used is that a very high threshold must be reached before a whole force is deemed to be failing.

However, to leave that aside, we are currently debating a different question—what powers to direct should the Secretary of State have? It is always dangerous for Ministers who are on their feet to offer to consider amendments, but I am half-inclined—I will go no further than that—to suggest that we should remove all of subsection (2) of new section 40, and revert to the wording that was used by the previous Conservative Administration. I assume that hon. Members are happy with that wording. It states:

''the Secretary of State may direct the police authority responsible for maintaining the force to take such measures as may be specified in the direction.''

Section 40 does not require the matters on which the Secretary of State gives directions to bear any relation whatever to the issues that have been identified by HMIC. The new draft was produced because I felt—although, perhaps, I got this wrong—that that was too broad a remit to give to the Secretary of State, and that there should be some relationship between what the Secretary of State responds to and the problem that has been identified by HMIC.

However, if the Committee has a problem with the new wording, I shall consider reverting to the wording introduced by the Conservative party in the previous Parliament. I am sure that Conservative Committee members would accept that.

However, there is a reason why we have structured what we have done in this way. Although the

inspectorate reports are very detailed and comprehensive, it is always conceivable that, when a problem has been identified by the inspectorate, further matters will come to light that are relevant and should be taken into account.

For example, if HMIC criticised a force for consistently slipping with regard to the burglary target that it has been set under best value, it would set out its recommendations in its report on the force, and the Home Secretary could use that, by employing new section 40(2)(a), as the basis for issuing directions against the police authority. He could do that because the police authority owns the best value targets for the police force. The HMIC report might identify—in the way that the hon. Gentleman said—that the force was failing to meet its target because it was failing to offer decent prevention advice, and because its investigative techniques did not follow proven best practice. Under the amendment, the Home Secretary could only direct the police authority to require action to be taken to put right policing practice in those two areas—prevention and investigative techniques.

However, let us suppose that the CPS inspectorate was looking at performance in this area at the same time, and, having studied the work of CPS, it advised that the force had poor file quality and, as a result, there was a failure successfully to prosecute persistent offenders in the area, so that they were free to re-offend. Any sensible person would say that the Home Secretary should be able to take into account that wider source of evidence, which is relevant to the problem identified by HMIC.

In practical terms, I do not think that it is possible to specify in the Bill all the conceivable sources of additional evidence that might be available to the Home Secretary. That is why new section 40(2) is worded in this way. However, if the hon. Gentleman would prefer us to revert to the wide-ranging powers of the Secretary of State that were introduced by the Conservative Government, I shall give active consideration to that before Report.

Mr James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

Well, that is a tempting offer. However, as the Minister knows, the world has moved on a little bit since 1996, otherwise we would not be having this debate because the Government would have left the legislation as it is. We have moved on, but I remain of the view that the envisaged powers and those that are in existing legislation are over the top and go beyond what is necessary. I am not entirely convinced by the Minister's technical example of why he believes that the powers are necessary.

We must reflect on what the Minister said and I want to read his technical explanation to try to understand it more clearly. We might wish to return to the matter on another occasion. I want to know what the Minister's colleagues said in opposition to the clause in 1996—we might well find something of interest to entertain the Committee. Until we reach that stage, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 114, in page 4, line 45, at end insert—

'(4A) A report under subsection (3) shall set out fully the increased costs to public funds which will be required to make the police force or any part concerned efficient and effective and the full costs of any remedial measures recommended.'.

This is a matter of substance and not merely a probing amendment. I said before lunch that we would return to the issues of what the Government often refer to as so-called best value. The chief officers of my police authority in Surrey and the two local authorities in my constituency think that the current practice is very far from the normal and natural meaning in English language of ''best value''. They have found that the so-called best-value procedures have been incredibly expensive and have served no good purpose.

I suggest that the requirement that we propose in the amendment represents plain common sense. It is rather akin to the compliance cost assessment that is required in every statute. We must be able to know what it will cost to make things work. We should always have a weather eye on the cost to taxpayers of what is proposed. Nevertheless, when one knows the cost of something, it might still be the right thing to do. I do not suggest that something that would genuinely make a force efficient and effective should not be done because it is expensive. We want efficient and effective police forces. One should always be aware of costs so that value judgments can be made.

There are occasions when a marginal improvement would be very expensive. One could say that because a force is pretty effective, it is not worth while to spend a huge amount of taxpayers' money of the sort that was wasted on the dome or Wembley—as the House heard today—for only a marginal improvement. We must always be careful to examine costs, and I hope that we shall hear a constructive response from the Minister. I accept that the Minister may say that that would not be a good way in which to do it, and that the Government will bring forward Government amendments at a later stage to incorporate the concept, and if he were to say that we would listen to him. It is important, however, that the report should have a compliance cost assessment in it whenever such things are contemplated.

Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)

We can take the amendment as a covert attempt to make the Home Office responsible for the costs that may be incurred by saying that a police force should do things differently. Let us remember, however, the basis on which the provision will work. From the outset, a police authority is funded to maintain an efficient and effective police force. Direction-making powers, including those introduced by the previous Administration, exist for use when a police authority fails to maintain an efficient and effective police force. That is wholly separate from a situation in which the Government may decide that a police authority should do something. In the spending review 2000, for example, we decided that there needed to be a greater focus on rural policing, and we introduced an additional £15 million of funding, which was allocated to forces according to how sparsely their areas were populated.

If a police authority fails to use its resources effectively and has to invest extra money in order to correct its own failings, that is its responsibility and it should be accountable to the local communities that it serves. The amendment is misplaced and does not build on the purpose of either the HMIC inspection or the direction-making powers that we, and the previous Government, have framed.

Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)

I am not wholly convinced by the Minister's comments. He started off by saying that the amendment is a covert attempt to make the Home Office pay for the costs of the measure. If it were such an attempt, I am not sure whether it would be covert.

In the time of the Minister's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), there was a problem in my county when the previous Home Secretary, who is now the Foreign Secretary, decided that Senator Pinochet should be placed under house arrest. The former Home Secretary went on television and said that the costs of the house arrest would not fall on Surrey police or the council tax payers of Surrey, but would come out of Home Office funds. Unfortunately, it did not turn out that way. The total cost of that policing operation was £1.1 million, but the Home Office reimbursed Surrey police only £600,000. People in my area were very unhappy, and all the Surrey MPs went to see the former Home Secretary. We managed to get an extra £200,000 out of him, but we did not get the full cost. The Minister thinks that the amendment is a covert attempt to make the Home Office pay for things, but if we wanted that we would do it overtly.

That is not the point, which, with respect, the Minister has slightly missed. Even if a local police authority has to pay, Parliament and taxpayers are entitled to know the cost. There is always the question of who judges what is efficient or effective. I am not sure that my judgment of what is efficient or effective would always be same as that of the previous Home Secretary or, indeed, the current Home Secretary. Of course, the current Home Secretary has spent most of his time in office dismantling all the things that the previous Home Secretary did to such an extent that the press has described his actions as dismantling the house the Jack built.

I revert to what I said in moving the amendment. We want to see the text in the Bill. That may be a matter to which we return on Report, but at this stage I do not propose to press it to a vote. Before withdrawing the amendment, I hope that I can ask the Minister to reflect carefully. The amendment is not a covert attempt to make the Home Office pay. It is about transparency, and everyone being aware of the cost to public funds of such reports. I hope that the Minister will seriously reflect on that, and may be prepared to table Government amendments to similar effect. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment made: No. 130, in page 4, line 45, at end insert—

'(5) The Secretary of State shall not give a direction under this section in relation to any police force unless—

(a) the police authority maintaining that force and the chief officer of that force have each been given such information about the Secretary of State's grounds for proposing to give that direction as he considers appropriate for enabling them to make representations or proposals under the following paragraphs of this subsection;

(b) that police authority and chief officer have each been given an opportunity of making representations about those grounds;

(c) that police authority has had an opportunity of making proposals for the taking of remedial measures that would make the giving of the direction unnecessary; and

(d) the Secretary of State has considered any such representations and any such proposals.

(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make further provision as to the procedure to be followed in cases where a proposal is made for the giving of a direction under this section.

(7) Before making any regulations under this section, the Secretary of State shall consult with—

(a) persons whom he considers to represent the interests of police authorities;

(b) persons whom he considers to represent the interests of chief officers of police; and

(c) such other persons as he thinks fit.

(8) Regulations under this section may make different provision for different cases and circumstances.

(9) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section shall not be made unless a draft of the regulations has been laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House.'' '.—[Mr. Denham.]

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Ms Vera Baird (Redcar, Labour)

I want to raise a minor drafting point of the kind that will lead the Minister to regret having lawyers on the Back Benches. I do not suppose that anyone who is not an expert in reading legislation will actually read this clause, but if they did, they might hesitate at subsection (2). At the moment it says:

''Those remedial measures must not relate to any matter other than (a) . . . or (b)''.

Is there any good reason why it does not just say that those remedial measures may relate only to (a) and (b)? That is infinitely easier to read, more straightforward and easier to follow.

Mr George Stevenson (Stoke-on-Trent South, Labour)

If there is not any good reason for it to be worded that way at the moment, I am that sure someone will find one. The point is well taken.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 4, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.