Nick Herbert (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Arundel & South Downs, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 140, in schedule 6, page 81, line 1, leave out subparagraph (5).

The amendment is probing. The explanatory notes relating to schedule 6 explain that paragraph 2 will enable

“the appropriate national authority to add to or otherwise change the list of responsible authorities”,

and suggests that that will be possible in Wales. Will the Minister explain that provision further, given that it confers on the Secretary of State the power to do that in future? What proposals do the Government have to change the list of responsible authorities and how will that affect crime and disorder reduction partnerships?

Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)

The order-making power simply allows us to change the responsible authorities without having to use primary legislation. At this stage, there are no further intentions to amend the responsible bodies, but new organisations might well be established that could play a role in crime and disorder reduction partnerships, and it would be difficult to have to use primary legislation every time we want to make a variation in respect of the type of bodies that should be engaged.

Recently, there have been discussions, which I think are ongoing, about whether the Greater London authority should be a responsible authority for crime and disorder. I certainly have no plans to bring in additional bodies, but it is important that there should be an order-making power so that we can be flexible and adapt to changing circumstances without needing always to return to primary legislation when there is an opportunity for a new body to play an important role in the wider partnership. I do not want us to lose the opportunity to draw in those partners. Primary care trusts and fire authorities are now partners, but they were not covered by the original legislation, and we had to return to legislation each time to get them involved. The order-making power will give us the flexibility to add bodies without going through the lengthy and, dare I say it, bureaucratic process.

Nick Herbert (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Arundel & South Downs, Conservative)

I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. I wondered whether there were proposals to include new bodies within the crime and disorder reduction partnerships, but it appears that there are not and it is just a matter of taking a power in case it may be needed in the future. I accept the Minister’s point. If new bodies can be brought in it is sensible to do so by order rather than by primary legislation. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Nick Herbert (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Arundel & South Downs, Conservative)

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a broader issue that concerns crime and disorder reduction partnerships and what is being proposed for   them. The “Review of the Partnership Provisions of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998—Report of Findings” published by the Home Office prior to Second Reading stated that the merger of crime and disorder reduction partnerships was under consideration. That would be enabled not under this Bill but under the Police Reform Act 2002. However, it goes directly to the substance of the Bill, which is to reshape in part how crime and disorder reduction partnerships operate.

The report conceded:

“CDRPs have a vital role within this family of partnerships at local level”.

We would all agree. Having seen local crime and disorder reduction partnerships in operation, we appreciate the value of that localism. However, paragraph 2.9 recommended taking

“the opportunity, wherever possible, to reduce the total number of partnerships.”

Paragraph 2.12 stated that the Government were

“not at this stage thinking of compelling mergers.”

That sounds ominous, as if it may be the case in the future. The paragraph continued that the Government were considering the possibility against the background of potential change in local authority boundaries as a result of their review.

My simple point is that, if the Minister relies on crime and reduction partnerships as the way to deliver policing locally—against our accusation that larger police authorities are taking policing further away from local people—that will be substantially undermined if the CDRPs are to be much larger than they are now. In my county of Sussex, it is proposed that the local authority-based CDRPs will grow and become county-based CDRPs. Inevitably, that will take local management further away from people. I will need the Minister to tell us more about her thinking in that regard before I can agree to the proposal, which makes new provision in relation to the CDRPs.

Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)

I think that we would all agree that the crime and disorder reduction partnerships, which were introduced in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, are one of the most significant things that have happened to policing and community safety. In many parts of the country, the partnerships are working very well. The best CDRPs bring together the health service, education, social services, the police and the local authority. They share information, look at hotspots in their communities and help to task and to deploy resources to reduce a range of crime. However, it has to be said that, in some parts of the country, the performance of CDRPs is patchy. That is why we reviewed the partnership provisions in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

We had 450 different responses to that extensive and lengthy consultation—some people thought that it was too lengthy. The recommendations took a long time to come out. However, it was a serious attempt to look at where CDRPs were working well, where they were not and what we could do to strengthen them.

Schedule 6 contains various recommendations for national standards for information sharing and community engagement. They are about ensuring that all partners take the partnership seriously. If CDRPs are going to be the engine of local policing, together with the neighbourhood policing teams and the basic command units, they have to be rigorous, perform well and deliver the outcomes that communities want.

Small partnerships might find it advantageous, therefore, to merge with neighbouring ones. That is voluntary, and not being imposed by the Government. However, we might ask CDRPs to focus on a particular issue, to come up with a strategy and to work with the police to develop tactics. The focus might be on, for example, alcohol-related violent crime, if that is a big community issue. That would be quite a task, and if a small organisation lacks the capacity, resources and people to carry it out, it makes sense for it to come together, perhaps with a neighbouring CDRP, to take that forward.

Many of the established drug and alcohol teams have merged with their CDRPs because they recognise that that makes sense. Those teams tackle drug and alcohol problems, which fuel a lot of violent and acquisitive crime, so it makes sense to bring together the bodies that deal with all those issues. In some other parts of the country, those teams have not merged, probably for good local reasons, and all I am concerned about is that those areas achieve the outcomes that we want.

The proposal to encourage CDRP mergers, where appropriate, is about ensuring that they can perform at a level that can deliver good crime reduction for their local communities. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman that the proposals are not a centralised plan to dictate the landscape, but are driven by efficiency and performance to ensure that the CDRPs that, in some cases, struggle to deliver on the agenda, can get support from neighbouring CDRPs.

Mark Pritchard (Wrekin, The, Conservative)

How confident is the Minister that those new bodies will be accountable to local authority overview and scrutiny committees, rather than just “answerable”—the word used in the explanation of the issue on the Home Office’s website? For example, often, a primary care trust has a political leadership, and the local authority, being a stakeholder in the same partnership, will, by definition, have some sort of political leadership. The overview and scrutiny committee also will have a political leadership. Therefore, there might be answerability, but will there be accountability?

Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that we will have a detailed debate on the role of overview and scrutiny committees during consideration of later clauses. One of our CDRP proposals is to ensure that the elected member, the community safety portfolio holder, plays an increasingly more visible role. Many CDRPs are run primarily by officers and executives, and sometimes the elected politician does not have the kind of visible role   that I want them to have. It is important that a community can hold to account the person responsible for those issues.

Some of the CDA recommendations in schedule 6 are about ensuring that the elected members play an increasingly important role in setting some of the CDRP’s strategic priorities. There are also proposals to separate the strategic target setting role from the actual operational delivery, which would help to introduce into the system more accountability. Taken together, the measures would help dramatically to increase local answerability and accountability. On that basis, I ask that the schedule be agreed to.

Nick Herbert (Shadow Minister (Police Reform), Home Affairs; Arundel & South Downs, Conservative)

I am grateful to the Minister for her reply, and I accept the merit of the Bill’s provisions for splitting the strategic and operational roles of crime and disorder reduction partnerships. I am not sure that she fully took on board what I was saying about turning some of the crime and disorder reduction partnerships into much bigger units, and the effect of that on localism.

The other day, I met members of a crime and disorder reduction partnership in my constituency, and each member, from the fire service, the police service and the local NHS trust, was anxious to express concerns to me. They felt that, at the district council level at which the partnership operated, there was the local knowledge to make the planning of crime reduction, and the way in which the partners worked together, effective. It is interesting that they were sceptical about the partnership when it was first established, but as time went on they found that it was useful in bringing them together, and drawing the resources of the community together to reduce crime. They felt that they could not be as effective by operating at county level, which would take them further from local communities.

Another point that I am not sure the Minister took on board entirely is that we have a fear about whether what is happening will match the proposed reorganisation of local government, which has not yet been properly announced or discussed in the House, but which is the background against which many of the measures in the Bill will be implemented, whether in relation to CDRPs or police force amalgamation. It will be curious if district or borough councils are no longer to play the lead role in crime and disorder reduction partnerships, as they are responsible for matters such as licensing, environmental health and, indeed, closed circuit television.

The point has been made, and I believe that we shall return to it when the Government present proposals for the mergers. However, we have put down a marker of our concern, and on that basis we support the schedule.