Clause 1 - National Policing Improvement Agency
Police and Justice Bill
9:00 am
Nick Herbert (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 61, in clause 1, page 1, line 9, at end insert—
‘(c)the Police Standards Unit.’.
This is a probing amendment. I want to raise the issue of the extent to which a plethora of bodies will continue to direct or seek to give guidance to police forces and police authorities, despite the Government’s intention to set up a national policing improvement agency. The Home Office White Paper “Building Communities, Beating Crime” stated that a strong prerequisite for the establishment of the agency was the rationalisation of the landscape of national organisations. The idea that two organisations are to be subsumed within the new agency commands reasonably broad support. However, other bodies will continue working alongside the agency. For example, the Police Standards Unit will remain as a body within the Home Office.
We need to discuss the relationship between the Police Standards Unit and the inspectorate of constabulary to be subsumed by the new inspectorate. We may be able to do that when we discuss the inspectorate. The question, however, is whether we need a separate standards unit as well as the improvement agency, and we need to consider the extent to which their functions will overlap. After all, both will seek to drive up police standards and performance, the agency more by advice and guidance and the Police Standards Unit more through intervention. My question is whether it is really necessary to have both bodies, and I shall listen with interest to what the Minister has to say.
The Minister said in evidence to the Home Affairs Committee last year:
“I have no intention of having the Improvement Agency and still having this myriad of different organisations”.
I do not think that she was referring specifically to the Police Standards Unit. The Government have stated that the inspectorate and the standards unit have separate and complementary roles, but the Home Affairs Committee believes that a strong case can be made for rationalising the many agencies, and that it would be desirable—even inevitable—that the inspectorate and the standards unit eventually merged. Were that to be the case, I would be less concerned about separating the standards unit and the improvement agency, but it is proposed that three bodies, not to mention the Audit Commission, should be able to intervene in police forces in one way or another.
Dr. Kevin Bond, former director of the Police Standards Unit, said that the unit was created to act as a catalyst in the police service, and that the proposal to merge the standards unit and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary made sense. That statement was contradicted by the current director, Paul Evans, who said that the standards unit works out of the Home Office and that the constabulary is independent.
Other concerns have been expressed by professional bodies about the potential for duplication. The Association of Chief Police Officers noted a
“considerable overlap and duplication of resources”
between it, the standards unit, the National Centre for Policing Excellence and the Home Office. The APA has expressed concern at the level of monitoring, inspection and auditing currently being undertaken, and the number of those engaging in such roles centrally, including the standards unit, the Home Office, the inspectorate and the Audit Commission. The APA said
“There is undoubtedly scope to streamline and reduce radically the extent of such activity”.
That view is supported by the Police Federation, which claims that there is a considerable degree of overlap between the Police Standards Unit, the Audit Commission and HMIC, which could lead to a “costly duplication of effort”. The Home Affairs Committee noted that
“the overlapping remits can paradoxically create holes through which important work may fall”.
That is the danger of having a multiplicity of organisations with overlapping tasks. Not only can there be too much interference with the bodies concerned—in this case, the police forces and authorities—but there could be confusion as to who should be responsible for certain matters.
I am not persuaded. I have heard no argument as to why the Police Standards Unit should remain separate from the new improvement agency. The purpose of the amendment is to suggest that it should be one of the organisations to be abolished—in other words, it should be subsumed by the new agency.
It would have helped us if the full regulatory impact assessment on the national policing improvement agency had been published. Unless I am mistaken, in which case, I am sure the Minister will put me right, it has not been. It is certainly not published on the Home Office website. However, the overarching regulatory impact assessment for the Bill says that
“A full RIA on the National Policing Improvement Agency will be published in due course.”
Such an RIA would have set out the costs and benefits of setting up the agency. It would also have addressed the issue of whether other organisations were performing similar roles, and the relationship between them. However, that assessment is not available to us now, on our first opportunity to scrutinise in detail the basis for the establishment and operation of the improvement agency. Am I correct that the impact assessment has not been published? If so, why is that, and can the Minister tell us when it will be available to the Committee?
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
The national policing improvement agency is to be a police-owned and led organisation that supports self-improvement in forces, particularly on front-line policing. As such, it will not take direct control of the mechanisms for monitoring police performance, nor will it be responsible for police performance management at national level. Those functions should remain firmly with the Police Standards Unit of the Home Office. Of course, the two bodies will need to establish a close working relationship. All of us, on our constituents’ behalf, have an interest in making sure that police performance continues to improve, as it has done over the past few years. The Police Standards Unit has a good record in that regard, and I should like to give the Committee a little evidence of that.
In any event, the Police Standards Unit is not a statutory body and could not be abolished by the amendment—I accept that it is a probing amendment. The Police Standards Unit has a key role to play in identifying for the Home Secretary performance variations across the service, and the capacity to reduce those variations. Hon. Members will know that one of our key targets is to reduce crime generally, and to reduce crime further in high-crime areas. It is important to us to have a body that can spot the variations between low-crime and high-crime areas.
Since the unit was created in 2002, it has demonstrated its value. It has led on the creation of the police performance assessment framework, with which, no doubt, the Committee will become increasingly familiar as we go through the Bill. It is unbelievable that, until a few years ago, we did not have a national police performance assessment framework. In the past few years, that has been incredibly useful in driving up police performance.
The Police Standards Unit’s work enables it to spot performance variations. It can respond in a targeted way where necessary. The eight forces with which the unit has worked have reduced crime by twice as much as the average of other forces—11.4 per cent., compared with 4.6 per cent more generally. That shows that, once the unit engages constructively with forces, it can come up with tactics, strategies and ways of working that they can use.
Michael Fabricant (Whip, Whips; Lichfield, Conservative)
Can the Minister clarify the relationship between the agency and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary? There must be some overlap in their activity. In which ways do they co-operate, and are there any strains between the two organisations?
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
That is a good question, and I welcome the opportunity to clarify the situation. HMIC undertakes broad inspections of the whole service. It makes annual baseline reports, so it looks at performance across the piece. Inevitably, that is done over a longer time than the work of the Police Standards Unit. Her Majesty’s inspectorate also does thematic inspections—into call handling and other specific issues, for example—in order to give us a snapshot of the performance of different forces. The Police Standards Unit can act like a radar, so that when forces start to drift in their performance it can target them immediately. At the moment, it is engaged with some basic command units, not necessarily the whole force. There could be a basic command unit in which things are not going well, and in some of our city BCUs that can account for a huge proportion of crime across the force. The Police Standards Unit is quick to act and has the performance monitoring information, so if there are problems in that BCU, it can get in.
The Police Standards Unit has done that consensually. It has not been a heavy-handed organisation, although people originally had fears that it might be and that it would trample over the service. In fact, we are probably at the point now where, although the Police Standards Unit might not be welcomed, once it is engaged, most forces feel that it is very useful. There is a difference, but it is important that there should be close working relationships between HMIC, the Police Standards Unit and the national policing improvement agency, when it is up and running.
I said to the Home Affairs Committee that I wanted to rationalise, to use the jargon, the policing landscape. The fact that the NPIA will take over the functions of Centrex and the Police Information Technology Organisation, which are significant and large organisations, should be generally welcome.
Martin Horwood (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)
I am intrigued by the Minister’s response. If she is saying that the Police Standards Unit is necessary because it can spot performance variations among forces, is she also saying that the new national policing improvement agency will not be able do so, when it is responsible for the
“development and promulgation of good practice”
and for giving “expert advice” to forces? Surely it would make sense for the spotting of performance variations to be incorporated into the same body that provides advice on the basis of it.
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
We will have an opportunity to discuss those very issues when we come to the hon. Gentleman’s amendments that deal with monitoring performance. The NPIA is not a performance-monitoring body; it is police-owned and police-led, developing products and good practice. It is important that the monitoring of performance does not take place within the same organisation that is there to help the police. It is important to have the rigour of external scrutiny, which will take place through the new inspectorate and the Police Standards Unit. I hope that the hon. Gentleman would acknowledge that we can improve our public services by having good external drivers and internal improvement processes that are owned by the force. There is a perfectly logical and effective distinction between the roles that the various organisations will play.
A practical example of how the Police Standards Unit has assisted forces is its recent work with about a quarter of forces to help to improve their sanction detection rates. The average performance improvement in those forces has been around double that of the forces with which the unit has not worked. Detection rates increased by 4.4 per cent., as against 2.3 per cent., from September 2004 to November 2005. All hon. Members will be concerned about detection rates. It is important to drive them up and the Police Standards Unit has been able to do so.
The Police Standards Unit has been dealing with some issues that may well go across to the NPIA as it develops. The dissemination of good practice on the development of automatic number plate recognition is another example that involves internal improvements to the force. There will be a resettling of functions and organisation as the new agency starts to work. Getting that settlement right will be important for future performance, and not muddling performance monitoring with self-improvement is key. I therefore urge the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs to withdraw the amendment and, if not, for the Committee to oppose it.
Nick Herbert (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)
I must say that I do not feel very enlightened. The more the Minister spoke, the more I thought that we need to consider further the extent to which the various bodies will overlap. We will have the opportunity to do that when we come to the inspectorate.
The Minister said that the purpose of the inspectorate was to conduct broader inspections, but the Home Office says that the first purpose of the Police Standards Unit is to measure and compare police performance. It has also the function of identifying and disseminating good practice across the country—the Prime Minister himself said that. However, one of the stated aims of the national policing improvement agency is to improve professional practice and
“ensure that national policing best practice is identified, evaluated and understood by police officers and police staff”.
The Minister cannot sweep aside so easily the fact that there is clearly potential overlap between those bodies.
I shall return to the regulatory impact assessment. The Minister might wish to intervene on me to let me know what the position is because she did not refer to it in her remarks.
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
Perhaps I can assist the Committee—I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. We expect to publish the regulatory impact assessment before Report, and I will endeavour to ensure that we do that as quickly as we can. I understand that that is important to hon. Members.
Nick Herbert (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, which has plainly put the skids on her officials. However, the truth is that that is not good enough. If I may say so, as a new Member, the purpose of the Committee stage is to scrutinise carefully the provisions of a Bill. If a regulatory impact assessment is to be produced on a specific measure that forms part of a single clause—the first clause—it should be available to the Committee. That impact assessment goes directly to the substance of the concerns that I and others have raised about the potential overlap between the organisations concerned. The impact assessment would consider whether creating another organisation is justifiable, or whether further amalgamation is a possibility.
The Minister might have a case. Those bodies might well have separate roles, but I am not persuaded. We have not been assisted by the brevity of her answer or the fact that the impact assessment is unavailable. I am grateful to her for saying that it will be available before Report, but in future, such impact assessments should be made available before Second Reading, and certainly before Committee stage.
Last week, I introduced a private Member’s Bill that would put regulatory impact assessments on a statutory footing so that the Government were required to publish them, rather than leaving it to discretion. The fact that the assessment has not been published is plainly in breach of Cabinet Office guidance. I am sure that the Minister will take that on board.
On the substance of my amendment, I can see that we will not make any progress this morning. We have an opportunity to return to the matter when we consider the inspectorate, and perhaps by then, we will have collected our thoughts about the extent to which the bodies overlap. We will not have the impact assessment to assist us, and we will need to take further advice from outside bodies about the extent to which they consider the overlap to be a problem.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.