Clause 10 - Reports to the Secretary of State
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
3:00 pm
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Coventry North East, Labour)
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will do that, because if he does, I am hopeful that I will be
able to convince him that his amendment is inappropriate. However, his motivation, which is to ensure that there is openness, is right. That is the founding principle of the system that we are seeking to establish.
The amendment would require the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament, and cause to be published, every report that he receives from the IPCC. It must be remembered that reports will be made to the Secretary of State because he has asked for them, or because the commission feels it is necessary to bring something to his attention.
That is not the only avenue for the commission to make its reports. If it feels that information should be made public, or made available to the police service, it can do that through the annual report, or through its ability to give advice directly to the police service and other interested persons under the provisions of subsections (10) and (11). Therefore, it will not be possible for this—or any future—Home Secretary to prevent the publication of information that the commission wishes to be made known to a wider audience than the Secretary of State.
It would potentially be harmful to the public interest if the Bill were to demand that reports to the Secretary of State be published. It is highly likely that this amendment would result in the commission not writing any reports for the Secretary of State, or in useful information being excluded because it was felt that it might be harmful if it were made public. The Secretary of State should have discretion with regard to whether to publish these reports, having considered all the relevant factors.
The Secretary of State will be aware that the system is based on openness, and that to fulfil the spirit of the system it will be appropriate to make the reports available to the public in as many cases as possible. Nevertheless, there may be times when it is not right for these reports to be disclosed.
The hon. Gentleman is worried about an abuse of power by the Secretary of State, and he wants to ensure that everything is open. However, when the commission has the ability to put anything it likes into the public domain through a variety of mechanisms, in some circumstances the effect of the amendment would be to prevent—or at least to discourage—not the Secretary of State from doing anything, but the IPCC itself. There might be circumstances in which it wanted to make a report to the Secretary of State, and it would feel more comfortable doing that if it knew that he had discretion with regard to what should be put into the public domain. If it wants to make an open report, it is free to do so. No Home Secretary will able to stop it doing that.
Therefore, although the hon. Gentleman's intention is to be open—his desire is to ensure that the Home Secretary does not have any powers that he should not have—I fear that the effect of his amendment will be to restrict not the Home Secretary, but the IPCC. He said that he would listen to what I had to say. Therefore, I ask him to take on board my comments—to accept
that the Secretary of State has no power to prevent the IPCC from putting whatever it wants into the public domain—and to withdraw his amendment. That would allow the IPCC, where it believes it to be appropriate, to make reports to the Secretary of State, without the inevitable consequence that each and every part of that report has to be put into the public domain.