Clause 36 - Community safety accreditation schemes
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
11:30 am
Ms Vera Baird (Redcar, Labour)
I welcome you, Miss Widdecombe, and I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship.
The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) frequently gets carried away by his own rhetoric, which is amusing for us all. He seems to be suggesting that there is something mandatory about all these powers. The legislation merely empowers a chief constable to look at his own operational area, and to decide whether accrediting any schemes would be useful to him. If he shares the hon. Gentleman's reservations about some particular schemes, he simply will not accredit them.
As far as I can see, there is no prospect of a judicial review leading to anybody being compelled to accredit a scheme, because that is entirely within the chief constable's operational discretion. The chief constable is the person with the best view; I would have thought that the courts would readily accept that.
I wish to raise another concern by, once again, sheltering under the licence given by the Chair. It is inappropriate that these schemes should be limited to local authorities, for the many reasons that have been set out. However, although I do not advocate that limit, there would be an advantage to imposing it; local authorities are at least public authorities, within the meaning of the Human Rights Act 1998, whereas many other people who can be accredited with the powers to have officers will not, on the face of it, be public authorities within the meaning of that Act. It is inappropriate to say that the answer is to confine those people to local authorities.
It is hugely important that crime and disorder partnerships, neighbourhood renewal, housing associations and registered social landlords—even in my constituency, the single regeneration budget group—should be able to have enhanced power to take responsibility for their own communities. Surely, the issue is one of devolving the power to produce a scheme that fits into the local community at its most local level, and is best assessed by those concerned.
In my view, it is out of the question and of no use to the people who are suffering crime and disorder on the ground to limit the scheme to local authorities. However, the Human Rights Act protects individuals' human rights only against public authorities.