My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Bill is about helping to build safer communities. It does this in two ways. First, the Bill makes legislative provision to enable us to take forward our programme of reform of the police service. Secondly, it helps to create a modern culture of respect by implementing key measures in the Respect Action Plan. The police service can be rightly proud of its record of achievement in recent years. The reduction in crime by 35 per cent since 1997 is, above all, testament to the professionalism and dedication of the service and its community safety partners. But more needs to be done. Levels of crime and anti-social behaviour are still too high, and public expectations around quality of service are—quite properly—rising. Continuing reform is essential to enable the police to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Measures in this Bill will contribute to this process.

Part 1 of the Bill makes important changes to the national policing landscape and the governance arrangements for police forces. We have already legislated to establish the Serious Organised Crime Agency. It is important that we also work to rationalise the complex web of agencies that provide support to the police nationally. A bewildering array of organisations has developed over time to provide support of one kind or another to police forces. We have the Police Information Technology Organisation— PITO—to supply information technology systems; the Central Police Training and Development Authority, Centrex, to provide training services; the National Centre for Policing Excellence to develop best practice; and ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers. The Home Office supports the rollout of operational change programmes.

This tangled web of agencies is an obstacle to promoting improvement within the police service and needs to change. That is why the Bill will establish the National Policing Improvement Agency. It will be police owned and police led. It will rationalise the national policing landscape and inject new dynamism into support for operational policing. This will drive further improvements in service delivery, particularly at the front line for the public. The NPIA will also give the police service new capacity and capability to deliver the mission's critical priorities, as set out in the National Community Safety Plan, such as the rollout of neighbourhood policing and implementation of the recommendations of the Bichard inquiry. The existing organisations—that is, PITO and Centrex, including the National Centre for Policing Excellence—will be abolished and a number of their functions transferred to the NPIA. A number of day-to-day activities concerned with driving policing improvement will also move to the agency from the Home Office. The focus of the agency's work will be to embed a culture of self-improvement within the service, and to identify and respond to the opportunities and challenges that the service will face over a five-year to 10-year horizon.

Part 1 of the Bill also includes a number of amendments to the Police Act 1996. As noble Lords will know, faced with the professional advice of the Chief Inspector of Constabulary that the existing 43-force structure is no longer fit for purpose, we have embarked on a process of restructuring to enable forces to meet effectively the challenges of policing modern Britain. The new Home Secretary has made it clear that he endorses the strategic goals set out in HMIC's report and that the status quo is not an option. He is, quite properly, taking a little time to consider the issues in detail before announcing how he intends to proceed. Part 1 of the Bill will help to ensure that forces can successfully reconfigure to deliver both protective services to national standards and the public's expectations around responsive neighbourhood policing.

The Bill will strengthen police authorities. The new flexible provisions governing the composition and membership of the authorities will enable us to ensure that members have the skills and experience that they need to undertake this challenging role. The role and functions of the police authorities will also be updated, particularly by conferring on them an express duty to hold the chief officer to account, and by empowering them to delegate functions to area committees where the geography and infrastructure of their force area make this appropriate. It is also important to ensure that strategic forces and authorities are effectively held to account and that the Government are able to take action where serious performance failings have been identified.

Your Lordships' House will recall the debates on these powers during our consideration of the Police Reform Bill in 2002. We have since had four years' experience of the Police Standards Unit working with underperforming forces. We need to draw on that experience to better reflect how policing failings are identified and addressed.

The provisions in the Bill are not about giving the Home Secretary new powers, but about updating the existing powers to ensure that they can operate effectively. The Bill makes two key changes. First, we are seeking to widen the sources of information that the Home Secretary may consider in deciding whether to exercise these powers. We believe that when considering utilising such significant powers the Home Secretary needs to be able to consider all the relevant information available and not only that contained in inspection reports. Secondly, we are refocusing the intervention powers so that they better reflect the reality of how best to tackle performance problems—namely, by dealing directly with those who are able to make the changes that are needed to remedy such problems. This change is not about bypassing the police authorities' important role in holding forces to account for their performance; it is about ensuring that there is an effective means to get to the heart of the problem to remedy the failing.

Finally in Part 1, we will build on the success of police community support officers—the PCSOs—by providing them with a standard set of powers. Police community support officers are now an established and valued part of the policing family. Their high visibility and accessibility to communities have led to recognition of their true worth from all sides. We want PCSOs to play a full part in the neighbourhood policing teams that are being rolled out across the country. To do this, it is essential that they have the powers necessary to tackle low-level crime and anti-social behaviour. This is not a case of mission creep. If you look back at our debates on the Police Reform Bill, you will see that this was precisely the role we envisaged for PCSOs at that time. Affording PCSOs with a standard suite of powers will also help to remove the confusion in the public's mind about precisely what powers they have.

Before I leave Part 1, I should like to offer one further comment. I know that a number of noble Lords have already expressed concerns about the impact of the provisions in Schedule 2 on the tripartite relationship. I want to assure the House that the Home Secretary and I genuinely value the tripartite framework. The strength of the relationship hinges on a proper balance between the respective powers and responsibilities of the Home Secretary, chief constables and police authorities. The Bill does not fundamentally alter that balance. The House may be assured, however, that I will, as always, reflect carefully on the concerns raised in debate and on any recommendations from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in respect of the various order-making and regulation-making powers in Schedule 2 to the Bill. We await its report later this month.

Part 2 of the Bill provides the police, prosecutors and other key players with new powers to enable them to meet the challenges posed by present-day criminality. The Bill will enable police officers to attach conditions to bail before a suspect has been charged and to detain a suspect pending a prosecutor's decision about charging. This will reduce the potential for offending while on bail, ensure that suspects spend the least amount of time necessary in a police cell and allow officers to better plan their investigations and spend more time on the front line.

Police officers will also be empowered to stop and search any person in any area of an aerodrome where he reasonably suspects that criminal activity has or is about to take place. This will ensure that the police have the powers that they need to conduct anti-smuggling operations and to detect staff collusion in thefts at airports, as recommended by Sir John Wheeler in his 2002 review of airport security.

We will provide powers to complement those in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 to enable the police to gain advance bulk access to information about passengers on domestic journeys. Access to such information will help the police to gain effective intelligence on the movement of known terrorists and those involved in organised crime.

This part of the Bill will widen the conditions that can be attached to conditional cautions. Currently, the conditions are limited to rehabilitation or direct reparation. While these conditions have given good results for victims and offenders, as well as local communities, widening the scope of the conditions would mean that conditional cautions could be used in more cases. The Bill will enable conditional cautions to involve the offender paying a fine or undertaking up to 20 hours of unpaid work—for example, to make reparation to the community in general by clearing up litter from a park. In this way, the offenders will be giving something back to the community to repair the harm that they have caused. We will also provide police officers with the power to arrest those whom they suspect of a breach of the conditions of their caution. That will enable the police to respond quickly and effectively to suspected breaches of conditions without recourse to the more potentially bureaucratic and time-consuming court summons process.

Finally in this part, the Bill will introduce an accreditation scheme to arm trading standards officers with a quick and effective means of dealing with those caught selling alcohol to under-18s. This will complement provisions in the Violent Crime Reduction Bill to tackle alcohol-related disorder.

My Lords, before the Minister leaves conditional cautions, does she agree that the addition of the power to punish changes the whole nature of the conditional caution? Could it mean in effect that somebody will be punished twice over for the same offence—first the fine and secondly some punishment for the original offence?

My Lords, we do not believe that that is right. The noble and learned Lord will know that conditional cautions are offered to those who agree and accept responsibility. It will always be open to the person if they did not wish to accept the conditional caution to go through the ordinary court procedure—the full panoply—and have their matter dealt with another way. The whole purpose of expanding the nature of conditional cautions is to allow the minor offences to be dealt with quickly, efficiently and speedily, particularly if the offender is accepting responsibility in a way that will ensure that there is a sanction. The community is therefore paid back in a way that is appropriate without necessarily making that person into a criminal in such a way that they cannot move on later. It is a quick, easy and effective way of recognising poor behaviour and intervening in a sensible manner.

We hope that we will have more opportunity to talk about the levels—when they should apply, how they should apply, what would be the conditions, what would be the format and matters of that sort. I am sure that when we come to debate this more fully in Committee, those will be the sorts of issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay—if I know anything about her—will want to press me on. We will have to look very carefully at how this fits in with sentencing and what will be appropriate.

We know that there was a lot of discussion in the other place in relation to this issue and I anticipate that your Lordships will wish to press us further on it to make sure that the balance is right. I see the nods coming from around the House and anticipate the sorts of discussions and debates that we will have about it. I also hear affirmation coming from the Liberal Democrat Benches and elsewhere.

Part 3 is the area to which we now turn our minds in relation to crime and anti-social behaviour. This part talks about the ways in which we intend to make our communities safer. It is not only a matter for the police. It requires other key agencies—local authorities, police and fire and rescue authorities and primary care trusts—to work with the police in partnership. To this end, we established the crime and disorder reduction partnerships in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The CDRPs have had some success—some of us would say a considerable success—and they have the potential to achieve even more.

To that end, Part 3 of the Bill makes a number of amendments to the 1998 Act, enabling crime and disorder reduction partnerships to become the most effective vehicle possible for partnership working in the reduction of crime and anti-social behaviour. The Bill will improve delivery by reducing unnecessary bureaucracy and enabling better flows of information between partners; introduce national standards to ensure that the best working practices are adopted by all partnerships nationwide; and improve the accountability arrangements for partnerships by providing for scrutiny of community safety by local authority overview and scrutiny committees.

The overview and scrutiny committees will also have a key role in the new community call for action provided for in Clause 17. The community call for action will give local people a means to trigger action on a community safety issue where they are dissatisfied with the response by the police or local authority. Ward councillors will play a central role acting as an advocate for local residents and seeking to resolve issues through an informal dialogue with the neighbourhood policing team or local authority, as appropriate.

As the Prime Minister set out in the Respect Action Plan, parents are also key partners in building safer communities. In fact, effective parenting is one of the key drivers in preventing children from engaging in anti-social behaviour. It is vital that the police are supported at the neighbourhood level by parents in creating a strong society based on mutual respect. To that end, the Bill will widen the range of agencies that can enter into parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders to secure their engagement. Parenting orders are already highly successful where they are used by local authorities to combat truancy. Youth offending teams successfully applied for some 1,273 orders in 2004–05 alone. The breach rate is low and most parents subject to an order grow to value the support that they receive; indeed, many wish that they had received such support earlier.

Part 4 of the Bill is relevant to the whole of the justice system. It creates the new justice, community safety and custody inspectorate, which will replace the five existing inspectorates covering the police, probation, prisons, court administration and the Crown Prosecution Service. The inspectorate will create a modern, unified, strongly led and forward-looking inspection regime which will be every bit as independent as the existing inspectorates. It will support front-line staff by minimising unnecessary duplication of inspection and the additional work that that entails. With its overview of the justice system, the inspectorate will provide a capacity to challenge whether the police, courts, Crown Prosecution Service and National Offender Management Service are giving the public the best possible service.

There is an argument that because of the unique position of HM Inspectorate of Prisons, it should be maintained as a separate inspectorate. I agree that the Chief Inspector of Prisons has a unique role in ensuring that persons held in custody on behalf of society as a whole are kept in decent conditions and that their human rights are respected. That is why the new inspectorate will have a special duty to continue that role and why we will not abolish the Chief Inspector of Prisons until we are sure that the new chief inspector is ready to fill the role satisfactorily.

The creation of the National Offender Management Service, uniting the Prison Service and the National Probation Service to provide end-to-end management of offenders, demands a unified inspection regime. An inspection regime that looks only at what happens to an individual when in prison, and relies on another inspectorate to tell it what happens before and after, cannot report credibly on the whole process of offender management from start to finish. A single chief inspector for the justice system will be a more powerful public voice, able to say what is wrong with the system as a whole and what needs to be done to put it right, especially at the joins where the activities of different agencies interface.

Finally, Part 5 deals with one of the growing new threats that can be tackled only through extensive international co-operation; namely, the continued threat posed by computer hacking and denial-of-service attacks. To that end, the Bill makes provision to criminalise all means of interfering with a computer system, increases the penalties for hacking offences and criminalises the supply of so-called "hacking tools".

This part of the Bill also provides a suitable opportunity to review the Extradition Act 2003, which has now been in force for more than two years. The Act was a complete overhaul of extradition law, some of which dated back to the 19th century. It also implemented the European arrest warrant, which governs extradition between EU states on the principle of mutual recognition.

Unsurprisingly, after such a major reform of complex law, some minor lacunae and operating difficulties have emerged in the first years of operation. The amendments in the Bill are to correct these lacunae, to clarify areas of doubt and to ensure that the United Kingdom is not in breach of international agreements. They are therefore essentially technical amendments to the 2003 Act which do not alter the existing framework governing our extradition arrangements with either Europe or the wider world.

As a package, the Bill makes a vital contribution towards the realisation of our goal of safer communities and I have no hesitation in commending it to the House.

Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Baroness Scotland of Asthal.)

My Lords, another day, another Home Office Bill. The Violent Crime Reduction Bill has not even reached Report yet. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, who has been dealing with it, tells us to give it time. It sounds as though it will have until October.

I am told by the Library that this is the 52nd Home Office Bill since the Government came to power in 1997. The noble Baroness gave a careful introduction. As always, she gives the House a very fair reflection of the Government's view on these matters. A few of the Bill's proposals will make some modest improvements, and noble Lords on the Conservative Benches will certainly support those, for example, the new powers to tackle child pornography, the increased sentences for computer hacking and the extension of provisions about parenting contracts. The latter will be dealt with from the Conservative Benches by my noble friend Lord Bridgeman. We felt that another place did not have time to give sufficient consideration to those matters.

However, we have serious concerns about four issues in particular: police mergers; the increase in the Home Secretary's powers to interfere in operational policing; the merging of the Inspectorate of Prisons with other criminal justice inspectorates; and our extradition arrangements with the United States.

The Bill maintains an unfortunate trend of increasing government direction of the police. It aims to prepare police authorities for the Government's proposed regional police forces. It does not itself propose police amalgamations; the Government have said that they will go ahead with those using secondary legislation under the Police Act 1996. We shall table amendments that will put the debate about the Home Secretary's proposal for merging police forces at the very heart of our consideration of Part 1 of the Bill.

I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, said that it was right for the Home Secretary—after all, he has been in post for only a couple of weeks or so—to take a little time to consider the details. I hope that the new Home Secretary will delay laying any statutory instruments until full consideration has been given to these matters during the passage of the Bill. In her reply, I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to give an undertaking to that effect.

In the 1960s, when police force amalgamations were last considered, a Royal Commission was established which took two years to report. Legislation was introduced a year later. It was recognised that the structure of police forces is a fundamental issue on which the public, the forces themselves and their authorities need to be properly consulted. Our worry is that the way in which the Government are proceeding could not be more different. The previous Home Secretary's proposals to amalgamate forces were announced last September, and gave forces just four months in which to respond. In the words of the Labour chairman of the Association of Police Authorities, he attempted to "bully and bribe" authorities to agree to his proposals and to meet the deadline, a tactic that backfired spectacularly when not one authority submitted.

In February, the Home Secretary again gave police authorities an ultimatum, this time to submit proposals for voluntary mergers within just three weeks. Again, almost all the authorities concerned refused, but the Home Secretary announced that he would proceed with compulsory amalgamations regardless. At that stage, he rejected the alternative proposals put forward by the police. The police were not against modernisation and they were not against improvements; for example, Bob Quick, who is the chief constable in my own area of Surrey, has argued that police forces could improve their efficiency by sharing services. I agree with him. That would be a better way forward.

The report of Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, Denis O'Connor, on which the Government are relying, said:

"The constitutional implications . . . are significant".

We are now being asked to agree that similar order-making powers be given to the Home Secretary through this Bill to allow him to alter the structure and functions of police authorities. It is hardly surprising that the chairman of the Association of Police Authorities, Mr Bob Jones, has expressed alarm at the provisions. He said:

"The Home Secretary is now proposing to give himself power to change the role and membership of local authorities . . . and the bodies which represent them. Only Parliament, not the Home Secretary, should be able to do this".

Earlier today, the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, said that the Government value the tripartite relationship and do not seek to unbalance it. We are concerned that the measures in the Bill will do just that, and we shall have to examine them extremely carefully. The Government have claimed that they have rejected the idea of a national police force, but the reorganisation is moving us steadily towards that model. Twelve police chiefs, rather than 43, would, effectively, answer to the Home Secretary and not to their local communities.

The new National Policing Improvement Agency, introduced by Clause 1, will not answer to police forces or to authorities; indeed, the Government have flatly rejected a proposal from police authorities that they should even part-fund the agency. We shall table amendments to address that defect.

The Government claim that proposals in the Bill to align basic command unit and crime and disorder reduction partnership boundaries will strengthen local accountability. But the number of BCUs has reduced from around 400, when the Government came into power, to 225 today. The Government are pressing partnerships, which are currently based on district council areas, to merge. They cannot credibly claim that police accountability will be achieved through local government scrutiny when the partnerships are being altered to make them more remote from the people. The real decisions will be taken, not in the partnerships, but in Whitehall and by chief officers in regional headquarters. Inevitably, they will be less answerable to local people.

I turn now to the Government's proposals to subsume the Inspectorate of Prisons into the new, combined inspectorate for justice, community safety and custody. We are persuaded that this will compromise the independence of the Inspectorate of Prisons and should not go ahead. I look forward to hearing the detail of the arguments on this matter from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and from my noble friend Lord Hurd. They are experts in these matters so I certainly do not intend to take up the House's time with my less expert comments.

The Bill's technical amendments to the Extradition Act 2003 appear to be acceptable, although of course we will want to submit them to scrutiny. I was interested in how they were introduced by the Minister, who said that after two years in operation minor lacunae had come to light in the Extradition Act.

We remain deeply concerned about another aspect of our extradition arrangements: the consequences of the United Kingdom/US extradition treaty. It has not been ratified by Congress. Its one-sided operation is a serious cause for concern. The treaty was sold as being necessary to deal with terrorism and serious crime; but it is being used to require the extradition of offenders who have a minimal connection with the US.

My noble friend Lord Kingsland will lead for us on all debates on extradition matters. He will table amendments to restrict extradition to the US under the Extradition Act to terrorism cases, until such time as full reciprocity is granted by the US, and to put in place safeguards to ensure that, in future, extradition will not happen if the alleged crime could be tried here under domestic jurisdictions and there is no clear causal link with the US.

Although our main focus, of course, will be on police reorganisation, the inspectorates and extradition, we will, as always, scrutinise carefully all measures in the Bill. For example, a number of the Bill's proposals rely on the extension of police summary power and summary justice.

Clause 15 allows conditional cautions to include punitive conditions. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, made an important intervention earlier. Schedule 4 will allow arresting officers to set bail conditions. However, those proposals raise serious issues. First, under the new bail conditions, the police alone will be able to make significant restrictions on someone's liberty, such as by tagging and with curfews, before they have even decided that there is enough evidence to bring a criminal prosecution. The power to impose punitive conditions in cautions effectively will allow the police to act as investigator, prosecutor and judge. We will need to consider whether that is the right way forward. The Minister was absolutely right to realise that that would arouse concern. I do not wish to disappoint her and I can assure her that I used last week's wonderful Recess to work on some amendments with our marvellous researcher, Caroline Chamberlain. They are ready to be tabled tomorrow morning for the noble Baroness's delectation.

The closest that the Bill gets to police modernisation is in Clause 4, which would allow standardisation of the powers of community support officers. The balance of the exact powers involved will need discussion in Committee, but they seem to be promising proposals.

The fight against terrorism will remain at the top of the police agenda, so we welcome the power in Clause 12 to extend police search powers in airports. For the same reason, we will be open-minded about the power in that clause to gather in bulk passenger information for ship and aircraft journeys in the UK. We will want to be persuaded that that is necessary and that it will contain adequate safeguards.

In his Dimbleby lecture last year, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner called for a national debate on policing, and stated:

"It is time to decide what kind of police service we want".

He was right. This is the right time to have such a debate. Important issues are at stake: the independence of police forces, how they should be accountable and how they should be organised both to accommodate the demand for neighbourhood policing and to meet the renewed threat of domestic terrorism. The Bill is not much of an answer to those questions. It reflects the Government's continuing preoccupation with the incessant reorganisation of, and intervention in, public services.

We all want to see police forces that provide value for money, instil public confidence and are effective in the fight against crime. So we will work constructively to achieve those aims throughout our scrutiny of this Bill.

My Lords, the Police and Justice Bill raises some fundamental questions. I detect no common thread between different parts of it. However, that is to be expected, since the Home Office sees legislation as the answer to all society's ills; as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, rightly pointed out, there have been 52 Home Office Bills in less than 10 years. The only comparison that I can draw is that there have been as many Home Secretaries since 1996 as policing Bills introduced by this Government. We had the Police Act 1996, which was followed by the 1997, 2002 and 2005 Acts. In the mean time, we have seen Jack Straw, David Blunkett and Charles Clarke come and go, and now we have John Reid in charge.

At first glance I am not sure whether anywhere near sufficient attention has been given to the fact that this is the latest of almost yearly legislative proposals affecting the organisation and function of law enforcement agencies and, in particular, policing. There must come a time when we need to ask this simple question: does the periodic reorganisation of such agencies indicate that the Government simply cannot make up their mind about what policing is all about? No business would even consider carrying out structural and functional reorganisation of fundamental institutions with the frequency that we have seen in recent times.

I do not doubt that the Bill is not as complete as it should be, because it fails to address the real issues. How do we identify the requirements of public safety and security in this country? We need to know which law enforcement functions have to be performed. How best can those functions be provided, given the constraint of resources? Is the Bill really adequate to determine what reorganisational arrangements should be implemented in order to resolve the fundamental issues of what should be done and how it should be done? In the policing debate on 10 May I said that policing is just one aspect of that discussion—an important aspect—but instead of discussing it we seem to focus more on the reorganisation of police forces.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, I welcome the invitation from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, to open up the debate following his Dimbleby lecture. I shall certainly participate in those discussions. We need to answer fundamental questions about policing, which were last dealt with by the Royal Commission some 40 years ago. Would it not be wise to deliberate a little longer before proceeding with the changes envisaged in the Bill? A debate of that nature should also take into account the unremitting periodic assault on some of our freedoms. Of course, in a changing situation we cannot rule out the need to respond to the threat of terrorism and international organised crime. The impact of legislation that compromises our civil liberties is a delicate issue and we should exercise care to ensure that no measure taken should fundamentally alter the balance that we have enjoyed for centuries. Policing is about public consent and independence.

I need to be convinced that the Bill is not yet another example of the move towards central control over policing. If that is the case, we are altering the balance of the situation, under which the police service was run on behalf of communities and we allowed the chief constable to have independence and autonomy over operational issues. The Secretary of State was the third element of that tripartite arrangement.

I have little doubt that the Bill will give the Home Office increased control over policing and that, with the reinforcement of national policy-setting and performance-review powers, it will provide de facto control at all levels. Local control is being eroded to the point at which it will mean little or nothing.

The last time we came near to exercising central control over policing was during the miners' strike, when the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, was Prime Minister. Despite all the intervening years, miners still feel bitter and their relationship with the police force has remained strained.

Policing is possible only with the consent of communities. There is no way in which the police can maintain public safety unless the public consent to it. We remove that consent at our peril. We have opposed police mergers on the basis that they appear to be about saving money rather than improving performance and about centralisation rather than accountability. We must of course recognise the need for structural reforms; we have not accepted that having larger forces is the most effective way to overcome the problems identified by HMIC.

Furthermore, amalgamation would reduce police accountability and responsiveness by distancing force headquarters from the communities themselves by sacrificing co-terminosity with local authority boundaries. Will the Minister confirm that the estimated £500 million to £600 million cost of amalgamation will not come at the expense of the Government's neighbourhood policing strategy?

The merger proposal was not mentioned during the previous general election, nor did it form part of the Labour manifesto. Legal challenges are still pending and the consultation process has been grossly inadequate. That said, I accept that there needs to be a complete reconsideration of a properly developed service for the future. That will take time, and real and pressing commitments must be addressed. There is a danger that failure to consider future requirements will result in a continual piecemeal slide towards greater central control and structural change, without providing any improvement. It would be unfortunate to lose sight of some positive measures in Part 1, as identified by the Minister. Of course we support a number of the Bill's provisions, such as the incorporation of the Central Police Training and Development Authority and the Police Information and Technology Organisation into a National Policing Improvement Agency, which is a logical and sensible step forward.

Computer hacking is a serious problem and the extent to which the Government are collecting personal information is frightening. The security of such data is paramount, and such information must be secure. Equally, we welcome the sternest measures that we can take to tackle the illegal possession of indecent photographs of children. My noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Linklater will have more to say about the provisions affecting children. Equally welcome is the harmonisation and extension of the powers of community support officers, provided that we are all assured that training will be an essential requirement before such powers are exercised.

I also take pleasure, and credit if I may, for the campaign which I led to ensure that complaints and misconduct in the immigration and asylum system were properly investigated under powers invested in the Independent Police Complaints Commission. If only the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, had accepted my advice when I moved a similar amendment a few years ago to the immigration and asylum legislation, instead of rejecting the suggestion outright. I am glad that at last he has seen the wisdom of my case.

I ought to declare a further interest. At one time, I was a member of the Police Complaints Authority. I am also acquainted with the work of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The proposal will not only create a better system but improve public confidence in the system. My noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond will have more to say about police reforms.

I now turn to Part 4. The Government's intention about the inspection arrangements is not in doubt. In previous debates and questions the Minister has assured us that the Government want the current approach, methodology and the ambit of the inspection of our penal institutions to be retained. I am afraid that the Government are in a very tight spot. They cannot do otherwise because they have to meet the United Kingdom's international obligations regarding protection of the human rights of prisoners.

Successive chief inspectors, such as the late Judge Stephen Tumim, Sir David Ramsbotham—now the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham—and Anne Owers, have retained their independence in setting detailed criteria for inspectors, conducting unannounced inspections, and criticising unacceptable policy and practices. I have always believed that the independence of inspectors should never be sacrificed, however critical their reports. HMIs stand between unchecked oppressive policies and the civilised values that must form part of the basis of our penal policies. The Government should have no worries because almost 96 per cent of HMI recommendations are accepted by the institutions and the successful implementation is as high as 75 per cent.

Of course no Home Secretary can take comfort when frequent inspection reports reflect what is wrong with our penal institutions. But we must not forget that the standards we set are the envy of the civilised world. I am aware that the Correctional Service of Canada invited HMI to inspect two women's prisons using criteria and methods deployed here. I am also aware that Anne Owers gave evidence in the US to a hearing of the Vera commission on prisoner abuse. Our prison inspectorate is considered to be the leading international example. We are a source of encouragement to many nations across the world. If that is the fitting endorsement of our HMI, why is it necessary to change such a successful body?

We will be told that the Government wish to preserve this within the proposed new inspectorate, but all of us who have worked towards prison reform are convinced that over time we will dilute the effectiveness and independence we have cherished so long.

I am not convinced that a single inspectorate for justice, community safety and custody under a single chief inspector can perform two duties, bearing in mind that there are two entirely separate functions requiring different methods. I do not dispute the need for joined-up work with other inspectorates. That already happens. There is a close working relationship with the two education inspectorates, and with the Healthcare Commission under a memorandum of understanding, and a close link with the probation inspectorate.

Clause 25 gives Ministers powers of direction over the chief inspectors as well as the ability to direct that inspections are carried out and advice given. But there is a draconian requirement that, in exercising any of his functions, the chief inspector shall have regard to such aspects of government policy as the responsible ministers may direct. I am afraid that that is wholly unacceptable.

Taken to its extreme, this provision could also be invoked to prevent a chief inspector criticising aspects of government policy. It does not fit well with some Home Secretaries' pronouncements that prisons work. We shall of course advance further arguments during Committee and Report. I hope that there is a change of heart in the Home Office on this contentious provision.

Let me also explain my concern about the section on extradition. I fully endorse the position set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. I must question the Government's track record, given that they have failed to deal with the unfair, unequal and painfully embarrassing nature of our extradition arrangements with the United States. We were told by the Prime Minister that the only purpose of this arrangement was to deal with terrorism. The Government now see that there is evidence that such powers are used to deal with fraud offences as well. I do not underestimate the difficulties faced by the new Home Secretary. Public expectations about crime and punishment are high and the Home Secretary's ability to deliver is limited—events of the past few weeks have clearly demonstrated that.

There are some useful measures in the Bill which we support but, in return, we ask the Minister to exercise great care that the Home Office does not blur the relationship between criminal justice agencies, the public and the legislators.

My Lords, the Bill bears resemblances to the proverbial curate's egg: there are good parts, but the overall taste is not entirely pleasing. I welcome several elements of the Bill. The National Policing Improvement Agency seems like an extremely sensible rationalisation of a confusing mixture of bodies advising, monitoring and assisting the police. It is good to see in a government Bill some sensible deregulation. Removing police authorities from the obligation of best-value reviewing and planning under the Local Government Act 1999 is a relief, for which I am sure they will give much thanks. If that can be done for police authorities, perhaps it can be applied much more widely. No one ever denies the need for best value, but the paraphernalia that surrounds that mantra has not always delivered what it promises.

I have to admit that I was once somewhat sceptical about community support officers. It seemed to me that without too much more investment the number of police officers on our streets could have been greatly increased. But I have gradually become convinced that the value of CSOs in neighbourhood policing is related both to their visibility and to their relatively limited powers. Effective policing requires local knowledge and community engagement, and many CSOs have had to use their innate powers of persuasion and human ingenuity rather than quick recourse to the force of law.

So when I am told that we need to introduce a standard set of robust powers for CSOs I wonder whether that might undermine the reason for their success. I know the way in which the powers of community support officers have varied from one police force to the next has been hardly sensible, and the Bill clarifies what they are able to do. But I am concerned that the relative success of CSOs is related to the trust that they have engendered through personal contact, knowledge and social confidence. We do not want CSOs so impressed by their new powers that they are too keen to wield them.

This leads me to my main concerns about the Bill. There is plausibility about many of its detailed reforms, but the cumulative impact may be far from beneficial. The reforms related to anti-social behaviour seem well intentioned and I recognise that many of them derive from reviews of existing policy. But the itch to legislate repeatedly in this area reveals a frustration that anti-social behaviour is so difficult to combat by means of legislation alone. I sympathise with the aim of giving local councillors, for example, power to trigger a community call to action where it is felt that local crime and anti-social behaviour are not being dealt with adequately and that that should be referred to a crime and disorder scrutiny committee. But it is hard to see how all that would necessarily make things much different on the ground. There is certainly dangerous and intimidating behaviour that needs to be dealt with by the force of law, but much anti-social behaviour that causes distress in communities derives from community irritation with the thoughtless, the perverse, the stupid and the unsocialised. The law cannot entirely replace the self-discipline that derives from our social, spiritual and moral sensibilities. So many of our difficulties in this area derive from deficiencies in those qualities in too many members of our population.

That is why we become so frustrated that our best-laid plans in legislation do not always work. Parenting contracts, parenting orders and anti-social behaviour injunctions may all have their place, but I fear that all of us—Bishops included—need to address a deeper moral and spiritual malaise than we sometimes wish to recognise.

I look for reassurance from the Minister on conditional cautions. Again it seems extremely sensible to divert low-level offenders who admit their guilt from court and get them to accept relatively modest sanctions, but I have several concerns. In another place, the relevant Minister in Committee estimated that that would affect up to 30,000 cases per year. Is that a figure that the Minister endorses, and if so how is the estimate made? We are also told that this would relate simply to low-level crimes, yet the Magistrates' Association tells us that the offences for which a conditional caution might be administered could include actual bodily harm, criminal damage, carrying an offensive weapon, burglary and theft. Is that accurate? Such crimes seem far from low-level to me.

It also occurs to me and others that the wealthier low-level criminal might welcome a caution and a fine as a lesser punishment to get the offence out of the way. The net impact of that increase in the use of cautions might be both the imposition of punishments without due process and yet indulging some offenders at the same time. Again, I find the principle behind the legislation might be sensible, but I wonder what the net effect would be.

The one area where I believe that the Bill is wholly and completely mistaken is in the amalgamation of the existing police, prison, probation, CPS and courts inspectorates into a single body. If my friend, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester, who is also bishop to the prisons, were here, he would make his opposition clear and convincing. He and all my episcopal colleagues are at a residential meeting of Bishops in Leicestershire and I am the only one let out on parole for good behaviour. I know that many of us share a deep concern about the absorption of the prisons inspectorate into that unified body.

I recognise from the words of the Minister, who began our debate, that the Government seek to meet their critics by making the function of inspecting custodial institutions distinct and giving it priority, but I fear that that is insufficient to assuage our fears. There will no longer be a Chief Inspector of Prisons with a distinct public profile and a direct line of reporting to the Home Secretary and Parliament. The distinctive priorities and methodology of the prisons inspectorate, dealing with issues of human rights, justice, health and safety and decency within the enclosed institutions, are very likely to be diluted. They are very different from all the other issues that the other inspectorates have to deal with.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, that, despite assurances about robustness and independence, as our Select Committee on the Constitution observed, the new chief inspector of the integrated inspectorate has to,

"give regard to such aspects of government policy as responsible ministers may direct".

That does not make reassuring reading.

One of the clearest ways of judging the maturity and civilisation of any society comes to us from ancient Israel. You simply have to look at how society treats its widows, its orphans and its prisoners. The psalmist says:

"Let the sighing of the prisoners come before you", but we do not always want to hear their sighs. We have been astonishingly well served by successive Chief Inspectors of Prisons in recent years, who have not allowed us to neglect the human dignity of those whom we imprison. Their reports have not been easy reading for successive Governments, or for the rest of us. Last year's description of the conditions in the Victorian section of Norwich prison was, in my experience, accurate, focused and deeply disturbing. We need such disturbance and I hope that the Government will think again.

My Lords, I should begin by declaring an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and of the executive of the Association of Police Authorities. I also chair the All-Party Group on Police, which is supported by the Association of Police Authorities, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Police Federation.

It is in the nature of Second Reading debates that one dwells on the issues with which one disagrees in the Bill. I want to start by making a more general point: most of the Bill is about bringing forward elements of police reform. Although there is the appearance of a series of disparate parts, the Bill is intended to achieve a convincing whole to deliver better-quality policing that is better fit for the future.

Having said that, I want to focus on a number of problem areas. The concept of the National Policing Improvement Agency is extremely good; it could be a very powerful mechanism to achieve police reform. My noble friend, in introducing the Bill very thoroughly earlier this afternoon, talked about that agency creating a culture of self-improvement and enabling the police service to meet the challenges of the future, ensuring, in effect, that the police service is fit for purpose in future. Those are important and valuable objectives. I therefore welcome the creation of the National Policing Improvement Agency.

However, I wonder—I want to hear from my noble friend in her reply—whether sufficient has been done to rationalise the existing structure. We will have a National Policing Improvement Agency, but we will continue to have Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary—albeit one that is subsumed into the new inspectorate. We will also continue to have the Police Standards Unit, which resides in the Home Office. If we are to take these steps towards rationalisation, I wonder whether we should not bring more of these functions together to ensure that all the levers are available for an agency that was designed to improve policing practice.

The proposed arrangements for the ownership of the new agency are also deficient. If the principle of the tripartite governance of policing—I note the Minister's warmish words in support of it—is to be maintained and applied to the agency, the agency must be unequivocally owned and supported both by the police service and chief constables and by police authorities. It is not clear to me whether the provisions in the Bill are sufficient to ensure that that will happen. Yes, one person broadly representative of police authorities will sit on the board of this new agency, but does that really amount to a proper role in the governance of police authorities?

I shall say a little about the principles that should underpin any further reform of our policing structure. I believe that all your Lordships will value the principle of policing by consent—the principle that the police service, which is a civilian service and part of the civil arm of the state, is there by the consent of the communities that it serves. That very important principle underlies all UK policing. The tripartite principle of governance has evolved over a long time to achieve that policing by consent; indeed, I have already referred to that. The idea is that the chief officer of police is operationally responsible for the way in which policing is delivered in a particular area, but that he or she is accountable locally to a police authority, which has a substantial democratic element and is there to ensure that the service meets the needs of local communities and that the chief police officer is aware of the requirements and expectations of those communities. On the other hand, the Home Office is there to ensure that national priorities are being met. Keeping all those elements in balance is a very important principle. I notice that the Minister, when introducing the Bill, talked about the value that she and ministerial colleagues placed on these principles. She has talked about that proper balance not being fundamentally altered by the Bill.

In the next few minutes, I shall analyse the role of the Home Office and the police authorities in maintaining the tripartite principle after the Bill passes into law, if it passes in this form. First, I shall say a few words about the Home Office's intervention powers. I respectfully say to the Minister that the Bill extends the Home Office's powers of intervention. The Home Secretary will, in future, be able to intervene without reference to the police authority, and will merely have to be satisfied that there is a problem with a particular service. I understand the frustrations of successive Home Secretaries when they are clear that there is a problem. There may be a virtually universal view around the country that there is a problem with policing in a particular area, but we should be very wary of throwing away a proper process that takes account of that tripartite structure and recognises the importance of the local accountability arm.

The Minister says that the reason for the changes is to enable the Home Secretary to take account of sources of information other than those from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary. I have no problem with that, but there must be other ways of achieving it without dismantling that basic principle. I think that the Bill should require that, in intervening, the Home Secretary must involve the police authority for the area concerned and listen to the best professional advice currently available through Her Majesty's Inspectorate.

Then there is the proposal that basic command units should have statutory status. I have no particular problem with this as a principle but wonder what the intention is. Giving them statutory status will make it easier for a future—or even the present—Chancellor of the Exchequer to announce, in the moments of largesse that we are used to in Budget speeches, that a specific sum of money is being passed to individual basic command units for a particular purpose. I am all for BCUs getting more resources—certainly those with which I am involved in the London area. I just wonder where it leads us on tripartite governance.

The Association of Chief Police Officers sees the proposal, in an evocative phrase, as "hollowing out" the direction and control of chief constables. The chief constable or chief police officer is responsible for the operational delivery of the entire force. The basic command units are an essential, integral and key part of the running of the police service. Yet if some commanders of BCUs have a specific chunk of money for a specific purpose for which they are personally accountable as statutory bodies, then that will alter their relationship with the chief constables and their overall responsibility for the delivery of services. That is an important issue, and I would welcome clarification on it from my noble friend.

If there is to be some change in the status of the basic command units—perhaps in recognition of the important role that they and their commanders play in local life in relation to CDRPs and so on—it would be helpful to have a requirement that, in appointing BCU commanders, the chief constable must have regard to the views of the police authority or local authority, or that the police authority should be involved in the appointment process. That is certainly something that we worked towards achieving in my Metropolitan Police area while I was chair. I am not sure that we quite got there, but that involvement is an essential part of delivery at local level.

My most significant concern is the way in which the Bill takes from the responsibility of primary legislation a whole series of issues about how police authorities operate, and puts them into secondary legislation. I am conscious that this Home Secretary, like his immediate predecessors—there have been several—is a benign, even cuddly individual. We should have no doubt that this Home Secretary has no malign intent for how police authorities operate. Why then, if we have such a benign intent, is the proposal to move so much into secondary legislation?

I strongly support paragraph 9(2) of Schedule 2, which creates a general duty for police authorities to hold the chief officer of police accountable to the public. I am concerned by the rest of paragraphs 9 and 10, which effectively say that the Secretary of State shall determine the other police authority functions by secondary legislation. A number of key duties should explicitly be in primary legislation. The first is the duty to ensure that communities are consulted in setting policing priorities. That involvement of communities must be a central part of governance. Secondly, police authorities should have the power to set the strategic direction and objectives of the force, within that national framework. Thirdly, there should be a duty to promote diversity and good community relations, something that now applies to other parts of local government; that should be explicit for police authorities, too. Fourthly, there should be a duty to provide information, and similarly a duty to monitor the performance of the force for its area, as well as a duty to ensure that the force co-operates with other forces and other partners where appropriate. Those duties should, I believe, form a part of primary legislation and I do not understand the rationale of the Government in trying to move them out of primary and into secondary legislation.

Then there are the provisions covering best value. I differ from the right reverend Prelate in that I believe that the duty to promote best value was an important one for police authorities. I am concerned that the Bill removes the powers and levers available to police authorities in delivering best value. As the right reverend Prelate said, we all endorse the importance of best value, but to remove the levers currently available to police authorities to ensure that it is delivered would be unfortunate.

The membership of police authorities is also to be taken out of primary legislation and put into secondary legislation. If the Bill is passed, questions such as how many members should make up a police authority, what is the process of appointment, what qualifications are required, what issues would lead to the disqualification of police authority members and what is their tenure will all be dealt with in secondary legislation. Similarly, the appointment of the chairs and vice-chairs of police authorities would be left to secondary legislation. We are assured, although I would be grateful to hear it again, that there is no intention to move from the present position whereby police authority chairs and vice-chairs are elected by other members of the police authority. If that is so, why put this into secondary legislation rather than making it explicit in the Bill?

In my view, there is a great deal of confusion within the Home Office on the question of the number of members on a police authority. The Bill sets out a change in the definition of a "relevant council". Previous Home Office Ministers have said that there is to be one representative from each top-tier local authority on individual police authorities. The implication here is that the ability of people to give a strategic overview and to deliver political balance at the local level is to be sacrificed in favour of the principle of local representation. While I am all for local representation, I wonder whether other provisions such as the enhanced statutory role of crime and disorder reduction partnerships provide that already. A lot is being thrown away with this principle. Further thinking by the Home Office on the question of membership is important.

I have a final point. This legislation is not about the current arguments taking place on police service reorganisation, but I am concerned that our debates will be coloured entirely by that issue. There are all sorts of arguments about whether police service reorganisation is a good or a bad thing, but the provisions of this Bill are in a sense irrelevant to that. Nevertheless, the changes being proposed here would have very long-term implications for the tripartite relationship between the chief officer of police, the local police authority and the Home Office. I believe that that relationship is essential in underpinning public consent to policing, which in turn is a fundamental tenet of British policing.

My Lords, it is always easy to listen to the Minister because she is extraordinarily beguiling in the way she sets about her business, but I do not think that I would be the only one to remark on a contrast. If one were to form a point of view of the Home Office based solely on the speeches made by the noble Baroness over the years and again today, one would envisage a department progressing from Bill to Bill, all of them successful and bringing improvements to our society, learning wisely from experience and occasionally filling in what the noble Baroness has called minor lacunae, but leading us slowly and surely towards the desired litter-free paradise of progress and good behaviour. There is therefore a contrast between what we hear from the noble Baroness and what we read everywhere else about the department of which she is a part, not least—and, indeed, most forcefully—from the remarks of her own new chief in the other place.

There is a serious problem here. While I do not know if I would carry with me my noble friend Lord Waddington, who is to speak shortly, my impression when thinking of the Home Office from years ago is that it is a great department of state which is cumbersome, not particularly communicative, but immensely conscientious and anxious to get things right. I have the impression that those good qualities are now overburdened by change: not only changes in society brought about by drugs, asylum, immigration—one could go on with the list—but change produced by the ceaseless juggling of laws, regulations and procedures, so characteristic of the Home Office sectors of this Government. I simply do not believe that the Home Office will recover its poise and efficacy while pressure from society—and from Ministers in response to changes in society—remains so strong.

I have a vision that I conjure up every now and then of what this means. It is late afternoon, outside a prison, and the van is coming in from the courts. You do not know how many prisoners you will receive. The van sometimes has to go from one prison to another to find space. Within a few hours there is a tension between all the rules, laws, regulations and procedures that have to be fulfilled, and a mass of reluctant, sometimes desperate, human beings who have to be admitted to prison. So long as the pressure of numbers is of that kind, the tensions will be such that whatever legislation we pass on these matters will not be fully effective. When it comes to not being able to count numbers here and there, one has to conjure up the vision of this kind of tense afternoon. That is only in the prison sector, but it applies elsewhere. There is not now time or space for whatever improvements we vote for to be carried through to success.

This leads me to the Inspectorate of Prisons. I sympathise with what the Government are trying to do, with their desire for simplicity and good order. What the noble Baroness described to us was a sort of motorway, running smoothly from the commission of the crime, through the courts, to imprisonment, release and what happens after release. But when you are planning a motorway, you need to consider not only the route, but what you may demolish along the way. Many of us fear that the prisons inspectorate may be demolished or greatly weakened when this road is built. It is different in nature from other inspectorates. It is concerned with the well-being of individuals who have been deprived of their liberty because of the crimes they have committed. This is a public service not well served by the media, or indeed in either House of Parliament. It is surrounded by a swirl of prejudice and the idea that because these are bad people it does not matter particularly what happens to them once they are imprisoned. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich told us, that approach is the reverse of civilisation.

The prisons inspectorate stands now as a fortress of good sense in this swirl of prejudice and ignorance. I have known reasonably well the last three chief inspectors. They have been very different in style, vocabulary and method, and they have all been effective: Judge Tumim, whom I appointed in my time; the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who we are delighted is a Member of this House; and the present chief inspector, Anne Owers. The inspectorate, as the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, pointed out, is known and admired in this country among all those who study the subject. It is also copied all over the world. It has certain characteristics, established not so much by law as by how these three individuals have operated. It is not clear to me that these characteristics will be preserved in the Bill. It is even less clear because of the ludicrously inadequate discussion of these matters which took place in the other place.

The four crucial characteristics are: that there should be an Inspectorate of Prisons with an independent head, not someone derived from the Prison Service or the Home Office; that it should have the ability to operate as it, itself, decides is necessary, which will include, for example, unannounced visits; that its chief should have direct access to the Home Secretary; and that he or she should be able to report independently and to publish when and what he or she wishes. These sound simple things but they have been secured not without difficulty and not without tensions with the bureaucracy over these past years. Nothing that the Minister has said today, that I have seen or that has been said in another place persuades me that these characteristics—and no doubt there are others—will be preserved. I appeal to the Minister to think again and to cause the Home Secretary and the Government to think again.

At one level, on the sheer merit of the argument, this important matter should not be messed about with in the name of principles which may have a good general application but would do damage here, but mainly because the noble Baroness must realise that the cards are stacked against her. This is piling up and I do not think a simple repetition of the stand taken in the other place, and taken briefly by her today, will do. When my noble friend comes to table amendments, will the Minister please look at them carefully, alter the wording if that is necessary, and enable us to say that the strength and independence of the prisons inspectorate has been preserved?

Perhaps I may add a word on extradition, an issue dealt with by my noble friend Lady Anelay. I am delighted that the ingenuity of our Front Bench gives us an opportunity to discuss—and, I hope, remedy—the unjust working of the 2003 extradition treaty with the United States, which is unequal in procedure and in substance. It is a clear example of the law of unintended consequences. Presumably it was intended to gain favour with a powerful friend and ally at a time of great difficulty for that ally following September 11th, but it is actually souring that relationship and will continue to do so unless remedied.

It is unequal in procedure because, as everyone knows, the United States Senate has not ratified the treaty whereas the Government brought it into effect on 1 January 2004, by order, in the United Kingdom. It is unequal in substance because there is no requirement for the United States authorities to show a prima facie case against defendants here. It was intended and defended largely as a means of dealing with terrorist offences but it is being used mainly against those accused of white-collar crime, particularly in the financial sphere, where the United States federal authorities seem to be setting themselves up as a global prosecutor. It seeks extradition in cases where the link with the United States is fairly tenuous—it may be only a message passed on the internet through a United States server—and in some cases where the offence could have been prosecuted in this country but has not been. I should add that neither of the two firms with which I am associated in the City has any direct involvement in such cases.

The results are now piling up and are damaging. Some organisations with financial contacts across the Atlantic are beginning to operate in an atmosphere of anxiety and risk. There is a similar atmosphere of anxiety and restraint in dealing with our own regulatory authorities because of the fear that information given to them automatically crosses the Atlantic to United States authorities, which may use it in a way that would not be regarded as equitable in this country.

This matter has been raised often—I have raised it in the past, as have many Members of this House and the other place—and the volume of protest has now grown and is deafening. I do not think there is any doubt about the damage being done to relationships across the Atlantic and I hope that the Minister will not again turn this indignation aside as if it is unreal, when it is the Government's stance that is unreal. As the United States has not ratified the treaty, it should not be too difficult to find ways of remedying the evil. I look forward to hearing and supporting amendments drafted in that sense by my noble friend Lord Kingsland.

My Lords, this is a Bill covering a wide range of issues in both policing and justice, of which some are welcome and others, as we have already heard, are very controversial. It develops measures instituted over time by this Government, which here involve still further enhancing the powers of the Home Secretary and creating substantial new police powers, which are potentially worrying and require close scrutiny.

My interest, as always, is in children and young people in the criminal justice system, where the Bill is relevant in a number of areas. In the policing aspect it relates to the new conditions for street bail granted by police to suspects who may be children and where there are important child welfare issues. There is also a standardisation of the powers and duties of community support officers, including the new power of "truancy sweeps". That is important since a large proportion of their work happens to relate to young people.

In Part 3, there are new provisions to deal with anti-social behaviour arising from the creation of local authority oversight committees scrutinising crime and disorder reduction partnerships and the requirement on local councils to respond to a community call for action, which will directly affect young people. There is also an extension of those agencies which can enter into parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders—in particular, registered social landlords—which is especially inappropriate. Finally, in Part 4, there is the major proposal to amalgamate the five criminal justice inspectorates into one king-size inspectorate thereby merging decades of specialist knowledge and expertise which, as we have heard already around the Chamber, is a major cause for concern, particularly for the prisons inspectorate.

There are real concerns over the proposal that the police powers to grant bail on the street should be extended to impose pre-charge conditions at the same time. The intervention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, was particularly appropriate. The point was also echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. Worries have been expressed that, if inappropriately used, this could develop into a form of summary police justice. When we debated the Anti-social Behaviour Bill in 2003 there were particular concerns that, where young people and children were involved, there should be proper protection for them and an appropriate adult present, so that they would understand fully the implications of the whole process.

An understanding of child welfare issues is always paramount, and appropriate welfare assessments by an arresting officer on the street may not be possible or even desirable. These concerns are now far greater when the process also involves the possibility of conditions of bail being put in place—what that means to a young person, who may have special needs or mental health issues or, simply by virtue of his or her age, not understand the implications, including those of non-compliance. We argued then, and we argue now, that the age limit for all appropriate safeguards for children and young people should be extended to include 17 year-olds. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us reassurance on this.

Where community safety officers are concerned, it is clearly desirable that their powers and duties should be standardised. The "truancy sweeps", whereby they will now be able to take a child back to school or some other place, may well be very positive, albeit with limited long-term results unless the root cause of the truanting is also addressed. It is quite clear that there will have to be a significant investment in their training, particularly if they are to be involved in the enforcement of ASBOs, on which the definition of what constitutes anti-social behaviour is at best woolly. It is known that a high proportion of CSOs' work is with children and young people, and that almost 50 per cent of ASBOs are on young people. Since there are plans for the number of CSOs to be increased to around 24,000, unless and until they all have adequate training, particularly with young people, far from this added presence being a benefit, there will be serious risks for all concerned. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us on this point too.

Two further areas in the Bill deal with anti-social behaviour and both require a great deal of further discussion. There is an extension of the role of local authorities, with a new duty on councillors to respond to the call for action if a resident feels that not enough is being done locally to deal with a problem of an anti-social nature. We have already seen with the Anti-social Behaviour Act what an unfortunate and unhelpful thing naming and shaming is. There are real concerns that this may become worse as a result of this new duty.

More worrying is the proposed power of both local authorities and registered social landlords to apply for parenting contracts and parenting orders. Most authorities in this field agree that it is highly inappropriate for RSLs to have such a power. Their role is to deal with housing and not the intervention in such a sensitive and potentially momentous way in the lives of their tenants, particularly when the penalty for failing to comply with a parenting order becomes a criminal offence. It is imperative that social agencies with expertise in this area—we are dealing with such difficult family issues—work with families through parenting contracts and the range of supportive strategies available to them.

However, the merging of the criminal justice inspectorates in Part 4, on which there was no time for a debate at Third Reading in the other place, is the cause for gravest concern—for the future of the prisons inspectorate in particular, although all five have particular roles and areas of expertise. Therefore it is in this House that we must give this issue the fullest attention. Again, there are some serious implications for children and young people.

The argument is that the proposed amalgamation of five criminal justice inspectorates into one justice, community safety and custody inspectorate will rationalise their activities into a common framework, where they will become more effective and efficient, and that common methodologies, cycles and assessments will create better standards and co-ordination across the piece. This is a dangerously simplistic argument as far as the inspectorate of prisons is concerned. As Dr Silvia Casale, the distinguished president of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, has said:

"The deprivation of liberty is fundamentally different from other criminal justice measures and has different legal and moral implications. Thus, inspecting the treatment and conditions of people in custody is of a different order to other inspections".

Anne Owers, the current Chief Inspector of Prisons, explains that as well as focusing on the activities of prisons and beyond, their task is to focus on the details of the life of prisoners, and has much more to it than looking at issues of process, management or audit.

Of necessity, much of what happens in prison is a closed world and quite hidden. As the Prison Reform Trust has said, prisons can go bad very quickly so the spotlight which the inspectorate can shine on conditions, from a completely independent and authoritative standpoint, has proved over and over again to be essential to exposing some shaming situations—in Norwich, Forest Bank and Woodhill, to name but a few—which in turn can act as a trigger and help the Prison Service to bring about improvement and change. Indeed, as has already been mentioned, the outstanding quality of the work of our prison inspectorate is acknowledged worldwide, as well as by our own Government; it is used as a model and leads the way in best practice. It is strange, therefore, to propose to subsume it into a far bigger, wider organisation which will inevitably dilute its capacity and impact.

I want to echo the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, in saying that the key element to the success of the Prison Service's work has been its complete independence: the chief inspector comes from outside the service; it is independent in the use of its own criteria and methodology; its ability to criticise policy as well as practice; and its reliance on unannounced inspections. While none of these is specifically prohibited in the Bill, neither are they guaranteed in it. Indeed, Clause 30(3) states that the chief inspector must,

"have regard to such aspects of government policy as the responsible ministers may direct".

So the independence of inspections in future looks to be severely compromised. This is another area where a great deal of comfort has to be sought from the Minister.

I have an added concern for the future of children and young people caught up in custody. Even within the highly specific and specialised field of prisons inspection there is the still further specialised work with juvenile prisoners. Currently, there are separate criteria, a different set of expectations and a dedicated, specialist team that adopts, as indeed it should, a child-centred approach. As any of us who have worked with vulnerable children knows, this work requires highly skilled and specialised professional experience, knowledge and understanding. It is in recognition of this that this specific team exists for inspecting YOIs. Its work is now part of the development of a memo of understanding with children's services, so that while HMI continues to inspect, it will feed its findings into a joint area review and into the broader spectrum of children's services. Thus, an understanding of the very different worlds of both custody on the one hand and of children on the other has to be sought from appropriate professionals.

Finally, I urge the Minister not to forget the hidden world of the STCs, run by private companies, where children as young as 12 are imprisoned. Here inspections are done only by the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) because the relevant children are so very young. But it took an inquiry, chaired by my noble friend Lord Carlile, to highlight the extent of the use of restraint, during the course of which one child died, strip searching and solitary confinement. For as long as we continue to incarcerate children in this way, it would be more appropriate for HMI's expertise also to be involved in this area. There are fears for the future of the prisons inspectorate as a whole, but the fears for these even more specialist areas of work are greater still.

It is sometimes helpful to look back and learn the lessons of the past. I have a sense of déjà vu here of a parallel moment in the social services back in the late 1960s, when I was a childcare officer. Just like today, the argument was made that there was a need to rationalise the range of services, to simplify, co-ordinate and bring under one umbrella work which had a great deal of overlap and common practice. Following the recommendations of the Seebohm committee, the individual roles of childcare officers, psychiatric social workers and welfare officers among others were swept away, and with them, ultimately, went years of specialised knowledge and practice in the law and many other related fields. The individual departments vanished and the generic social worker was born, operating out of a social services department and working in a "multi-disciplinary team". Only one specialism remained: the probation officer, who alone has been allowed to retain his own distinct role. The result was not an improvement, but a diminution of provision, because it is impossible to retain those levels of specialism when subsumed into a bigger whole, and the work was, indeed, diluted. We could not be all things to all people. Now, indeed, many of the specialisms have returned of necessity in different guises. It seems to me that something similar is being proposed for the inspectorates. We should be very careful not to make the same mistakes again.

I look forward to following the progress of this very important Bill over the next few weeks.

My Lords, sometimes it is an advantage and sometimes a disadvantage to speak about a job that one has had the privilege of undertaking oneself. As the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, has already said, for five and a half years I served as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, a position which is covered in the Bill. It is an advantage because I had to do a job for which I did not apply and I had to learn how it was done, what was required, and so on, on the job. When I took the job I told the then Home Secretary that I would be grateful if I could still have two days a month to carry on with work that I was doing with the United Nations. However, it was immediately clear that that was a foolish request because inspecting prisons is a whole-time occupation and two days a month simply could not be spared.

The most important part of the work was accompanying inspections. After hearing from my inspection team what they had found during the week, I would spend a whole day walking round a prison with the governor. I would spend an evening with the team discussing exactly what they had found and the following morning I would spend up to three hours with the governor and the management team of the prison, telling them precisely what we had found and the recommendations that we were going to make. They could then start to carry on from what I regarded not just as an inquisition but as a free consultancy which had the aim of helping them to move forward.

The added advantage of such an inspection was that, of course, I was then able to speak first-hand to Ministers, the public and anyone about the state of things in the prisons that I had visited. When I heard a suggestion that the Inspectorate of Prisons would be subsumed into something far bigger, I was concerned that in future the chief inspector would not be able to give the amount of time that, by experience, I had found was essential if an inspection of those in custody is to be carried out properly and, to my mind, as it should be done in a humane system.

The disadvantage is that you would expect me to say that, wouldn't you? I do not disagree with everything in the Bill; I speak only about Part 4. I applaud the intention to end the use of the Prison Service as accommodation for children, something that I recommended as long ago as 1997. But if I were to take a couple of texts for what I am to say, first, I would look back through military history to October 1809, to the ill-conceived, useless and mal-directed expedition to the island of Walcheren, in which my regiment took part; it was disastrous for disease as much as anything else. On the way back, a regiment passing my own on its way up shouted, "Good luck, the Rifles. You, too, are being made the sport of theory". Secondly, a very distinguished commander, who did not like long rules and regulations, when asked what were the most effective rules he had ever found, quoted a company that had only one rule: a breach of common sense is a breach of the rules.

My theme is that the Inspectorate of Prisons is being made the sport of theory, in breach of common sense. How did that come about? It did not come about as a result of an Act of Parliament, as the first inspectors did in 1835, after a long period of prison reform, starting way back in 1773, which required that every prison should be inspected every year and reported on to Parliament through one of His Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State; nor did it come about as a result of an inquiry into the prison department and the reformation of the inspectorate in 1981, when Mr Justice May's report of 1979, originally put in place by the Labour Government under Mr Callaghan, recommended the reformation of independent inspection, which had ceased in 1877. No, it came about in the Budget Statement of 2005, in which it was announced that the 11 public sector inspectorates were being rolled into four, in line with the Audit Commission's 10 principles of inspection of public services. When I looked at those principles from the point of view of prisons, they filled me with horror, because the Inspectorate of Prisons does not inspect a public service; it inspects the treatment of and conditions for prisoners. No one inspects the Prison Service. Someone inspects the police service, the probation service, the Courts Service and the Crown Prosecution Service—the other four partners in the merger. Those four inspectors come from the services that they inspect and they act as professional advisers to Ministers on those services.

The prisons inspectorate is entirely different, and I welcome the four principles of the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, as to what it does. They state that you are required to monitor and influence the treatment and conditions of prisoners and report on them as you find them; and you report on fact, not dictated by anyone. I found that the unannounced inspection was hugely valuable. Only once did I make the mistake of telling the Home Secretary that I was going to inspect a prison the following week. It was the only inspection that had been predicted when I got there.

The Audit Commission states that:

"Inspectors are also normally required to have regard to value for money considerations and as such there is an overlap with economic regulation".

That is not the case with the prisons inspectorate. It is up to the people who receive the reports to look at the economic considerations. The inspectorate is instructed to be concerned with the treatment of and conditions for prisoners. The Office of Public Services Reform's review in 2003 found that the purpose of inspection was seen as providing assurance to the public. That is absolutely right. One of the principal reasons why independent inspection was restored in 1981 was that there was public disquiet at the self-regulation carried out by inspectors in a Home Office department who hid things that are now exposed.

On 23 May this year, the new Home Secretary, commenting on the premature release of foreign national prisoners, told the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee:

"I think when you embark on a review . . . if you find that the facts warrant a particular position then you should be prepared to countenance that".

Those were wise words and I hope that the Minister will bear them in mind when she considers all that has been said about the inappropriate merger of something that has a totally different role into something that is broad and covers actions other than the treatment and conditions of prisoners. I am concerned about Clause 30, which has been mentioned, because when the chief inspector exercises his functions he must have regard to any aspect of government policy that responsible Ministers may direct. Prisons are not a party-political issue, nor should they be, because prisoners will be in prison whichever government are in power. It must be the duty of every government to ensure that the treatment and conditions of prisoners are appropriate and allow their resettlement into the community.

The Government's protestations that the compromise inspectorate will be just as independent as at present are nonsense. Everyone is weakened by compromise. I was able to speak out because I was the independent Chief Inspector of Prisons and, as such, was required to do so by Parliament. I do not think that I could have done that if I had been the deputy chief inspector for justice, community safety and custody (prisons). My successor, to whom, rightly, great tributes have been paid in this House, has said that she is concerned about the quality of who might apply for the job of deputy chief inspector for justice, community safety and custody, and whether they might be able to speak out, or whether people might listen to them.

I am very worried about a word that the Minister used and which I have also seen used in many other documents about inspection; that is, "modern". There is only one way of inspecting, and that is to go and see for yourself. I do not know what "modern" means in this context. I presume that it means following targets and performance indicators, producing reports and coming to a paper judgment. I am sorry, but I do not believe that that is appropriate for the treatment and conditions of prisoners. You cannot do it on paper; you have to do it yourself.

I also draw attention to something that has a slightly Alice in Wonderland ring about it, and which has already been mentioned: the optional protocol to the UN convention against torture, which the UK ratified in June 2004. Under that, all ratifying nations are required to have an independent monitoring of places of detention at national level. I have been asked to go to Geneva on Friday by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture to take part in a seminar on the formation of those independent monitoring boards on the grounds that we in the United Kingdom have the only board that currently meets what they think the requirements should be. When questioned about the absence—or the presence—of a national preventive mechanism in this country, a former Minister, Fiona Mactaggart, said that we did not actually need to form another one because we already had one in the independent Inspectorate of Prisons, which enabled us to satisfy the required conditions. However, I have just received an invitation from the Department for Constitutional Affairs to attend a conference on 13 June to discuss the formation of a national mechanism for the inspection of places of detention; it adds that practical details need to be worked out. If we have already got such a mechanism, which Ministers have recognised as such, why on earth is the Department for Constitutional Affairs having a conference to find it?

That is as far as I would like to go because I know that we will introduce a number of amendments to bring out the details of what I have been saying in relation to every clause in Part 4. In an ideal world I would hope that, having listened to the arguments that have already been made, the Minister will withdraw the prisons inspectorate from the proposal. It has not, as we have heard, received due scrutiny in the other place. Sub-Committee D, which studied it and which has a government majority of seven to six, contained two Home Office Ministers, but it did not really get down to the subject of Part 4. That part was not discussed at all on Report because there was insufficient time. I therefore submit that while we must obviously look again at inspectorates from time to time, the proposal is not appropriate. I hope that when the time comes we will be able to dismiss becoming privy to the sport of theory and restore common sense.

My Lords, I must first declare an interest as a former chair and now president of the Association of Police Authorities. I was thus fully involved in the consultations arising from the Green Paper Building Safer Communities Together and from the White Paper Building Communities, Beating Crime, which were the precursors of this Bill. This Bill takes the process of police reform further forward, in directions that I warmly welcome. The emphasis on delivering neighbourhood policing across the country, increasing local accountability and the involvement of local people in policing issues, and progressing workforce modernisation will surely be welcomed by all members of this House.

I strongly support the Government's avowed aims of community empowerment, combating anti-social behaviour and seeking to embed in the delivery of policing a culture of continuous improvement, although I am not fully convinced that the means, as set out in some of the proposed legislation, will contribute as effectively to those outcomes as they could do, for reasons that I shall explain shortly.

First, however, I would like to welcome the establishment of the National Policing Improvement Agency. It is always a good sign when different agencies all claim the parentage of an original idea. In this case, both ACPO and the APA can show that they began pressing for such a body at least a couple of years ago. The establishment of a genuinely tripartite body, at arm's length from the Home Office, whose primary aims are to promote good practice and steadily to improve the quality of the police service, is an important step in the ongoing police reform programme.

Government Ministers and their departments—particularly the Home Office in the case of policing, as hinted earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Hurd—cannot themselves deliver improved services. They can establish strategic frameworks and set priorities, but delivery takes place at street level, in local neighbourhoods or across police boundaries. Operating within the Government's strategic remit, the NPIA has the chance to establish itself as a powerful body, provided that it is owned and driven by forces and police authorities, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, argued earlier, and provided that it generates a culture of strong professionalism, diversity and continuous improvement. If it achieves success, it will serve as a powerful model for other service providers in the public sector.

I want to move on to the crucial issue of accountability, and in particular local accountability. I have always had a passionate belief that policing must be locally accountable, and must be seen to be so in our democratic and pluralist society. I have no problem with the Home Secretary formulating an annual community safety plan and setting strategic priorities for policing. However, within that strategic framework, each force and each senior officer team should be able to tailor their delivery to meet local needs and objectives, and should be held locally to account for their performance. I welcome the provisions in this Bill that strengthen that local accountability, by underlining the managerial role of police authorities not only in maintaining an efficient and effective police force, but additionally in holding their chief officer to account for the exercise of his or her functions and thus for the overall performance of the force.

Police authorities have been one of the unsung success stories of the past 11 years, and it has always surprised me that the Conservative Party, which brought them into being, has never claimed any credit for the undoubted step change that has taken place in the performance of police authorities since 1995. The addition of independent members with particular financial, IT or human resources skills, one-fifth of whom are now drawn from ethnic minority communities, has given police authorities much greater effectiveness and focus. They should now be required to operate at force level, not just to hold their chief officer team to account on behalf of local people, as the Bill proposes, but to promote diversity and good community relations, to secure co-operation with neighbouring forces to tackle level 2 crime, to set strategic direction, and to consult local people about local policing priorities.

At present, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, pointed out, these last four functions are not spelt out on the face of the Bill, although interestingly they are for the Northern Ireland Policing Board. They are to be covered in secondary legislation, as are a whole host of matters relating to the composition and running of police authorities. I know that this is of great concern to many members of the APA and of ACPO, who believe that proceeding in this way is seriously undermining the tripartite nature of policing and moving away from the localism agenda by concentrating too much power in the Secretary of State.

I understand the need to enable the Government to have the flexibility to respond to anticipated structural changes, but I am also mindful of the fact that, 12 years ago, I and large numbers of others, including some in this Chamber today, argued strongly against the proposals of the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, that he should appoint all chairs of police authorities. I believed then, and continue to believe, that police authorities should appoint their own chairs and vice-chairs. I believe that this should be written into Schedule 2 to the Bill, alongside the provision that the majority of members of the police authority should be councillors. I would also like to see some reference to the need for the political balance of the authority councillor membership to reflect the police authority area as it has to do now, which has given authorities much greater political legitimacy in their areas.

Managerial accountability at force level needs to be reinforced by local accountability or answerability at divisional level, which is why I strongly support the proposals in this Bill to enable local people to raise police issues with their councillor, and to have them considered by local overview and scrutiny committees and the CDRP, alongside scrutiny of divisional policing strategies and the work of the local crime and disorder reduction partnership.

However, that will raise problems in two-tier areas such as mine, for which the Home Office's review has suggested a separation of strategic and delivery functions for CDRPs, with strategy and funding going to the county level to deliver the safer and stronger communities element of local area agreements. If local community safety priorities and funding for local projects are not set and allocated at district level, what ability will council overview and scrutiny panels, and the people who bring issues to them, have to bring about any change? I must declare an interest here as vice-chair of my local community safety partnership. Stripping it of the ability to set strategic local priorities seems to me to undermine the locality agenda. Lancaster district, along with two or three other districts in Lancashire, was strongly supportive of community support officers and used CDRP funding to pay the constabulary to employ extra officers in its area. The county council left it to district councils to decide whether they were willing to do that, and many chose not to. We also spent a lot of money on an innovative one-stop domestic violence centre to help victims. I fear that in the future we shall lose the ability to exercise such local choice, unless in two-tier areas such as mine the local area agreements are administered in a more localised way.

Finally, I would like to comment on the two issues of inspection and intervention. I am generally supportive of the Government's aim to streamline the inspections framework and to join up inspection across the criminal justice sector. However, I take this opportunity to put the spotlight not on the prisons inspectorate but on the police inspectorate. I would like to place on record the appreciation of police authorities for all the encouragement, advice and help that Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary have given to them over the past few years. The wise counsel of successive HMIs was invaluable to me when I was chair of Lancashire Police Authority, and I thank them all. I hope that, in the new structure, this unfailing source of support will not be lost to police authorities and that HMIs can continue as impartial and dispassionate advisers to both authorities and forces.

Not before time, this Bill proposes that police authorities should be inspected alongside forces. I think that the principle is right, but, in practical terms, alongside the criminal justice inspectors and the Audit Commission I would like to see on the inspection team one or two lay members who have served on police authorities and who can add value to the process. They may well play an important mediating role and be able to reconcile what might otherwise be the rather different approaches of the two professional bodies.

In the rare cases where inspections of forces or of authorities reveal serious systemic weaknesses that are clearly not being addressed, I am supportive of the inspectorate having the power to trigger a direct intervention by the Secretary of State, via the police authority. However, the Bill goes much further than this and proposes to give the Home Secretary the unilateral right to intervene if he or she believes that there is a serious problem relating to a force or authority. The Bill does not specify the nature of the evidence on which the Home Secretary would come to his or her judgment, and does not provide that there should first be the need to consult HMI, or ACPO and the APA, which would at least be consistent with the spirit of the tripartite relationship.

Such wide discretion on such a sensitive issue worries me greatly given that we will have the NPIA, an inspectorate, the Audit Commission, the standards unit in the Home Office, the APA and ACPO, all dedicated to the improvement of policing. In practice, as we saw even in the Humberside situation, the resolution of difficult issues can be carried out effectively only in partnership between local and national agencies, and the Bill's provisions, if they are to improve matters and not make them worse, have to reflect that reality.

I strongly support the Bill's main thrust, but I believe that some of its detailed provisions will need to be carefully considered in Committee. I want to ensure two things above all else: that we maintain and strengthen the tripartite approach to policing that all partners say that they wish to support—I was pleased to hear my noble friend Lady Scotland reaffirm that point earlier in the debate—and that we enable forces, police, local authorities and the NPIA to have the freedom within the Government's strategic framework to deliver the high quality, wide range and diversity of local services from which we will all benefit.

My Lords, my noble friend told us that this was the 52nd Home Office Bill since 1997 and one is tempted to say, rudely, a fat lot they seem to have done for us. One of the points that should be made in that regard is to ask what has happened to the sort of machinery that used to exist within Government that imposed some sort of discipline on departments and encouraged them to limit the amount of legislation that they were minded to introduce. My noble friend Lord Hurd of Westwell will remember as I do that a powerful Cabinet committee was mandated to keep some sort of check on the volume of legislation—powerful enough to say to a Home Secretary, "You've had your share and it really is not to your advantage nor to the advantage of your department to introduce yet another Bill". I can imagine nothing more calculated to restore the morale of a battered Home Office than a moratorium on Bills emanating from it. I put that forward as a realistic and sensible suggestion to the noble Baroness, who is always willing to listen with great care to suggestions, wherever they come from.

The Bill contains lots of bits and pieces, many of which are pretty uncontroversial, but tucked away in Schedule 2, as was mentioned by the noble Baroness opposite, are big increases in the Home Office's powers over policing. This is not just the updating of existing powers, as the Minister suggested, but significant new powers. Take for a start the National Policing Improvement Agency. What is the purpose of the agency? It is to support implementation of the Home Secretary's key priorities for the police. That is not what I say but what the Home Office says. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, that the Home Office seems in no doubt as to who will own the agency. In its eyes it will be the Home Secretary's enforcement arm to enable him to get the policing he wants. That is the agency's aim and mandate.

Schedule 2 hands to the Home Secretary sweeping powers to give directions to police authorities and to chief constables as to how to run their forces. Paragraph 24 of Schedule 2 gives the Secretary of State power to determine strategic priorities for policing. Paragraph 26 gives him power to direct a chief constable to take specific measures without reference even to the police authority, a matter referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. The latter, I understand, was a proposal rejected by Parliament when it appeared in the Police Reform Bill in 2002. I am not certain about that, but I have a memory that it appeared then. Everyone said, "What nonsense", and that was the end of that. We must be very careful with this Government because, stealthily, they are inclined to reintroduce proposals dismissed with contempt only a few years before. We should be quite clear that what the Government are trying to thrust on us is not just regional forces but regional forces subject to greater control by the Home Office. The Bill fundamentally alters the present balance of the tripartite arrangement.

As for police amalgamations, 12 years ago Mr Blair seems to have recognised the dangers of what the Government are now doing. He said:

"A wholesale amalgamation of the smaller police services will remove local policing further from local people".

He could see then, as we can see now, that if you create a police force that is responsible for an area twice or three times as big as the area covered by each of the forces that it replaces and you increase the membership of the police authority from 17 to, say, 23, many local communities, some of which may have special policing needs, will be completely unrepresented on the authority and there will be less public accountability. At the same time, it is obvious that a few regional forces will be far more easily controlled by the Home Office than the present 43.

The Government have talked a great deal about community policing. I am certainly in favour of that. However, often what they call increased accountability at local level is not really accountability, but consultation. One should not confuse the two terms. Local officers will not be accountable in the true sense to local people. Rightly, they will remain accountable to their superiors. What needs reinforcing first and foremost is accountability at leadership level. Whether or not there will be effective accountability must depend on the structure and functions of police authorities. It is surely not right that the Secretary of State should seek the power under paragraphs 3, 10 and 11 of Schedule 2 to have those matters determined by order. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, about that.

How police authorities are composed and what powers they should have should remain a matter for primary legislation. I think that there is a strong case for their being directly elected, as the Government proposed in 2003, but that is another matter. The cost of the proposed amalgamations has been a great worry, not least because of the Home Office's repeated changes of position. The Government's original offer had a flavour of blackmail about it. Last December's letter to the APA stated that only those police authorities volunteering to merge their forces by 23 December would get extra money to help them to do so. The extra money would be taken away from those who were not agreeable to mergers or not prepared to make decisions on the ridiculously tight timetable set by the then Secretary of State.

The Government's present stance is very different. They say that they will pay all the net set-up costs, but only after savings, which they will not or cannot specify. Small wonder that there are rumours of an increase in the number of community support officers to allow for savings as a result of a reduction in the number of constables.

In the police and in the police authorities, there is widespread opposition to what is proposed. In fact, only one amalgamation, that of Cumbria and Lancashire, has been agreed by both police authorities concerned. There have been court proceedings to try to stop the Home Secretary's plans and Labour Back Benchers are, we are told, plotting rebellion when the order or orders come before the Commons.

Judging by the polls, the public have no liking for the proposed amalgamations either. They want not new names for the forces responsible for their safety but a new war against violent crime, which has nearly doubled under Labour, and a new war against gun crime, which has almost doubled under Labour. It is no good the Minister trotting out the same old statistics about an overall reduction in crime. Some of the crime of which people are most frightened has increased the most. I have just cited two very good examples.

Why should the public not be sceptical about the supposed advantages of larger forces? They read the papers and can see that some of the bigger forces apparently perform the worst. Dr Reid himself comes from a part of the country where the pressures are all for the break-up of large forces, such as Strathclyde, because they are inefficient and unresponsive to the public. We are told by the Home Secretary that, after nine years of Labour government, a big chunk of the Home Office, the IND, has been rendered unfit for purpose. The IND, and with it firm and fair immigration controls, seems to have taken a beating from Labour.

I will pass no comment on what is going on in the rest of the Home Office but, from what I hear, it is suffering strains and a loss of confidence that was not obvious when I was there, serving under my noble friend Lord Hurd and, later, as Secretary of State. Surely, in those circumstances, the new Home Secretary is entitled to say, "I need time to sort out the mess that I have inherited and, for the moment, I will shelve new ventures".

The only other thing that I want to say about the Bill relates to extradition. The Bill gives us the opportunity to revisit the Extradition Act 2003. The position that the Government have got themselves into is truly extraordinary. The treaty signed with the United States was unfair, because it was not reciprocal, but even that unfair treaty has not been ratified by the US. Yet, in December 2003, the Government proceeded to implement the Act by designating the USA under Sections 71 and 84, thus relieving the American authorities of the need to show, in the case of a request for extradition, evidence sufficient to show a case to answer.

What is worse, the new power given to the American authorities seems to have been used to extradite not terrorists, but British businessmen whose acts about which complaint is made were committed in Britain but have not attracted the adverse attention of the British authorities. The present position is quite unsustainable. I hope that the Bill does not leave this place without our concerns being properly addressed.

My Lords, I intend to restrict my remarks to some parts of the Bill that affect children and young people. I shall address Clauses 5 and 6 in relation to community support officers and, in Part 3, Clause 17, which deals with the role of local authorities in relation to crime and disorder, and Clauses 21 to 23, relating to parenting contracts, parenting orders and anti-social behaviour injunctions.

First, I shall discuss the measures to introduce standard powers and duties for community support officers, and to provide training for them, and the proposal for a sixfold increase in their number. There is no doubt that CSOs can play a very positive role in communities, adding to the ability of the police to keep order in our communities. Many of them have done very good work since their introduction. The Home Office's national evaluation of community support officers shows that they spend a great deal of their time dealing with young people. More than half do so daily, and four out of five do so at least once every week. They have therefore become a very important group in working with young people, particularly those in trouble. It is therefore important for it to be specified in their new standardised powers that they have an important preventive role to play in improving community relations and supporting communication between residents of all ages.

Following the dismantling of youth services through lack of resources in many areas, the Bill seems to propose a large force of surrogate youth workers. Why not therefore have the real thing instead? Why could not the considerable resources, which will undoubtedly have to be put into recruiting, equipping, training and paying these officers, have been put into the youth service, whose workforce we know is properly trained to do the job? This whole measure, I believe, comes at the problem from the wrong end. Here we are talking about recruiting a large body of people to enforce the sort of behaviour we would all like to see on our streets and to deal with the chaos caused when children behave badly. Instead, we could have prevented the problems and annoyance to residents in the first place, and avoided young people getting into trouble with the forces of law and order, if only we had put the resources into what I would call the front end—giving them something to do and somewhere to go instead of getting into trouble and annoying other people—instead of into the back end. How important, therefore, given the Government's approach, is the need for proper training of this new workforce and adequate resources to deliver such training.

The report I have just referred to asked CSOs about their training. Only 38 per cent felt it had prepared them to do their job, and 59 per cent felt they had encountered situations they did not feel trained to deal with. The Minister in another place, Hazel Blears, gave an assurance that community support officers would,

"receive proper and adequate training to deal with young people".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 21/3/06; col. 126.]

She did not specify what this training would involve.

Does the Minister agree that the best way in which to deal with this would be to make it a statutory requirement that CSOs—and, by the way, police officers—should receive training in the common core of skills and knowledge for the children's workforce developed by the DfES? This would equip them to deal appropriately and communicate well with children and young people. Given that "fit for purpose" now appears to be the fashionable phrase of choice for the Government, what we are looking for is a workforce that is fit for the purpose of dealing with young people on account of the training that it has received. Without it, CSOs may well fall into the same situation in which the police find themselves, in which young people feel intimidated, disrespected and stereotyped by the police, who they believe lack sympathy for and understanding of them. With appropriate training, CSOs would also realise that, far from always being the perpetrators of anti-social behaviour, young people are all too often the victims of it, as the three very sad cases in last week's papers of young people being stabbed and shot has shown.

I shall now discuss the power of CSOs in Clause 6 to remove truants in specified areas to designated places or to their school. The Government introduced twice-yearly sweeps in May 2002 that do not appear to have been very effective. Indeed, the latest DfES statistics on pupil absence in schools in England in 2004–05 show that it spent £885 million over seven years, but that the absences actually increased by 0.8 per cent last year. Although they may have some role to play, truancy sweeps are not the only answer, and it is simply perverse of the Government to plough more money and more legislative powers into this route when there is no research showing that it works.

There are many reasons for children being absent from school. Sometimes there are family difficulties, which need to be addressed by support services. Sometimes the parents are complicit in the absence. Sometimes the child is unhappy at school because of bullying, an inappropriate curriculum or poorly addressed learning difficulties. More CSOs sweeping the streets for children is not the answer. The answer is support for schools' bullying strategies, implementing a more appropriate curriculum and all the Tomlinson recommendations, and putting more resources into specialist help for children with learning difficulties. I am also concerned about young carers, who are often picked up by truancy officers. This invisible army of young people caring for adults at home needs support, not punishment, and more needs to be done to ensure that they do not lose their childhood or their education.

I shall now discuss the role of local authorities and the duty on a ward councillor in Clause 17 to respond to a call for action if approached by one of their voters complaining about anti-social behaviour. Frankly, I am amazed that the Government feel it necessary to put this duty on them. It seems to me only good practice and good service on the part of any ward councillor to respond to such complaints and ensure that the complainant knows what has been done. However, I suppose we have to accept that not all ward councillors are up to the standard of the best Liberal Democrat ward councillors—more is the pity. Although I support the creation of accessible and efficient means for local people to have their legitimate fears and complaints addressed, I am very concerned that young people will be further stigmatised and alienated from their communities. I believe that, before taking action, the local authority must consult widely, particularly young people, including those who are accused of the nuisance. If they do so, they will often get to the causes of the behaviour, and if they address those causes, they can not only address the historic bad behaviour, so that the young people perhaps make amends, but prevent a repetition of it. I would have thought this was an efficient way of going about it. However, it is not always done.

It is also essential that, when such a complaint is made, the local children's services should be asked to conduct an assessment of the child's needs to ensure a correct diagnosis and appropriate plan of action. Anti-social behaviour may be a cry for help about abuse in the home, poor parental control, poor nurturing and neglect, a drug or alcohol problem or many other causes that should be addressed if the objectives of the Every Child Matters agenda are to be fulfilled. Without such an assessment, local authorities are only guessing the cause or, even worse, not even bothering to guess but simply slapping an ASBO on the child. Sadly, we know that this has happened to many children with learning difficulties. Some have even been named and shamed—a matter to which I will return in a minute. Unless professionals get involved, how can the ward councillor properly address the matter in a long-term sustainable way? I think it should also be specified that the ward councillor should not publish the names of the young people complained about, but should take their action privately within the confines of the local authority and their own weekly surgery. Such publicity should not become a substitute for the real and effective action we all want to see.

On Clauses 21 to 23 on parenting contracts and orders, I should say at the outset that I believe the most effective interventions with parents are voluntary. However, I accept that some parents, having been forced by the courts to accept parenting support in some form or another, have found it enormously helpful and have expressed a wish that such help had been available long before the child's behaviour became such a problem.

However, I have to echo my noble friend Lady Linklater's major concerns about the extension of the powers to make parenting contracts or apply to the courts for parenting orders to social landlords, such as local authorities and housing associations. It is debatable whether parenting contracts can be considered truly voluntary when they appear in statute and their breach can lead to a parenting order from the court, breach of which brings a £1,000 fine. Section 25(2) of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 includes a welcome requirement for the local authority to agree to provide the support necessary to assist the parent to comply with the contract.

Definitions and thresholds of behaviour are widely drafted in this Bill. In Clause 21's amendments to the 2003 Act, new Section 25B(1)(a)(ii) allows a registered social landlord to enter into a parenting contract with parents whose child is "likely" to engage in such behaviour. Here we have another example of potential criminal sanctions against someone who has not yet done anything. This Government are fond of that; we see it in many pieces of legislation. If they are so keen to prevent something that might happen, why do they not put their efforts into support and prevention instead of these draconian measures designed to demonise children and penalise their parents for something that they might do? How can the Minister justify such a thing?

In Clause 22's amendments to the 2003 Act, new Section 26A(1)(b), refers to a local authority applying for a parenting order for parents of children who reside or appear to reside in the local authority area, leading to the ludicrous situation that an order could be made against a parent with whom the child does not live, and over whose behaviour he or she has little control. This seems downright daft, and I hope it will be addressed during the course of the Bill.

Finally, I return to the naming and shaming of young people who have been given ASBOs. When ASBOs were introduced, the Government claimed that they were not primarily for use with children and young people, yet we have heard from my noble friend Lady Linklater that about half of them are. The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 eroded children's rights to privacy by making a presumption of negative publicity for children subject to ASBOs. Their rights were further eroded by Section 141 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, by allowing children to be named and shamed if they breach an ASBO. There are major concerns about this, and we will table an amendment, first introduced in another place by Lynne Featherstone MP, to reinstate the 70 year-old safeguard for privacy for children.

Naming and shaming not only breaches children's rights, but is unnecessary, ineffective and dangerous. In rejecting my colleague's amendment in another place, the Minister, Hazel Blears, said:

"Publicity is not to punish or shame the individual, but is there to let the community know that action has been taken".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 23/3/06; col. 230.]

I suppose this is so that it will vote Labour at the next election. It is certainly not in the interests of the child in question. Publicity is unnecessary because local authorities have other ways of informing the public about what action is being taken, in the form of services for the child and his parents. It does not have to contain the name of the child. In the long term it is better for communities to be educated about these matters rather than be given details about the lives of individual children.

The practice is ineffective because it further alienates the child and destroys his self-esteem, and does not address the causes of the behaviour. It is dangerous because the child, or even his siblings, can be subject to bullying because of it. In a broadcast on Channel 4 in February, Rod Morgan, chair of the Youth Justice Board, said:

"It's not the sort of thing that would be tolerated in most countries and I think it's unfortunate that we have taken that route. It's often counterproductive".

Alvaro Gil-Robles, the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner, said in June last year:

"It seems to me . . . to be entirely disproportionate to aggressively inform members of the community who have no knowledge of the offending behaviour, and who are not affected by it, of the application of ASBOs. It seems to me that they have no business and no need to know".

I agree.

My Lords, this has not been a happy time for the Home Office. Those who have known it for many years can remember the days when, as a great department of state, its work on crime, crime prevention, law and justice was looked up to throughout the world. Sadly, it would be more difficult to assert that today.

We have before us another Home Office Bill, but not one that deals with the many problems that we have regularly highlighted in this House, such as the overuse of custody for vulnerable children and young people, the imposition of anti-social behaviour orders on children with serious health problems and disabilities, or the use of prison to deal quite inappropriately with some of the most needy, sick and sad women in our society. Instead, this Bill gives us more of a Home Office policy direction, which is in my view deeply flawed.

We have more centralisation, and erosion of local control and accountability. Many noble Lords will have received this morning, as I did, a letter from the president of ACPO, Mr Ken Jones, who says that what is at stake in this Bill is,

"an unprecedented and seismic shift in the balance of roles and responsibilities", within the tripartite system of police governance, which has served this country extremely well. It must, he says, be withdrawn. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for his helpful contribution in explaining just what Mr Jones means.

This Bill is more of the same in that it gives a range of authorities yet more power over mainly poor families struggling to bring up their children in a difficult environment. It is also more of the same in that it will involve massive reorganisation, and the creation of a new, heavily bureaucratic structure for five important inspectorates on the basis of shaky evidence that this will work, as well as the abolition of a highly respected British institution that is admired throughout the world and seen as a model—something we can all be proud of.

I shall concentrate on Parts 3 and 4. Part 3 takes a step further in the Government's attempt to deal with families with problems through controlling measures and stigmatisation, rather than help. It puts people with few resources at the mercy of authorities—not specialists in the area—that have extensive powers to tell them what they can and cannot do, but few powers to give them access to the special schools, intensive support and counselling, and medical help that they might need. I refer in particular to the powers in Clause 21 to enable a registered social landlord to enter into parenting contracts. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Linklater and Lady Walmsley, have already mentioned, a parenting contact is a substantial intrusion into someone's life. It requires a parent to attend counselling sessions, and can also require them to exercise control over their children in a specific way.

The National Federation of Housing Associations is concerned that its members will be required to take on a role for which they are not qualified, and become the responsible officers supervising these measures, rather than a probation officer, a social worker or a member of a youth offending team. Will housing officers be given this role, and if so what training will they get? More importantly, as they get to know the family and understand its problems, what access will they get to the services the family needs? For example, will they have the power to set up projects along the lines of the excellent one run in Dundee by NCH Action for Children Scotland, which gives dysfunctional families the tools and support they need to sort their problems out themselves, while building their self-respect and self-confidence?

This part of the Bill, in particular Clauses 17 and 18, is also of concern in that it continues and develops further the legislative framework within which local authorities are required to operate, based on the Home Office view that it knows better than local authorities how to create a safe environment with a high quality of life and social cohesion. Clause 17(3) requires a ward councillor to respond to a call for action from anyone living or working in the area which they represent on a crime and disorder matter, including anti-social behaviour and behaviour adversely affecting the environment, or a substance misuse matter in that area. Since anti-social behaviour is by definition in the eye of the beholder, and some people see two young black men walking down a street laughing and talking as a threat, have the Government considered the implications of this for race relations, especially given that, since the last local elections, there are, I believe, now 46 ward councillors from racist parties? It is disappointing that the Government have not taken this opportunity to give more control to local authorities by allowing those with a good track record to decide for themselves how to create a safe and happy community by channelling more money through local area agreements.

I know a couple of streets in London quite well. They are not through roads, but peaceful streets. They used to display notices for motorists saying, "Drive with care—play street until sunset". Children used to play, kick balls about and run up and down chasing each other, enjoying the summer evenings. The older residents had a chance to chat to the children, make friends and so bridge the generation gap. All that is no more. No children are seen or heard because parents are too frightened to let them out in case they are reported. The notices about the play street have come down and the only ones to go up are about a dispersal order, which states that no one under the age of 16 is allowed out after nine o'clock. Is this the reform and modernisation the noble Baroness is looking for? Yet this Bill will give us more of that approach.

Finally, I want to comment on the proposals for the amalgamation of inspectorates, an issue already referred to by many noble Lords. Your Lordships might be aware that on 23 May, Honduras and Bolivia ratified the optional protocol to the United Nations convention against torture. This brought the number of ratifications to 20 and thus the convention will come into force on 23 June. The UK Government were the third signatories and the Foreign Office has worked hard to encourage more countries to ratify. I suspect that the Minister was behind that in an earlier incarnation when she worked at the Foreign Office. The optional protocol aims to prevent torture by ensuring that places of detention are inspected by independent bodies. As my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham explained, all ratifying countries need to have in place what is called a "national preventive mechanism". We can assume that the Government believe that the Chief Inspectors of Prisons in Scotland, England and Wales will be a major part of that mechanism, yet there are grave doubts about how far the proposed new inspectorate will meet the Government's commitment to the United Nations.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, has reached the view that to meet the requirements of the optional protocol, the proposals in this Bill about the inspectorate should include the following: a requirement that the prison inspection function is carried out by actual visits to places of detention; a requirement of regularity of visits; stronger guarantees of independence, including the removal of the power of ministerial direction; an express power of unannounced inspection; express power for the inspectors to set their own standards; and an express requirement that prisons inspections be carried out by reference to human rights standards. The Joint Committee concluded that, without these specific guarantees, the absorption of the Prisons Inspectorate into a larger entity,

"would not be compatible with the requirement of the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Torture that there would be independent monitoring of places of detention at the national level".

The committee is also of the view that, without these guarantees, the new arrangements will,

"give rise to a greater risk of breaches of the human rights of prisoners, in particular their rights to life and not to be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment, because they are likely to lead to less effective preventive monitoring in practice".

The committee also said that it considered this essential function would be better protected if the prisons inspectorate retained its present independence from the proposed new inspectorate. No doubt we shall spend more time on this in Committee. We are duty bound to do so after the remarks made on 10 May in the other place by Dominic Grieve. He asked the Speaker to advise this House that the other place had been unable to do its duty to the Bill in relation to Part 4 and to tell us that we need to do,

"an awful lot of work".—[Hansard, Commons, 10/5/06; col. 430.]

I accept that Ministers have done a great deal to try to allay concerns and I am sure that the Home Office has worked as hard as it can to protect the office of the Chief Inspector of Prisons, but I have to say that I have read everything Ministers have said about the idea of the inspectorate for justice, community safety and custody and still find the arguments for it completely unconvincing. I look forward to the further stages of the Bill.

My Lords, a Metropolitan Police advertisement for the recruitment of community support officers has been displayed on the London Underground for some weeks, under the strap line, "Make a visible difference". As I see it, the whole point of community support officers, first introduced some three or four years ago, is to be uniformed and visible in order to provide a very necessary reassurance to law-abiding citizens and perhaps some measure of deterrent to would-be malefactors. I am pleased that there seems to be widespread approval of the relatively new creation of community support officers and their role in neighbourhood policing, especially dealing with so-called low-level crime and anti-social behaviour. It seems sensible to give them a standard set of powers and duties, as set out in Clause 5, but I welcome the reminder made in the briefing from the Local Government Association which I have just received, that a community support officer is distinct and separate from a police constable. These additional responsibilities must not detract CSOs from their core duties of visible policing and community work.

There was some concern, although perhaps it has disappeared because it has not been mentioned today, that CSOs might be a substitute for rather than an addition to the police force and, indeed, would make up for the somewhat declining number of special constables. However, I hope the Minister can confirm that it now seems that the number of special constables is rising once again.

I see that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, is now in his place—I rather missed him earlier. As has been the case with a number of other Bills, the noble Lord and others of a similar kind dealing with criminal justice issues have mentioned that this raises a cry that here is yet another Bill in which the Government are concentrating power on to themselves and centralising powers in various ways. When I look at this Bill I see a number of items which involve greater centralisation, but I also see a number of matters where local interests and powers are enhanced, hence the emphasis on neighbourhood policing, the greater involvement of communities and citizens in determining how their communities and police operate, and enhancing local crime and disorder reduction partnerships and their relationships with local authorities. It seems to me that the Minister, at the beginning of today's debate, was absolutely right to say that the traditional tripartite arrangement of the Home Secretary, the police authorities and the police is not being brought to an end. There is no question that it is being brought to an end. Of course, however, the Government must admit—and, surely, no government could do otherwise—that it is desirable for there to be some kind of adjustment to the balance between those three parties to the tripartite agreement.

The Government do not need to deny that some concentration is taking place. What they have to do is justify to Parliament what greater centralisation there may be in the Bill. As we have heard, accurately, this afternoon, because of the inadequacy of House of Commons debates, it often falls to the House of Lords to require this. Take, for example, in this Bill, the increase in the reserve powers to give directions to the police, provided for in Schedule 2. These powers can be justified because they are dependent on there being,

"a failure of a police force to discharge any of its functions in an effective manner".

It seems to me right that the Secretary of State should no longer be confined to information obtained from Her Majesty's inspectorate, but should be entitled to draw upon the findings of a public inquiry or national performance assessments.

Therefore, I regret to say that I am not sure that I agree with my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey. It is equally right that the Secretary of State should be required by the Bill to give the police authority and the chief constable the opportunity to make representations against the Secretary of State's prima facie view that the force is failing, and to propose remedial measures. As I understand it, only if serious performance problems persist is the Home Secretary entitled to intervene. In the other place, the Conservative spokesman seemed to pour scorn on the Government's assertion that these powers of direction would only be used as a last resort, but Schedule 2, in its detail, lays down clear duties to that effect on the Home Secretary. That is as it should be.

Many of your Lordships on both sides of the House have expressed concern about Part 4, which involves amalgamation of the various inspectorates dealing separately with prisons, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the probation service and court administration. The aim of these provisions is, to my mind, exceedingly ambitious, if not over-ambitious: it is to report on the functioning of the justice system as a whole. That nothing should be excluded and that the whole justice system should be inspected from time to time is fully justified and worth while. But, inevitably, it raises the question of whether the creation of this massive new body will result in a loss of focus, which each of the bodies to be replaced currently has. At present, though one could not have foreseen this six months ago—though one should have—it seems ironic that the proposal emanates from a department of state, the Home Office, which is itself subject to intense criticism for being unwieldy—or "cumbersome," as the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, put it earlier this afternoon—and unmanageable.

In the prison inspectorate there is particular concern about this matter, as we have heard from several voices this afternoon. In recent years we have had such excellent chief inspectors as the present one, Anne Owers, the late Judge Stephen Tumim, who came from a judicial background, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, from a military background. Each and every one of them, from their varying backgrounds, was an independent person from outside the Prison Service. That is the most vital matter. Small wonder, therefore, that there should be such anxiety as expressed here today, and indeed elsewhere, as to how one super-chief inspector can possibly have the ability and time to carry out the inspections required, and to concentrate not only on prisons, but on all the other responsibilities proposed by the Government. Anne Owers, the present Chief Inspector of Prisons, has written an article in the current New Statesman in which she describes the Government's plans as "reckless." I hope the Minister can give some comfort on this issue. I was more impressed by the four key points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, than by the 10 principles referred to as those of the Audit Commission.

My Lords, I start by apologising very humbly to the House and the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, in case I am unable to stay until the very end. I have a long-standing family commitment, which I cannot really get out of. This 52nd Bill is perhaps different from the others in being the first to be produced from the Home Office against the astonishing backdrop of the remarks of the Secretary of State, Dr John Reid, to the Home Affairs Committee on 23 May. He referred to the Home Office as "dysfunctional," "probably needing wholesale transformation" and,

"having inadequate leadership and management systems".

He ended with "not fit for purpose", a phrase which will join the lexicon of catalytic political phrases such as "a week is a long time in politics" and "the unacceptable face of capitalism" which echo down the decades. On Thursday we will have a debate, put forward by my noble friend Lord Fowler, which will enable some of us to make practical offerings as to how the Home Office might be able to improve its performance.

I want to make only two basic points. First, I want to say a word about this astonishing proposal to amalgamate the five inspectorates. Both sides of the House have gone into this in considerable detail, with no points of praise whatever. But, in a way, it is not astonishing—in my view, it is quite explicable—because the Home Office has always disliked criticism. Perhaps we all dislike criticism, but what the Home Office really dislikes is public criticism—and the whole function of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons must be, and has always been, to be able to publicly criticise the Home Office, the Government and the Prison Service for what is done. That is why, of course, in accordance with the best practice of "Yes Minister"—a skill which the Home Office has in spades—the Government have decided to dilute the possibility of future criticism by putting in five different inspectors-general. So, in future, the space occupied by the inspector-general of the Prison Service will be very much diluted.

I believe that this House is likely to reject the proposals for amalgamation in the Bill. If it does so, I suspect that it will be inclined to play ping-pong with the Bill and, from the way in which he has at least started, I have sufficient confidence in the new Home Secretary to believe that he will not be inclined to use the Parliament Act to force it through. I therefore think it is rather unlikely that this amalgamation will reach the statute book.

The only other thing I wish to do is to give the Minister notice that I intend to bring back, after Clause 10, my earlier proposal to give the police powers to close areas and to search for guns where they think they might be found. It will be the third time that I have brought forward the proposal. The Home Office argued against it in the past but its judgment is perhaps not quite so almighty nowadays. The Home Office says that it does not like it and the police say that they do not like it, but the police do not always get it right. For a long time they opposed identity cards but have now changed their minds.

The Minister said that one of the objects of the Bill is to update the existing powers of the police to ensure that they can operate successfully. On the earlier occasions on which I brought forward the proposal, it had the support of both my own party and the Liberal Democrats, and the Liberal Democrat Front Bench made some very convincing interventions. The real point of the proposal is to give a very clear public mandate for the police to do something about which the public mind enormously—that is, to control gun crime. I believe that if this power is in the Bill the public will have confidence that it can be used and will expect it to be used. This will help the police to use it, which will mean there will be less gun crime. The fact that it could also, to some extent, apply to knife crime is an added advantage.

With that brief intervention in the debate, I hope the House will make substantial changes to the Bill so that when it eventually reaches the statute book it will have more credit and more success than many of its 51 predecessors.

My Lords, one of the drawbacks of being last man in is that it is not one's task to sum up, although I cannot help referring to some of the quite outstanding contributions that have been made in today's debate. It also means, of course, that the best targets have already been peppered by well directed fire from far better shots than me.

This is a very important Bill which requires the fullest scrutiny because of its constitutional implications, a scrutiny which I am sure it will receive in this House. I am also sure that, with her customary conscientiousness and charm, the Minister will seek to deflect many of the genuine concerns expressed today. However, I have to advise her that she faces an uphill struggle on a number of fronts.

I hope the House will forgive me if I concentrate initially on an issue which has not attracted the most attention today but which, nevertheless, is of constitutional and operational importance—namely, the position of the magistracy. In doing so, I declare an interest as a magistrate, now on the supplementary list, and as a former member of a police authority, although, of course, as is customary in this House, I speak personally.

In my experience, the magistrates are invariably, in the world of the law, everyone's favourite aunts and uncles. From High Court judges to passing Ministers of every political hue—and, believe me, there have been a good many in recent years—they are invariably depicted as the jewel in the British judicial system. If I had a fiver for every time that I heard this in my time on the Bench, I could be well and truly in the money. Yet whenever changes are afoot because of some malfunction, who do we invariably see in the firing line? Why, justices of the peace. I entirely accept that delays, especially in dealing with minor offences, are a continuing scandal, but instead of dealing with the inadequacies and incompetence in other agencies, which are the principal reason for such delays, we must apparently instead give additional powers—particularly with regard to bail and conditional cautions—to the CPS and the police, thereby cutting out the inconvenience of a judicial hearing.

Bail is a serious matter, both for the individual concerned and possibly for the public too in certain instances. Correct assessment of cases requires both training and experience and the sort of publicity which is only available through open court, with reasons provided for decisions reached. However unfair it may be, there will undoubtedly be a feeling of a done deal—perhaps even a stitch-up—between the prosecuting authorities if these measures are implemented as they stand. In some instances, defendants could find themselves with a criminal record despite never having appeared in court. I should add that the Select Committee on the Constitution has drawn attention to this potential constitutional danger.

I turn now to the matter of the police authorities and magisterial representation. Quite apart from the widespread unease about the composition of such bodies being a matter for secondary legislation—and, therefore, basically left to the whim of a Home Secretary—the proposal to remove the obligation to have magistrate representatives on a police authority in future beggars belief and has aroused the opposition of the Magistrates' Association, the Association of Police Authorities and the police themselves. Try as I have to find some scintilla of a logical argument for this proposal, I have failed, other than to hazard a guess that in an effort to get the size of future authorities down—something which, in itself, may not be a bad thing—the Home Office has said, to paraphrase Shakespeare, "Let's kill all the JPs".

But if we are, at long last, trying to get joined-up and expert advice in the fight against organised crime and terrorism, what sort of sense does it make to get rid of what is arguably the most experienced element in these matters on any authority? Is it too much to suggest that one obligatory magistrate stays on and, say, one of the business representatives drops off, anathema though that may be to the present Government? With, correctly, so many elected local representatives on the body, can I—appropriately from these Benches you may feel—make a plea for at least some independent element, something which would be provided by the retention of a representative from the Bench?

Turning to other matters, in principle I welcome the creation of the National Policing Improvement Agency, particularly in relation to its powers of overseeing good practice in procurement and in being able to check on the contracting-out in design and delivery. In all the justified excitement and unease about future police force mergers, I have now—forcefully, I hope—made the point on two separate and recent occasions that, irrespective of whether one ends up with 43, 33, 23 or 13 forces, or any other number one cares to think of, if there is IT and system incompatibility the war against serious crime and terrorism is fatally compromised. Again, in this context, does the creation of this agency signal an end to the indifference of the Home Office to what equipment chief constables order on their own initiatives—equipment which, because of Treasury constraints, is often the cheapest available and frequently incompatible with other forces? Also, what proposals are there to gather together the separate Special Branch elements which reside within individual police forces where they are scattered about the country, in what has been a historic and slightly arbitrary way?

There are of course many other concerns raised by the Bill, not least those relating to the establishment of a Chief Inspector for Justice, Community Safety and Custody and how that will affect in particular the prison inspection regime referred to by my noble friends Lord Ramsbotham and Lady Stern, and the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, in what were very powerful speeches indeed. I will only say that I share their dismay at this possible infliction on the system.

However, I finally refer to something that is absent from the Bill but which has been referred to by several noble Lords today—the omission of any mechanism to amend the Extradition Act passed by this House in 2003 in so far as it affects our relations with the US. I remember the occasion well. We were invited to support yet another measure in the fight against terrorism and I—and I suspect many other noble Lords—voted for the measure on that basis. Was I naive? Yes, in the light of subsequent events, and short-sighted and unimaginative too—I plead guilty on all those charges. But two principal developments have emerged from the situation. The number of requests for extradition from US authorities for non-terrorist cases has far exceeded those with possible terrorist associations. Secondly, the reciprocity promised by the US Government has failed to materialise. Thanks to opposition in Congress, possibly due, as some believe, to reluctance to part with IRA suspects, who are literally leading the life of Reilly on the American subcontinent, there is little sign of the Act being implemented there in the future. This Bill offers an opportunity to correct that inequity and I am hopeful that, not for the first time, this House will take up its role as the defender of our liberties.

My Lords, this has been an absolutely fascinating, thought-provoking and clear introduction to the Police and Justice Bill at Second Reading. I start on a relatively supportive note by welcoming the creation of the new National Policing Improvement Agency; the harmonisation and extension of powers for community support officers, with some qualification; the tackling of problems caused by computer hacking; the tackling of illegal possession of indecent photographs of children; the taking-on by the Independent Police Complaints Commission of complaints of misconduct in the area of immigration and asylum; and the inclusion of local authorities in the scrutiny process of crime and disorder in the community, with some concerns which I shall express later.

That having been said, there are plenty of areas about which I have severe reservations. As we have heard, we have had in place for 42 years a system of policing in this country which has served us well. It separated out the powers of the Secretary of State to direct policing broadly in the way that the country and the service itself wished, it created a local system to oversee and scrutinise how the police service was run on behalf of local communities—that is the job of the police authorities—and it allowed the chief constable, as head of the local force, autonomy on how he or she directed the actual work of the police. This was called the tripartite system of policing. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, explained its principles very clearly and concisely, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, also aired her deep concerns about the matter.

The tripartite system is when three partners work together to produce a service that will be democratically acceptable and, in the phrase that we have come to learn is synonymous with policing, "fit for purpose", although we have heard other uses of that phrase this afternoon. I say that this was the tripartite system of policing because this Bill is about to change much of that. At a stroke, it creates an entirely different balancing of the system. In Part 1 of the Bill, we see the Home Secretary giving himself the ability to direct both police authorities and police forces without having to come before Parliament to justify his actions. That blows apart the delicate but necessary processes that have been carefully constructed to form acceptable policing principles for almost 50 years. It is not for the Government to sweep away parliamentary scrutiny of policing and the proposal flies in the face of good governance of the service, something that I thought this Government wished to improve and uphold.

Of course, administrative detail can be put into secondary legislation. That is right and proper for a modern, functioning service that needs some flexibility in how it operates within the system. But the key powers, functions and, above all, principles that enable the tripartite relationship to continue must be placed in primary legislation. A number of noble Lords expressed similar sentiments, notably the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris. I mentioned the NPIA, which is a body that I support, and I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, had to say about it. A great deal of its constitution is to be put into secondary legislation, so the Home Secretary will be able to tinker about unchallenged whenever he feels the urge. Why should not elements about the basic governance of the agency be set out more fully in primary legislation? It is a new body and I am sure that Parliament will very much wish to see how it operates and be able to change its terms if necessary.

Although I welcome the creation of the NPIA, I would just like to put on record my thanks and great admiration for the excellent work done over very many years by Centrex and its predecessors, which have trained our police officers to such high standards and to be the envy of most of the world. The training centres throughout the country have produced thousands of able police officers and I know that your Lordships would want to thank all the staff at those centres—many of which have now closed due to the reorganisation of training—for all their hard work, commitment and dedication over the years. I had the great honour of taking passing-out parades at a number of those establishments and I regret their closure immensely.

As a former chair of a police authority and member of the National Crime Squad Service Authority and various other national police bodies because of my role as a former deputy chair of the Association of Police Authorities—deputy to, of course, our excellent chair the noble Baroness, Lady Henig—I have seen over the years the changing face of training. Some aspects in this Bill worry me, not least the training needs of community support officers. As I indicated earlier, I welcome the further work that they will be doing, but I am concerned about whether the new powers proposed for them will be adequately carried out. That means proper training, as my noble friends Lord Dholakia and Lady Walmsley reminded us. Will the Minister guarantee that proper training will be available for them all? Who will pay for it? Would it not be better to look at other ways of tackling non-attendance at school than by sending the CSOs out on a truancy sweep? My noble friend Lady Linklater of Butterstone referred to that. Should the CSOs not be developing diversionary activities, listening to children and playing an important preventive role in improving community relations, rather than being seen as always wielding a big stick? Again, this was referred to by my noble friend Lady Walmsley.

The evidence cited by the DfES in its statistical report Pupil Absence in Schools in England: 2004/2005 indicates that unauthorised absences have increased, as was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. This comes after the Government introduced twice-yearly truancy sweeps in May 2002. We will at a later stage be questioning other clauses of the Bill that deal with children, notably with reference to crime and anti-social behaviour.

Schedule 2 and Clause 2 of the Bill make enormous numbers of amendments to the Police Act 1996. In essence, it is a good idea to ensure that BCUs have coterminosity with the local authority boundaries. But BCUs are not autonomous entities, so why do they need to become statutory constructs? The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, touched on this point. My concern is that, if they are made such, that may be the precursor to other, more radical developments, such as direct funding for BCUs, bypassing both police authorities and chief officers. But I do not want to give the Secretary of State any more ideas.

I am concerned about the changes to the current duties of police authorities to obtain the views of the community on policing. This was previously in primary legislation and now moves to secondary legislation, once again enabling the Secretary of State to order authorities to make consultation arrangements. It is a fundamental responsibility of police authorities to consult communities on how the police function. There are wide powers in secondary legislation to determine and change the membership of CDRPs. We will find out more of the Government's thinking in Committee.

I have some concerns over the proposals for local authority representation in proposed strategic areas, mainly because of the large number of councils involved, given that the Bill seems to suggest that all district councils should be given representation on what will become the new strategic police authorities. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, referred to this, as did the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. I think that I would want that, if legislation suggested that I could have it. On top of that, how will political balance be guaranteed under the proposals for police authority members? Will this not mean huge new authorities to cope with the disproportion of representation across a huge new policing area? Just how many seats on each of these authorities will there be?

One of the most difficult matters for me to accept is the power to be given to the Secretary of State to appoint a chair and one or more vice-chairs of a police authority. I well remember the fierce battle that we had on all sides of the political divide when this measure was originally proposed by the then Conservative Home Secretary, Kenneth Clarke. It is iniquitous that the police authority cannot be held responsible for choosing its own chair any more. That is wrong and completely unacceptable. We will closely examine other paragraphs in this schedule dealing with membership of police authorities. All the regulations, of course, can be made by negative resolution—so no parliamentary debate, again.

The proposal to remove from police authorities the need to apply best-value reviews, performance plans, audit and so on is just plain stupid. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich felt strongly about this, as did the noble Lord, Lord Harris. How can police authorities fulfil a duty to secure best value without having the ability to conduct best-value reviews? If reviews are conducted properly, they are the mechanism through which problems are both identified and resolved. For example, a review team would identify the functions being performed, challenge their need, discover missing functions and develop smarter practices. Just because such a mess has been made of best value throughout government departments does not mean that other organisations cannot undertake best value and maintain continuous improvement in their operations.

I spoke recently against the proposals dealing with force mergers as outlined by the Secretary of State and I agree with the sentiments expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns. I will refer to them briefly here. Underlying many of these proposed changes is, of course, the looming prospect of large strategic forces, which we will do all that we can during the passage of the Bill to resist. In no way will they improve local accountability. How can they, if they are far larger than those in the present boundaries? How will the needs of the rural areas be protected from the inevitable demands of the high crime urban areas within the same huge force area? Again, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, referred to this, as did my noble friend Lord Dholakia and the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. What do the Government have to say about their own Home Office strategy unit report of 2004? The report said:

"Evidence from other sectors suggests that merger can be a costly, protracted exercise which does not always deliver expected benefits and inevitably causes distraction for management and staff".

The truth is that one report, concluded—after many drafts—with the political direction that the Secretary of State desired, has decided the fate of local democracy and its ability to scrutinise effectively the most important organisation affecting our lives and security. It is a bitter day when Government fail to listen to the clearly expressed will of the people. People do not want these large forces and the Government would do well to heed them.

We oppose the removal of magistrate members from police authorities, as does the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby. I declare an interest in this as a former magistrate and now a supplemental magistrate member. Magistrates bring a much needed wider perspective to how policing is practically administered and we will be resisting moves to take them off police authorities.

New powers given to the Home Secretary will allow him to decide what issues a police authority looks into, requiring them to determine objectives and to issue plans and reports. Again, that is more intervention from the Secretary of State. We have grave concerns about the parenting contracts—my noble friends Lady Linklater and Lady Walmsley spoke about this, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Stern. Once again the phrase,

"or is likely to engage", in anti-social behaviour appears. Like my noble friend Lady Walmsley, I ask whether the Government are saying that they are now able to guess what a child might do. That indeed would be an amazing assumption. These orders should be used not only to prevent anti-social behaviour but also to promote the well-being of the child or young person.

To extend these powers to registered social landlords is not appropriate and I urge the Minister to think again about that. Where do the registered social landlords get their special expertise in deciding whether a child should be subject to one of these orders? The specialist resources needed to do this properly surely come from within local authorities and other specialist agencies.

Under the crime and anti-social behaviour provisions, will the Government consider reinstating reporting restrictions for children subjected to ASBO proceedings? These are important aspects which touch on the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the removal of the safeguards of reporting restrictions in these proceedings may well violate children's rights under Article 37 of the convention and possibly Articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR. There are also concerns about holding children in prison. My noble friend Lord Carlile of Berriew's investigation into the use of restraint, segregation and strip searching of children in prison was extremely damning of our practices in this country. My noble friend Lady Linklater made reference to this. The Youth Justice Board's findings also showed that, in the 12 months to September 2005, painful restraint was used 768 times in the four privately run secure training centres alone, resulting in 51 child injuries. Twenty-nine children have died in penal custody since 1990, nine of whom were on remand. No public inquiry into a child's death in custody has ever taken place. That is an appalling scandal. I believe that it would now be appropriate for the Government to end penal custody for children and to look at other methods of securing appropriate punishment.

Most speakers have commented on the merging of the inspectorates. I have great unease about the proposal. The specialist skills and knowledge of the people presently occupying these organisations is unique and invaluable. It was a great privilege to hear the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, speak from his very specialist knowledge base. For those people to lose their ability to undertake the crucial task of scrutiny of our police, prisons, the CPS, the probation service and court administration would be catastrophic. I hope that the Minister will look again at how they could be enabled to work more closely rather than to impose such enormous changes on the entirety of the services that they so professionally and ably supply.

The amendments to the Extradition Act in Schedule 14—to which a number of my noble friends, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, the noble Lords, Lord Hurd of Westwell and Lord Waddington, and the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, referred—also give us some concern. Previously, a requesting authority had to establish a prima facie case to obtain extradition. Now all that is needed is proof of identity before sending someone to their fate. As we have heard, we were told that an order which allowed extradition to the US would be followed by US ratification of the treaty. That was back in December 2003 yet nothing appears to have been done about it. Should not this now be rethought properly and proportionate measures be taken if extradition is deemed necessary?

Finally, I am glad that I am not the only one who believes that this Bill is a mish-mash of different provisions, repeals and revocations. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich feels as I do. There are five and a half pages of them. The sheer number of Acts being amended and re-amended, and those that have previously been subject to multiple variation through statutory instrument and are now further amended by the Bill before us, is, quite frankly, depressing. Is it not high time that we consolidated much of these proposed measures into coherent, sensible legislation, understandable to everyone? That would be a good power for the Secretary of State to take unto himself. I commend that action to him.

My Lords, I add my thanks to the Minister for her introduction to the Bill, and thank noble Lords who have contributed to this Second Reading debate. There have been knowledgeable, powerful and, indeed, passionate contributions from all sides of the Chamber that have highlighted only too clearly the fact that this Bill has a very long way to go before it meets the high standards which this House sets for legislation.

We recognise the negative impact that crime and anti-social behaviour can have upon neighbourhoods and communities, in particular upon the lives of children and young people, who are the future of our country. However, on balance, I argue that the Bill provides more cause for concern than comfort. Three significant areas that have been raised today are police reorganisation, the merging of the criminal justice inspectorates and our extradition arrangements with the US.

I will not go into the detail of what has already been so aptly set out, but suffice it to say that once again we are faced with smoke and mirrors as the Government claim that they are handing the power back to communities, making local policing more accountable, yet all the while the Bill increasingly centralises power in the hands of the Secretary of State.

I have been both an elected county council member of a police authority and a magistrate member. I wholeheartedly support the views of the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, on magistrate members of a police authority.

We have good grounds for caution regarding the powers set out in Part 1 when we consider how the Home Secretary's predecessor, having failed in his use of "bully and bribe" tactics, is now forcing through changes of great constitutional significance despite little consultation and strong opposition from the police authorities. Indeed, I believe that the four chief constables of Wales have recently withdrawn support for the restructuring and have submitted a formal objection. As we have heard in recent days, legal challenges have begun around the country. I hope that the Minister can confirm whether that is correct.

My honourable friend in another place highlighted the report of Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, Denis O'Connor, on which the Government are relying for the police merger plan, and made this very point:

"The constitutional implications . . . are significant".

This Bill will confer very significant new powers on the Home Secretary to interfere with police forces and authorities. Clause 2 will give him wide powers to prescribe the membership of police authorities, and new powers to intervene in police forces. That will scrap the statutory duty on police authorities to determine local policing objectives, replacing it with additional rules from the Home Secretary. It will put basic command units on a statutory footing—an apparently unnecessary provision, but one that the Association of Police Authorities believes may be the precursor to more direct Home Office control. I reiterate the association's warning that,

"These provisions represent a fundamental constitutional change, and a significant shift in the balance of power within the tripartite relationship".

Clauses 4 to 6 in Part 1 address issues to do with community support officers. We will seek to tease out the detail and address the concerns of the Standing Committee on youth justice, among others. I am glad that the Standing Committee and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children have produced briefing and a child impact assessment on the Bill, and look forward to full debates on those issues in Committee.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and my noble friend Lord Hurd have highlighted the combined concerns of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, the Prison Reform Trust, the Magistrates' Association, NACRO and the Howard League for Penal Reform, to name but a few. There is an overriding concern that the prisons inspectorate's wealth of experience, expertise and independence will be lost in the proposed single inspectorate in Part 4. That would be a seriously backward step for a body which has obtained universal recognition and respect for its work, as was so vividly illustrated by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.

We will pay careful attention to details of Part 6 on extradition. As your Lordships have said, there are concerns surrounding the lack of safeguards in the Extradition Act 2003. There is a significant debate to be had regarding the balance of the UK-US extradition treaty, which remains a one-sided operation until it is ratified by Congress—a prospect that I fear is not close to hand.

The Bill also provides for the amalgamation of various police and court functions, for example powers regarding bail conditions and conditional cautions in Clauses 7 and 12. These have given rise to fears that the police will become investigator, prosecutor and judge, and that extending these powers could give rise to summary justice made, as the Bill currently stands, without proper support or training. The Magistrates' Association is not alone in considering that such processes are contrary to the principles of justice if punishment is to be imposed without the involvement of the judiciary. The traditional separation of powers is a vital part of our constitution and is entrenched in previous legislation. It should not be altered lightly.

We must not forget to set this Bill against the context of chaos at the Home Office. One cannot help but think, as we turn our attention to what my noble friend Lady Anelay has highlighted as the 52nd Home Office Bill since 1997, about what is potentially slipping through the net in legislative terms, especially when the bulk of the Bill is not discussed in the guillotined debates in the other place. Indeed, in the light of the new Secretary of State's comments on reorganisation, I wonder whether we are to expect additional new clauses from the Government. I hope the Minister will indicate whether that is so and undertake to give the Members of this House the fullest time possible for their consideration should they arise.

Our detailed scrutiny is all the more important, especially if we are to rebuild public confidence in our police forces. Effective policing, including preventing, reducing and detecting crime and providing safety and security, is at the heart of civil society. I believe all Members of your Lordships' House agree with the aspirations of the recent Respect Action Plan, to create a decent, civil society in which people can shape their lives and participate fully in their communities. We on these Benches look forward to working constructively with the Minister and her team, throughout the progress of the Bill, on the significant and varied concerns raised here today. But, first, we look forward to her response.

My Lords, I thank all who have participated in the debate. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, in saying that we have had a comprehensive, well ordered and well informed discourse on these matters. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, that of course we accept that legislation is not the panacea for all ills, which is probably why we have had 52 different Bills since coming into government.

However, it provides us with an important tool or series of tools which we can use judiciously to provide the appropriate framework to help to deliver productive and lasting change—something on which my noble friend Lady Henig alighted. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, for the compliments he pays me, and I hope he finds that when I answer, I tend to put matters in an accurate, precise and proportionate way—something that is not always true of the way in which others depict the Home Office in the press. Therefore, I hope he and the House gain a little comfort in knowing that the Home Office has a vision which is being implemented in an appropriate way. The fact that we expect and anticipate change does not mean that that change cannot be productive.

In devising the changes that we put forward in the Bill—as we have in the 52 others that have delighted your Lordships' House—we have tried to rely on empirical data to help us to shape them so that they will provide safety and confidence for the people of this country, as they demand. We understand the need to ensure that intelligence-led policing is properly embedded in the needs of the community and local accountability.

Over the past nine years, we have understood that working in partnership is the main means of delivering just and effective change. The silo-based working that characterised the previous 18 years was not a recipe for success and is not a model that anyone now wishes to adopt. The noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Waddington, know that partnership can and often does entail listening to good advice from wherever it may come. That good advice is, and has been, incorporated into our legislation.

The changes that the Bill brings have to be viewed against the background of all the other changes that have emanated from the work done by Lord Justice Auld in Justice for All, including the development of CJIT—the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, highlighted our use of IT and ensuring there is synergy. There is also the work that we have done through the National Criminal Justice Board, the local criminal justice boards, the local strategic partnerships, the local area agreements and the crime and disorder reduction partnerships. All those things working together to bring about change have enabled us to do what we needed to do.

I am delighted that many of the measures in the Bill have been welcomed and seen as improvements. Part 1, for example, includes the improvement agency and the work of the CSOs. I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich that they have been shown to be a real success. Many who were sceptical about the work of the CSOs have put that scepticism to one side because of the good work that has been done. There is a need for a greater spread of good practice and to ensure that those who engage in that work have a fair and clear remit in which to do that. We believe that the procedures in the Bill will enable us to do just that. I can reassure noble Lords—I agree with my noble friend Lord Borrie—that the number of special constables has increased and that CSOs have not been replaced in that sense.

My noble friends Lord Borrie and Lady Henig and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, all touched on training. Noble Lords will know that training was specifically referred to in the Police Reform Act 2002; it already provides for training for PCSOs, and this Bill will do nothing to change that.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, that housing departments will be included. We had a very interesting debate. I am sure noble Lords will remember the last time we spoke about anti-social behaviour orders and how they should apply to housing authorities. I am sure we shall read all those debates again, but I remind the House that they can be very judiciously and successfully used by those helping families to rehabilitate themselves in a housing setting. We would obviously wish to preserve that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, was right to divide our debates into three areas: first, the changes to police authorities; secondly, the merging of the five inspectorates; and, thirdly, the way in which the Extradition Act will work, which was touched on lightly but importantly.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich referred to the figure of 30,000 conditional cautions. That comes, in part, from Patrick Carter's review, in which he suggested that up to 25,000 offenders could be dealt with by the use of conditional cautions. We shall debate that issue and see how far it goes, particularly when we consider the conditions.

The meat of the debate relates to the matters raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia: the process of restructuring and the way in which we have dealt with it. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, that this has not been rushed; it is not a case of restructuring happening overnight. We began a national debate on the future of the existing 43 forces' structure in November 2003 in the Green Paper Policing: Building Safer Communities Together. Moreover, as required by the Police Act 1996, we are in the middle of a four-month period during which police and local authorities may submit objections to the Home Secretary's proposals for force mergers. Naturally, we shall consider any objections very carefully before inviting this House and another place to agree the amalgamation orders.

I can assure noble Lords that restructuring will not undermine neighbourhood policing; forces need the capacity and resilience to provide protective services to safeguard neighbourhood policing teams from the repeated extraction of police officers, for example, when they have to man a huge murder inquiry which just sucks people from the frontline into that activity.

The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, raised an issue that was echoed by a number of noble Lords: the role of primary legislation and what would be in it. Primary legislation will continue to provide that police authorities comprise a majority of councillor members and a minority of other independent members. Similarly, the core functions of police authorities will continue to be set in primary legislation. The duty to maintain an effective and efficient force, the power to appoint and remove chief officers, the duty to hold the chief constable to account and the power to set the budget and policing precepts will be contained in primary legislation.

I wish to reassure the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, that we, too, value the contribution of magistrates to the work of police authorities, but guaranteed seats for magistrates necessarily limits the skills and experience base of police authority members, and we have to draw from as wide a pool of candidates as possible. It will still be open to magistrates to apply to be appointed as independent members and I remind noble Lords that magistrates come from a wide spectrum of professions and bring with them a huge amount of skills and ability—and many magistrates will find that they wear a number of hats, like the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby. Therefore, they will be more than able to fulfil their duties in appropriate posts on a police authority.

My noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey raised a number of telling issues with which we will have to deal in this debate. We are placing basic command units on a statutory footing for one reason only: to mandate coterminosity with local authority boundaries. Common boundaries are essential to ensure that partnerships work effectively between the police and local authorities, and we have no plans directly to fund BCUs. Much of our past success has been by joint partnership working, and coterminosity has been of benefit.

My noble friend also mentioned elections of police authority chairs. I confirm that outside London the chairmen of police authorities will continue to be appointed by the members of the authority. We have consulted on alternative arrangements for the Metropolitan Police Authority that would provide a stronger role for the Mayor and we are considering the responses to that consultation. I hope that that reassures my noble friend. Our starting point regarding the inclusion of the PSUs and the inspectorate in the NPIA is recognising that policing is and must remain a locally delivered service. For policing, as is the case for any other public service, some key responsibilities must either be laid down by government or organised on a nationwide basis. We envisage grouping those national responsibilities in three main areas, and this legislation is intended to reinforce and clarify those. The first is the Home Secretary's responsibilities for strategic direction and arm's-length performance monitoring; the second is the NPIA's role in supporting and improving operational policing; and the third is the inspectorate's role for independent policing assessments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, asked me who had brought proceedings in relation to the Home Office's actions. Cleveland and West Mercia police authorities have commenced judicial review proceedings. They seek to challenge the Home Secretary's notice to merge forces in the north-east and West Midlands. We believe that the judicial reviews are premature, as no final decisions have been taken, and the four chief constables in Wales continue to support in principle an all-Wales police force.

I now turn to the issue that has much concerned noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Hurd, Lord Dholakia and Lord Ramsbotham, the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, my noble friend Lord Borrie, the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford—who is looking absolutely delightful now in his appropriate attire and is still with us—and the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby. That issue is the characteristics of the independence of the inspectorate. We have debated that on a number of occasions and have repeatedly said that it must be preserved in any new inspectorate.

In relation to the Seebohm committee, I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, that we do learn from our lessons. It is interesting that Seebohm got rid of the specialist and replaced it with the generalist. That is not what we intend to do. We intend not to let the sort of specialisation that disappeared under Seebohm go in this amalgamation, but to preserve it. If I may respectfully say so, the trick that was not used during that amalgamation was understanding that which the departments had—the childcare officers, the specialisations in relation to families—therefore they amalgamated and merged without keeping those specialisations within the system to enable them to work together in partnership. We have learned that lesson, so in this new inspectorate we intend to preserve what we have and build upon it.

I shall explain more specifically why that is so. We have repeatedly given assurances that neither the power of direction, nor anything else in the Bill, can be used to set the inspection criteria. The wording of the power of direction was agreed in detail with the prison inspectorate to make sure that that cannot be done; nor can it be used to prevent the chief inspector criticising government policy. I repeat the assurance given by my colleagues in the other place: the chief inspector will be free to criticise government policy where that provides the wrong outcomes for prisoners, detainees or other service users.

Perhaps I may deal with questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, and particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. We agree that prisons inspection is different and have preserved that distinction in the statute. We will continue also to preserve it in the work to develop the practicalities of the business strategy of the new inspectorate. The new chief inspector will, like the inspector of prisons, be an independent statutory office holder appointed by the Queen—so there will be absolutely no diminution in the independence of the office. There will be unannounced inspections. Those and the ability to undertake them and to set the inspection criteria will be totally in the purview of the chief inspector, and that will continue as now. Furthermore, the procedure of independent reporting by the chief inspector to the Home Secretary has been made more robust and more independent. Not only will the chief inspector continue to report on prisons to the Home Secretary, but he or she will be required to publish all reports and will be able to require the Home Secretary to lay any report before Parliament. Those are new provisions that even the existing Chief Inspector of Prisons does not enjoy in statute.

My Lords, I am grateful for the care with which the noble Baroness is responding to our points. She has been talking for five or six sentences about the chief inspector. Am I right to assume that she is referring to the chief inspector of the joint inspectorate, not the person who will actually be in charge of inspecting prisons himself or herself, and that the noble Baroness is talking about the panjandrum on top of the whole set-up, which is quite different?

My Lords, our proposal is that someone within the inspectorate will specifically be charged with carrying out the functions currently undertaken by the Chief Inspector of Prisons.

My Lords, will that person have access to the Home Secretary and the other facilities that the noble Baroness has described?

My Lords, we will discuss the detail of how direct access will be effected but our intent is that the person who undertakes those inspections will have strengthened rather than reduced powers compared with the current powers. The noble Lord will also be aware that the current inspector does not have an opportunity to look at the wider issues. For instance, issues that have come up repeatedly in inspections are whether the correct people are in fact currently in prison, whether imprisonment is appropriate for them and so on. With end-to-end offender management, the new inspectorate will be better able to respond to such issues than is possible with the current, silo-based inspections. I could use the word "further", but one of the advantages of joining up the system is that it becomes a system and not, as it has been hitherto, a series of guttural stops that are disjointed and do not help to develop and deliver the synergy and outcomes that we seek. We think that that can be delivered in future. The special duty stands apart from the chief inspector's other duties and will demand permanent dedication of ample resources and attention by the chief inspector as a result.

The prisons inspectorate does not inspect the Prison Service; that assertion was made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. It does so indirectly through the supervision of prisons because the prison inspector is able to see how the Prison Service discharges its duty and thereby is able to inspect. Concerns were raised about the powers of direction with respect to government policy but that will not restrict the ability of the chief inspector to set criteria in the way that we have just described.

We are in no doubt that the inspectorate will continue to fulfil the role of the prison inspectorate in meeting the UK's international human rights obligations under, in particular, the optional protocol. We are also clear that the Chief Inspector for Justice, Community Safety and Custody will have a special duty to report on the treatment and conditions of those in prison and will, by virtue of a remit that embraces the justice system as a whole, be a more powerful public presence than is currently the case. We say that this is a strengthening and not a reduction.

The wording of the powers of direction was agreed with the prisons inspectorate on the basis that it cannot, as I have made clear, prevent the inspectorate setting its own criteria or the chief inspector criticising. In saying that, I hope that I have satisfied the noble Baroness, Lady Stern. I absolutely accept that when we look at the detail of this in Committee, there will be a proper opportunity for us to scrutinise how this will work in practice.

I turn finally to extradition. I am very much aware that this issue has excited a lot of attention and that we have not had the swift implementation in the United States that we had anticipated. I assure noble Lords that active discussions have continued in that regard. The noble Lord, Lord Hurd, strongly expressed his anxiety about the working of the US-UK extradition arrangements. However, his anxiety is not based on the facts as they have turned out to be. The majority of extradition requests from the United States are not for white-collar crimes; such crimes are a small minority of those for which extradition is requested. They are and always have been requests for people accused of financial crimes, but very few of them can be characterised as white-collar crime—crimes committed against one's employer. The Bill's provisions are the small, technical provisions that I have mentioned and they are absolutely necessary. I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, proposes to treat this like a passing bus on to which she can jump; I am sure that we can deal with such joyriding in an appropriate manner.

I look forward to discussing this Bill in all its detail, with all its difficulties and with a full panoply, in Committee and during its latter stages.

On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.