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?