Schedule 2 - Amendments to the Police Act 1996
Police and Justice Bill
1:30 pm
Nick Herbert (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Arundel and South Downs, Conservative)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising a point that I have no doubt that the Minister will make, and on which the Government are now relying. The Government’s case—that its proposals will result in incredibly greater police accountability—rests on the idea that that accountability will come at the basic command unit level. All that the Bill does is to put existing basic command units on a statutory footing. There are other proposals for a community call to action, which we shall come to, but I consider that those are bureaucratic and exceptional procedures. We shall debate them in due course.
There is a big difference between observing that police forces, at the moment, are broken up into smaller units—although we must remember that the number of units has been diminishing considerably during the past few years, while basic command units have become bigger and therefore further away from people—and saying what the formal mechanism of police accountability is. What is the formal mechanism by which the chief officer is held to account?