Clause 21 - Appointment of Chief Inspector
Police and Justice Bill
10:30 am
Fiona Mactaggart (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Slough, Labour)
It might be helpful if we start with the definition of inspection that the Government set out in their policy on the inspection of public services, because that includes an important commitment. As a first rule, it defines inspection as an external review that should be independent of the service providers. Inspectorates should also provide assurance to Ministers and the public about the safe and proper delivery of the services, contribute to their improvement, report in public and deliver value for money. It is right that that quick summary of the function starts with independence, which the hon. Gentleman emphasised.
The hon. Gentleman reflected on whether previous inspectors had experienced the kind of independence that rhetoric has always rightly praised in the House. An inspectorate that is a poodle to a service, or its creature, cannot inspect and provide the critique of performance quality of a public service for which we depend on it.
Lord Ramsbotham, who was previously the chief inspector of prisons, has rightly reminded us of moments of tension between him and the Home Office. Whatever statutory provision we establish will be there—and it is right that it should be. In a way, it is almost necessary that civil servants will keep trying to do things their way, because if there is never any tension between them and the inspectorate, one will wonder whether it is being sufficiently independent. On Second Reading, the Home Secretary said that
“the key point for me is the independence of the inspectorate, which must be spiky, particularly when considering the conditions of detention”.—[Official Report, 6 March 2006; Vol. 443, c. 617.]
Unless that relationship is spiky and has moments of difficulty, it will not be a reflection of the right independence of relationship.
Have we achieved that in the Bill? I am confident that the Bill already achieves the effect sought by the amendment. The complete independence of the chief inspector from the Government is guaranteed, in so far as it is possible to guarantee it by legislation, by virtue of the establishment of the office as a statutory post, as is the case with existing chief inspectors in the justice sector. Ministers will not have the power to direct the chief inspector, other than where a statute provides for it. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that clause 25(3) contains a requirement for the chief inspector to have regard to aspects of Government policy and asked whether that would infringe their independence. They will remain entitled, as is made clear in the provisions about reporting and so on, to challenge Government policy and procedure to bring about improvement, including where a bad policy is producing the wrong outcomes for service users.
The power to which the hon. Gentleman referred ensures that, if necessary, Ministers can guide the chief inspector in accordance with policy on the broad purposes of inspection, such as assurance, service improvement and obtaining value for money, and obtain his or her expert views on the outcomes achieved on policy objectives. For example, we have a policy objective to reduce reoffending. All parts of the criminal justice system ought to play a part in achieving that outcome. It is a matter not only of what happens to people in prison, but of what happens to people under supervision in the community, how the police deal with criminals and how the court and the Crown Prosecution Service function. All those parts of the system can have an impact on reducing reoffending. It would be quite proper for Ministers to ask the inspectorate to have regard to that Government policy when conducting an inspection, but they will not have the power to direct the chief inspector what to conclude or how to conduct the inspection. Absolute independence will remain.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to the possibility of conferring additional functions on the inspectorate by order. At present, we can confer additional functions on many of our criminal justice inspectorates by fiat. One of the reasons that we are seeking to pass the Bill is to obtain parliamentary scrutiny of the possibility of doing so by order. I share his feeling about some of our inspectorates that started within the service. They risk—let us not put it more strongly than that—becoming too cosy. In some ways, the tradition of involving them in senior appointments, training, staff development and so on is not fundamentally appropriate for inspectorates, which need a kind of spikiness and distance.
We have therefore taken the opportunity not to put that within the purview of the inspectorate, but there might be an occasion—perhaps that of appointments to some independent body—on which the view of the inspectorate would be appropriate. We do not want to rule out that possibility, but if it is done by order, we could discuss it in Parliament and it could be done properly.
The hon. Gentleman’s remarks have hit on the nub of the matter. The Bill is an opportunity to create an inspectorate that has a direct relationship with Ministers, direct accountability and the ability that our chief inspectors have, which he said the former chief inspector valued so much, to stand up and give it straight to the person responsible for service quality. We have maintained that relationship—the inspectorate will be an independent officer of the Crown—but by bringing the inspectors together, we have given ourselves the opportunity to infuse the inspectorate with the independent qualities that every parliamentarian I have heard speak about it values in the prisons inspectorate.
We recognise that the prisons inspectorate, because it performs human rights inspections, has some particular qualities. That is why we have created the special duty relating to prisons—so that it will not be subsumed in the general duties and so that that quality will be maintained.
I am confident that the amendment would not add anything to the chief inspector’s independence from the Government, which is already complete and equal to that of existing chief inspectors. Although chief inspectors of all kinds criticise the system for trying occasionally to infringe their independence, I have yet to meet an effective chief inspector who thinks that the system beat them and succeeded in infringing their independence. I therefore urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment. It is not necessary, and we are all united on the issue.