Clause 36 - Community safety accreditation schemes
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
My party has more sympathy with some of what the hon. Member for Lewes has said on this matter than with several of his other proposals. At the end of his remarks, he rightly stressed that Conservative Committee members have repeatedly said that this entire new system should be properly piloted. If we were to persuade the Government to go down the route that we have consistently suggested of having a few pilot schemes that are sufficient to assess the system, it would be desirable to have a review of those schemes. Therefore, we have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman has said about reviews.
However, we are concerned that many of those who have been looking at the way that community safety schemes have been operating, and the way that the Government's existing system of links between police authorities and local authorities are working, feel that there is a danger that the whole thing could be consulted to death. One can have too much of a good thing, and there is a lot of feeling—particularly among Conservatives in the local authority world—that so much consulting is going on that not much action can be taken. Therefore, we have less sympathy with the suggestion that everything must be consulted on, and approved of, before there is any action.
However, we appreciate that the hon. Members for Lewes and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole have genuine motives for proposing the amendments, and we will listen with interest to what the Minister says about them. The Bill talks about police authorities being consulted, and that might not make much difference in practice. The Liberal Democrats propose that the Bill should specify that there must be prior approval: if there were a big difference between having a consultation and having to obtain prior approval, that might indicate that there is something seriously wrong with the relationship between the chief officer and his police authority, because if a chief officer is going to be consulting anyway, he might not be willing to go ahead if the result of that is unfavourable.
I accept that it makes things much more explicit if the Bill refers specifically to prior approval. However, we have worries about issues such as consultation to death and consultation with everybody. Many of us have come across situations in which the views of the majority party in a local authority about the best way
to move forward are not in accordance with those of the chief constable, or many members of the police authority. We would not want the requirement for still further consultation between the police authority and the local authority to strangle the whole thing at birth, and to lead to a log-jam. Perhaps the Minister will refer to some of those points?
We have much sympathy with what the Liberal Democrats have to say on reviewing, but we also want the Government to move much further in our direction by agreeing that the new system should be properly piloted first.