Clause 6 - Former Inland Revenue matters
Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill
Mr David Heath (Shadow Minister (Home Affairs), Home Affairs; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
I support the general tenor of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield.
It must be extraordinarily irksome for a British Home Secretary at international conferences to be in the company of Ministers of the Interior who are in direct control of their security forces and gendarmeries and are able to say, ''I will commit my officers to such and such a task.'' The British Home Secretary would have to say, ''I do not control the police in my country. I have an influence on policing, but I do not control it.'' I believe that that has been the origin of many attempts over the years by successive Home Secretaries, who have fretted about the fact that they do not have control, to establish direct control—by subterfuge, by statute or by bullying chief constables and police authorities.
We have to be very wary of that in this House. We in this country have a fine tradition of policing by consent and by tripartite arrangements that ensure that no single authority directs our police. That becomes doubly important when we establish a national agency of this kind, with far-reaching powers and a higher level of capability than many regional police forces. My concern is exactly what has been expressed: the Bill would provide for the Home Secretary to have very substantial operational control of the priorities, the programmes and the procurement of the agency being set up.
The hon. and learned Member for Redcar suggested that I was trying to mislead the Committee earlier when I read out the quotes from Sir Stephen Lander—far from it. Reading out every single word of the interview would only have reinforced my point. Many of us have significant concerns about the way in which it appears that SOCA is to do its business, subjected to pressures that are largely populist rather than based on a candid assessment of policing need and the need to reduce serious and organised crime. We should be wary about giving too many levers of control to any Home Secretary—this one, his predecessor or Home Secretaries in the future.
A level of independence in priority setting for SOCA is to be welcomed and encouraged and should be expressly set out in the legislation.