Clause 5 - Regulation of equipment
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)
I hope that I can allay the Committee's concerns. The ability to standardise should not be equated with particular types of procurement. There are some dilemmas, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham is right.
This is one of those weeks. Yesterday I was up in front of the Defence Committee dealing with issues such as counter-terrorism, civil contingency and so forth. That Committee had been highly critical of the way in which the Government previously allowed fire authorities to procure radio systems on a different basis to that of the police. It is not for me to anticipate what the Defence Committee will say in its report, but I think that it will welcome the fact that the decision has been revisited in the light of the events of 11 September.
There are issues on which, even within the House and the Select Committee system, people look to the Government to deal with standardisation where appropriate. The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire has a great interest in and considerable knowledge of information technology-related issues in the police service. He resisted the temptation to get into a big discussion about Airwave, and I will do the same. However, I predict that when—in the Select Committee or elsewhere—we examine the roll-out of Airwave, we will learn from the forces with the earliest experience of implementation plans that
they were left to individual police forces to develop. There is a difference between forces that had a single contractual approach to everything—from handsets to control centres to the system itself—and those that decided to buy the handsets separately and have a separate control centre contract and the Airwave system. There are lessons to be learned, but I will not go too far down that line.
The intention of the clause has been broadly welcomed. The Association of Chief Police Officers advocated a more corporate approach in the document that it published in September. It states that in
''moving from a fragmented legacy (old systems) environment which inhibits significant structural change to a unified national Police information systems environment which meets the needs of Citizens, the Service, operational staff and Government . . . will yield very significant operational and quality of service benefits.''
In a 1998 report on officer safety, HMIC said:
''Of concern is the lack of consultation in some instances between forces and other agencies when determining the most suitable officer safety equipment. There are cases where the in-depth, expert research carried out by the Police Scientific Development Branch (PSDB) appears not to have been given due weight and preference has been afforded to the advice from what could best be described as ''well-meaning overnight experts''.''
We can all take the warnings that have been reasonably raised that neither public nor private sector procurements are without fault. That should not, however, deflect us from the central aim of the measure, which is to bring about an appropriate degree of standardisation where it is necessary to promote the general efficiency and effectiveness of the police forces maintained for England and Wales.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.