Schedule 1 - Powers of the Secretary of State in relation to NCIS and NCS
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
5:30 pm
Mr George Osborne (Tatton, Conservative)
I too visited your constituency last week, Mr. Stevenson, as I do every week when I drive to my constituency—I go through Stoke on Trent on my way to Cheshire.
I support my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire and the hon. Member for Lewes in their opposition to new clause 4. It is the most centralist, interventionist and prescriptive clause in a Bill that was described by my local chief constable in Cheshire as centralist, interventionist and prescriptive. In the view of almost every organisation—I am covering my back by saying almost, because I have found not a single organisation apart from the Home Office that supports it—the power to issue directions to chief officers undermines the tripartite relationship that has worked so well to guard the independence of the police force from the politicians of today.
I remind the Committee of the strength of opposition to the clause from organisations. The Association of Police Authorities, to which my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire referred, said:
''We urge MPs not to reinstate these provisions which fundamentally undermine local accountability for local policing.''
In response to the Select Committee on which the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Bridget Prentice) served, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Lord Condon, said:
''The tripartite structure for the governance of policing . . . has provided the checks and balances that underpin our policing system . . . the cumulative impact of the clauses in the Bill which give the Secretary of State new powers to direct and control policing will dramatically alter that balance of power in favour of the Secretary of State.''—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 February 2002; Vol. 631, c. 524.]
Even the chairman of the Metropolitan police authority, who is, I believe, a member of the Labour party, said in the other place:
''Why do the Government need to intervene directly in forces rather than work with and through local police authorities?''—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 February 2002; Vol. 631 c. 1624.]
In conjunction with the chief constable, my own police authority in Cheshire wrote to all the MPs representing Cheshire constituencies, saying:
''The provisions of the Police Bill would radically shift the current balance of responsibility for policing away from local people and local accountability, towards greater central direction and control by the Home Secretary.
Such a step would in our view damage local policing and make policing more remote from the local communities it serves.''
Labour Members must wonder why, apart from the Home Office, almost every organisation involved seems to believe that the Bill will achieve that.
Over the very enjoyable recess, I decided to look back at Hansard. When such powers were being given by previous Governments, the Labour party was the first to jump up. In 1994, at the time of the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill, which gave powers to direct police authorities that are far superseded by the Bill, the Opposition spokesman said that
''the Bill represents the most determined and least popular attempt ever made to centralise policing in Britain, to give Ministers unprecedented control over the way that the police do their work, and to undermine police independence . . . an ideology that resents local freedom''.
He continued by saying that
''crime is fought most successfully locally, where police and the local community work together. Every measure that ruptures or weakens that link diminishes our primary purpose which is to fight crime.''—[Official Report, 26 April 1994; Vol. 242, c. 122–23.]
That spokesman was the Prime Minister. What has changed? First, Labour Members are in government and have started to listen to their civil servants, who want more power. Secondly—I refer to the interventions on the hon. Member for Lewes—they have been in power for five years, nothing seems to be improving and public services do not seem to be getting any better, so they start to blame the police, nurses and teachers and suggest that if only Whitehall had a bit more power, everything would be fine and the reasons why the country supported new Labour would become apparent.
The Bill represents the Government's authoritarian streak. They have a deep instinct for centralisation. Labour Members may think that the Conservatives were no better. However, the Bill goes far beyond what we did. We did not take those powers. No such powers were ever proposed by any Conservative Government.