Police Reform Bill [HL]

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 4:15 pm on 25 April 2002.

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Photo of Lord Rooker Lord Rooker Minister of State (Asylum and Immigration), Home Office, Minister (Home Office) (Asylum & Immigration) 4:15, 25 April 2002

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Harris mentioned—obviously genuinely—that I have come to have an abiding regard for police authorities during the passage of the Bill. I spent an hour and a half this morning meeting the Association of Police Authorities. I met five different groups briefly and then met them collectively for a while. So I had my ears bent, as it were.

The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said that we would be unable to implement this by police areas; it would have to be done by local authority areas. I submit that that is up to the chief constable, not us, under the Bill. That is the whole point of the exercise; the Bill is enabling legislation.

As far as I know, police forces in this country are basically constructed from county council areas—either a single county council, or two in Devon and Cornwall, three, I think, in West Mercia, and I do not know how many in Thames Valley. However, none crosses or divides a county council boundary and local authorities are contained within those boundaries. So the police know with which county councils and local authorities they are dealing. They may want to do so on a local authority or smaller area basis, but I submit that that is up to the chief constable.

I appreciate that, as is their right, noble Lords have returned to the issue on Third Reading; and I have no doubt that it will be debated at length in the other place. The group of amendments is large. In summary, they would exclude from accreditation schemes a wide range of organisations already involved in community safety and regeneration and increasing public safety. Their effect would be to slow down any withdrawal of accreditation that a chief officer might wish to make. I now turn to the detail.

It is ironic that the Conservative Party is signed up to the idea of "public sector good; private sector bad". There will be a few wry smiles in the other Chamber if such an amendment is tabled down there. We have this incredible operation of the Tories in the Lords—if I may put it that way—ruling out the private sector from accreditation schemes in any way, shape or form and restricting them to local authorities. My, how things have changed in the past few years! Perhaps that suspicion is unfair.

I am uneasy about accepting the amendments. I do not really have any new arguments; but I have a few more examples to add to those that I have given previously. The amendments would fail to harness what is already taking place and the goodwill that exists in both the voluntary and private sectors—along with local authorities, of course. Town centre, shopping centre and shopping mall security staff would be ruled out because invariably they are not run by the local authority.

Policy Action Team 6 is a group asked by the Social Exclusion Unit of the Cabinet Office to consider the concept of neighbourhood wardens as part of the national strategy for neighbourhood renewal. It gave examples of 50 neighbourhood warden schemes around the country serving their communities and reducing the fear of crime. Many were not being run by local authorities and so could not be accredited under the amendments. That would be a great pity.

Other organisations that would be excluded from accreditation under the amendment would be all of the non-local authority-led neighbourhood and street warden schemes, church housing associations and registered social landlords. For example, a local authority could employ accredited persons using money from the rent account, but if the housing were transferred from the local authority to a registered social landlord, it could not use the safety officers and tenants would be denied those services.

I mentioned shopping centre security staff. Hospital security staff employed for the protection of hospital staff and patients do vital work. It is terrible that these days we have to employ security staff in and around hospitals, but they are a necessary fact of life. Invariably, they are employed by or contracted to the hospital, so they could not be accredited under the amendments. Neither could warrant enforcement officers employed by magistrates' courts committees, sports stewards, concert hall stewards or mosque and synagogue security staff.

So we would rule out great tranches of existing staff—I am not inventing those examples. Such work already takes place. It would be good as a comfort blanket for the public to know that such uniformed people were OK'd by the police or the chief constable. That would give them some comfort. At present, 208 street and neighbourhood warden schemes have been set up using funding from the neighbourhood and street wardens programme. Just over a third or them—72—are not led by the local authority. Communities in those 72 areas would not be able to take comfort from the provision.

I turn to Amendment No. 21—which, of course, the Conservatives do not support—under which all such staff should be known as community safety wardens. I repeat what I said in Committee and on Report: I have no hang-up about that; nor do the Government. I think that that is a matter for local communities and the police to discuss locally; we should not prescribe that in the Bill.

I turn to Amendment No. 22—an idea we have already discussed, which would require the chief officer to consult the local authority before modifying or withdrawing accreditation. That would hinder the chief officer. If he needs to take quick action because a scheme has fallen apart or the employer has for some reason caused the police difficulty, he should be able to do so. At the end of the day, under this enabling legislation, the chief constable is responsible for the concept and accreditation of wardens.

While I understand that this issue will be revisited, I think that it would be wholly demoralising for all those bodies—the voluntary organisations, private sector companies and housing association staff, as well as others that I listed earlier—if we were to agree to this form of amendment. I understand the reasons why it has been brought forward, but I sincerely hope that noble Lords will not seek to press it.