Schedule 2 - Amendments to the Police Act 1996
Police and Justice Bill
11:00 am
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
I certainly do not intend to reject the amendments out of hand. I may recommend that the Committee resist the arguments of the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) after a logical and rational discussion of such an important matter. However, given that the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives party are united in their opposition, I am even more convinced that we are absolutely right in the course that we are pursuing.
Listening to the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs speaking about what happened 10 years ago was a little like “Groundhog Day”. If his policy review, which is considering the whole range of Conservative party policies, is going to be at least 10 years out of date, we look forward to its conclusions.
Amendment No. 133 seems to ignore the fact that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary is an independent body of professional policing experts, which is there to reach conclusions independently and to advise the Home Secretary on the appropriate steps to be taken. The amendment refers to a
“body which is wholly separate from central Government, police forces or police authorities.”
That is exactly what HMIC is. All those proposals have been subject to HMIC assessments of protective services, cost and benefit. We have engaged a range of independent bodies to help us with that. The business cases are being scrutinised by a team involving a variety of consultancy firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst and Young. The Office of Government Commerce has managed the consultancy team. A huge range of independent bodies are involved in scrutinising the various cases.