Schedule 1 - Powers of the Secretary of State in relation to NCIS and NCS
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Mr John Denham (Minister of State (Police, Courts and Drugs), Home Office; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Heppell) has taken over the duty of Whip to the Department and the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth), the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, has joined us today for the first time in Committee to take through some business. Without wishing to curry favour, Mr. Stevenson, I wish to say how pleased I was to visit your constituency last Thursday. I was impressed by what I saw there.
The whole purpose of the Bill is to drive up standards of policing across the board in England and Wales. It is fundamentally about doing what is necessary to ensure that all local communities receive the best quality service, as they have a right to expect. Members of the Committee will know that the amendment and new clause would reintroduce what
was originally clause 5—which was removed by the Opposition in another place—and to add to it some amendments that were tabled in another place to the original clause 5. The new clause, in common with the rest of the Bill, is about improving the quality of service provided by the police.
The police reform process is putting in place a significant series of measures that are intended to raise policing standards and to bring the policing standard of all forces up to the standards of the best. Many of the measures are non-legislative, such as the establishment of the police standards unit, or use existing machinery, such as the inspectorate. They involve the investment in the development and codification of best practice that will result in the national centre for policing excellence and raise professional leadership and training standards through the new organisation, Centrex, and so on. In no way are the Government saying that we are wholly or even largely dependent on the powers that are set out in the new clause to raise policing standards. Many other aspects are involved, including the work of the police service itself and the police authorities that we look to in the first instance to raise policing standards.
The issue that the Committee must deal with is what action, if any, should be taken when a force is failing to provide an adequate service and when, despite that, the police authority and the chief officer responsible have failed, or have been unable or unwilling to deal with the under-performance. In those circumstances, it is unacceptable that the third element in the tripartite structure that governs policing—the Home Secretary—is prevented from stepping in to require the necessary improvements. It leaves the Home Secretary in a position in which the public and possibly Parliament would demand action that he is unable to take. That is not satisfactory. The new clause will give the Home Secretary that power, although in constrained circumstances, which I shall explain in a moment.