New clause 8 - Conditions on payment of Police Grant
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
6:45 pm
Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole and I are happy to support the clause. We also supported the amendment, but did not get around to putting our names to it. I am happy to make up for that now.
The new clause also raises the question of how much flexibility there is in police authorities and local police forces, and how much the centre will determine local policing. It would be intolerable if grants could be used to determine how a police force conducted its operations. That would allow the Home Secretary of the day to say that there was no direct intervention, and that the chief constable and the police authority had agreed that this was the correct way forward. I used the metaphor when speaking to a similar amendment that if a train is put on a track, that is the way that it will go. I meant that sufficient incentives lead to inescapable conclusions. An inescapable conclusion will be reached if funding is directed in a particular way. It would be wrong for the Government to try to achieve something by the back
door that they were not prepared to do by the front door. It would be quite wrong to reach a policy decision though financial coercion rather than at a local level.