Lords Sitting of 17 February 1994

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Worcester.):The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

Overseas Aid Programme
Lord Judd Lord Judd asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is now the proportion of the aid budget devoted to the aid and trade provision.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, in this financial year £110 million—some 6 per cent. of the gross aid programme—is allocated to the aid and trade provision. On present estimates we expect to spend about £90 million on the ATP. The difference will be used elsewhere in the aid programme.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the Minister stand by the criteria of degree of poverty, sound development, good government and human rights as the basis of all the aid programme? How then have Indonesia, Malaysia and China been leading beneficiaries of ATP? How can that be reconciled with one-third of the population of East Timor having been massacred? What specific action is the Minister taking to ensure that in future all assistance under the ATP as originally envisaged has to be justifiable in sound developmental terms?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, indeed the elements and objectives of the aid programme, as I set them out again last October in a speech to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, stand. We have revised the ATP programme and the level above which ATP will not apply is the 700 dollar GNP per capita threshold. We intend to keep to that threshold. That revision was arrived at over the past few years. We are quite certain that it is the right way to help British industry. I believe that the noble Lord was a Foreign Office Minister when his government introduced the ATP scheme in 1977. I wonder whether he means that in the unlikely event of his party forming the next Administration, that aid instrument, which has created thousands of jobs throughout the land, will be wound up. If so, he is letting down British industry and British jobs.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the question now being asked is whether perhaps the ATP should be administered by the DTI?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I am convinced that the ATP programme has a real part to play in answering developmental needs. That is why the threshold for ATP is down to 700 dollars GNP per head.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, in view of the very high regard in which the Minister is held in this House, is it not sad that she should have to justify the deal with
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Malaysia which, as documents have shown, quite clearly linked an aid programme and a series of arms deals? Was not the arrangement reached behind her back and presumably without consultation with her? Could she say by what criteria Malaysia is now entitled to receive aid from our very small programme which, as she has often said, puts emphasis on the poorest countries?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I thought that the noble Lord would know that on the criteria of the 700 dollar threshold, which I mentioned a few moments ago, Malaysia is no longer eligible for ATP for new projects. When a decision is made by a government, we all stand by the decision of that government.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, would the noble Baroness be so good as to answer the question put to her by my noble friend Lord Redesdale?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I had. sought to answer the noble Lord's question.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that many in this House who have admired her efforts in this field, and who have stood solidly behind her in regard to the integrity with which the programme has hitherto been carried out, are very disappointed that it should now have become quite clearly contaminated by considerations that are completely aside from the purposes for which the whole scheme was originally devised?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord is jumping to conclusions. The ATP has been a successful scheme since it was introduced in 1977. I wonder whether your Lordships realise that it has won for this country some £3.9 billion of British exports at a cost of £1.4 billion. That represents business won since 1978, covering more than 270 projects and over 140 lead contractors, not including any of their sub-contractors, in 50 countries worldwide. The Opposition sometimes want to have it both ways.
Lord Judd: My Lords, certainly there is a place for a responsible ATP in aid policy, but not an ATP which is undermining development. Whatever the shenanigans in Downing Street and Whitehall on Pergau and the rest, can the Minister now give an assurance that in future every single penny of the aid programme will be devoted to the fight against poverty, the cause of human rights and improving the lot of people living in the third world? Will she further assure the House that she will never again allow herself to be trampled on and pushed to one side by people whose objectives have nothing whatsoever to do with the aid programme?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, out of the total aid budget more than 80 per cent. is spent on poverty alleviation. It was decided by a Labour Government in 1977 that there was room for an aid and trade provision so that British firms could compete on equal terms with their major competitors to whom those contracts would go, instead of to British workers, if Britain did not have something similar. In 1977 we did

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not dissent. I have already made it quite clear that in the ATP review we set a threshold of 700 dollars. That threshold now means that some countries which previously could get ATP will no longer be able to do so. I am absolutely adamant that the objectives that we have set for the aid programme will be held to and that countries will only benefit from ATP if there is a full developmental need in the programme that is under consideration.
Baroness Elles: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that Members on this side of your Lordships' House, if not on the other side, could never believe that anybody could trample on my noble friend in any way whatsoever?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, my noble friend is right. Some may try but none will win.

Psychoanalytic Therapy
3.8 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester The Lord Bishop of Worcester asked Her Majesty's Government:
In view of the internal market in the health service, whether it is their policy to safeguard the future of long-term psychoanalytic therapy throughout the health service for those who need it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege): My Lords, it is for health authorities and general practitioner fundholders to assess the needs of their populations and to contract with trusts, hospitals and community units for the services that they judge to be clinically effective. As the internal market develops, health authorities will increasingly commission a range of therapeutic interventions of proven effectiveness.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Is she aware that of the 200 health authorities, only 100 have that kind of therapy? Is she further aware that recent research by the Mental Health Foundation shows that one in 10 of the population of this country suffers from mental ill-health, and that research in the Low Countries and Germany shows that with psychoanalytical psychotherapy people can be saved from hospitalisation and expensive medication and can return to work? In view of that, does she agree that such therapy gives very good value for money?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, this therapy has never been widely accessible to NHS patients because of the limited number of providers of the service and the differing views about its clinical effectiveness. I understand what the right reverend prelate is saying, and I know that some people find it extremely helpful. But the department feels that there is more work to be done in assessing and monitoring its effectiveness.
Lord Rea: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that psychotherapists who are properly trained and registered with the United Kingdom Council for
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Psychotherapy—I emphasise those points—have an important role to play, especially as their work does not require the use of drugs, as the right reverend prelate pointed out? Can the noble Baroness assure us that training institutions for psychotherapy, such as the Tavistock Clinic, will be enabled to continue when they are given trust status?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, yes. A review is currently being undertaken by the department about training requirements. We encourage registers of all therapists so that we know who is available and at what standard. We have secured the future of both the Tavistock and Portman clinics. They have been granted trust status, and the NHS management executive issued a contract worth £3.7 million for 1994–95, which will support the transition to the internal market.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, taking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, will my noble friend consult the Tavistock and Portman clinics? They are concerned in these matters and would welcome an opportunity to be helpful.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, yes. Our relationship with those two clinics is extremely good. As I said, we have secured their future and value the work that they do in training, education and development.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Tavistock and Portman clinics deal with the abused, the abusers and severe sexual deviants? Those people can be extremely dangerous not only to themselves but to the public. If those clinics do not survive in the internal market, serious problems may arise throughout the country in relation to training.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, it is up to health authorities to assess the needs of their populations and to enter into contracts with those two institutions. As I said, the department values their work. We are giving every possible assistance to help them enter the internal market and to ensure that their teaching and research activities are safeguarded.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is the Minister aware that there is a great deal of anxiety among voluntary organisations such as mine that there should be made available much more opportunity for what they call "talking treatments"? They are also concerned that over half the district health authorities have no service that they can offer. Can the Minister say a little more regarding the department's future progress on training as well as recruitment?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, as I said, those therapies have a degree of ambivalence about them in relation to their effectiveness. There are those who find them extremely helpful and good value for money. They believe that they do a job that needs to be done. There are others who feel that it is actually quite damaging to people if the therapists are not properly trained, qualified, registered and recognised. Therefore the department has a review underway. The results will be available in the early summer. Once that review is

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completed, another review, which will involve specifically education and training, will start in the late summer.
Lord Carter: My Lords, is the fact that as many as half of the 200 or more health districts have no psychotherapy service a factor in the increasing problem of mentally ill people being discharged from hospital without a properly worked out individual care programme?
Baroness Cumberlege: No, my Lords. My honourable friend the Secretary of State made an announcement last December on the way forward for mental health services. She recognises that legislation will he needed in the near future to ensure that people who are discharged from hospital are followed up and monitored. However, that is rather divorced from the specific Question on the Order Paper.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, bearing in mind that people in need of psychotherapy treatment are extremely vulnerable almost by definition, and bearing in mind that anybody can set themselves up completely untrained and irresponsibly as a psychotherapist, I should like to ask this question. What plans do the Government have to safeguard the future well-being of those vulnerable people by ensuring adequate training and oversight of the, workings of that profession?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, that is the subject of the two reviews that I have mentioned. We are encouraging the Development of registration and training standards and codes of ethical and disciplinary practices. We want to create a responsible and accountable profession. The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy launched its register of psychotherapists in 1993, and the British Confederation of Psychotherapists is about to publish a register of its members.

CAP Exports: Customs Checks
3.16 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the new practice of examining thoroughly 5 per cent. of common agricultural policy goods cleared through ports is being challenged with the European Commission, and whether there is any risk of it being extended to other ports in addition to Felixstowe.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department off Employment (Lord Henley): My Lords, the practice of examining 5 per cent. of common agricultural policy goods exported from the Community to third countries has for some time been a feature of EC law. The examination requirements apply to traffic at all ports.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. That the practice has existed for some time does not quite coincide with my information. As I understand it—and I hope my noble friend will agree—it is a practice which has grown up relatively recently.
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Does he accept that it is strange that although the practice is meant to apply to goods that are not subject to local export control there is an order at the moment waiting at Sheerness from a large exporter which was sealed by the customs at LEC on 21st January and yet is to be examined by the customs at Sheerness? That is bad for British trade and for British shipping. Both sectors have grumbled to me. It is also most unreasonable that such special measures should be taken when goods are being exported by reputable companies in this country? Those companies have a reputation to maintain. They take enormous steps not to cheat, whatever the regulations may be. Can the situation be modified so that procedures are carried out quickly?
Lord Henley: My Lords, my noble friend asks a number of questions. I am not sure that I can respond in detail to the specific question relating to the case at Sheerness. However, I am prepared to look into it. Where local export controls are made use of, there should be less examination at the port. Obviously, we must get the right balance between the appropriate controls so as to protect Community funds and the funds of this country against fraud, while not impeding trade. We therefore negotiated further flexibility in the scheme and from January of next year the minimum examination rate in each of the 17 product sectors will be 2 per cent. but with an overall rate of 5 per cent. That will allow customs officials to exercise a certain degree of extra risk analysis whereby the low refund sector, such as processed goods—obviously, it will be considerably less broad because there is a low refund—will experience much lower rates of checking while those with high refunds, such as cereals, where checking is much easier, can continue to be checked at a higher rate. The checking of those should be easier and cause less disruption.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that in so far as the goods referred to in the Question relate to the export of intervention stocks to third countries with a view to securing export refunds, it is absolutely vital that a good sample of the goods is inspected rigorously at the port of exit in order to prevent fraud? It is widespread among those samples that have so far been made and reported on by the Court of Auditors as well as our own National Audit Office. Will the Minister ensure that the regulations are rigorously enforced?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I think I can say with all sincerity that I greatly welcome the noble Lord's question. It is right to achieve some sort of balance between impeding trade and combating fraud. We believe, and certainly Customs and Excise believe, that there is scope for considerably greater flexibility. That is why the extra flexibility that I mentioned has been negotiated. The absolute flat rate of 5 per cent. in all sectors is possibly over-rigorous. We hope that the greater flexibility, to which I referred, and the greater use of risk analysis will allow the pursuit of fraud to be continued while not impeding trade.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, was not the basis of the Question that British exports are being held

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up as a result of delays by customs officials who come under the Minister? Can he do anything to speed them up?
Lord Henley: My Lords, the exporters themselves can make progress towards speeding things up. First, they can pack their goods in a suitable manner that makes it easy for customs to get access to those goods. More importantly, exporters can choose to have their goods controlled by customs inland at their own premises. Therefore—and I refer again to the case mentioned by my noble friend Lord Mottistone—there should be considerably more cursory examination when the goods reach the port.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the possibility of fraud and indeed the need for checks arise only because of the structure of agricultural protection maintained under the common agricultural policy? Will he tell the House how much the checks cost? Does he agree that the expense of making them is yet another charge which the economic folly of the CAP imposes upon every family in this country?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I cannot answer the precise question that the noble Lord asks about the cost of each examination. We believe that the impact of CAP reform in time will reduce the export refunds and consequently the need for such rigorous controls.

British Steel: European Commission Fine
3.22 p.m.
Lord Ezra Lord Ezra asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will provide details of the fines the European Commission is believed to be imposing on certain steel makers, including British Steel.
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Strathclyde): My Lords, the European Commission yesterday announced the decision to impose fines of slightly more than 100 million ecu on 16 steel companies from seven Community and three Scandinavian countries. The fines follow a Commission investigation into alleged anti-competitive activity in beams, where findings were made of price fixing, exchange of information and market sharing. British Steel's fines total 32 million ecu (£24.4 million). I understand that British Steel will be appealing against the decision.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that information and I accept that it must be the task of the Commission to ensure that the rules and regulations of various Community treaties are adhered to. Would he nevertheless agree that in the present situation within the European steel industries the Commission is getting its priorities wrong and that what it should be concentrating on is eliminating the subsidies, a large quantity of which still survive, rather than on penalising companies which are not subsidised and which may be purely technically in infringement of the rules of the treaty?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, I entirely agree with the premise of the noble Lord's question. It is right that the Commission has an important role to play in governing the treaties which deal with this subject. But of course its priorities should be to deal with the subsidy regime that exists for steel manufacturers throughout the Community. The Government have helped the Commission after the results of the November and December industry councils. That has made the Commission's job a lot easier. I should perhaps remind the House that the Government are in the forefront of efforts to bring about free and fair markets throughout the Community.
Lord Clark of Kempston: My Lords, will my noble friend urge the Government to press the European Commission to impose fines on those governments that give subsidies to steel industries against the spirit of the common market; subsidies which are killing the competitiveness of our steel industry?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, we never fail to take the opportunity of demonstrating to the Commission and indeed to our other European partners that the interests of sound economies are best served by free trade. The Commission clearly has a role to police its own treaties in the way it sees fit. And that is what it has done in this particular case.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, can the Minister say whether the Government will be supporting the steel companies in their appeal against the fines?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, first and foremost, this is a private sector matter between British Steel and the European Commission. If there is help and advice that we can offer British Steel, we shall do so. However, at this stage I am not yet certain whether or not British Steel will take an appeal forward.
Baroness O'Cathain: My Lords, can the Minister confirm that some 10 years ago, at the insistence of the Commission, there were mandatory minimum prices for the steel industry in Europe? There was a restructuring proposal by, I think, Davignon which meant that there were continuous discussions between steel companies. What has now happened seems to be just an extension of fining people for what the Commission encouraged in the first place.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, the noble Baroness is right. Between 1980 and 1988 the Commission administered production quotas under the manifest crisis provisions of the ECSC treaty. That finished in 1988. The investigation with which the Commission is concerned at the moment was post-1988.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, reverting to the subject of subsidies, is my noble friend aware that the Commissioner concerned, when giving an interview on television yesterday, emphasised how necessary it was,
"to stick to the rules".

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Would my noble friend be kind enough to encourage that Commissioner and indeed our partners in other European countries also to stick to the rules regarding illegal subsidies?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, we never fail to make that point both to the Commission and to our European partners. We do believe in fair play; we do believe in sticking to the rules; and we do believe in sticking to the law in this case.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, I note from what the Minister said that a number of steel producers in Europe have also been charged with price fixing, market sharing and exchange of information. Can he explain why it is that British Steel has been called upon to pay the biggest tine of all—£24 million? Was the fix of that magnitude? Was British Steel the ringleader in this alleged cartel? If not, will the Government—reverting to a previous question—be prepared to assist British Steel if it has to appeal to the Commission or to the European Court of Justice?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, although we have not seen the formal notice of these fines from the European Commission I understand that British Steel was fined the most because it sold the most products into the European Community. It was the largest player in the manufacture of the beams which were the subject of the investigation. I can go no further than the answer that I gave to the nobble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that Articles 92 and 93 of the Treaty of Rome lay the responsibility on the Commission to eliminate state subsidies that distort competition? In the steel industry that has been the case for the past five years. Why is it that the Commission has not instituted action under Article 92 and brought the matter before the European Court of Justice? Why, in default, have not Her Majesty's Government urged that this course of action be taken? Five years have passed since the first infringement of Article 92.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, that is because this particular investigation comes under Article 65 of the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty. That is the relevant treaty in respect of this investigation.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords—
Lord Peston: My Lords—
Noble Lords: Order!
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Wakeham): My Lords, I believe the next question comes from the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, while endorsing what my noble friend Lord Ezra and others have said about the importance of dealing with illegal subsidies and creating proper conditions for free competition, does the Minister agree that in the world as it is today international cartels can be met effectively only by Community action and not by national action? Does the Minister further agree that effective action
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against international cartels is in the interests of all of us in terms of lower prices and higher living standards in the long run?
Lord Strathclyde: Yes, my Lords, and that is why we are supporters of the rule of law within the European Community.
Lord Peston: My Lords, I am glad that the Opposition Front Bench is allowed to intervene.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Peston: My Lords, there are certain courtesies involved here. Since I am still slightly at a loss to know what the Government are going to do, does the Minister agree that British Steel is an efficient operator which is being hammered in two ways? On the one hand, it is being subjected to unfair competition from subsidised industries and, on the other, it is subject to this fine the size of which, as I understand it, is so large because British Steel is itself so large and efficient? The Minister keeps talking about such matters but what one would like to know—and if I were part of British Steel I should like to know—is what the Government are going to do?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, as I made clear earlier, this is a private sector matter between British Steel and the Commission. The noble Lord should not link the two issues. The investigation deals with a period between 1988–91, whereas the subsidy regime and the industry councils taken at the end of last year deal with the future. There I join with the noble Lord in saying that we wish to see a subsidy-free future for the European steel industry.

Mental Health (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
Read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill [H.L.]
3.32 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Earl Ferrers.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]
[Amendment No.81 not moved.]
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No.82:
Before Clause 10, insert the following new clause: ("Greater London Police Authority Metropolitan Police Authority

.—(1) There shall be a police authority for the metropolitan police district.

(2) The police authority established under this section shall be a body corporate to be known as the Metropolitan Police Authority.

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(3) The police authority established under this section shall secure the maintenance of an efficient and effective police force for its area.

(4) The police authority established under subsection (1) above shall consist of sixteen members, of whom—

(a) eight shall be members of a relevant council appointed in accordance with Schedule 1B to the Police Act 1964;

(b) three shall be magistrates appointed in accordance with that Schedule; and

(c) five shall be persons appointed by the Secretary of State.

(5) For the purposes of this section, a council is a relevant council in relation to a police authority if it is the council for a London borough.

(6) Schedule 1B to the 1964 Act shall apply with respect to appointments to the police authority established under this section. ").

The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment, I would like to speak also to Amendment No.213, which is consequential upon it. I do not need to urge a democratically elected police authority for London purely on the arguments of democracy or those of elected local representatives in London. It is enough for me to rely on the words of the Government and of the police force in London to urge the case for a democratically elected police force in London. Indeed, as recently as 26th May last year, the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, argued very cogently for a democratically elected police force in London.
Without going into past history—that is to say, not going back more than a year—perhaps I may refer to the record of the Government's statements on this matter. The then Home Secretary, Mr. Kenneth Clarke, answered a Parliamentary Question on 14th April 1993 in these words:
"I think that London needs a Police Authority and the arrangement whereby the Home Secretary is in theory the police authority for London is not adequate if we are to hold the Metropolitan Police to account, as happens with other police authorities, and if we are to assist them by giving clearer guidelines on priorities and so on".
I could hardly have put it better myself.
I shall not quote any of the other intermediate statements. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said in this House on 26th May 1993:
"London will benefit from the reforms which we are proposing as in a similar way will the remainder of the country … my right honourable friend intends in future that there should be a police authority for London outside of the Home Office and that he will delegate to that authority many of his existing responsibilities".—[Official Report, 26/5/93; col.351.]
Again, I yield to no one in my admiration of the noble Earl in this instance for his lucidity, clear thinking and correctness of political judgment.
What has gone wrong? What has gone wrong is that there was a panic campaign by a number of London Conservative MPs, who drew up all the old smears about the loony left-wing Lambeth councillors. It should be noted that this panic campaign took place last summer. I do not believe that we hear very much about loony left-wing Lambeth councillors at the moment because of the response which is always made, and which is bound to be made, as regards what is happening in Wandsworth and Westminster. I believe that the electors of Lambeth, Wandsworth and Westminster will be expressing their views on 5th May in such a way as to make it clear that the arguments which were used by Mr. Cyril Townsend and others last summer do not wash very well with the electorate and they should not
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have any particular weight in this House. The Government have backed down on their very clearly and correctly expressed intentions as recent as May last year in response to irresponsible and ill thought-out Back-Bench pressure about the possibility of any democratic control for the police force in London.
I do not need to rely on Left or Right-wing councils or anybody else for the rest of the argument in favour of this amendment. The argument has been put very clearly by the police force itself. Sir John Smith, the chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said publicly at the time that ACPO would like to see London governed by the same arrangements which will emerge for the rest of the country. He went on to stress that his association wanted to ensure that elected councillors would remain a "significant component" of any new authorities.
The newly appointed Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Paul Condon, in an article in the June edition of the Association of London Authorities Bulletin, also expressed his support for a police authority for the capital. In his article the Commissioner says:
"There is the challenge to be faced of working towards a new Police Authority for London. This is a concept which has my full support".
In the face of those arguments, what is there for me to add? Perhaps I may say a word or two about the wording of the amendment. In this amendment we have very deliberately not sought to raise the issue of the balance between the local authority councillors, appointed members and magistrates for London. We take it that the Committee will be expressing a view when it is reconvened to consider Clauses 2,3 and 4 on 1st March. At that time, whatever decision the Committee makes, it should be reflected in the wording of a new clause on the Greater London Police Authority. Under those circumstances it seems most straightfor-ward not to raise the whole issue of the composition of police authorities but simply to accept, for the purposes of this amendment, the government formula. That is what we have done.
London is different in some ways from other police forces. London, through the Metropolitan Police, has a number of national obligations. There are diplomatic surveillance and national security obligations besides a number of other matters which are primarily national and which devolve mainly on the Metropolitan Police, although of course major regional police forces also have comparable national responsibilities on a smaller scale.
If it is suggested that, because of the national responsibilities of the Metropolitan Police, the whole of its activities should be taken out of local authority control, that would be done against the considered advice of those in the police force who know most about it; who believe that national responsibilities can be carried out effectively, and who do not see (as I do not see) why it is that local councillors of any political persuasion should seek, for example, to put the Royal Family at risk. There is no difference, other than of scale, between the national and local responsibilities of the Metropolitan Police and those of the police in any

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other area of the country. On those grounds also, having the Metropolitan Police under democratic local control is very much to be desired.
Above all, all of the arguments that are put forward by both Government and Opposition and by all of those who are concerned about the necessity to police by consent and to have local policing apply just as strongly in London as anywhere else—perhaps even more strongly.
In fact, even with the Metropolitan Police being responsible directly to the Home Secretary, there have been a number of very effective local policing initiatives between the Metropolitan Police and both Labour and Conservative London boroughs. They include Lambeth, where the Stockwell Park local scheme has been an effective collaboration between the Metropolitan Police and the Lambeth housing department. All over London, both police and local authorities are showing by their actions that they are willing and anxious to see local co-operation between the police and democratically elected councillors.
Why is it that the Government, having expressed their views clearly in favour of such a link and such a police authority, should have turned away from that very wise judgment? I very much regret the change of heart that the Government have undergone. I believe that it will be regretted not only by councillors in London but by the, police in London and by ordinary people in London, also. I beg to move.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: I should like briefly to support what my noble friend Lord McIntosh of Haringey has said. I have felt for a long time that there is a genuine case for having a police committee for London. Indeed, I thought that when I was Home Secretary 30 years ago, although there was no Police Bill at the time and I did nothing about it.
I have always recognised the particular responsibilities of government in relation to a number of issues that do not affect provisional police authorities. My noble friend referred to this. I see that those responsibilities are provided for in this amendment by the provision of five persons who should be appointed by the Secretary of State. The five, persons whom the Government propose to appoint with respect to the provisional forces are those who would be representative of local opinion other than those who are elected.
In relation to London, I do not think that the five persons whom the Home Secretary shall appoint, if this amendment is earned, ought to be the same type of person. I think that they ought to be representative more of the special responsibilities of Her Majesty's Government for a number of functions which do not fall to the provisional authorities. I hope that "the five persons" would be interpreted in that sense, but I am not sure whether my noble friend agrees. However, it seems to me that the Government have a distinct responsibility which must be exercised.
The case for a police authority for London is quite clear. At the moment, we have taxation without representation, and one has to be hard put to it to defend such a position. The local authorities which have to call in the charge are responsible for policing but have no
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say in it at all. I believe that that is wrong. I see no reason why it should not be possible to devise a police authority that would represent both local opinion and national responsibilities.
There is such a thing as local opinion. I am sure that the councillors in the London Borough of Southwark where I happen to live in London have a different sense of priorities from those who live in Hampstead—at least I guess that they may have. However, there is no prospect and no chance of those views being represented. I think that that should happen. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, will have to put forward a jolly good argument if he is to convince us that there is not a case for local representation.
I know that the police have built up very good relations with local authorities in some areas, and that is desirable, but the elected representatives, through the local authorities, ought to be able to form a police authority here in London, subject to the reservation of the Government's responsibilities, which could be included in this amendment. Subject to that, they ought to be able to form a police authority. Let us get rid of taxation without representation, which I thought had been rejected a long time ago. Unless the noble Earl can convince us—and I have never been able to find a convincing argument for that case—I hope that we shall test the opinion of the Committee on this.
3.45 p.m.
Viscount Whitelaw: I understand clearly what the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan of Cardiff, says. At certain times when I was Home Secretary, I held something of the same view, but having had many of the problems that come from that national position, about which he spoke rightly and fairly, I came to the opposite conclusion. It was a difficult decision, but I think that I can claim that I had to deal with many—perhaps more than most—of those national problems when I was Home Secretary.
Those problems included somebody getting into the Palace and the Queen's bedroom. Problems such as that have to be dealt with by the Home Secretary—and have to be dealt with very firmly. Nobody else can take responsibility for it. I felt strongly on that occasion that I had to take a very strong view and in many different ways. I had to make some things perfectly clear to the Royal Household about what I believed had to be done. Naturally, they did not particularly like some of them. People imagine that the Royal Family is secure in the Palace and it is difficult when somebody finds that some things have to be changed. Somebody like a Home Secretary has to say that that will happen.
That is what changed my view. Although I recognise that there are strong arguments in favour of what the amendment suggests, on balance I believe that it is the Home Secretary who has the duty to deal with the national position. The Home Secretary also has a duty, which I regarded as very important when I held that position, to deal with local problems in conjunction with local councillors. We had meetings constantly with local councillors so that we could fulfil that charge.
I have come down on the opposite side of the argument to the noble Lords who have spoken so far, but

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I agree that they have a strong case. Perhaps, however, when one has experienced the national problem—acutely on one or two occasions—it is not surprising if one takes this point of view.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: Perhaps the noble Viscount will forgive me for intervening, but surely nothing about setting up a police authority of this kind, with its very limited responsibilities, would interfere with the duty of the Home Secretary (which would be exercised in all circumstances whether or not there was a police authority) to advise Her Majesty and others associated with the Royal Family about the proper level of protection. Surely nothing can remove that duty from the Home Secretary whether or not a police authority is set up.
Viscount Whitelaw: The answer to that must be that, if one sets up this police authority on the same basis as other police authorities throughout the country, the charge then comes that the Home Secretary must not interfere with this, that or another matter. That is a very good case and many people, including myself, have argued about the need for the police authorities to be independent. That is what I believe, but I do not believe that one can have that and then turn round from the national position and tell the chairman of the London police authority that you are going to have your will and that he is not. That is a very dangerous and difficult point.
This is a difficult matter. It is not a matter of principle to me because I think that it rests simply on the facts of London's national position as a large capital. In the end, I think that that national position has to be dealt with in detail and as a straight responsibility of the Home Secretary of the day.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: Perhaps I may begin by addressing the point that was raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw. The Royal Family has residences throughout the country. In fact, the Queen is well known to prefer Windsor Castle to Buckingham Palace as a residence. If there was an intruder at Windsor Castle, presumably the Home Secretary would have no difficulty in directing the chairman of the police authority for the Thames Valley to present the same sort of report that he would ask the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to present in relation to Buckingham Palace. I do not believe that the argument about an intruder in Buckingham Palace is sufficient for saying that we should not have a police authority for London. If that were the case we should not have a police authority for any part of the country in which there is a royal residence.
I support the amendment as a former Metropolitan officer of many years' service. I also support what was said by my noble friend Lord McIntosh about the police service being keen to see a police authority in London. When I joined the Metropolitan police force in the late 1950s there was a different attitude. The police service was inward looking and it had a simplistic, if not an arrogant, assumption that it knew best about how to police an area. There was little discussion of public
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accountability or of the democratic deficit in London. Since then society has changed; it has become more complex. The police service is more sophisticated. There is greater media interest in it and a greater awareness of the rights of individuals. In some ways, that has forced the police service to be more accountable but there is a recognition in London that it is still not sufficient.
Some catalytic events have forced the police service to be more responsive to the London public. The 1981 Brixton riots and the report made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, and the consultative committees which were set up initially with some difficulty in boroughs such as Lambeth and Brent, have matured and there is a good relationship between London boroughs, the probation service, social services and police. There are many pro-active and successful partnership schemes working closely together. Suspicion of politicians no longer exists within the police service, and there is a much more mature understanding by politicians of the police service.
One of the successful partnership schemes was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord McAlpine. There has been the recent initiative in King's Cross between the local police and the boroughs of Islington and Camden, which previously were not necessarily thought to be pro-police boroughs. That scheme has successfully made a considerable impact on the problems in that area with drugs and prostitutes. On the Stonebridge Estate in Brent, which I policed for a time, there has been a considerable reduction in drug dealing and associated crime due to the efforts of police in collaboration with the local authority and the probation service.
Those are worthwhile schemes and they demonstrate the importance of police and community working together, and not in response to directives from the Home Secretary. But they are voluntary localised schemes and not part of a London-wide strategy. Londoners have no formal voice in the policing of London. That is undemocratic and unsafe. Disaffection with police actions, as we saw in the Brixton riots, can lead to serious public disorder. More recently, the devastation created in Los Angeles was due in part to the breakdown between the police and the public.
Policing can work only if there is public confidence and support. Crime can be solved only by complex community action at the local level. Communities are effectively self-policing and they need to be policed by community police officers.
The point that I emphasise in particular is that there is no voice for the Metropolitan police force. It is not just that Londoners have no formal voice; the Metropolitan police force has no representative for itself vis-à-vis the Home Office. The commissioner cannot openly criticise or oppose the Home Secretary or the Home Office, whatever he may think of their ideas. He cannot, for example, say publicly that the Met. has the worst personal radio system in the country. He cannot make public statements to that effect. A London police authority could say that the personal radio system of Metropolitan police officers has been underfunded, under-resourced and poorly served for many years. It could ask for more resources and make a statement

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which could hit the media. In no way could the Commissioner make such a statement in his close and over-symbiotic relationship with the Home Office.
Perhaps I may take as a more recent example the tragic death of Stephen Milligan, in respect of which accusations were made of police leaks to the media. There was no way in which the Metropolitan police force could suggest that it was those in other places (possibly Conservative Central Office) who leaked the information to the media. A police authority chairman could have been an advocate for the Metropolitan police force in those circumstances and suggested that politicians were the source of many of the stories that appeared in the press. An extremely important point for the Metropolitan police force is that it has no way of making its voice heard in public.
Finally, I should be grateful if in reply the Minister would say whether the new, more flexible financial arrangements which will be accorded to chief constables outside London will apply also to the Metropolitan police force? Or will it continue to be shackled by Treasury rules, which have made the proper funding of police buildings, the personal radio system and other equipment in London so hard to achieve over the years?
There are irrefutable arguments for having a police authority for London. The major anxiety that is usually expressed is the national responsibility of the Metropolitan police, which has been addressed by the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw. Many of those problems apply to other parts of the country and, in relation to the arrangements for a police authority for London, will be met by the five appointed members. I support the amendment.
Lord Renton: In her speech, which covered a lot of ground, the noble Baroness pleaded for the proposed change on the ground of democracy. I suggest that from the point of view of democracy it is much more effective to have the Home Secretary questioned, and for him to debate and defend his policies in either House of Parliament—of course, mainly in the House of Commons—than it would be to have a police authority of the kind envisaged in the proposed new clause. In the case of an authority, there would be much less publicity, much less account would be taken of criticism and it would be much less effective as a method of control.
Whatever else may be said on the matter, surely we can agree on both sides of the Committee that the Metropolitan police force has problems which are not only often different from those of other forces but are greater. There is no other comparable force with a city of anything like the size of London. Yes, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, and so forth, are large but they are not comparable with London. The Metropolitan police force not only has the problems involved in protecting the Royal Family, which have been mentioned and which to a lesser extent apply to some other forces, but it also has the problems of protecting the seat of government. It also has—dare I say?—the job of protecting Cabinet Ministers (of which I have never been one) and the greater problems of terrorism than elsewhere. I am sorry to say that we now have in London a considerable racial problem, although the way in which the police have
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dealt with that in recent years has shown a great improvement. There is no doubt about that. I go back to the old Conservative principle that if change is not necessary it is necessary not to change.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: If it ain't bust, don't fix it!
4 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers): The noble Lord's amendment proposes the setting up of a democratically-controlled police authority—a matter which has exercised people for a long time. It exercised the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, as he said, when he was Home Secretary. I can understand people believing that that would be a good idea. The Metropolitan police force is covered by most of the Bill's police provisions but the Bill is drafted, as was the Police Act 1964, to exclude the Metropolitan police force from certain of its clauses. Notably, they relate to the constitution and the function of police authorities.
Under the Government's proposals, the Metropolitan police force would in those respects continue to be catered for by the Metropolitan Police Acts. We gave a considerable amount of thought as to whether it was advisable to change that. The noble Lord. Lord Callaghan, said that he was in favour of a change. My noble friend Lord Whitelaw said that he had been of the same view for quite a while but gradually arrived at the feeling that the current position was best. My noble friend used an impressive argument about national interest and told us of his own experience in that regard.
It is fair to say that we have all thought about those matters. My right honourable friend considered them too. He eventually decided that the existing arrange-ments were correct. I was slightly amused because we have been castigated for making changes and, as some Members of the Committee may regard them, upheavals in the police force. But on the one occasion on which we decide not to change something which has been in place since 1829 everyone tells us that we should do so. I hope that Members of the Committee will realise that we have considered this matter and have decided not to make those substantial changes.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: It is not that we object to the Government making changes. The trouble is that they always make the wrong changes.
Earl Ferrers: If the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, would be kind enough to sit on this side of the Committee, he would consider that we had made the right changes. We were always clear that the provincial arrangements would require considerable modification if they were to be adapted to fit the unique circumstances of the Metropolitan Police. However, we hoped—and we made no secret of our hopes—that it might have proved possible to make suitable police authority arrangements which were legally separate from the Home Office.
In the event, we concluded, after further consideration, that it would go against the national interest to remove from the Secretary of State the legal authority over the force which is given to him by the Metropolitan

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Police Acts 1829 to 1963. We concluded also that the Metropolitan Police Acts were sufficiently flexible to allow us to apply our police reform programme administratively to the Metropolitan Police.
The noble Lord asked in effect in his amendment why it is so essential to preserve the Secretary of State's position as police authority for the Metropolitan Police and whether a way could not be found to share his legal powers with some local or independent authority. The basic answer that I must give to those questions is the same as the one which has been given by successive inquiries and governments since 1829. The Metropolitan Police is, and always has been, much more than just a local police force. This is not just a matter of size, although we should not forget that we are talking about a force which is some 13 times the size of the provincial average. It is a matter of function.
Bound up with its intrinsically important tasks of policing the capital, the Metropolitan Police has permanent and unavoidable duties of policing the seat of government, and, as my noble friend Lord Whitelaw said, it carries the associated national tasks of guarding the Royal Palaces, Westminster, government departments and embassies. And it leads the police fight against terrorism. The Metropolitan Police also undertakes vital national functions on behalf of the whole police service; for example, specialist anti-fraud work and international and government investigations at the request of the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The Government felt that they could not leave it to a local or independent authority, however important, to carry the ultimate responsibility for what are vital national tasks. The Government must have a direct authority over the force which is responsible for law and order in the metropolis.
Because the Home Secretary is a Minister of the Crown, he is directly responsible and answerable to Parliament. Matters arising from the administration and operations of the Metropolitan Police can be, and are, raised and debated in Parliament. Parliament has a closer relationship with ale Metropolitan Police because the police authority is answerable directly to Parliament. It is important that Parliament should not relinquish its responsibility for and its influence over such a large force.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, referred to the report by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman. But the noble and learned Lord recommended that the Home Secretary should remain as the police authority, as, indeed, for some time has every inquiry which has looked into the matter in detail. The noble Baroness was concerned also as to whether there would be flexibility in the police force under the new arrangements. The short answer to that is that there will be, subject only to the constraints of existing legislation. It is intended to give the management of the Metropolitan Police the maximum freedom.
The Government believe—and here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan—that the present arrangement whereby the police authority is the Secretary of State, advised
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exclusively by civil servants in the Home Office, is not ideal and could be improved. That is why we are establishing a new body, outside the Home Office, to help the Home Secretary and Londoners to benefit from the reforms, while ensuring that the Home Secretary and Parliament retain ultimate authority for safeguarding the national interest in the work of the force.
The new body, which we propose to call the Metropolitan Police Committee, will be created administratively to advise the Home Secretary on the exercise of functions which will outside London be the responsibility of local police authorities. We set out these responsibilities in the White Paper. The Metropolitan Police Committee is to advise the Home Secretary on: determining the details of the budget; approving and publishing a costed plan for policing which reflects both key and local objectives; probing and monitoring the performance of the force; holding the Commissioner to account for the delivery of agreed objectives; and drawing up a strategy for partnerships between the police and local people. Those are matters on which the committee will advise the Home Secretary, and he will retain ultimate authority.
The Metropolitan Police Committee will be expected to keep in close touch with police-community consultative groups; for example, about defining local objectives. It will also be required to publish performance results in a way which allows them to be compared with forces elsewhere.
The members of the Metropolitan Police Committee will not function as representatives. They will exist to advise the Secretary of State, who will remain directly answerable to Parliament for his police authority responsibilities. The Secretary of State will appoint all the members but individuals or local authorities or other bodies are welcome to suggest candidates at any time. No specific groups have been ruled in or out and there will be no quota. All members will be selected for their ability as individuals and not as representatives of a particular group. Its different constitution and functions mean that it will need fewer members than provincial authorities; for example,12 rather than 16.
Within its sphere of influence the Metropolitan Police Committee will undertake advisory work which is currently performed by civil servants in the Home Office. It will also be required to liaise closely with London's police and community consultative groups. It will enhance, but it will not replace, the present special arrangements for consultation between the Home Secretary and London MPs and local authority interests. With those changes, I suggest that it would be better to leave the responsibility as it is, as it should be and as it has been since 1829, with whoever holds the position of Home Secretary, although he will be advised by a committee which will help him in his tasks.
Lord Renton: Before my noble friend sits down, in answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, about no taxation without representation, does he agree that there are Members of Parliament in another place representing all the London boroughs?

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Not only that, the Metropolitan Police receives a higher proportion of its financing from the Treasury, the taxpayer, than does any other police force.
Earl Ferrers: My noble friend is absolutely right and that is one of the most important reasons why it is necessary to keep the Home Secretary responsible for the Metropolitan Police. He is answerable to the elected representatives in another place. They may ask him questions, and they do. They have meetings with him; and he is subject to all the parliamentary rigour which goes with being a Home Secretary and a police authority.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: The noble Earl is entirely right when he says that every inquiry has recommended the maintenance of the existing situation so far as concerns Metropolitan police. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, certainly said so, as indeed, did others. However, having made that point, the noble Earl went on to stress to the Committee the national responsibilities of the Metropolitan police in terms of policing the seat of government, and looking after embassies, the position of the Monarch, Westminster and so on. All that is entirely right. Unhappily, the question that the noble Earl did not answer is: what has changed since 23rd March of last year? Perhaps I may remind him once again of what the then Home Secretary, Mr Clarke, said. He announced the creation of a new police authority for the Metropolitan police,
"in line with the new national pattern, thereby strengthening local accountability in the capital".—[Official Report, Commons; 23/3/93, col.765.]
As the noble Earl will no doubt recall, it was on 26th May of last year that we on these Benches initiated a debate on the Government's proposals for the police. On that day, we were greeted by a headline in the Evening Standard announcing that the Government had gone into reverse on the question. There was a major announcement of policy that the whole policing structure of London was to change. Eight weeks later, exactly the opposite was said by Ministers. The noble Earl has given no coherent explanation of that change in policy. However, we know, because it has been reported in the press, that Sir John Wheeler and a number of others (a small group of Conservative Members in the other place) indicated that they did not like the arrangements.
When the announcement was made in Parliament there was almost universal approval for what the Government had done. The noble Earl said a few moments ago that the Government are always most unfairly treated. If they come forward with recommendations for change, as they have done with the Bill, they are attacked, but if they make recommendations for no change—which is the position, by and large, so far as concerns the Metropolitan police—they are also attacked. As we know, the reality is that the major structure of policing in the Bill is opposed by virtually everyone. However, if we put that to one side and look at the Metropolitan police, we see that, in comparison, there was almost total agreement with what Mr. Clarke announced in the other place in March last year.
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It is a great pity. Londoners had every right to believe that they were, for the first time, to have a democratically accountable local police authority. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, indicated, there has been widespread support both in the police service generally and in the Metropolitan police for a democratically accountable local police authority in London. When it is suggested that it is preferable to have Members of the other place discussing the problems of policing in London, I must point out to the noble Earl that that is done precisely one day a year. It is not in any sense a serious alternative to a police authority meeting in public, as other police authorities do, and discussing frankly the problems of policing in London.
The Government have made a serious error. They have gone into reverse simply because a small handful of their supporters in the other place went to see the Home Secretary and complained about it. I believe that Londoners had every reason to expect better from the Government than they have received.
4.15 p.m.
Viscount Mountgarret: I have the greatest difficulty understanding and following the arguments postulated in favour of not accepting the amendment or at least going a long way towards meeting it. I do not profess to know a great deal about the administration of the police. However, the Metropolitan force is widely respected throughout the country and, indeed, in places throughout the world. Foreign visitors, ambassadors and so on, who come here, feel much safer when visiting London in times of trouble or terrorism than, perhaps, we sometimes do when visiting more volatile areas elsewhere.
It takes a brave man to cross swords with my noble friend Lord Whitelaw, but I honestly and genuinely cannot follow his line of argument. On the one hand, he said that there was much merit in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh: yet, on the other hand, he found reasons—based, I am sure, on his vast experience—as to why it was undesirable or not possible to continue with that which we have; namely, the Metropolitan police force. That comes across to me as a contradiction in terms.
There may be an argument that it is more costly to keep the force in being, or that it is more cumbersome and so on. However, perhaps my noble friend can examine whether the reasons that appear to him and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary to make it necessary to effectively abolish the Metropolitan police might be turned to advantage and the force retained. I hope that that will be possible. I have a good deal of sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh.
Lord Merlyn-Rees: I have been searching through the Bill to see what it says about the proposed Metropolitan police committee which was mentioned in the White Paper and which will be made up of appointed people to advise the Home Secretary. Where will we be able to find in statutory form the functions of that committee? Will it meet in public? What is it really going to do? Further, how will it conflict—if that is the

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right word—at the moment, let alone if the amendment is passed today, with the report of the Home Secretary to Parliament and the fact that something like 90 London Members of Parliament in another place are only able to debate local policing in London once a year? I do not know the answer. I should have checked whether we operate in the same manner in this Chamber. I can see no reason why not. However, I cannot recall noticing when I was Home Secretary. I repeat: will there be a statutory instrument laying down the functions of the proposed Metropolitan police committee? I do not quite understand the position. The Minister made a play of it this afternoon; I can find nothing in the Bill about it.
Earl Ferrers: Perhaps I may first answer the concerns expressed by my noble friend Lord Mountgarret. I believe that he has got the wrong end of the stick. I believe he thinks that we are abolishing the Metropolitan police force. If so, I can only tell him that that is not the intention. With regard to the questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, I should point out that the Metropolitan police committee can be established administratively under existing Metropolitan police legislation. Therefore, it is not necessary to have separate legislation in that respect. It would restrict unnecessarily the ability of the Home Secretary to adapt the arrangements to secure the best for London. That is why there is no particular mention of it in the Bill. It will, in fact, operate outside the Home Office and will consist of people whose responsibility will be to advise my right honourable friend. I should add that such people will be there to advise him, but it will be my right honourable friend who takes the final responsibility.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, could not help it. He made a big meal of what the previous Home Secretary said and went on about how there had been a change of heart. He enjoys pursuing something like that and making a mountain where not much of a mountain exists. My right honourable friend did say that that was his intention. The Statement was made and people knew about it. We listened to what people said and thought more about how it would work. We concluded that it was better for the position to remain as it is as regards responsibility but that, nevertheless, my right honour-able friend should be advised by outside people. That is the position.
I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, can make much of an issue of this by saying one moment that we are listening to what people say and we should not do this, whereas two days ago he claims that we said we would not listen to people when in his opinion we should have done. The noble Lord cannot have it all ways. We have listened. My right honourable friend considered that the present position would be best and he decided that the position should remain as it has been for the past 150 years.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: The noble Earl was asked a question by the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, which I am sure he will realise he did not answer. The question was: is this advisory committee, or this
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Metropolitan police committee, going to meet in public or not, or will it meet in a confidential situation and therefore people will have no idea what issues it is discussing? The question I asked was a different one, as I am sure the noble Earl will have realised. The Government of course would have considered very carefully all the implications of creating a democratically accountable police authority before Mr. Clarke made his announcement. The idea that they started to consider the wider issues only after they had made the announcement is of course quite unrealistic in terms of the way in which ministerial decisions are arrived at.
We make no complaint over the Government listening to people on this issue. All one would point out to them is that there was overwhelming public support for the provision of a democratically accountable police authority for London. The Government gave in to a small minority of their own Back-Benchers, notwith-standing the public support that had been registered. I think that that is a great pity. They did it—as the noble Earl is well aware—in the face of the situation that this withdrawal of Mr. Clarke's announcement, which had been made only in March of last year, did on that occasion obtain the overwhelming support of people in the police service both in London and outside it. It is a matter of regret that the Government have gone into reverse.
Lord Renton: I hope that the noble Lord will allow me to intervene. How can anyone be more democratically accountable than the Home Secretary is when he is accountable to the House of Commons?
Lord Harris of Greenwich: Of course the Home Secretary is accountable to the House of Commons. However, the issue we are discussing—as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Renton, will appreciate—is why, when Mr. Clarke announced that it was highly advantageous to have a democratically accountable police authority for London only in March of last year, eight weeks later he said exactly the opposite.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: In the past few minutes we have come to the nub of the matter. The noble Lord, Lord Renton, asked the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, whether the Home Secretary was accountable to Parliament for the actions of the Metropolitan police. Strictly speaking, of course he is accountable for those actions to Parliament. However, we must ask ourselves, when we are considering these issues, to whom and for what a body is accountable. The Home Secretary is accountable to Parliament for national policing issues all over the country, not merely for those affecting the Metropolitan police. That situation arose because under the 1964 Act a tripartite system was established which gives responsibilities severally to local police authorities, to chief constables and to the Home Secretary. Where local policing matters are concerned—I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is suggesting that there are no local policing matters in London; indeed, if he did so he would be going against the opinion of the Metropolitan police themselves—accountability is the domain of chief constables and local police authorities.

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As regards accountability on national matters—it does not matter whether we are talking about the position in London, Warrington, Windsor, Sandringham or Balmoral and whether we are discussing accountability as regards the diplomatic protection group, the protection of the Royal Family, national drug smuggling issues or terrorist issues—the Home Secretary is accountable, and will be accountable if this amendment is carried, as regards national policing matters all over the country. The idea that London is so special that the Home Secretary has to be accountable for local policing matters as well as national policing matters seems to me to be totally unconvincing.
The Minister is renowned in the Chamber for his persuasive powers. Unfortunately, he has a real difficulty on this occasion because he is trying to persuade the Committee today of the validity of an argument which is the exact opposite of an argument he put before the Chamber on 26th May last year. With his usual courtesy and ability he put forward exactly the opposite view on the basis of the opinion of the then Home Secretary. I must say that I found the Minister more persuasive on 26th May than I find him today. I think it is right that we should take the opinion of the Committee on this matter. The view that we should take on this matter is the view shared not only by London local authorities but also by the Government last year, by the Metropolitan police themselves and by all who are concerned with the democratic control of policing in this country. I wish to test the opinion of the Committee.
4.26 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No.82) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents,112; Not-Contents,151.

Division No. 1

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Alport, L.

Gallacher, L.

Annan, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Archer of Sandwell, L.

Gould of Potternewton, B.

Ardwick, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Ashley of Stoke, L.

[Teller.]

Avebury, L.

Hamwee, B.

Aylestone, L.

Hanworth, V.

Bath, M.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Haskel, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Hayter, L.

Bottomley, L.

Hilton of Eggardon, B.

Broadbridge, L.

Holme of Cheltenham, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Hooson, L.

Callaghan of Cardiff, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Howell, L.

Carter, L.

Hughes, L.

Chapple, L.

Hunt, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Hylton, L.

Clinton-Davis, L.

Irvine of Lairg, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Dahrendorf, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

David, B.

Judd, L.

Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, B.

Kagan, L.

Diamond, L.

Kennet, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridgc, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Kirkwood, L.

Eatwell, L.

Knights, L.

Ennals, L.

Lester of Herne Hill, L.

Ezra, L.

Listowel, E.

Falkender, B.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B

Falkland, V.

Longford, E.

308

Lovell-Davis, L.

Russell of Liverpool, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Russell, E.

Mallalieu, B.

Sainsbury, L.

Mclntosh of Haringey, L.

Seear, B.

McNair, L.

Sefton of Garston, L.

Merlyn-Rees, L.

Serota, B.

Meston, L.

Shaughnessy, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Stallard, L.

Molloy, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Monkswell, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Morris of Castle Morris, L.

Strafford, E.

Morris of Kenwood, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Morton of Shuna, L.

Thomson of Monifieth, L.

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Thurlow, L.

Nelson, E.

Tordoff, L. [Teller.]

Nicol, B.

Turner of Camden, B.

Ogmore, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Peston, L.

Wharton, B.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

White, B.

Plant of Highfield, L.

Wigoder, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Rea, L.

Williams of Mostyn, L.

Richard, L.

Wilson of Rievaulx, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

Rochester, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Abercorn, D.

Elton, L.

Aberdare, L.

Faithfull, B.

Addison, V.

Ferrers, E.

Aldington, L.

Flather, B.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Fraser of Carmyllie, L.

Allen of Abbeydale, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Gainford, L.

Annaly, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Archer of Weston-Super-Mare, L.

Gilmour of Craigmillar, L.

Arran, E.

Gisborough, L.

Ashbourne, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Astor of Hever, L.

Goschen, V.

Astor, V.

Greenway, L.

Bathurst, E.

Gridley, L.

Beloff, L.

Hacking, L.

Blatch, B.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Halsbury, E.

Braine of Wheatley, L.

Harding of Petherton, L.

Braybrooke, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Bridges, L.

Harvington, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Hayhoe, L.

Bruntisfield, L.

Henley, L.

Butterworth, L.

Hooper, B.

Cadman, L.

Howe, E.

Caithness, E.

Huntly, M.

Caldecote, V.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Jenkin of Roding, L.

Camegy of Lour, B.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Carnock, L.

Killearn, L.

Chalker of Wallasey, B.

Knollys, V.

Chelmsford, V.

Lauderdale, E.

Chesham, L.

Liverpool, E.

Clark of Kempston, L.

Long, V.

Cockfield, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Colnbrook, L.

Lyell, L.

Cornwallis, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L. [Lord Chancellor.]

Courtown, E.

Cranborn]e, V.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Crathorne, L.

Malmesbury, E.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Mancroft, L.

Cumberlege, B.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Merrivale, L.

Daventry, V.

Miller of Hendon, B.

Davidson, V.

Milverton, L.

De Freyne, L.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Dean of Harptree, L.

Morris, L.

Denham, L.

Mottistone, L.

Dixon-Smith, L.

Mountevans, L.

Dundonald, E.

Mountgarret, V.

Elibank, L.

Mowbray and Stourtorn, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Moyne, L.

Elles, B.

Munster, E.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

309

Norfolk, D.

Sharples, B.

Norrie, L.

Simon of Glaisdale, L.

O'Cathain, B.

Skelmersdale, L.

Orkney, E.

Slim, V.

Oxfuird, V.

St. Davids, V.

Park of Monmouth, B.

Strange, B.

Peel, E.

Strathcarron, L.

Pender, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Perry of Southwark, B.

Strathmore and Kinghome, E.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

[Teller.]

Pike, B.

Sudeley, L.

Plumb, L.

Swansea, L.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Swinfen, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Teviot, L.

Reay, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

Rennell, L.

Trumpington, B.

Renton, L.

Ullswater, V. [Teller]

Renwick, L.

Vivian, L.

Rippon of Hexham, L.

Wakeham, L [Lord Privy Seal.]

Rodger of Earlsferry, L.

Weatherili, L. "

Romney, E.

Whitelaw, V.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Wise, L.

Sandford, L.

Worcester, Bp.

Seccombe, B.

Resolved in the negative to accordingly.
4.34 p.m.
Clause 10 [Alteration of police areas]:
[Amendment No.82A not moved.]
Lord Peyton of Yeovil Lord Peyton of Yeovil moved Amendment No.83:
Page 7, line 20, leave out ("appears to him to be") and insert ("is").
The noble Lord said: Amendment No.83 is grouped with Amendment No.86. On this occasion I have no objection to the grouping. Both have the merit of being simple amendments and easily understood.
I draw the attention of the Committee to Section 21 of the 1964 Act, which gives the Secretary of State powers to alter police areas. Subsection (3) states that the Secretary of State shall not exercise his power to make alterations unless either he has been requested to do so by a police authority or, alternatively:
"it appears to him to be expedient to make the alterations in the interests of efficiency".
That limitation is meaningless and frivolous. It would not place any burden on the Secretary of State at all. If, as my amendment suggests, the words,
"appears to him to be" are taken out and replaced with the single word "is", the subsection would then read:
"it is expedient to make the alterations in the interests of efficiency or effectiveness".
The burden placed on the Home Secretary by such a change would be slight, but I believe that it is wholly appropriate.
This may not of itself appear to be an amendment of earth shaking importance and I do not suggest to the Committee that it is crucial. On the other hand, the Government's failure to accept it, or even to think about it, would indicate a very rigid state of mind and might influence the otherwise flexible approach which I always take to the arguments which they put forward.
Since the amendment is grouped with Amendment No.86 it may be convenient if I deal briefly with that amendment because it addresses a similar point. Section 21B deals with orders for altering police areas and such supplementary provisions as may be necessary. I am not certain how important those supplementary or
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transitional provisions might be, but let us assume for the moment that they are not trivial. I suggest here that the words,
"as the Secretary of State thinks necessary or expedient" should be amended by the deletion of the words,
"the Secretary of State thinks" to read, "as may be necessary or expedient".
That does not seem a great burden to place upon the Secretary of State. As we have so often argued in this Chamber, it is not a question of casting doubt upon the wisdom of the present holder of that office; it is a question of being absolutely certain that not only he but all his successors are infallible in the exercise of their judgment.
These two amendments represent a slight alteration, but an important one. They change what the Government propose in the Bill in the first instance by using the words "it is expedient" instead of,
"it appears to him to be expedient"
and, secondly, "as may be expedient" in place of the words "as he thinks expedient". I hope that I have made the position clear. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Lord has spoken to his amendments to Clause 10 with his characteristic modesty and moderation. I should remind the Committee that Clause 10 is the clause which has caused the greatest concern to the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee. One of the strictures of that committee refers very much to the issues to which the noble Lord has spoken. Amendment No.86 seeks to limit the flexibility of the Secretary of State in making powers under new Section 21B. It is worth reading on from the change that the noble Lord proposes. The powers which are sought to make supplementary and transitional provision as the Secretary of State thinks necessary include,
"provision as to the membership of a police authority".
We can understand that. When an area changes, that provision may be necessary when one has to have some change-over period. The powers also include,
"provision for the transfer of property, rights and liabilities".
Again one can understand that. They include,
"provision for the transfer of members of police forces and other persons; provision as to pending legal proceedings".
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is not in his place. Does that provision mean that legal proceedings might be dropped because of the change in boundaries? However, we then come to the crux of the matter. Paragraph (e) includes,
"provision amending Schedule IA to this Act, "
that is, the schedule which refers to police authority areas—
"any other enactment and any instrument made under any enactment".
The provision is bound by the phrase "supplementary and transitional provision". That is a widespread power. It is very much a Henry VIII provision that regulations made in that way can change,
"any other enactment and any instrument made under any enactment".
While I support the noble Lord's excellent amendment, does he realise the true horror of the powers which are proposed to be given to the Secretary of State by the new provision?
4.45 p.m.
Viscount Mountgarret: Perhaps I may put another point of view and perhaps assist my noble friend before he replies. While agreeing wholeheartedly with my noble friend that it is desirable to seek to have Acts of Parliament drafted in such a way that they contain less verbiage, and thus make lawyers' tasks less difficult in understanding them, I am not sure that in this case the amendment will achieve the objective that my noble friend desires. The reason is this. Amendment No.83 provides that "it is expedient" to make the alterations. Who will decide whether or not it is expedient? If it appears to the Secretary of State that it is expedient, at least he can argue his point. However, the generality of the phrase, "it is expedient" must open up doubts about who is responsible and how the provision would be interpreted.
The same argument applies to Amendment No.86. The term "may be" is loose. As drafted, the Bill would cause fewer problems in the future if certain actions were taken than might be created if the amendment were agreed to. I say that only to be helpful to my noble friend. I know his deep interest in the matter, and he is extremely persuasive. It is a point to be borne in mind.
Lord Gisborough: I believe that the provision is for minor adjustments. Without the amendment, the Home Secretary will be able to merge forces. That was not the intention. There seems a possibility that forces could be merged for accountancy arid book-keeping reasons which would be quite logical from the point of view of economy but totally wrong from the point of view of policing. The example of Los Angeles has been cited of what went wrong when book-keeping policing took over from local policing. There is the possibility of merging being undertaken at the whim of the Home Secretary or civil servants. If the amendment prevents that possibility, it should have serious consideration.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: The Home Office was the first office in which I served. I was very happy there and immensely proud of serving in that office. I have remained so ever since. I very much dislike opposing anything proposed by the Home Office. However, it seems to me that speakers have been overwhelmingly in favour of the amendment. I do not desire to add to the generality of what has been so admirably said. I merely draw attention to one word as indicative of the aggrandisement of the Executive these days at the expense of the legislative power of Parliament, and in particular of your Lordships' House when it comes, as a later amendment indicates, to intruding upon the Standing Orders of your Lordships' House.
I desire to add only this. It is the danger of the word "transitional". The point arises because use of that word was made quite extraordinarily—and I use that term advisedly—in the amendments to correct some of the grosser injustices of the Child Support Act. Regulations were brought in recently to modify the provisions of the Act. That Act provided for the formulae to be applied by officials in place of the discretion of the court which had previously obtained. The formulae were to assess the maintenance that was liable to be paid by absent fathers.
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The provision fell into two categories. If the assessments had been made under the Act, as many had, they were immediately payable by the absent father. The absent fathers were immediately liable.
The other class of case was where the assessment had not yet been made. The word "transitional" would have covered the latter case. As the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments pointed out, the word did not immediately, and by accepted usage, cover the former case. In a sense, under "transitional" the department was bringing in regulations to permit the Secretary of State to alter the effect of a provision of an Act of Parliament. The joint Select Committee, with its immense experience, and headed by a chairman who is universally respected and is a Member of the other place, drew attention to that. It signified clearly that, as was the case, the use of the word "transitional" was quite extraordinary.
It seemed to us that that aroused immediate protests in your Lordships' House. We were in the difficulty that in the first place there is a convention—perhaps a weak convention and one that should be reviewed—whereby your Lordships do not vote against a statutory instrument. The second more powerful reason was that the regulations were designed, in so far as they went, to mitigate the harshness of the Child Support Act. So, subject to protests, the regulation was passed.
It was then indicated that the matter would be taken up before the Procedure Committee of your Lordships' House. The point was then also raised in connection with the word "transitional" in a similar provision to this one in the Local Government (Wales) Bill. That, however, was not reached on the last occasion. It is notable that that is an additional reason in support of the amendment. To use the word "transitional" to give the Secretary of State power to rectify mistakes that have been made in an Act of Parliament is going far further than has yet been gone, although the Executive has been encroaching increasingly on the legislative power of Parliament and your Lordships' House.
Earl Ferrers: First, I can tell my noble friend Lord Gisborough that the amendment will not stop civil servants from amalgamating forces. I believe that that was his anxiety. Nowhere does the Bill allow for civil servants to amalgamate police forces, and therefore he need not be too worried about it.
The point at issue is quite simple in the case of my noble friend's amendment. Clause 10 of the Bill provides that Section 21(3) of the 1964 Act should state:
"The Secretary of State shall not exercise his power under subsection (1)"—
in other words altering police areas—
"to make alterations … unless … it appears to him to be expedient to make the alterations in the interests of efficiency or effectiveness".
The Bill leaves to the Secretary of State the question of whether it is expedient to make the alterations in the interests of efficiency and effectiveness. Before he makes an order, he has to notify the interested parties and he must consider their objections. When he has considered them, he then has to be satisfied that the proposed changes are in the interests of efficiency or effectiveness. An order to implement such an alteration

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or amalgamation must then be laid before, and approved by, both Houses of Parliament. My noble friend's amendment would remove that subjective discretion on the part of the Secretary of State and both the first and the second amendments would impose an objective test of what is actually expedient in the interests of efficiency and effectiveness.
I suggest that those questions are not something which can be proved. They cannot be determined objectively; they necessarily involve a degree of subjective judgment. I believe that my noble friend Lord Mountgarret was right. No one can definitely say, "If you do that, it is expedient". But what one can do and can justify is to make alterations if the Secretary of State considers that, in his impression, it is expedient.
The words which my noble friend's Amendment No.83 would remove from the Bill have a direct parallel in the Police Act 1964. In Section 21(2) of the Act, the test for making amalgamation schemes is whether,
"it appears to the Secretary of State that it is expedient in the interests of efficiency",
that such a change should be made. The words used in the Bill are the same as those in the 1964 Act, which is itself concerned with amalgamations.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The Minister is quite right to say that the words also appear in the 1964 Act. What he does not say is that the procedures which the Secretary of State has to adopt include provision for local public inquiries. Those are the provisions which are missing from this clause.
In cases of minor adjustments of boundaries, one can quite see that such powers are appropriate. But the problem is that the powers which are used here would be appropriate for minor changes of boundaries, for example those which would arise from local government reorganisation. We all recognise that, whatever comes out of the Local Government Commission and parliamentary consideration of the reports, there are likely to be changes of local government boundaries. That is fine; the provisions are all right. However, what is behind the Government's thinking here, and has been made explicit by Ministers over the past 12 months or so, is not just a matter of adjusting boundaries but of wholesale amalgamations of police forces.
It has been the view of Ministers that some police forces are too small for efficiency. We, for our part, very much contest that; in fact we consider that the smaller police forces have shown exemplary control over their expenditure, concern for community matters, efficiency in clear-up rates and generally high performance in terms of the recognised objectives of policing. The achievements of smaller police forces have been recognised by inspectors of constabulary.
The problem with Clause 10 is that what might be acceptable for minor changes is not acceptable for wholesale amalgamations. Anything which can be done to restrict the free licence for the Secretary of State to do what he wants—and that is what I understand the noble Lord, Lord Peyton, is trying to do, to restrict that free licence—is very welcome indeed.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: I have not always risen to support the Government in our discussions on the Bill, but it seems to me that the discussion we have been having goes extremely wide of the one narrow point raised in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Peyton. I go along with the Minister in his conclusion that the whole process is started by a subjective judgment of the Home Secretary. It is bound to be subjective. We can discuss the procedures in due course, but the Minister's conclusion is that the procedures are designed to work out whether that subjective judgment turns out to be justified. That seems to me the simple pattern of the clause and I am afraid that I do not go along with the amendment. I agree with the Minister.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: It is with a great deal of unease that I find myself differing from the opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, with his great experience of these matters. However, there are one or two points that I wish to make.
First, the fact that words have been used before in a comparatively modern statute confers upon them no status of respectability of any kind. It is still possible that they were, after all, wrong in the first place, in which case it would be desirable not to repeat the offence and use them again. So my noble friend's argument on that point is interesting only in that it reveals that he had not too much else to say.
The point with which I am concerned is this. The Government must accept that the Bill has aroused a great deal of hostility and suspicion among many people who are knowledgeable about police affairs. These two simple amendments seek to remove some of the suspicion that the Home Secretary simply wants to add to his powers and make life easy for himself. If he wants to alter a police area all he has to say is that it seems to him to be expedient to do so. No one can argue with that. If he says that it seems to him to be expedient, that is the end of the argument. On the other hand, if he has to give an indication or evidence that it is expedient to make a change, admittedly it will remain subjective, as the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, said, but it will not be quite so intensely so. There is a burden on the Home Secretary to satisfy himself and others that it is expedient to make the change asked for.
I do not wish to exaggerate the importance of the matter, but I have the nasty feeling at the back of my mind that the Minister is in the awkward position that he comes here with a load of advice and the instruction of his right honourable friend, "Do not give these people an inch. " I would like to believe that he will take these matters away to see whether there is the possibility that somebody else may be right and he may have got it wrong.
5 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My noble friend says that I come here with loads of advice and instructions from my right honourable friend "not to give them an inch", to use his words. That has nothing to do with it. When I suggested that the precedent of the 1964 Act should be used my noble friend said that it was just possible that that Act had got it wrong and we should put it right. I say to my

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noble friend that it is also possible that the Act got it right. If so why should we now differ? It is not a question of my right honourable friend gathering powers to himself; it is a matter of judgment. It is impossible to say that something will be done because it will be efficient and effective. All you can say is that you will do it because in your view it will be efficient and effective. It is simply a question of making the powers work, not giving additional powers to my right honourable friend so that he can bypass Parliament and do all these other things.
If and when under the new proposals there are any amalgamations there will be plenty of safeguards, one of which, apart from anything else, is that any proposal will have to be laid before Parliament so it can be discussed there. I assure my noble friend that this is not some diktat that my right honourable friend has given me.
Viscount Mountgarret: I should like to help my noble friend. Perhaps I may draw the attention of my noble friend Lord Peyton to Section 21A of the Act where it is provided that before making an order under Section 21, by virtue of paragraph (b) of subsection (3)—which says "it appears to him to be expedient"—the Secretary of State shall give notice of his proposal to various people. I understand the concern of my noble friend that on occasions there is too much power concentrated in too small an area, but on this occasion it is provided that the Secretary of State shall consult various people. Therefore, the scenario conjured up by my noble friend of the Secretary of State having the right to say that something looks a good idea and he can get on with it is simply not possible under the Bill as drafted.
Lord Monkswell: I am interested in the Government's argument that the wording of the 1964 Act was satisfactory and therefore it should be satisfactory now. I am not saying that the wording of the Act is unsatisfactory. One of the matters that concern me is whether the Government recognise that the circumstances today are rather different from those of 1964. If we cast our minds back to that period, the general consensus was that there was need for a reorganisation not only of local government but also of the police forces. There was no consensus about how it should be done. It was logical at that point in history to say that something had to be done and that the ultimate arbiter of what needed to be done was the Home Secretary. That was how the wording of the Act was framed.
We are now in a different situation. There is no consensus that something needs to be done about reorganisation of the police. If anything, the consensus is the other way round. It seems to me that it is only the Home Secretary who says that there needs to be amalgamation of police forces. There is a general consensus that most police forces up and down the land do not need to be amalgamated or split apart. There is recognition, however, of the need for minor changes because of the changes in local government which will arise from boundary commission decisions. It seems to me that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Peyton,
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is eminently sensible and should be supported. The circumstances today are different from those which obtained in 1964.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: There is another difference between 1964 and the present time. Today we have a scrutiny committee, established in pursuance of the recommendations of the Jellicoe Committee, notwithstanding executive reservations. It has reported on the matter; that is a crucial difference.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: I do not wish to make too heavy weather about these amendments. Neither of them is very vital. I simply thought it would not be unreasonable to impose a slight burden on the Home Secretary to dilute a totally subjective judgment. That is unacceptable. I know that my noble friend Lord Mountgarret was anxious to help. I do not think he did so, although it was nice of him to try. Before I seek leave to withdraw the amendment, perhaps I may say to my noble friend that, had he said that there might be something in the matter and he would take it away to look at it, I do not believe that I would have attached an enormous amount of weight to the undertaking but I would have regarded it as a gesture of conciliation. Instead, he has literally spat it back at me and said, "This is absolute rubbish, and I will not even look at it". So be it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale Lord Allen of Abbeydale moved Amendment No.84:
Page 8, line 13, leave out ("two") and insert ("four").
The noble Lord said: I hope to deal with this matter fairly shortly. The Minister explained that the clause provides that where the Secretary of State is contemplating making a compulsory order altering police districts he must give notice to the police and local authorities concerned and such other persons as he considers appropriate. That notice has to describe the general nature of the proposed alteration and the reasons for it.
The 1964 Act left it to the notice itself to give a date by which objections must be received. This time the clause itself sets a period of two months with no power of extension. It seems to me that this is not realistic. Two months is not all that long. My experience may be unique, but I have known it take that time to get a reply from a Minister on what seemed to me quite a simple matter. That is the authorities' only chance. They will need to consult constituents and other bodies and they themselves do not meet every week. The notice might reach them in the middle of the holiday season—who knows? It is a little offhand. Given the importance of the issue to those concerned, it seems not unreasonable to extend the period for objecting at any rate to four months, if indeed it is necessary to provide any period in the statute itself. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: In introducing the amendment, with which I thoroughly agree, the noble Lord did not refer to Amendment No.85, which has been grouped with it.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: With respect, no, the amendments have not been grouped together. They are distinct amendments.
Earl Ferrers: That seems to have closed up the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I made the point that I wanted to make; namely, that I agree with the amendment.
Earl Ferrers: But the noble Lord did not know that we were not talking about another amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Allen, suggested that the period should be longer than two months and proposed that it should be four months. I thought it was hitting a little below the belt to say that it took two months to get an answer from a Minister at the Home Office.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: I did not say from the Home Office; I said from a Minister.
Earl Ferrers: I thought that the noble Lord knew the habits of the Home Office so well that he might have been aiming in that direction. I am delighted to know that his loyalty to his old department remains strong and that he did not mean anything of the sort.
I suppose it is perfectly true that such letters might be written during summer holidays or whenever. But a two-month period in which the local authority has to reply in giving any objections to a proposed amalgamation seems to me to be quite a long while. I should have thought that that period was quite reasonable. There are arguments that the period of two months could be extended in some cases and the Bill allows for that. Two months is a minimum period and is not necessarily the period that will apply in all cases. So it would be possible to allow an extension of the period in certain cases.
I do not know that the noble Lord, Lord Allen, made a very effective case. Of course I wish to help whenever I can and I should be quite happy to accept the noble Lord's amendment, despite what I said earlier. It seems to me that four months would be a perfectly acceptable length of time. If that would help the Committee, I should be entirely happy to accept the amendment.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: I am very much obliged. It would help greatly.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale Lord Allen of Abbeydale moved Amendment No.85:
Page 8, leave out line 19 and insert:

("(a) cause a local inquiry to be held in respect of that objection by a person appointed by him (who shall not be an officer of police or of any Government Department);

(aa) consider the report of the person holding an inquiry before determining whether the scheme should be made and if so subject to what modifications, if any; and").

The noble Lord said: I may have to speak for just a little longer about this amendment, which is rather more important than the previous one. Its purpose is to retain the local inquiry procedure where the Secretary of State is contemplating a compulsory alteration in police areas.
I recall that when the Police Act 1946 abolished most non-county borough forces, such as Reigate and Penzance, it also made provision for compulsory amalgamations, subject to some protection for the bigger counties and county boroughs. Those provisions were repeated with some extensions in the 1964 Act, as the Committee were reminded in earlier discussions. Tonight, happily, we can ignore the changes in amalgamation procedure made in the Local Government Act 1972—the statute which is so much admired by the noble Lord, Lord Peyton—and also the Local Government Act 1992, dealing with the consequences for police areas of the findings of the Boundary Commission. That was a point touched on earlier by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey.
The compulsory powers provided for in the 1946 and 1964 Acts were both put into use. A number of inquiries were held and a number of compulsory amalgamation schemes were carried through. But the procedure that is now contemplated is different. If the Secretary of State decides to go for a compulsory alteration in the interests of effectiveness or efficiency he is required to issue to the police authorities, the local authorities concerned and such other persons as he considers appropriate, as we have already discussed, a notice describing the general nature of the proposed alterations—that broadly follows the earlier Acts—together with his reasons.
There is then a period, which happily we have discussed, for making objections. The Secretary of State has to consider those objections and tell the objector whether he accepts them; and if not, why not. That is the end for the local and police authorities. At no stage is there any requirement for them to be told the details of the scheme; for example, under the paragraphs read out earlier by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey. They only have to be told the general nature of it. So far as I can make out, those details would appear for the first time in an order laid before both Chambers and requiring affirmative resolutions.
Under the old procedure, all the details—some of them can matter—would have been discussed at the local inquiry. Sometimes alterations would have been recommended by the inspector—but not now. Under the old procedure the orders had to be laid.
The Minister hinted that this time the additional requirement for affirmative resolution might prove to be an adequate safeguard. I am afraid that I do not believe that it is. For one thing, as we were reminded, it is rather unusual for this Chamber ever to turn down an affirmative resolution. My experience is limited but I can remember only one occasion. But as a safeguard, to my mind, in practice the affirmative resolution does not carry quite the weight that is sometimes attached to it. Also, the order cannot be amended. I do not quite know what either Chamber would make of an unamendable instrument with a mass of detail about such things as rank structure, the composition of the authority, the disposal of property, the detailed financial controls and all the rest of it.
What is a little more surprising is that there is no intention of using those powers, at any rate for the time being. The Government said in their White Paper, Police Reform (Cm.2281), that,

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"it may be desirable in the long term to reduce the number of police forces," but that they all had enough to do in the meantime not to be diverted by any such proposals now. However, the Government want to take power to be able to implement a programme of amalgamation—a word which the Bill itself avoids—when, in a familiar phrase, the time is right.
The White Paper goes on to say that it would be unworkable to rely on the current statutory provisions.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines "unworkable" as, "not capable of being worked".
But the White Paper immediately goes on to make it clear that the Government do not mean that at all. If I had been at the Home Office, I might not have been too happy about the drafting of that passage or indeed some other parts of the White Paper.
As the White Paper makes plain, what the Government object to is that if a local inquiry has to be held there may be delay and uncertainty over a long period. It is almost saying that the procedure would work but that it would be clumsy and a nuisance.
I have enough dim memories of being a bureaucrat to realise that it must be exceedingly frustrating, sitting high up in the Bail Spence Building at Queen Anne's Gate, when one is convinced that it would make sense to merge forces X and Y. The authorities have already had their say on the general issues but nevertheless one has to wait until the long inquiry procedures have been gone through and those concerned have been given their chance of arguing at length about the details. But we live in a democracy and those are issues of great local concern.
I shall listen, as I always do, with great care to what the noble Earl says when he replies. But on what I have heard so far I am nowhere near being convinced that the local inquiry should be dispensed with. I beg to move.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: At the time of the publication of the Willink Report there were 155 police forces in Britain, ranging from one of 18 officers in the Shetlands to one of over 3,000 in Lancashire. Now, of course, there are 43 forces in England and Wales and eight in Scotland.
Most of those amalgamations in England and Wales—some were affected subsequently by government reform in 1974—were carried through in the period 1966–67 as a result of the procedures laid down in the third schedule of the 1964 Police Act. That requires the Secretary of State to publish a scheme and, if the police authority or local authority object to it, there must be a local inquiry. As it happens, I was at the Home Office in the period 1966–67.
I am bound to say that I find it more than mildly surprising to have it suggested that the procedure laid down in that Act was unworkable; because it worked. Those amalgamations were carried through between 1966–67. Local authorities or local police authorities were enabled to put their case to an impartial and independent inspector, who then submitted a report to the Secretary of State. What is wrong with that? Why do we see the use of the word "unworkable"? It is an
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astonishing word to use given the fact that, as I indicated, the bulk of the amalgamations that took place did so on the basis of this procedure.
I wish to make only two other points. The first was made by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale. Like him I am mildly sceptical about the argument as between affirmative and negative resolutions. Oppositions are always in favour of the affirmative resolution procedure and governments, by and large, are in favour of the negative resolution procedure because of the amount of parliamentary time that can be devoted to it. On this occasion, for understandable reasons, the Government are suggesting the affirmative resolution procedure because they are wiping out the obligation on the Secretary of State to hold a local inquiry.
I do not regard that provision in the Bill as protecting the rights of local communities. As we know, debates in the House of Commons—that is where most of these debates will take place—on affirmative resolution procedures take place with possibly six, seven, perhaps a dozen MPs in the House, rarely more. The Division Bells ring and, as a result of the work of the Government Whips, the Government get their way. I do not regard that procedure as a satisfactory alternative to the right of local communities to put their case to an inspector at a local inquiry.
My second point is that I find it even odder that the Government are suggesting this major change in the amalgamation procedure when they say that they have no intention, in the short term, to amalgamate police forces. If that is indeed their position, why are they putting forward the proposal? It is an extremely strange idea.
One other argument was used in relation to delay and uncertainty over a long period. As I indicated, that did not operate in 1966–67. Having had some involvement in the matter at the time I cannot recall any of the Home Office officials who were involved taking that specific view; nor can I remember that view being expressed on behalf of any of the police forces involved. Accordingly, I am firmly opposed to once again stripping away the rights of local communities to put their case to a local inquiry.
It is wrong that police forces with a long and honourable tradition, a long record of service to their local communities, after four months can be wiped out of existence—in reality, by the stroke of a ministerial pen. The only problem then for the Home Secretary of the day—not the current Home Secretary because he tells us that he has no such ideas in mind—would be a thinly attended debate in the House of Commons taking place for an hour or so late in the evening as a result of which, when the Division Bells rang, a police force would be wiped out of existence. The local community would have no opportunity of putting its case to a local inquiry. That seems to me to be wholly wrong and I look forward to hearing what the noble Earl says to justify what, in my view, is an extremely oppressive proposal.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: I support the amendment because I feel that the provision is a protection for the Home Secretary. I found in the cases I had to consider that new elements and arguments were brought

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to light; matters that were not known to officials in the Home Office even to someone as luminous as the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, who always guided my footsteps from falling. But even he, on occasions, did not realise what those in the backwoods were thinking.
With respect, I think the Home Secretary is depriving himself of a form of protection in removing the possibility of a local inquiry. It helps him to know, after the inquiry, what arguments have been brought out. Although he hears the case from Home Office officials for amalgamation, he has not heard the case against. I suggest to the Minister, therefore, that it would be good to keep that form of inquiry.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I shall not trip myself up again by confusing the amendments. However, I want to say again that we strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, for the reasons already indicated. Minor changes to boundaries caused by local government reorganisation may well be acceptable in the form proposed. But larger changes may be proposed by future Home Secretaries with a different view from the present Home Secretary; after all, in the case of London, as we have seen, changes of one Home Secretary to another in the same party led to 180 degree reversals of policy. That could happen again. It may be that the arguments which always seem to persist—that larger authorities are more efficient than smaller ones—could result in proposals for large-scale amalgamations. Under those circumstances, proposals which are presented only in general terms to the authorities and to the councils in the area concerned, without a public inquiry, would be an outrage.
5.30 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: I know that anything to do with amalgamations is always a sensitive area, and that people are quite rightly jealous of their territorial forces. They take pride in them, and often they do not like to see amalgamations. That applies in matters of the police service, and very often in matters of business or even government administration. People like what they have become used to, and they take pride in their areas. I understand that. I do not think that there is anything sinister in what the Government are proposing.
There are serious disadvantages in the public inquiry procedures which apply under Section 21 of the Police Act 1964 in its present form. Inquiries are very long, very protracted and very expensive. Under present arrangements, if the Home Secretary is inclined to initiate compulsory amalgamation of police areas, he is required to publish details of the proposed scheme and to invite objections. Then if any of the interested police authorities or councils object, he is obliged to set up a local inquiry very much on the lines proposed by the present amendment. Once the inquiry has been held, the Secretary of State must consider the report and then determine whether the amalgamation should proceed. If he determines that it should proceed, he has to decide whether it should proceed with the modifications to the original scheme which are suggested by the report or
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without them. He has to listen to the views of the inquiry, but he can then reject them. He need not accept its views. He need not incorporate its views into his decision.
The report of the inquiry and the draft of the order giving effect to the amalgamation is laid before Parliament but it is not subject to any parliamentary procedure. In other words, Parliament would have no right, and has no right, of approval or rejection of the order. These procedures are long. They can sometimes take up to 18 months. They can be very expensive. There is also the serious disadvantage of subjecting the police forces concerned to a prolonged period of uncertainty. We believe that this can have an adverse effect on policing in the area.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, said that the rights of local authorities can be wiped out at the stroke of a ministerial pen. I do not think that that is so. If I may modestly suggest it, the noble Lord is wrong. The proposals set out in the Bill are in some ways even more generous to objectors. Under the proposals, the Secretary of State is required to serve notice on the relevant councils and police authorities which would be affected and to such other persons as he considers appropriate. He must give a minimum period of time for them to respond with any objections. It was to be two months. That, I admit, has now been extended to four months at the stroke of the Committee's pen. The Home Secretary is then required to consider those objections, respond and state what his views are. In addition—and the Committee might think this a valuable safeguard—if the Secretary of State is minded to proceed with a compulsory alteration of police areas having considered the objections, he must obtain the approval of both Houses of Parliament before the relevant alteration order can come into effect.
The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, said that it is very unusual for affirmative resolutions to be voted against. It is unusual but I remember the occasion about 30 years ago when a Stansted order was brought before your Lordships. There was a proposal to have an airport at Stansted long, long before the present Stansted airport was built. There was such a row about it that, admittedly, the order was not voted on. The Government withdrew the order because it would have been so unpopular. The order never went through Parliament, so there is a protection there.
This is a less protracted and unsettling arrangement. It gives those who want to object the ability to object and allows for Parliament also to have the right of decision about the resultant decision.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: The noble Earl has suggested to us that there are formidable hurdles for the Secretary of State to have to clamber over in order to get his way on an amalgamation scheme. I took a note of what the noble Earl said. The Secretary of State must first serve a notice on those concerned. That does not seem an immensely difficult procedure. Then he has to give them time to respond. That is true. It is to take four months. Then he has to consider their objections. That

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also is not an enormous hurdle to have to clamber over. Then he has to respond to the objections, which means a letter.
I ask the Committee to contrast that with the present statutory position. There is a local inquiry. In most cases an inspector of constabulary has to go into the witness box to justify the character of the Secretary of State's scheme. He is crass-examined. At the end of the period of inquiry the inspector submits a report to the Secretary of State. That is a substantial procedure, and rightly so, because what we are talking about is a significant number of police forces of considerable quality with a long record of service to the local community and often an intimate relationship with a local community. It seems to me that the procedures outlined by the noble Earl amount to very little indeed.
I have indicated already that I do not believe that the affirmative resolution procedure has a great deal of strength behind it because, as we know, many affirmative resolutions trundle through a thinly attended House of Commons, with people responding when they hear Division Belts ring. The local inquiry is the best guarantee local communities have that their forces will not be wiped out of existence by a Home Secretary without reasonable cause arid without a serious case being put to a local inquiry.
For instance, why should the police forces of Wiltshire and Dorset be amalgamated without some form of local inquiry? Why should the forces of Hampshire and Sussex be wiped out of existence without some form of local inquiry? What seems so puzzling is that the. Government have made it clear that they have no intension of proceeding with a programme of amalgamations. So one is left wondering why this provision has been introduced at all. With great respect to the noble Earl, he has not advanced an argument in favour of it except that he said that the present system can lead to protracted delay. To the extent that a local inquiry has to take place, it will take longer than simply an exchange of correspondence, which is what is outlined in the present Bill.
I must say to the noble Earl that in the period between 1966 and 1967, when, this major programme of amalgamations was carried through, there was no view in the police service that the delays caused by the local inquiry system were unreasonable or affected the efficiency of the police forces concerned.
We have here yet another example of the government of the day acting ether on their own behalf or possibly their successor's behalf, giving Ministers the power to act without being required to justify their position before a local inquiry. That is unreasonable. In the light of the arguments which have been represented, I hope that the Government are prepared to think again on the matter.
Earl Ferrers: I find the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, difficult to follow. He seems to argue that the Government are removing rights from people. He appears to look underneath every stone to see if there is a slug there. He says that we are producing arrangements for amalgamations, but we have no intention of doing any. I have no hesitation in telling the
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Committee what the position is. My right honourable friend has no intention at present of amalgamating anything, but it is perfectly possible in the course of the next 10,20 or 30 years that amalgamations will have to take place.
The present procedure is a very protracted one, an aspect to which the noble Lord, Lord Harris, did not address himself. If this matter continues for 18 months and nobody knows whether they are going to be amalgamated or not, there is frustration and lack of motivation. Under the system which we have at the moment the public inquiry is long and expensive. At the end of it the Home Secretary does not have to take any notice of what the inquiry says. He makes an order under the administrative procedure and Parliament does not vote on it or even debate it.
The proposed scheme will be quicker. People will have the opportunity to write in to complain and see my right honourable friend. He has to answer those complaints and the matter then goes before Parliament. That is a more appropriate procedure.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: Earlier, the noble Earl sat down before I expected him to do so. I thought that he was developing a case against this amendment; but he does not appear to have got very far. We have talked about an alteration to police areas; but the White Paper is quite honest because it refers to amalgamations and that is what we are talking about. The Minister has not answered the point that, as drafted, the amendment allows for the authorities concerned to be told about the general nature of the proposals, but it gives them no opportunity to be told about the details which in some cases can be very important.
I do not think I need say any more about the weakness of the safeguard of an affirmative resolution. We have Stansted and Rhodesia, but not very much else. The Minister has not commented on the valid points made by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan of Cardiff, and in particular, that when these inquiries are made they bring out points of which the officials were unaware. That means amendments being made to the original scheme. The proposal now envisaged allows no opportunity for that to happen.
It is said that these inquiries can take a long time. was involved in some of them, but I cannot remember that they took as long as all that. As the Minister said, there may be one which went on for 18 months. But once made, the orders last for a very long time and a period of uncertainty of even 18 months is a price well worth paying to be sure one gets the answer right.
I am not going to ask the Committee for an opinion this evening because, looking at the amendment, its drafting could be improved. For example, it does not specify what type of local inquiry one has in mind. But I reserve the right to return to this at a later stage. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No.86 not moved.]
5.45 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No.87:
Page 8, leave out lines 40 to 44.
The noble Lord said: I am delighted to see that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, is back in his place. I know that he had urgent business outside this Chamber earlier this afternoon. I am very much hoping for his support on this amendment. It seeks to do what the Government decided to do in the Local Government (Wales) Bill: to take out a provision which would intrude on the procedures of this House by declaring that what would otherwise be a hybrid instrument shall be considered not to be so.
Even though it may be somewhat boring, it is necessary to remind the Committee of what the effect of the hybrid instrument procedure is in your Lordships' House. I quote from Erskine May at page 550:
"A petition to the House not to affirm a hybrid instrument must be deposited in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments within fourteen days following the day on which the Chairman's report is laid before the House. If no petition is received, or any petition so received is withdrawn during this period, the Chairman reports accordingly to the House. Any petition received during the period and not withdrawn, together with the instrument petitioned against, stands referred to the Hybrid Instruments Committee. This Committee is appointed each session (as it has been this Session) with the Chairman of Committees in the Chair.
The Hybrid Instruments Committee, after considering any representations in writing by the parties to the proceedings and after hearing, if it thinks fit, the parties in person or by counsel or agents, decides whether the petition has a locus standi. If it so decides, the Committee reports to the House, in accordance with the criteria specified in Standing Order [216) whether there ought to be a further inquiry by a Select Committee into all or any of the matters complained of.
Where the Hybrid Instruments Committee has reported that there ought to be a further inquiry, the House may refer all or any of the matters on which the Committee has reported to a select committee consisting of five Lords, named by the House on the proposal of the Committee of Selection, with orders of reference specified under the House".
That provision would be completely removed if lines 40 to 44 of Clause 10 were to remain in the Bill. The Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee, which, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon, reminded us, is the difference between now and 1964, expressed very great anxiety over this provision. I shall not read the full report on hybrid instruments but simply the second and shorter paragraph:
"The Committee notes that Clause 10 excludes the hybrid procedure of this House and that the Home Office has defended this in comparison with existing powers. We drew the attention of the House to similar recent provisions in the Railways Bill and the Local Government (Wales) Bill. In this case the bill gives the Secretary of State new and extensive powers in many areas and the House may wish to look very carefully at any further delegation of powers such as is proposed in Clause 10. Bearing in mind that the bill will remove a provision of Schedule 3 of the 1964 Act for a public enquiry"—
this matter may be returned to on Report by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale—
"in case of objection by a police authority or a council to an order to amalgamate police areas, the Committee believes that the House will wish to consider carefully the exclusion of the hybrid instrument procedure in this case".
Before the last election I believe that this was called a "double whammy". One takes away the provision for a public inquiry and, having done so, one then takes away the provision for issues which mix general and particular matters—in other words, hybrid issues—to be
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considered properly by the procedures of this House or another place. Many noble Lords in all parts of the Committee will consider this an affront to the procedures of this Chamber as well as to the democratic consideration of proposals by government on amalgamations. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: I would not expect my noble friend the Minister to accept the amendment. I do not think that it will very often arise that there could be hybridity. That will occur only rarely, but when there is hybridity, it means an elaborate parliamentary procedure, with the taking of evidence and the hearing of arguments. It could cause considerable delay, especially if the matter arose in July and consideration was delayed until the full hybridity procedure could be conducted in the autumn. I would have thought that this is a matter on which we should be trying to avoid delay. If it is necessary to make the changes envisaged in what will be the new Section 21B of the 1964 Act,
"it were well
It were done quickly".
The Government are right to avoid hybridity. I hope that they will do so.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: This is a more important constitutional point than might appear at first instance because it crystallises an increasing invasion by the Executive of legislative functions. That is an age-old constitutional tension. It is not to be worried about, it is not to be grieved about but it is to be noted and to be resisted.
From time to time the tension is relaxed. It was relaxed as a result of the Glorious Revolution which established the supremacy of Parliament over the pretensions of the Executive to exercise legislative power. For nearly two centuries after that, there was no attempt by the Executive to exercise such legislative powers. It was relaxed again after the report of the Donoughmore Committee in 1932 which considered ministerial powers. Again, for decades there was no attempt by the Executive to revive its pretensions in the legislative sphere.
Your Lordships are now faced with a renewed attempt. As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, pointed out, this is in effect an affront to your Lordships' House because it is a pretension to suspend the standing orders of your Lordships' House without any prior approach to the Procedure Committee of your Lordships' House. That is an extraordinary pretension.
It is important to recollect why the procedure of your Lordships' House in relation to hybrid instruments was established. As is well known, there are three sorts of Bills. There are public Bills, which deal with matters general and are introduced by a Member of either House. There are private Bills, dealing with particular interests and introduced on petition from outside Parliament. However, some public Bills affect private interests in particular and are certified by the Examiners of Bills as hybrid Bills. They then go to be considered by the Hybrid Bill Committees which weigh the intrusion of private rights against the public purpose of the measure and give each such weight as they think fit. That was a nuisance to the administrators of the

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Executive when trying to get a measure through Parliament—and to get it through quickly without paying too great a regard to individual rights which may be overridden. So the brilliant device was established: instead of having a hybrid Bill, the hybrid provisions were put into a statutory instrument under the Bill.
Your Lordships' House alone countered that by establishing a Select Committee on Hybrid Instruments so that the private interests which were intruded upon by a hybrid instrument could be given proper consideration—not necessarily vindicated against the general purpose, but given proper consideration. That was embodied in the standing orders of your Lordships' House; those standing orders which are now sought to be suspended.
The matter was considered by the Joint Select Committee on Delegated Legislation of 1972–73. It was a very strong committee, presided over by a very experienced parliamentarian and Minister, the late Lord Brooke of Cumnor. It reported that the procedure of your Lordships' House—the procedure which is now sought to be aborted—should be maintained; that it was a safeguard and hat it had proved for 50 years to be a safeguard for individual rights and interests. That was 20 years ago. We have now had 70 years of the use of that procedure. There have been a number of attempts to obviate it in the way that is proposed in this statute.
As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, pointed out, such precedents as existed before the establishment of your Lordships' Scrutiny Committee can be discounted. The Scrutiny Committee has on this occasion, and previously, signalled very strongly its objection to such a provision. It came to a head in the last Session in relation to the Railways Bill. The department fought with great tenacity to preserve its power of intrusion; to preserve its power to abort the standing orders of your Lordships' House. The matter finally went to a Division, in which the Government had a majority of one. They were supported by what is opprobriously called the "payroll vote" of 23 Ministers who had been kept around in order to support the Government in such a situation.
As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, reminded the Committee, the matter came up again in relation to the Local Government (Wales) Bill. On that occasion, the Government silently agreed with the objection and the Lord Advocate, who was in charge of the Bill, put his name at the head of the four Members of your Lordships' House who tabled an amendment.
So the fight goes on, as any fight for liberty goes on. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. One must expect this sort of provision to be revived wherever an Executive can get away with it. Your Lordships will not, I hope, allow the Government to get away with it on this occasion, any more than on the Local Government (Wales) Bill—and as they just got away with it on the Railways Bill. I support the amendment as strongly as I can.
6 p.m.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and to the Committee because I was not in my place when he began to speak to the amendment. I gravely overestimated the time that it would take to dispose of the preceding amendment.
The amendment appears under my name. In fact, I tabled the amendment separately from the other two noble Lords whose names appear on it because it represented my strong views. I do not wish to repeat what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale. Suffice it to say, the concept of hybridity exists in our proceedings in order to protect the individual on occasions when the whole might of the state is deployed. Without a provision of that kind, the small rights of small people might go wholly unnoticed, unobserved and unheeded.
I was surprised when I saw the extremely laconic way in which the right had been dispensed with. New Section 21B(3) in Clause 10 provides that:
"An order to which subsection (2) of this section applies, and which would apart from this subsection be treated for the purposes of the standing orders of either House of Parliament as a hybrid instrument, shall proceed in that House as if it were not such an instrument".
That is the stuff of Alice in Wonderland and Humpty Dummy—"Words will not mean what they normally mean when I don't want them to". I find that a strange proposition to come from a Conservative Administration. I wonder what the reaction of some of my noble friends would have been had the provision been contained in a Labour Government's Bill.
I feel acutely uncomfortable with the provision. If it is going to be said that it will occur only very seldom, why bother about it at all? If it is going to be frequently used we should be very careful before we accept such a measure. I say in conclusion that I have no regret whatever that my name is on the amendment.
Earl Russell: Like the noble Lord, Lord Peyton of Yeovil, I owe an apology to the Committee because I was not in my place when the amendment was called.
As usual, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, is entirely right. The hybridity procedure is an important part of our liberty. The force of an Act of Parliament which may do what it likes is one of the most formidable instruments of power known to man. When the whole weight of that instrument is brought to bear against a single individual or corporation in a different way from any other individual or corporation, that individual or corporation has rightly been regarded as entitled to the protection of our procedure.
That sense has existed in Parliament for a long time. I recently read a case of 1607 where Parliament brought in a private Bill that affected the inheritance of someone imprisoned for Roman Catholic recusancy. They were not the favourite characters of another place in the 17th century. Nevertheless, it stopped proceedings on the Bill, sent notification to him in prison and delayed proceedings to allow him time to instruct counsel to get a hearing. That is the way that parliamentary procedure

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ought to be conducted and that is why we, in our hybrid instruments procedure, have something which is particularly valuable to the liberty of the subject.
There is another instance which the noble and learned Lord did not mention. In the Local Government Finance Bill 1988 a provision was introduced to vary the power to have the hybrid procedure. The noble Lord, Lord Hesketh, from the Dispatch Box defended that—and so did the noble Lord, Lord Renton, who spoke on that occasion—I thought with a good deal of force. It dealt with the application of the community charge to railway signal boxes where cases were so individual that the risk of hybridity was extreme. On that occasion I decided to give the noble Lord the benefit of the doubt, but in return I asked him to give a pledge not to make a habit of it. The noble Lord, Lord Hesketh, willingly gave me that pledge. Now we have in the Railways Bill, the Local Government (Wales) Bill and this Bill—three instances in quick succession. I am inclined to agree with Goldfinger: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time is enemy action. I hope that the noble Earl's response will be sufficiently conciliatory to persuade me that on this occasion Goldfinger is mistaken.
We live in a time when respect for Parliament appears to be declining. I am inclined to think that the diminution of column inches in the papers is an objective sign of a real decline of respect. I regret that very deeply. The purpose of Parliament is to make the law and on occasion to be capable of checking the Executive. We have here a case where the power of Parliament to control what goes in to regulations, which are themselves hard enough to control and which will have the force of law, is severely diminished. I hold the view that, if respect for Parliament diminishes, this kind of Executive action may have something to do with it. It is what was known in the 17th century as, "how to blow up a Parliament without gunpowder".
Lord Renton: Does the noble Earl agree that the alteration of the boundaries of a police area will scarcely ever affect private interests in the way they could be affected, for example, under the Railways Bill or under various other forms of legislation with which we are familiar? Surely we must be realistic about this.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: If the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is right—
Earl Russell: I believe that the question was addressed to me. If the noble Lords, Lord McIntosh and Lord Mottistone, wish to come back, I believe that that will be in order.
If the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is right, the existence of the procedure would not use up a lot of parliamentary time because there would not be the wish to invoke it. But if there is the wish to invoke the procedure, that would indicate that the noble Lord is wrong and that it has adversely affected a private interest. After all, a police station is a community and one cannot tear it apart without causing a good deal of screaming as the mandrake is pulled up by the roots.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Lord made the point that I wished to make much better than I could have done.
Earl Ferrers: Members of the Committee have discussed the subject of hybridity, and it is clear that the requirement for an affirmative resolution procedure raises the possibility that under the standing orders of this House an order implementing the change in police areas might be a hybrid instrument. Of course, new Section 21B(3) would exclude that possibility. It seems unnecessary to treat an instrument such as we are considering as a hybrid instrument. I believe that my noble friend Lord Renton was right in saying that the police areas as such are not of a specific national importance which normally goes with hybridity.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: If there is no question of treating the regulation as a hybrid instrument, then there is no point in excluding the Standing Orders of your Lordships' House.
Earl Ferrers: I understand the view of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, and I am glad to receive his advice. I was merely saying that I do not believe that police areas would come under the hybrid instrument provisions. Erskine May describes a hybrid Bill as a public Bill which affects a particular private interest in a manner different from the private interests of other persons or bodies of the same category or class. On the whole, hybridity tends to refer to parliamentary proceedings which implement public policy but which affect private interests in such a way that not all private interests are treated the same.
I know that Members of the Committee are sensitive about these matters. I remember the Bill to nationalise aircraft and shipbuilding. Problems of hybridity arose and there were a great many difficulties. I am glad to have the advice of the Committee on those matters. Precedents have been quoted. There is a precedent in the Local Government Act 1992. But parliamentary procedures are important, as is the advice of Members of the Committee about them.
My noble friend Lord Peyton said earlier that he felt uncomfortable. I am not surprised about that. He has done nothing but criticise the Bill from start to finish and I am glad that he feels uncomfortable. Earlier he accused me of coming to the Committee with strict instructions from my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to say no to everything; that is not so. I wish to consider what Members of the Committee have said. At present I believe that what is in the Bill is correct, but I should like to take away the views of the Committee and consider them further before Report stage.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is an offer it would be churlish to refuse. Clearly, anxiety has been expressed on all sides of the Committee about the provision. The defence for it is rather like the housemaid's baby; it is only a little one. I do not find that argument very convincing.
It has been said that the subsection is an affront to the procedures of your Lordships' House. I am sure that that is true. We could live with that. However, I find that it

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is an affront to the English language. The Bill has five lines which say that that which is shall be treated as though it were not. That is most offensive. The Minister has properly and courteously said that he will take away the matter and think again about it.
Lord Tordoff: Before the noble Lord decides what to do with the amendment, I should like to raise one further point. If a Bill comes to us from another place with such a clause, it may be thought that the other place has made a decision and, therefore, we should be particularly cautious about rejecting such a clause. However, this Bill started in this Chamber and we are inflicting on ourselves a diminution of our powers. That should be taken into account in conjunction with what the scrutiny committee recommended.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That is an extremely useful and valid additional argument for the amendment. It is proper that I should accept the Minister's offer. If he wishes, I shall make myself available to discuss the matter with him, but he may feel that that is not necessary. He will realise that if I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, as I do, I reserve the right to return to the matter at a later stage if we do not receive satisfaction. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 11 [Functions of Secretary of State]:
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Serota): If Amendment No.88 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments Nos.89 or 90.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich Lord Harris of Greenwich moved Amendment No.88:
Page 9, leave out lines 4 to 23.
The noble Lord said: This amendment deals with the extremely important issue of the national objectives of the police service for which the Government are seeking powers. There are substantial implications with regard to this procedure. First, there is no precedent for a government of this country requiring every police force to accept the same objectives. I have still heard no persuasive argument as to why that should be done. In fact, we are moving towards a procedure whereby we are asked to undermine the judgment given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in the case of Blackburn. That established clearly and unequivocally—I should be grateful if the noble Earl will deal specifically with this point—the operational independence of the chief officer. This provision is designed deliberately to undermine the force of that judgment and thus has the most profound implications for the police service.
As the noble Earl is aware, once again, so far as I am aware, the provision is opposed by every chief officer of police in this country. The constitutional implications are profound. Apart from anything else, there are a number of remarkable absurdities. I find it difficult to understand why the chief constables of Cumbria, North Wales and Dyfed-Powys, all police areas in which there is a settled and primarily rural population, should be
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expected to have precisely the same objective as the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, who is responsible for policing many of our most difficult inner city areas, and the chief constables of the West Midlands and Greater Manchester who are responsible for policing areas like Handsworth and Moss Side. What is the purpose of that?
We have been told frankly by the Home Secretary that among the central objectives which chief officers will be required to accept—I take two of the first examples given—are that the investigation and clear-up rate of cases of violence and burglary should be national objectives. I wonder how sensible that is. As I endeavoured to point out at Second Reading, crimes of violence include a wide range of offences from murder and manslaughter to minor assaults—an assault, say, committed by one neighbour on another.
I wonder why it is regarded as sensible to create a situation whereby, as a result of the requirement to be imposed on chief officers of the forces concerned to answer precise statistical questions based on the success or otherwise of their operations in those areas, the media will, perfectly understandably—and, in my view, perfectly properly—be able to construct league tables based on those statistics.
I understand—though I know that many regret it—the case for a league table, for example, so far as concerns schools. I know that many people are passionately opposed to the idea. Nevertheless, I can at least understand the logic behind it. People can move so that their children are entitled to go to school in an area where the schools have better academic records than others. That is perfectly understandable. Many parents do in fact choose to do so, though I am not quite certain whether they are wise to do so on the basis of such league tables. However, how can that apply to a police force? Is it really being suggested that someone should move from, say, the area of Greater Manchester Police to Dyfed-Powys on the grounds that the clear-up rates in the latter are better and because it is at the top of the league table.
As I have already said, two of the central objectives which the Government have indicated they intend to impose on the police service are those of violence and burglary. To repeat, cases of violence cover a very wide range of criminal offences. When it comes to murder, the police do not have to be told to give priority in terms of their resources to such an investigation or, indeed, to the investigation of a rape. But how is it sensible for the success of the police in clearing up a murder to be counted in precisely the same way as a dispute between two neighbours who come to blows?
As I have pointed out, a policeman who has the good fortune to arrest both neighbours will score twice as heavily for his chief constable compared with the case investigated by a large team of police officers which eventually brings one murderer to the courts, The first of those cases may require the investigative skills of one uniformed officer for a period of perhaps an hour or so but, in the case of a murder investigation, it may require scores of detectives working together over a period of three to six months.
The noble Earl must be aware of the situation because he has direct ministerial responsibility for the police. The police themselves see no point in such a statistical exercise; indeed, they see it as deeply damaging. They are aware of all the issues which will not form part of the league tables and which will not be among the national objectives which will be laid down by the Home Secretary.
What about the hours of police time spent in sorting out people's domestic disputes (not a national policing objective as laid down by the Home Secretary) in dealing with missing persons, lost or runaway children; or in trying to help the elderly and infirm who call on the police for such assistance? Further, what about the heavy claims on police time of sending officers to sporting meetings—football matches, and so on—and major events? What about the hundreds of officers who sometimes have to be deployed in the streets at a time when it is believed likely that there may be a major terrorist attack? One has seen over the past few months the number of officers who have been deployed in the streets of the City of London following terrorist attacks in the area. All those activities will not score at all in terms of getting a good place in the league table.
Perhaps I may give Members of the Committee another example—one which is of fundamental importance. Again, I have already drawn this to the attention of the Government. Given the fact that the Government want to have those national policing objectives, it is astonishing that drugs are to be excluded. Since I spoke on Second Reading, we have seen the figures produced by Customs and Excise for drugs seizures in the calendar year of 1993. As I indicated then, in the first six months of 1980 Customs seizures of heroin and cocaine had a street value of £2 million. However, by 1993 in exactly the same period the value of hard drugs seized was not £2 million but £34 million; in other words,17 times as much. Now we have had the full figures for 1993. According to Customs and Excise figures published in the middle of January, cocaine seizures were 748 kilograms with a street value of £110 million and heroin seizures amounted to 562 kilograms with a street value of £98 million. That is a total of somewhere around £200 million.
As I also indicated on Second Reading, United States Customs assumes that it is successful in seizing somewhere around 10 per cent. of the drugs destined for the US market. It is generally accepted by law enforcement agencies in other parts of the developed world that they are probably equally successful. Very rarely do they assume that they are more successful. Therefore, if we apply the multiplier of 10, it means that heroin and cocaine were circulating in the United Kingdom last year with a street value of around £2,000 million. That is a huge law enforcement problem, not just in our inner-city areas but also in some of our cathedral cities and settled rural areas.
As I am sure the noble Earl will rightly say, the Government have devoted a great deal of time to trying to deal with that escalating problem. Perhaps I may give Members of the Committee just two examples. At
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present, unlike the situation in 1980, we have Customs and police officers posted to many embassies in Europe and elsewhere in order to collaborate with other law enforcement organisations—that is, both the police and Customs. That is extremely valuable work. I applaud the fact that it is being done.
In addition, we have had the creation of the National Criminal Intelligence Service which has its headquarters on the south side of the Thames. It has scores of officers working together to target major criminals. Moreover, the service has established five regional offices and 70 per cent. of its work is drug related. Yet, astonishingly, when it comes to the national policing objectives, the attack on drugs is not mentioned at all. I shall give the Committee an example of the kind of problem that will arise in the future in that respect. The National Criminal Intelligence Service obtains a great deal of intelligence relating to alleged money launderers as a result of information passed on by financial institutions. As Members of the Committee will recall, such institutions are obliged to pass on that information due to the passage of the drug trafficking offences Acts.
In a large number of cases the National Criminal Intelligence Service asks individual police forces to follow up with inquiries in the cases of people who are suspected of money laundering. These inquiries can result in major investigations which require the support of scores of detectives. Yet the bigger the resources made available by a police force for critically important work of this kind in dealing with the threat posed by narcotics, if this part of the Bill remains intact the greater will be the likelihood that that force will find itself lower in the league table than a force which does not make resources available to the National Criminal Intelligence Service for the work it carries out.
This is a most extraordinary situation. I find it difficult to begin to understand how the Government have made a serious misjudgment in the definition of the national objectives. If they are to have national objectives, which I think is a thoroughly bad idea, why have drugs been left out of account? Many chief officers are deeply concerned about this proposal from the Government. Once again their views have been ignored. They consider that it is for them and not for a Minister of the Crown to determine their operational priorities, after taking account, of course, of the interests of the community they serve and the concerns of its inhabitants.
I believe that the provisions in the Bill on these national objectives are wholly inconsistent with the present law as laid down in the judgment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in the Blackburn case. I believe that this matter strikes at the heart of the operational independence of the individual chief officer of police. I believe the provision in the Bill is wholly undesirable, and I very much hope that the Government will drop this idea as soon as possible. I beg to move.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Knights: I rise to speak to this amendment. I have added my name to it. As has already been said on several occasions in this debate, one of the fundamental principles of policing in this country has been the

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independence of the chief constable in operational matters. It is one of the checks on an ambitious Executive, arid as a former Commissioner of Police with the Metropolitan Police once said, it enables them to be completely impartial as between the governed and those who govern them. It is a principle which was commended by the Royal Commission in 1962 and expressed in Sect on 5 of the Police Act 1964. It is now repeated in Clause 4 of this Bill which states:
"A police force … shall be under the direction and control of the chief constable".
As the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, has said, that principle was set out in much greater detail in the Blackburn judgment. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, set out his view in a long judgment, some of which I read out to the Chamber on Second Reading. I wish to read out some of that judgment again. The noble and learned Lord stated:
"I hold it to be the duty … of every Chief Constable to enforce the law of the land. He must take steps so to post his men that crimes may be detected; and that honest citizens may go about their affairs in peace; he must decide whether or no suspected persons are to be prosecuted; and, if need be, bring the prosecution or see that it is brought. But in all these things he is not the servant of anyone, save of the law itself. No Minister of the Crown can tell him that he must, or must not, keep observations on this place or that; or that he must, or must not, prosecute this man or that one. Nor can any police authority tell him so. The responsibility for law enforcement lies on him. He is answerable to the lam and to the law alone. At the same time there are many fields in which they have a discretion with which the law will not interfere, For instance, it is for the … Chief Constable … to decide in any particular case whether enquiries should be pursued, or whether an arrest should be made, or a prosecution brought"—
subject now of course to the Crown Prosecution Service—
"It must be for him to decide on the disposition of his force and the concentration of his resources on any particular crime or area. No court can or should give him directions on such a matter".
One is bound to ask how that concept of an independent chief constable can lie alongside the concept of centrally produced objectives.
A memorandum dated 12th January 1994, addressed by the Home Office to the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships' House, stated:
"although police authorities and police forces are to be required to have regard to such objectives, they represent a framework for the exercise by those authorities of their statutory responsibilities, and are not a tightly drawn regulatory structure".
Nevertheless, under this Bill they are to be linked to the setting by the police authority of performance targets. If the police authority is to be held accountable to the Secretary of State in respect of the extent to which it does or does not achieve his objectives, surely it must follow that the authority will in turn seek to direct the chief constable as to how it expects him to deploy his resources to achieve its targets. The effect that that might have on the possible fixed-term appointment and the performance-related pay of the chief constable we shall debate later on.
While I am sure that the Minister will seek to reassure the Committee that there is no intention whatever to alter the present position, nevertheless I notice that a leading article in The Times today, in referring to your Lordships' debate last Tuesday, states:
"Above all, police authorities will be given new operational powers".
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Therefore, it is not only chief constables 'who believe that the Bill will affect the current arrangements. Of course chief constables should, and I believe do, consult with their police authorities in setting out to the force and to the communities they serve their objectives for particular years. But they cannot abrogate their responsibility for operational matters and must not be subject to operational directions by a police authority which is acting itself on the basis of directions it has received from the Home Secretary.
I believe that the Home Secretary's views on the direction in which policing should go could be quite adequately communicated to police authorities and to chief constables without the necessity of statutory directions, and the extent to which his objectives are being achieved could be equally adequately monitored through the Home Secretary's police inspectorate. Statutory requirements do not seem to be necessary.
I believe that there is another danger inherent in this clause. While I am sure that the Minister again will seek to assure the Committee that there is no question of a league table of results—as was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich—achieved by individual forces, nevertheless I am sure the press will seek to create one for him using the complementary performance indicators to which I have already referred. Those details will be obtainable from force reports without any difficulty, but the comments which will be made on the way in which they are used will have nothing to say about the differences between, for example, the inner cities and the Fens of Lincolnshire, or indeed as regards the other demands which are made on the police.
At the moment the public expect the police to spend some 60 per cent. of their time on matters not related to crime. The "dry run" of the objectives for this coming year which was circulated a few months ago concentrates almost entirely on crime and crime alone, which represents only 40 per cent. of total police effort.
Would it not be wise to consult the Association of Chief Police Officers before any guidance is given to the police via the Home Secretary as to the direction in which he believes policing should go? Where does Whitehall get its information as to what the public expect of their police? It has to come from the ground rather than from the Civil Service. That is not provided for in the clause as I read it.
I oppose the clause, first, because I believe that it is unnecessary, and, secondly, and more importantly, because I believe that it could be extremely dangerous.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: Without, I hope, doing any harm in the eyes of my noble friend to the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Knights, I should like to say that I agree with every word the noble Lord said. Therefore, it is quite unnecessary for me to attempt to repeat the arguments at any length.
I have put down two amendments. Before I refer to them briefly I should like to remark that in giving his views on an earlier amendment my noble friend gave me the impression that he thought that I was somehow misguided in not being an enthusiastic supporter of the

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Bill, and the fact that I sat behind him made matters worse. I hope that I misunderstood my noble friend and that he did not mean anything of the kind.
In Amendment No.89 I suggest the omission of the words "by order determine" from Section 28A at the beginning of Clause 11 and their replacement by the single word "propose". That may not be ideal drafting but to me it reflects better the spirit of partnership among the Home Secretary, the police authority and the chief constable which I had always understood was the cornerstone of our policing arrangements and to which I have heard my noble friend Lord Whitelaw refer with eloquence on a number of occasions. I hope that my noble friend will not dismiss this as an irrelevant notion which has emerged from a disordered mind. I hope that he will take the amendment seriously and treat it sympathetically.
My second amendment is not as far-reaching as that proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Harris. Its purpose is simply to omit lines 9 to 13 which mention the establishment of specific levels of performance and performance targets. I wonder what they will mean in practice. I imagine that we shall be told that they will be dealt with more fully in the codes of practice. I notice that there is no provision in the Bill at present for those codes of practice to be made the subject of consultation. Whether or not that is the intention of the Home Secretary, I very much fear that the provision which I seek to leave out is indicative of the drift towards central control of the police.
I cannot for the life of me understand how specific levels of performance or performance targets will be defined. I do not understand how sense can be made of that when it comes to applying such standards to a single police force, to a unit in a police force or to an individual. I can imagine some very unpleasant and dangerous criteria being allowed to creep in.
I hope that I do not do the noble Lord, Lord Knights, any harm by agreeing with him, but I believe that he has done the Committee a signal service in the way in which he put his case. Perhaps I may say without embarrassing him that I have long wondered why the only policemen in this place were those on the door. I am very glad that the noble Lord is present on this occasion to give us the benefit of his wisdom and experience. I hope very much that my noble friend will listen to it.
I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, if I omitted to mention her, but she has not yet contributed a speech to this debate. I was referring specifically to the admirable contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Knights.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Hylton: I speak as a mere layman in these matters, but it seems to me that different measures will make different people feel secure and well policed. The difference between town and country has already been pointed out. I shall go further and point out the marked differences between rural areas.
I would much rather trust to the perceptions of chief constables, magistrates and elected councillors than the perceptions of Home Secretaries. Some distinguished
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former Home Secretaries are Members of this Chamber, but Home Secretaries are not omniscient. That is why I hope that the Committee will accept the amendment, or at least the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Peyton.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Peyton, that the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Knights, was fully deserving of the encomium which the noble Lord gave it. As he said, I had not spoken. I shall not do so with either the weight or eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Knights.
I support the principle underlying all three amendments. They address another example of the trend of centralising power with the Home Secretary. I join with the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, in feeling that Home Secretaries are not necessarily a reservoir of all wisdom and knowledge about what is required in the way of policing in this country. I believe that the present Home Secretary is operating on the basis of a very simplistic model of crime and how it may be combatted. He seems to think that he can wave a magic wand and issue an order and crime will vanish from the land.
As I said on Second Reading, I am particularly anxious that the apparent performance targets will consist of clear-up rates. I have known detective inspectors who can create 60 per cent. clear-up rates using theoretically legitimate means. There are ways of fiddling performance targets, and not only in the field of crime. Once one starts setting league tables and trying to assess complex jobs by counting, people will find ingenious ways of reaching targets and fiddling the figures. Therefore, at that basic level I am very anxious about performance targets and clear-up rates.
I am much more concerned by the proposal that the Home Secretary will be able to direct police authorities and chief constables as to what they should see as their major objectives in the coming year. We live in a society in which, although it is democratic, there is a tendency to see the powers and diktats of central government as more important than those of local authorities or, in this case, what the chief constable himself may consider important. The effect may be a total distortion of police effort.
Some of the objectives set this year have been generalised and are fairly anodyne but they include crimes of violence. In response to them, one may set up, for example, domestic violence units or rape units. Very often such units produce an increase in reported crime. Once police turn their attention to a specific crime—drugs is an example; the noble Lord, Lord Harris, spoke about them at some length—there is almost inevitably an increase in reported crime. In consequence, one receives more media attention, more crime is reported, and one has an upwards spiral of that crime. That argument is certainly true with regard to rape. When the Metropolitan Police began to be more sensitive to the problems of victims of rape, there was a considerable increase in reported rapes. Such an increase would run counter to the intention to improve clear-up rates and the crime figures.
The effect of setting specific targets is often to have exactly the opposite effect. Although the quality of the

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service to the public may be much enhanced, one has an apparent diminution in performance. I am sceptical about the idea of performance targets and clear-up rates, especially when set at national level when one cannot observe what is happening on the ground.
The major objection in principle is to the assumption of power by the Home Secretary over chief constables and police authorities. The tripartite balance of power may be uncomfortable. Democracies are uncomfortable; they are difficult to work. But it is simplistic of the Home Secretary to assume that, by issuing diktats about what should be the major objectives of police forces in the coming year he can clear up crime, reduce the crime rate, and somehow no longer be blamed for the rising level of crime in this country.
Lord Elton: When one is faced with such a degree of professional experience in the police service, one naturally pays very close attention. One pays close attention also to any proposal abrogated by my noble friend Lord Peyton. However, I wonder whether the Committee may be going a little far in objecting to this part of the Bill.
As I understand the arguments against the provision, the first is that the Secretary of State is casting a blanket over England and Wales which will determine the whole policy of police forces to the exclusion of local influence. The Committee will not have forgotten, although we must revisit them, the provisions of Clause 11. New Section 28A applies that blanket requiring the police authority to have regard to the objectives set by the Secretary of State. However, immediately afterwards the authority is required to have regard to any objectives determined by the authority itself. There is therefore an equality of duty. I do not believe that it can be said that the Secretary of State has an overriding power in the Bill under Clause 11.
The Committee then expressed understandable reserves about the inevitability of every Secretary of State being the reservoir of wisdom and restraint that one would wish. However, in his remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Knights, referred to the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee. That committee made no recommendation other than that your Lordships should consider—I ask the Committee to accept that recommendation—whether the order that the Secretary of State at present is empowered to make under line 4 on page 9 at new Section 28A(1) should not be subject to some form of parliamentary supervision. The Committee can then satisfy itself case by case as to whether the Secretary of State has gone over the top. The anxiety expressed would not then stand in the way of the provisions of the clause which I believe have merit.
Lord Plant of Highfield: Perhaps I may say a brief word in favour of the amendment. In doing so, I am very much a sinner who has come to repentance. About five years ago I wrote a pamphlet for the Institute of Economic Affairs in which I argued in favour of performance indicators in the public sector, including the police, and limited term contracts for chief constables. However, in the intervening period I have come to reflect on my arguments and realise that they
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are fundamentally mistaken with regard to the police. I regard what I wrote then as fundamentally misguided. Perhaps I may briefly outline the reasons.
Performance indicators work, for example, in universities, (from where I come) in which one has a relatively homogeneous service to be delivered and a relatively homogeneous population of consumers of the service. The students are there primarily for one purpose; the staff are there primarily for one purpose. Neither of those conditions apply to police. The police have a diverse range of services to deliver. One has a diverse population, all of whom have different demands. Their interests have to be considered in a reasonably equitable way. There is a big asymmetry between the services and consumers where performance indicators work reasonably well and with regard to the police, a service in which they do not work well.
Secondly, having been involved in universities and performance indicators, both as an assessor of performance indicators from other universities and as a form filler in my own, it is clear that it is an enormously bureaucratic enterprise. In universities the exercise consumes hundredweights of paper. While the Home Secretary's desire is to cut down the amount of bureaucracy in the police and to put more people on the beat, I am worried that the performance indicator approach will create another bureaucratic monster.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, has already made my third point; namely, that people are ingenious. They can guide their behaviour to boost performance indicators. They can hit targets but at the cost of many other services that they should be providing. That is a major loss in a service with as broad a range as the police have. Therefore targets distort behaviour.
For those reasons, I believe that my view five years ago about the police was misguided. I would not now support what the Home Secretary proposes to do in the Bill. It is dangerous to link an illusory measure of effectiveness with proposals to judge a chief constable's performance in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness as detected by those distorting performance targets. If the chief constable is to lose his job as a result of a failure to meet those artificially defined targets, that is a dangerous concept. I now hold the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich: that is, the chief constable should be able to exercise discretion in consultation with, and having taken into account, the democratically expressed desires of local communities through the police authority and should be prepared at the end of the year to justify his exercise of that discretion to the police authority. He should not be bound by what I regard as distorting performance indicators.
Lord Renton: Clause 11 of the Bill breaks new ground. There was nothing like it in the Police Act 1964. In the light of the discussion that we have had, the provision deserves further consideration on the part of Government. The Government can be fortified to the extent pointed out by my noble friend Lord Elton. Our scrutiny committee has stated that it would be in order for the provision in the clause to be provided by

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secondary legislation. However, the proposed method of secondary legislation needs improvement, in my opinion, in the light of what has been said.
The starting point is the question of performance targets. We find them referred to in lines 11 and 12 on page 9, but without any real definition. The Bill states:
"the Secretary of State may direct police authorities to establish specific levels of performance ('performance targets')".
But that is the only definition we have of performance targets which could relate to a wide range of things: crime prevention, crime detection, arrest, custody, prosecution of suspected offenders, traffic control, further training of police officers on the job, public relations, protection of the Royal Family and the Cabinet and of vulnerable places, as well as many others. I do not say that all those matters should be spelt out, but it would be helpful if my noble friend Lord Ferrers could give us some idea of what is envisaged by the broad phrase "performance targets".
It has been suggested to me by one of my noble friends who is present that Amendment No.92A proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, has much to commend it. He tabled it with regard to codes of practice, to apply before codes of practice are approved and issued by the Home Secretary. However, on performance targets, it would also be helpful if the organisations representing chief constables and police authorities were to be consulted. That is another reason for further thought on the terms of the clause. I hope that we may hear from my noble friend that he has taken on board what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Knights, as well as others.
7 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My noble friend Lord Renton is correct when he says that we are breaking new ground in some parts of the Bill, particularly this one. There is nothing wrong with that. The whole police Bill deals with restructuring and bringing structures up to date so that they are more suitable for existing circumstances and those for the next 20 or 30 years.
I admired the noble Lord, Lord Plant, for admitting a total volte-face in his views. It is not often that a person, even a noble Lord, says that what he wrote five years ago was—as he said—fundamentally misguided. I admire him for saying it and respect it and, of course, he is entitled to change his view. I was grateful to him for having said that so generously.
The Bill will allow priorities to be set for the police and for police performance to be measured. That is a crucial element, clarifying the lines of accountability. After all, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is responsible for law and order. When things go wrong in law and order, people turn to the Home Secretary and say: "What are you going to do? The Government must do something". The Government spend £6,000 million on the police; 90 per cent. of that comes in one way or another from central government resources. Therefore, it is perfectly right for my right honourable friend, who is accountable to Parliament, to
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be able to say to Parliament, "This is the way we are spending the money", and that he would like to see efforts made in certain directions.
If one suggests that the Home Secretary should not say that, one is suggesting that we must give the police authorities or the chief constables the money and let them get on and hope that they will do their work well. Of course, the majority do, but there should be some form of accountability. People ought to be able to say, "This is what I have spent my money on and this is the effect that I have had". If the public are worried about law and order, it is right for the Home Secretary to say, "Are we getting the best value for money? Are our police forces efficient?" That is totally different from interfering with the operational independence of chief constables, which is preserved, as the noble Lord, Lord Knights, said, in Clause 4.
I believe that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, was right. No Minister can tell a chief constable what to do, but he can specify priorities. That is a totally different matter. The setting of key objectives will not undermine a chief constable's operational independence. A chief constable will be free not to meet the key objectives or any related performance targets if, in his view, other operational considerations are of overriding importance. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, referred to the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in the Blackburn case. There is an established operational independence of the chief constable and nothing in the Bill undermines that. The Home Secretary has always influenced operational policy, of course, and he has always been able to do so when he provides guidelines and so forth. It is essential for his statutory duty and accountability that he should.
The key objectives do not remove the operational independence, they just identify major public anxieties which the police should tackle. In future, it will be much clearer to chief constables, to police authorities and to the public what is expected of the police. Police authorities will have clear standards upon which they can judge police performance. Police authorities, in turn, can be held accountable for the performance of the force for which they are responsible and those changes will improve the effective use of police resources.
The noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Knights, were concerned about a number of matters and I only say to them that there need to be clear objectives for a service which costs £6,000 million. The police quite rightly complain that we make many and increasing demands upon them and the police themselves need a clear public indication of the major public concerns to which they should give priority.
The key objectives will set the priorities for policing. They will identify major public concerns which the police should tackle. My noble friend Lord Renton said that he hoped that there would be discussion about them. There will be. They will be selected after discussion with the Association of Chief Police Officers, Her Majesty's inspectors of constabulary and the local authority associations. The current non-statutory objectives which have been issued for 1994 and 1995 have been the subject of discussion.

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What are those objectives which people find so worrying? They are simply these. The first is to maintain and, if possible, increase the number of detections for violent crimes. It is hard to find that objectionable. The second is to increase the number of detections of burglaries in people's homes. The third is to target and prevent crimes which are a particular local problem, in partnership with the public and other local agencies. The fourth is to provide high visibility policing so as to reassure the public. The fifth is to respond promptly to emergency calls from the public.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris, was concerned that drugs were not specified in that. They were not specified in the key objectives because they were not considered to be of equal and overriding concern to all police forces. One of the objectives allows scope for targeting and preventing crimes of local concern, which can be drugs. The key objectives were discussed with representatives of ACPO and the local authorities who did not at any point advocate that work related to drugs should be a key objective. That does not mean that it cannot be a local objective.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: Perhaps I may ask the noble Earl a question. I am sure he would not wish—wholly unintentionally—to mislead the Committee. Will he agree with me that the Association of Chief Police Officers made it absolutely clear to him and his colleagues that it was opposed in principle to what the Government propose here in terms of the national objectives? The Committee should not be misled into assuming that the association went along with this, because it did not. The Association of Chief Police Officers believes that it is wrong in principle for Ministers of the Crown to make those decisions.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord, Lord Harris, has already made that point. I was answering the point raised by my noble friend that if we set objectives, that should be after discussion. Those objectives were set after discussion.
The success of police authorities and their forces in meeting the key objectives will be judged by performance indicators. Those indicators provide information about the number of burglaries detected or the percentage of 999 calls answered within locally specified times. They allow performance to be measured. The indicators for the 1994–95 key objectives were selected in consultation with the police, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and local authorities. Performance targets will tell the police what level of improvement in performance is expected.
The Bill requires police authorities, not the Home Secretary, to set targets, both for the national key objectives and for any local objectives. The role of the Home Secretary simply be to indicate the range of improvement that he expects to see. For example, he may ask police authorities and metropolitan forces to set a 4 to 6 per cent. target for increasing the number of detections for burglaries. He may set a target of 2 to 4 per cent. for smaller rural forces. Within the bands set by the Home Secretary police authorities will be free to make their own judgment as to how high or low a target should be. All of that can be supplemented by local
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discretion. Police authorities may want to set local objectives to be measured by their own selected performance indicators. They may want to set targets, or higher targets than those required by the Home Secretary, for those key objectives. All of that will be possible. The structure proposed in the Bill simply sets out a means for establishing priorities and measuring performance. None of this is set in concrete. The year 1994–95 is being treated as a trial run to enable the Home Office and police forces to learn from the exercise. Future years' objectives, indicators and any conditions attached to targets will be discussed fully with the police and representatives of police authorities before they are set.
A number of noble Lords have said that they consider these matters to be wrong and that comparisons should not be made. The purpose of the provision is to provide a consistent basis of measurement so that forces can see how well they are doing. I do not believe that there is anything new about this. Every time I visit a police force I am festooned with statistics and facts on thefts, detection rates, clear-up rates and response times, and how effective the force has become at civilianisation and how it compares with the national civilianisation average. The noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, said that figures could be altered by looking at a particular set of achievements. That possibility always exists. But in the end what is being said is that the Home Secretary is setting objectives to be covered and aimed at nationally. The police authority sets local objectives and says to the chief constable, "This is what we are worried about in our area. Will you deal with it?" How and when he deals with it are entirely operational matters which fall within the independence of the chief constable.
On the one hand, there are people who are worried about law and order and who ask what they are getting for the money spent. On the other hand, there are people who say that we must not interfere with the chief constable—we are not—and set these priorities. Of course the chief constable will be concerned with his local police authority. It is right that there should be strong police authorities. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Knights, recalls that in the days when he was a chief constable he worked much better with a strong police authority rather than with a weak authority which vacillated. We need strong police authorities. They are to determine what the policing is in their areas and the pressure points they want to see relieved. How that is done is entirely a matter for the chief constable.
I believe it not unreasonable to say to police authorities and chief constables that we are all in the business of dealing with crime. The Home Secretary, the police authorities and chief constables have responsibilities, but there should be some measurement of how they are doing; otherwise, we may as well let Parliament provide the money and hope for the best. I do not believe that that is the right way to proceed.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Chapple: The noble Earl said that when he visited police authorities he was inundated with statistics. If that is so, is it not an own goal to suggest that that can be married to a system of payment by

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results? All they need to do is put those statistics down on paper and we will be paying more money for what we are already getting. Anyone who is familiar with payment by results systems in industry knows that they cannot be a substitute for good management. If you have poor management, payment by results systems will only make it worse.
Earl Ferrers: There is no question of a payment by results system based on the number of clear-ups. It is perfectly true that in industry in order to achieve competitiveness and effectiveness targets are very often set. If targets are not set there is nothing for people to aim at. I see nothing wrong in setting a target. At the end of the year the chief constable can say that the reason the targets have not been met is that there has been an outbreak of murders or burglaries and accordingly resources have had to be diverted. That is perfectly all right. Why should that not be allowed?
Lord Harris of Greenwich: As always, I am fascinated by the response of the noble Earl, but, as always, I have unhappily found myself listening to a speech which does not answer some of the specific questions put to him. I now put a specific question and will gladly give way to him. Does he agree with me that the Association of Chief Police Officers is wholly opposed to this proposal? The answer to that is either yes or no. Will the noble Earl now tell the Committee what the truth of this matter is?
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord, Lord Harris, has a lovely habit of getting up and asking a question, saying that the answer is yes or no and inviting someone to answer in a monosyllable. The noble Lord knows perfectly well that these questions cannot be answered as simply as that. He knows perfectly well also that the Association of Chief Police Officers has welcomed many parts of the Bill but is opposed in principle to key objectives. But it has been co-operative over the key objectives set for 1994–95 with which it is in agreement.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I welcome that reply, which arrived in the nick of time. The fact is that the noble Earl has been good enough to confirm what the Committee should know, namely, that the Association of Chief Police Officers regards this as yet another example of the dangerous centralising tendency that runs through nearly all of the principal clauses of the Bill.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord was kind enough to interrupt me. Perhaps I may ask him whether he thinks that there should be any form of objectives or indicators—yes or no?
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I am glad to answer the noble Earl with a very simple reply. I believe that it is the duty of every chief officer of police to discuss the problems of his local community with the local police authority. It is for them to decide the matter, not for a politician in Whitehall. The difference between us is as simple as that.
Earl Ferrers: I do not wish to interrupt but I cannot help myself. The noble Lord is so engaging a personality. Does he say that it is quite wrong for the Home Secretary, who is responsible throughout the country for law and order and for the disposal of £6,000 million, to have any say in how that money is spent?
Lord Harris of Greenwich: That is quite an absurd question from the noble Earl, and I am rather surprised. I was hoping for a slightly more sophisticated question from him. Of course the Home Secretary—like the present one and like his predecessors, and like the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, when he was Home Secretary—has first of all a duty to provide adequate resources for the police service in this country and to indicate what he believes are the principal problems facing the police service of this country. That is the responsibility of the Home Secretary.
But the idea of imposing that framework on a police service which is wholly opposed to what the Government are proposing, as the noble Earl knows perfectly well, is offensive to the traditions of policing in this country. The difference between us is a fundamental one. It is whether we are going to move remorselessly—as I believe we shall over the next few years, if this process continues—towards more and more national control of the police service. We have seen that in country after country of western Europe. I remind the noble Earl that the traditions, the record and the reputation of the police service in this country are incomparably greater than in countries where there is exactly the form of national control that is advocated by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers.
In such a thinly attended Chamber, I do not propose to continue the debate this evening. Clearly, we shall have to come back to the matter because I am afraid that it is one of the three or four central issues in the Bill which are deeply offensive to the traditions of policing in this country and, I repeat, a police force which has won for itself such a high reputation in other countries of the world. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resume. It may be for the convenience of the House if the Committee recommences at 20 minutes past eight o'clock.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Accountants (Banking Act 1987) Regulations 1994
7.22 p.m.
Lord Henley Lord Henley rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 15th December be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move that the draft Accountants (Banking Act 1987) Regulations 1994 which were laid before this House on 15th December 1993, be approved.
I understand that it will also be convenient to discuss at the same time the following Motions: that the draft Auditors (Financial Services Act 1986) Rules 1994, laid on 15th December 1993 be approved; that the draft Building Societies (Auditors) Order 1994 laid on 15th December 1993 be approved; that the draft Auditors (Insurance Companies Act 1982) Regulations 1994 laid on 17th January 1994 be approved.
The House will recall that Sir Thomas Bingham's report on his inquiry into the supervision of BCCI was published in October 1992. It concerned perhaps the largest ever fraud in the history of banking. When BCCI collapsed in 1991 it left behind it a trail of deception and criminality on an epic scale. Sir Thomas Bingham drew some clear lessons from his inquiry and set out a list of recommendations. When he introduced the report in this House, my noble friend Lord Caithness made it clear that the Government accepted them all and was committed to carrying them out. One of the regulations before the House today represents the culmination of our actions to give effect to one of Sir Thomas's recommendations that the existing right (in Section 47 of the Banking Act 1987) for auditors to report relevant information to the Bank of England should become a statutory duty. Sir Thomas was persuaded to this view by, in part, the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee which, in another place, concluded that:
"although the existing permissive nature of Section 47 has worked well … it seems desirable to tighten the wording of the Act so that there can be no doubt, either from the point of view of the auditor, his client or the regulator, as to an auditor's duty to report. "
In the debate in another place in November 1992 the Economic Secretary to the Treasury announced that a similar duty should be introduced for auditors of building societies and financial service companies and he reported that the President of the Board of Trade would want the approach extended to the auditors of insurance companies; hence the four statutory instruments before us today.
Since that debate, the Government have taken the decision to introduce the duty into a fifth regulated sector, friendly societies, and a negative resolution order, under the Friendly Societies Act 1992 is also currently before the House.
There are a number of reasons for taking action across this wide front. First, and most important, the relevant provisions in the various Acts are very similar and if we are to bolster the arrangements in relation to banks then we should do the same for the other sectors entrusted with the public's investments, or with insuring their daily risks. It would be difficult for Ministers to have to defend leaving things unchanged in those other areas, if the effect of having done so were subsequently to lead to a case of fraud in an investment firm, building society or insurance company, which the existence of the duty would have helped to prevent. Extending the duty across the board will maintain a level playing field, which is something that is becoming increasingly important with the growth of cross-sector competition in the provision of financial products and services.
Once the scope or the duty had been determined, the Government published a consultation document at the beginning of March last year. That made clear that it
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was not the Government's objective to alter fundamentally the relationship between auditor and client. Nor were we looking to increase the costs of audit. Our objective was the same as Sir Thomas Bingham's: to clarify and strengthen the position of the auditor, not to change it. So the Government held back from imposing a duty on auditors to seek out fraud, malpractice or wrong-doing. That would have meant straying too far from the auditors' traditional role.
The responses that we received to the consultation document were considered carefully and officials discussed the issues raised with the Auditing Practices Board and with other interested parties in the regulated sectors. Some comments could be dealt with readily by changes to the draft statutory instruments. But others were not so easy to resolve as they raised more fundamental questions. In those cases officials were able to explore with the Auditing Practices Board whether issues could be more easily addressed in the Statement of Auditing Standards, which was being developed to accompany the legislation, than in the statutory instruments themselves. I should like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the cooperative attitude that the APB displayed in what were often long and complex discussions and to thank them for the very clear and helpful statement which they shortly plan to issue.
Once the extensive consultation process was over the Government circulated amended versions of the draft statutory instruments for a second, more limited round, before setting them in their final form. In producing the drafts we bore firmly in mind the fact that if this duty on auditors is to be effective, then it is vital that auditors can continue to rely on the trust of their clients. Therefore, we have tried to set the duty at a level which makes it clear to those who seek to commit financial crime that they are more likely to be caught, but which does not impose additional reporting burdens or costs on those who conduct their business honestly. We believe that that is most important.
Before I sit down, I should also like to mention that there is a European dimension to this issue. In November 1992, the Vice-President of the EC Commission, Sir Leon Brittan, sketched out some general proposals for Community legislation in response to the BCCI affair. Those proposals were subsequently turned into a Commission proposal for a directive, one element of which would be to require member states to impose a duty on auditors of financial undertakings to report breaches of laws or regulations or other adverse circumstances to supervisors. As the House will know, following discussions in Brussels, political agreement has been reached in the Council on an amended draft directive, which, if implemented in its present form, would impose on auditors a slightly wider duty to report than that contained in the regulations that we are currently debating. However, the proposed European directive has a number of further hurdles to negotiate before it can be finalised; and even when it is, it is unlikely to be implemented before 1996. Even though some minor changes may subsequently be necessary in order to conform with the directive, the Government do not want to risk a further period of delay before bringing these necessary measures into effect.
Given the widespread support of the recommendations of Sir Thomas we believe that we should now act promptly to pass those changes into law.
I conclude by once again expressing our gratitude to the APB and the many other professional bodies which were involved in considering the legislation. We believe that those measures will greatly strengthen and clarify the position of the auditor and represent an important step forward in the fight against financial wrongdoing. I commend the Motion to the House.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 15th December be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Lord Henley.)
7.30 p.m.
Lord Eatwell: My Lords, the Serious Fraud Office estimated that the amount of money lost due to management fraud in 1991 was double the loss due to household burglary. Fraud is big business and it is a growing business. If fraud were a legitimate business the Government's long hoped-for recovery would be well under way. Tackling fraud effectively is an essential part of building confidence in our financial institutions and of enhancing and sustaining the flow of savings into private business; in short, an essential part of building an efficient market economy.
Any measure concerned with the detection of fraud is a matter of the greatest public interest. As the noble Lord, Lord Henley, pointed out, the regulations grow out of the BCCI affair and implement in part—but not in whole, as the Economic Secretary suggested in another place—Sir Thomas Bingham's recommendations in his report into the affair.
To begin with, it should be remembered that it was not part of Sir Thomas Bingham's brief to conduct a general examination of the role of auditors and their relationship to supervisory bodies. He specifically ruled that out, suggesting that those questions,
"may well, at some point in the future, call for consideration in depth".
Given his terms of reference, Sir Thomas did not examine those issues in the depth that they deserved. But that is no excuse for the Government to fail to give them that attention. The regulations are a minimalist response to the problems raised by the BCCI affair and totally fail to address the wider issues of growing fraud and the role of the audit in the elimination of fraud.
I wish to ask two technical questions concerning the regulations and will later pose some related questions on the wider policy issues which the Government are apparently trying to avoid. First, with regard to the technical issues, why do the regulations only implement the first of the two recommendations contained in paragraph 3.45 of Sir Thomas Bingham's report? They embody recommendation 3.45 (iii) (a), but not recommendation 3.45 (iii) (b). Sir Thomas clearly regarded the two points as legally distinct. Why was the second neglected?
Secondly, while introducing the regulations in another place, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury took great pains to define in the widest possible terms the statutory responsibility now imposed on someone
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acting "in his capacity as auditor". That would include the responsibility to report information discovered in work other than the audit itself (such as tax advice or business consultancy), work by other partners in the same accounting firm, and work on other audits of other companies which reveal information relevant to the first audit. That wide interpretation would seem, in common sense terms, to be at odds with the phrase, "acting in his capacity as auditor". Will the Minister confirm and justify his honourable friend's wide interpretation?
I turn to the more general issues to which I referred earlier. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, repeating the words of his honourable friend the Economic Secretary, stated that,
"the Government held back from imposing a duty to seek out fraud, malpractice and wrong-doing".—[Official Report, Commons,15/2/94; col.853.]
Why did the Government hold back? Why did the Government fail to recognise that there is a vital public interest served by auditors and that the responsibility which auditors bear to the public interest should be embodied in statute?
In that respect the difference between the responsibility of auditors of private companies as set out in the regulations and the responsibility of auditors as set out in Section 15 of the Local Government Finance Act 1982, could not be more striking. That Act places a duty upon auditors to seek out wrongdoing and waste and report it. Will the Minister tell us what is the rational basis for imposing a duty upon auditors to seek out wrongdoing in the case of local authorities and not in the case of banks, insurance companies, building societies or other financial service companies? Why does the public interest deserve protection in the first place and not the second?
A further significant difference as between the sectors covered by the regulations and the case of local authorities is in the appointment of auditors. In the case of local authorities auditors are appointed by an independent body—the Audit Commission. In the cases that we are considering the auditors are nominally appointed by the annual general meeting of shareholders but, as we all know, they are effectively appointed by the directors of the companies concerned. Indeed, how many times have we heard auditors refer to the directors of a company as "the client"? In law, the client is the body of shareholders.
The accounting industry is becoming increasingly competitive and the audit will typically be only part of the package of services which the accounting firm is attempting to sell to the "client"; that is, the directors. In those circumstances it is not surprising that an unhealthy relationship can develop between the directors of a company and the auditors. Surely it would be in the best interests of shareholders, as well as the wider interest of potential shareholders, employees, depositors and other customers, that auditors be appointed by an independent body so that the auditor is not relying for his or her future employment on the persons whom he or she is auditing.
The Government's approach to the problems of the appointment and responsibility of auditors has been to ignore the public interest and to effect the minimum

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change upon a system which is failing to perform the task which the public have a right to expect of it. In recent years the accounting profession has been pressing for some limitation on the liability of auditors in fraud cases. Why do not the Government respond to the accounting profession's demand by requiring that, in return, auditors have a duty to the public to seek out fraud?
I well understand that imposing duties on auditors is an imperfect substitute for more effective corporate governance. But in bringing forward the regulations as their only response to rising financial sector fraud, the Government have ducked their responsibilities to legislate for an effective framework of accounting regulations; the sort of framework that would be an important element in building the confidence which is the ultimate resource of a successful financial industry. To secure that confidence, will the Government now initiate a proper inquiry into the relationship between client, auditor, supervisor and the public interest with the object of producing a Green Paper? We welcome the regulations as a step in the right direction. But they are only a small step; there is a long way to go.
Lord Henley: My Lords, the noble Lord stated that fraud is big business, and I agree with him. He also spoke of the importance of tackling fraud effectively. I believe that as far as possible we tackle these matters as effectively as we can.
I apologise on behalf of my honourable friend the Economic Secretary if he gave the impression in his speech in another place that introducing the orders was all we were doing, and that they totally implemented the recommendations in the Bingham Report. I do not believe that that was the impression he intended to give and certainly that is not the case. This is only part of bringing into effect what the Bingham Report suggested. We also made it quite clear that we agreed to introduce legislation, as soon as the parliamentary timetable allowed, in response to one of his recommendations to give the Bank express powers to refuse or revoke authorisation of banks where proper supervision was impossible, and in relation to other matters. This is just one ò f the matters that needs to be examined.
The noble Lord then went on to ask about specific recommendations. He asked why the regulations do not cover paragraph 3.45(iii) (b), but cover paragraph 3.45 (iii) (a). As I understand it—I am speaking on advice—the recommendation is covered. I would prefer to take this forward further with the noble Lord in correspondence, but my advice is that both (iii) (a) and (iii) (b), as recommendations, are covered.
The noble Lord asked what was meant by someone acting "in his capacity as auditor" and whether that covered the case of two auditors in the same firm working for two different clients. As the APB's statement of auditing standards made quite clear, auditors are not required to report to a regulator confidential information which arises from work undertaken by the same auditing firm for another client. However, as a matter of sound practice, auditors who become aware of matters in this situation which could
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otherwise give rise to a duty to report would we believe normally make further inquiries to establish whether the information concerned is substantiated.
Moving on to the general questions of why we do not go so far as the Local Government Act to seek out wrongdoing and why auditors should not have exactly those powers, as I think I explained, we did not go so far as to impose the additional duty to seek out fraud in order not unduly to change the relationship between the client and the auditor. It represents the difference between the fact that we are dealing in one case with private money and in the other with public money. The same would be true when we come to the question of the appointment of auditors. The noble Lord felt that too often they are seen as mere clients of the directors rather than of the shareholders by whom they are appointed. It is a matter for the shareholders to appoint them. I hope that the noble Lord will accept that. Shareholders can obviously exercise their powers in that respect.
I hope that I have covered, albeit very briefly, the noble Lord's various points. Although he accepts that the regulations are only part of the way, I hope he recognises that they at least in part meet some of the recommendations of the Bingham Report. As we have made perfectly clear, both the Government and the Bank of England have fully accepted all the recommendations of the report and, as and when appropriate, we shall bring forward suitable measures so to respond. I commend the regulations the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Auditors (Financial Services Act 1986) Rules 1994
Lord Henley: My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft rules laid before the House on 15th December be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Henley.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Auditors (Insurance Companies Act 1982) Regulations 1994
Lord Henley: My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 17th January be approved [5th Report from the Joint Committed].—(Lord Henley.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Building Societies (Auditors) Order 1994
Lord Henley: My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 15th December be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Henley.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8.20 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 7.44 to 8.20 p.m.]

Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill [H.L.]
House again in Committee on Clause 11.
[Amendments Nos.89 and 90 not moved.]
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No.91
Page 9, line 24, after ("may") insert ("by order").
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I speak also to Amendments Nos.92 to 95. There are two separate threads to these amendments, but I hope that it may be for the convenience of the Committee if they are considered together.
In all these amendments we are concerned with the issue of codes of practice by the Secretary of State about police authority functions. It is as well if we remind ourselves once again, as we did in our consideration of Clause 10, of the recommendations of the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee. It considered specifically Clause 11 of the Bill and looked at Section 28A inserted in the 1964 Act providing that,
"The Secretary of State may by order determine objectives for … police authorities".
The Home Office prepared a memorandum for the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee in which it set out its objectives. The committee published that memorandum in its third report which was presented to the House on 25th January of this year. It states:
"The final form of the objectives, and any subsequent changes to them, will be specified in a Statutory Instrument which has to be laid before parliament after being made, but this would not make the instrument subject to parliamentary control".
The Home Office explained:
"The objectives are clearly inappropriate to primary legislation because they would need to be changed and developed over time in response to changing circumstances… Parliamentary procedure beyond the laying of the order is not thought to be needed because, although police authorities and police forces are to be required to have regard to such objectives, they represent a framework for the exercise by those authorities of their statutory responsibilities, and are not a tightly drawn regulatory structure".
In paragraph 6 the committee states:
"The Committee agrees that the objectives do not need to be in primary legislation. We do, however, consider that as the Secretary of State proposes to, make the objectives of policing by an order that will be a statutory instrument, the House should consider whether there is a case for some parliamentary control of an order made under the new section 28A inserted into the Police Act 1964 by Clause 11 of this bill".
That is the purport of these amendments. Amendment No.91 states,
"Page 9, line 24, after ('may') insert (`by order')".
Amendment No.92 we say that in the same line there should be inserted the words,
"with the agreement of the organisations representing Chief Constables and police authorities".
That is a slightly different point from that made by the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee but nevertheless a point on very much the same lines.
Amendment No.94 states,
"and any statutory instrument containing any order made under this subsection shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament".
In this series of amendments we are giving effect to the anxieties expressed by the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee. That committee is a new organisation set up by the House in response to the work of the Jellicoe
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Committee. It is already having a considerable effect on the way in which your Lordships' House can conduct its business, and that is entirely right. It never says in its reports, "The House should do this" or "The Committee should do that". It does not lay down what should be the result. The committee points to problems which it sees in delegated powers and draws them to the attention of the House, or in this case to the Committee. It suggests the areas of anxiety.
That is typical of your Lordships' House. We never ever say that anything is wrong. Whereas in another place standing orders may say that something is out of order, we do not have any power to say that. We simply say in our standing orders or in the Companion to the Standing Orders that such-and-such a thing would be "undesirable". That is the utmost condemnation that this House ever makes of its Members or of its procedures.
It is a powerful and condemnatory report in House of Lords' terms. The mild, questioning tone in which it is expressed should not be misunderstood. The point is very clear. What is proposed here is that varying provisions for determining objectives for police authorities are to be made by order, which would be subject to inadequate parliamentary scrutiny.
The purpose of this amendment is not to change the substance of what the Government want to do but to make sure that their objectives are achieved without any loss of parliamentary control. That is a cause which I believe will not be resisted by government and which should be welcomed in all parts of the House. It should also receive the approval of your Lordships' Committee. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: We are now dealing with codes of practice, although when listening to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, I felt that he was referring to the earlier part of this clause and performances. If we are now talking about codes of practice in Amendments Nos.91 to 95, I make this comment. Parliamentary practice as to codes of practice varies quite a lot. There are some codes of practice which are non-statutory and others which are statutory, and of those which are statutory, some merely have to be laid before Parliament as proposed by the Government here and others are embodied in statutory instruments, which is what the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, is suggesting.
I doubt the need for subordinate legislation on this matter. A code of practice is different from secondary legislation and has a different purpose. It is not intended to be part of the law. It is intended as guidance to those concerned. Therefore, I do not agree with Amendment No.91.
I turn now to Amendment No.92, in which the noble Lord is insisting that the code of practice should have,
"the agreement of the organisations representing Chief Constables and police authorities".
That would give them the last word. That would give them a veto, and I do not think that is right. By all means, however, let there be a 'requirement for consultation. Therefore, I would prefer Amendment No.92A to Amendment No.92. Indeed, Amendment No.93

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would achieve that object so far as concerns the police authorities. I do not think that Amendment No.92 would be right because, as I say, it provides a veto.
At this lace hour, it is unlikely that we shall be reaching decisions tonight on any of the amendments that are grouped together. That is just as well because several of them overlap or are alternatives to each other and the Deputy Chairman of the Committee would have a confusing task if each of those amendments had to be put before the Committee.
I conclude by saying that there is one other point on which, with deep respect, I must correct the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. Our Scrutiny Committee did not make any critical comment on the proposed new Section 28C which we are now discussing. Its comments related to the new Section 28A which we discussed before the dinner adjournment. Therefore, I think that my noble friend Lord Ferrers can ignore what the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said about the recommendations of our Scrutiny Committee.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Dixon-Smith: I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Renton for clarifying my thinking because I was a trifle surprised by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, who was talking about objectives. Like my noble friend Lord Renton, I thought that we had cleared the question of objectives before we went to dinner and that we were now discussing codes of practice. My understanding of codes of practice at least so far as concerns local government—and the police service is very much a part of local government—is that local government is entirely accustomed to working with notes of guidance and codes of practice from government. Therefore, no new principle is involved in the proposed new Section 28C.
My amendment, Amendment No.92A, was proposed with the idea of restoring to this section the tripartite balance which otherwise might be deemed to have been monopolised. I would not wish to see that balance so monopolised. I look forward with interest to what my noble friend Lord Ferrers has to say on the matter.
Earl Ferrers: I agreè with my noble friend Lord Renton that these codes of practice should not take the form of secondary legislation. That is not really their purpose. The main code of practice which the Home Secretary will issue under Section 28C will govern financial relationships between police authorities and their forces. It will take the form of guidance to police authorities on how they should frame the regulations governing their financial affairs. It will therefore encourage best financial practice, including the delegation of financial management. This code, and any others which may be subsequently issued, are therefore guidance documents, enshrining what currently constitutes best practice.
Parliament should of course be informed of their contents, as the codes will contribute significantly to shaping the relationship between police authorities and their forces; but they should not be regarded as regulatory instruments which require parliamentary scrutiny. It would be equally wrong either to remove
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from the Home Secretary the obligation to inform Parliament of the contents of the code or to give the code the status of secondary legislation as suggested by Amendments Nos.91 and 94 on the one hand, and Amendment No.95 on the other.
Amendment No.92 proposes that the code should have to be the product of consensus between the Home Secretary, the Association of Chief Police Officers and those representing police authorities. The codes of practice will embody the Home Secretary's view, on the basis of wide consultation, of what best practice constitutes. That is what will be in the guidance. It may be—and indeed I hope it will be—that both the chief constables and police authorities will endorse the Home Secretary's conclusions on "best practice"; but the Home Secretary must not be constrained by the need to achieve consensus in issuing guidance which is designed to lead to better and more efficient management.
Amendments Nos.92A and 93 are not necessary. As I have said, the Home Secretary intends to consult fully with a wide range of bodies, including the Audit Commission as well as organisations representing chief constables and police authorities. The amendments have the disadvantage also of suggesting that consultation should be confined to chief constables and police authorities and, in the case of Amendment No.93, to police authorities alone—and to every police authority. I think that that would be undesirable. For those reasons, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, will realise that the wording of the Bill is best left as it is.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The wording contained in the Bill is by no means as clear-cut as the Minister appears to think. It provides in new Section 28C(3) that,
"The Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament a copy of any code of practice, and of any revision of a code of practice, issued by him under this section".
It may be that this is only gesture politics and that the Minister intends that Parliament should be informed but not consulted. If we are to be informed, surely there is no point in the information being laid before us unless we have some say on whether it is appropriate or suitable—otherwise there is no point in burdening your Lordships' House or our Library with that information.
Although I am not at all disposed to pursue these amendments, this little debate has been made thoroughly worthwhile by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, who said that the police service is very much a part of local government. We agree with that. That is the argument that we pursued above all on Tuesday when we considered Clause 2. We look forward to the noble Lord's active and vocal support in pursuit of that objective. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos.92 to 95 not moved.]
Clause 11 agreed to.
Clause 12 [Reports from police authorities]:
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No.96:
Page 10, line 5, after first ("State") insert ("by means of a notice issued not less than six weeks previously").
The noble Lord said: With Clause 12 we move to the issue of reports from police authorities. We accept—indeed, we welcome—the idea of reports from police authorities. We think that in general the additional clause which it is proposed to insert after Section 29 of the 1964 Act is a move in the right direction. In our view, it is a reasonable proposal that police authorities should submit a report on the discharge of their functions and the policing of their area.
The problem is purely practical; it is a question of the minimum timetable before the reports can be prepared by the police authority and be received by the Secretary of State. The amendment seeks to insert a six weeks' notice requirement for the reports. That will allow enough time for the police authority to carry out the necessary inquiries, to assemble the information, to take specialist advice, to evaluate the findings and to prepare the report. Within the tripartite system—and I emphasise that precaution—it is right that the Secretary of State should be able to require the reports. If he is going to do so they should be effective reports and there should be adequate time for them to be prepared. I have no doubt that the Minister will reply that that is the intention of the Secretary of State and of the Home Office. It will be helpful to have the matter clarified so that there can be no doubt. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, kindly said what he thought I would say. He did not get it quite right but he was not far off. As he said, the amendment seeks to give a minimum period of notice of six weeks in all cases where the Secretary of State wished to exercise the new power provided by this clause to require a report from a police authority. As noble Lords will realise, this new power in respect of reports from police authorities is based closely on the long-standing power in Section 30(1) of the Police Act 1964, which enables the Home Secretary to require a report from the chief constable.
I hope that the Committee will accept my assurance that it will always be the practice of the Secretary of State to give a reasonable period of time for a response for a request for a report, just as is already the case with similar requests to chief constables. But the amount of notice that is reasonable to give must depend on the nature of the subject matter and its urgency.
As regards the existing power in respect of chief constables, routine returns of information may be the subject of several months' notice. Less urgent requests may well require several weeks' notice. But it is certainly not unusual for very urgent requests—sometimes connected with proceedings in Parliament or Questions asked by Members of Parliament—to be answered in 24 hours or less. Although police authorities will not be dealing directly with urgent operational matters, I really do not think it practicable to provide a minimum period of notice of six weeks. I can think of circumstances in which Members of the Committee would not be too happy at being told that they would have to wait for six weeks for some perhaps straightforward piece of information to be obtained from a police authority.
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I assure the Committee that it would certainly not be the practice of the Secretary of State to impose unreasonable demands on police authorities by the exercise of his new power. I ask the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, to accept that the appropriate period of notice must vary according to the circumstances and that a six week minimum would be impractical. I hope that the noble Lord will realise that it is best to have a bit of flexibility.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I do not feel strongly about the issue. I agree with the noble Earl that some of the most urgent requests for information will go to the chief officer and not to the police authority. However, if we are talking about Parliamentary Questions we are almost certainly talking about police operations. In such cases the chief officer and not the police authority will be approached by the Home Office.
I am prepared to leave the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, to decide what he wishes to do about the amendment.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am not entirely reassured by the Minister's answer. I do not reject the assurance that a reasonable time will be given for reports. Indeed, I welcome that assurance and on that basis I shall not press the amendment to a Division. On the other hand, the way in which the Minister spoke gave me the impression that there could be a large number of such requests. I had hoped that routine requirements for reports would not be dealt with by specific requests for reports but by an indication on a regular basis of what should be contained in the annual reports from the police authority. The Secretary of State has plenty of powers in the Bill to require that annual reports should contain the kind of statistical information which he needs for his own purposes, and very properly too.
The idea that there should be a large number of ad hoc reports, some of which might be quite routine or in response to Parliamentary Questions, from a police authority rather than from the chief constable fills me with some disquiet. That was the valuable point made by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, in his intervention.
I hope that it is the intention of the clause that the Secretary of State will make such requests for reports to a police authority only when it is absolutely essential; when there is something about the policing of the area or the performance of the authority's objectives which requires a report to be made to the Secretary of State for the benefit of Parliament or anyone else.
I hope that the Minister will think again about that and, if necessary, will be able to reassure the Committee that the report-giving power will not be the first thing in the prayers at the Home Secretary's morning meetings—"What reports can we ask for from police authorities next?". It should be a power which, although it is necessary, should be used only sparingly if it is not to be a disruption in the work of these authorities. On the basis of the assurance given about a reasonable time being offered, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.45 p.m.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Baroness Hilton of Eggardon moved Amendment No.97:
Page 10, line 7, leave out from ("functions, ") to ("as") in line 8.
The noble Baroness said: The amendment addresses the same clause and it is an attempt to be helpful. As the Minister said, under Section 30 of the Police Act 1964 the Secretary of State may require chief constables to submit reports on any matters connected with the policing of their areas. The new clause appears to duplicate that and suggests that police authorities will be asked for reports oh matters connected to the policing of their area.
The Minister has already said that in relation to urgent operational matters the chief constable will be asked for the report. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, in his intervention stressed that it was for the chief constable to provide operational policing reports. If it is suggested that in future the police authority will be asked for the operational policing report it will have to ask the chief constable to provide a report. That puts the relationship between the chief constable, the police authority and the Home Office in a totally new set up. From top to bottom it will be a linear relationship, which worries us about the whole Bill, with the Home Secretary at the top, the police authority in the middle and the chief constable at the bottom. We are anxious to retain the tripartite relationship where the chief constable is on equal terms with the police authority. The duplication that is implicit in this clause with the Police Act 1964 is a recipe not only for that change in the relationship but also for confusion. I beg to move.
Lord Knights: I support the amendment. The Bill extends considerably the powers which the Secretary of State already has under the Police Act 1964 to require reports from chief constables as to the policing of their areas. Not only is it a duplication, it is an extension. It may well mean the police authority having to seek a report from the chief constable before it can respond to the Secretary of State. More important is the possibility of it being divisive as between the police authority and chief constable. What if the police authority has one thing to say about a particular matter and a chief constable has something else to say? It is one thing or the other and the one thing should be the chief constable in terms of policing of the area.
As regards asking questions of the police authority about the way it discharges its functions, that is a different matter and it is perfectly proper that the Secretary of State should be able to ask such questions. I believe that it will be rather divisive and objectionable to ask additional questions about matters relating to the policing of the area.
Earl Ferrets: I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, for saying that her amendment is supposed td be helpful. That is in curious distinction to some of the other amendments she has moved. It seems that the purpose of the amendment is to ensure that there should be no clash between the Secretary of State's new power to request reports from police authorities and his longstanding power under Section 30 of the Police Act
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1964 to request reports from chief officers. As the Bill stands, the Secretary of State's powers in respect of reports from both police authorities and chief constables could extend to matters connected with the policing of the relevant police area.
There is a degree of overlap here, and it is quite deliberate. Of course, questions relating to operational matters are most likely to be directed to the chief constable. But the general duty of a police authority, as set out in new Section 4(1) under Clause 3 of the Bill, is,
"to secure the maintenance of an efficient and effective police force for its area".
Apart from the addition of a reference to effectiveness, that duty is unchanged compared with the existing provision in the 1964 Act. If we accept, as I think we do, that it is reasonable in principle for the Secretary of State to have power to call for reports from police authorities as well as from chief constables, then I think there will be cases where the Secretary of State would be entitled to call for a report from the police authority—perhaps alongside a related request to the chief constable—about aspects of the policing of the relevant area.
I can think of one or two cases recently where, because of financial considerations, police authorities said that they did not have enough money and that buildings would be closed and so on. There was then a fuss because it appeared that in that area policing would not be what it should be. In those circumstances, it is quite reasonable for the Home Secretary to call for a report from the police authority to ask what is the situation with regard to the police in its area and to ask what is the problem. That is different from calling for a report from the chief constable following perhaps, a riot in the area. There would then be a request for information as to what had happened in that regard. That is a different kind of request.
It is already well established that it is quite proper for a police authority to exert influence on matters of operational policy—to urge the chief constable, for example, to tackle particular problems which have arisen in the area—though I hasten to add that how those problems should be tackled in operational terms is of course a matter for the chief constable. There is an element of overlap but it is reasonable that the Home Secretary should be allowed to call for a report both from the chief constable and from the police authority—either one or both.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I agree that it is perfectly reasonable to ask for a report from the police authority as well as from the chief constable. Indeed, the clause is unexceptional in its reference to the discharge of the authority's functions which would of course include finance, the provision of buildings and equipment and so on. I am concerned about the vagueness of the term:
"or otherwise with the policing of its area".
That implies that a report would be provided about the operational policing of the area. I do 'not see how one can put any other interpretation on those words. I shall take away the amendment and consider the matter.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I take the point that it is perfectly reasonable to ask for information from a police authority. However, I wonder whether the noble Earl will look at the language, without giving the Committee any commitment. I do not believe that there is a major issue between us but we wish to try to avoid confusion.
I do not wish to pick up the noble Earl on his words but he said that on an operational matter the request was most likely to be directed to the chief constable. My view is that it should always be directed at the chief constable. I do not ask the noble Earl for a commitment but I ask him to look at the language of the Bill because it is desirable to try to clarify the matter if at all possible.
Earl Ferrers: The noble Lord is correct to say that if it concerns an operational matter, the request should be to the chief constable. Of course, I shall have another look at the language.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 agreed to.
Clause 13 [Police grant and other grants]:
Baroness Gardner of Parkes Baroness Gardner of Parkes moved Amendment No.97A:
Page 10, leave out lines 21 and 22 and insert:
("and the grants made under this section to the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police District shall be determined with reference to the level of the budget for the Metropolitan Police set by the Secretary of State. ").
The noble Baroness said: This amendment seeks to ensure that the Metropolitan police service will continue to be treated separately as regards the distribution of police resources to reflect the fact that the Home Secretary will continue to decide on the level of the Met's budget under the new policing regime established by the Bill.
London is excluded specifically from the provisions in the Bill which establish new police authorities in the shire areas. The Home Secretary will remain the police authority for London but a new body will be established within the existing statutory arrangements to advise him on policing in London.
Some London boroughs—I imagine, most of them—welcome the creation of an advisory body on policing in London and feel strongly that at least half the members of such a body should be elected councillors. Of course, each borough would like to see its councillors on the committee. However, the fact remains that it will be only an advisory body and the decision on the level of the budget will continue to be taken by the Home Secretary in his role as police authority for London.
At present, because it would clearly be inconsistent for the Government to make an assessment of the Met's need to spend its SSA which is different from the budget agreed by the Home Secretary, its SSA is automatically set at the level of its budget. I believe it to be desirable for that special arrangement to continue because it reflects the fact that the Met will continue to be different from the police authorities in the shire areas.
The amendment seeks clarification of the Government's intentions in that respect by requiring the
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receiver of the Metropolitan police to be treated differently from the new shire police authorities in the making of grants to police authorities. It requires that the level of the grant should reflect the level of the budget set by the Home Secretary. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: The amendment seeks to remove the Metropolitan police from most of the provisions of new Section 31 of the Police Act 1964, inserted by Clause 13 of the Bill. It provides that Metropolitan police funding should be left solely to the discretion of the Secretary of State.
New Section 31 as it stands has been carefully drafted to permit its application to all police authorities without exception. It requires the Secretary of State to determine the amount of grant to be made to each authority; it allows him to use rules or a formula to allocate part of the total amount available; and it requires him to state the considerations he took into account in deciding how much to give to whom.
That is all perfectly compatible with funding the Metropolitan police. It allows the Home Secretary a degree of latitude in deciding how much grant should be received by different police authorities. He is certainly not bound to allocate all central government police grant on the basis of the formula. That would clearly not be right. But he is bound to make clear to another place the basis on which he is making his allocations. In whatever way he determines the funding for the Metropolitan police, new Section 31 requires him to tell another place his reasons. My noble friend's amendment does not seem to want him to do that, and he should be able to do SO.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I thank my noble friend for that reply. It was extremely interesting and I shall study it carefully. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No.98 not moved.]
9 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No: 99
Page 10, line 23, at end insert ("after consultation with such representatives of local authorities and persons representative of chief constables as he considers to be appropriate, and").
The noble Lord said: I did not move Amendment No.98, which was an alternative version of the same point, because I think that on reflection the above amendment, which provides for consultation with persons representative of chief constables as well as local authorities, is more appropriate than consultation only with local authorities.
We are concerned here with the level of grant to police authorities. I believe that it is necessary to set out the background in a few sentences. The White Paper (Cm.2281) on the police service at paragraph 5.14 proposes that there should continue to be joint central and local funding of police authorities. It has been suggested that the division of funding should be 51 per cent. from central government and 49 per cent. from local government. However, none of that actually appears in the Bill.
We know that discussions are taking place among the Home Office, local authority associations and the Association of Chief Police Officers about grant distribution formulae for 1995–96 and we know that the basis upon which those discussions are proceeding is that there should be a 51 per cent./49 per cent. split of grant. All that sou 'Ids entirely sensible to us. We do not in any way oppose the principle.
However, the amounts of money involved are very large. We are talking about £3 billion of police grant. If you want a comparison with local government finance, the figure there is approximately £17 billion of grant to local authorities. Section 78(1) of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 specifies the degree of consultation which will take place on local authority finance. There are elaborate procedures of central consultative committees and so on, some of which are more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, reminded us a few minutes ago that the police service is part of the local authority service. Surely, therefore, it is right that the same degree of consultation between those who are issuing the grant and those who are receiving and spending it should apply to the police service as to the rest of the local authority services. Moreover, £3 billion is not an insignificant amount. Yet at present it is provided that the Secretary of State should determine the basis of his grant only with the "approval" of the Treasury rather than in consultation with the local authority associations or associations representative of chief police officers.
I do not in any way question the good will of those who are taking part in discussions between the Home Office and those outside organisations. But I think it is right that the consultation process which is taking place should be legitimised in statute, as it is for local government service.
I hope that the proposal will not be thought to be destructive. I would even go so far as to say that it was helpful that the Minister did not seem to think that by saying one amendment was helpful it implied that other amendments were not. But that is his problem and not mine. I believe that the amendment is helpful and is in line with the Government's wish to have a sensible structure for police grant. I hope that it will find favour both with the Government and with Members of the Committee. I beg to move.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: It seems to me that the case for the amendment is self-evident. There is nothing I wish to add to what the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said.
Earl Ferrers: Of course I accept that in no way is the noble Lord's amendment destructive. I also realise that the spirit of his amendment is to ensure that the Home Secretary should rim make up his mind in a vacuum. That is an entirely reasonable spirit. But I do not think it necessary to impose upon the Home Secretary a statutory obligation to consult either with local authorities or chief constables, or, indeed, both.
The Home Secretary will in fact consult widely with chief constables and local authorities on the distribution of police funding. The Department of the Environment,
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which we expect to use the same formula as the Home Office in distributing its share of the funding to the new police authorities, is already bound to a process of consultation with the local authority associations. Therefore, to bind the Home Secretary as well in a similar way would appear to duplicate the process.
The consultation process of the Department of the Environment does not involve chief constables. The Home Secretary wants to be able to discuss his proposed distribution formula simultaneously with the local authority representatives and chief constables. We believe that the most effective and least bureaucratic way of doing that is through a non-statutory process.
However, in view of the noble Lord's remarks, I am quite happy to give the matter further consideration to see whether there is any advantage in drawing the two together or whether it would merely result in greater bureaucratisation of a process which will take place in any event. I shall certainly give the matter a little more thought.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am most grateful to the Minister for that response. I can hardly resist the invitation to withdraw the amendment. I confess that I find it a little strange to argue that, because the Department of the Environment consults on a statutory basis on the distribution of its grant, it would be duplication for the Home Office to consult on a statutory obligation for its portion of the grant. I should have thought that it would simply be keeping the two sets of consultations in line and in particular would permit and encourage consultation with associations representative of chief constables as provided in the amendment. But no doubt those are matters which the Minister will take into account when he reconsiders the issues raised by the amendment. I am grateful to him. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No.100:
Page 10, line 34, at end insert ("together with the allocation criteria that have been applied. ").
The noble Lord said: In moving the amendment I shall, with the leave of the Committee, speak also to Amendment No.101. We come now to rather curiously worded parts of Clause 13. Subsection (4) of the new Section 31 of the 1964 Act says:
"In determining the allocation among police authorities of the whole or any part of the aggregate amount of grants, the Secretary of State may exercise his discretion by applying rules decided upon by him and then applied without modification by reference to the particular circumstances of each authority".
There are some elements here which appear to be helpful and welcome. The phrase "without modification" as a qualifier to the rules "decided upon by him" (the Secretary of State) are helpful because they appear to discourage particular treatment of certain police authorities, although, as we shall come to consider when we look at Amendment No.102, that intention seems to be weakened by the wording of subsection (5) in Clause 13.
I believe that everyone who is involved in these grant matters agrees it is important that there should be some transparency, and that the Secretary of State should be

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able to describe publicly and explicitly the grant allocation formula which he has applied in addition to the amount of grant payable to each local authority, and the considerations which he takes into account.
I have been making comparisons with local government. I am conscious that the complexities of the local government grant system have increased so much in recent years that the claim of transparency is probably difficult to sustain. Much of the revenue support grant and standard spending assessments for local authorities are now far from being transparent. They are dependent on quite complex multifarious analysis with factors which can possibly be expressed in numerical terms but which cannot easily be expressed in plain English. I know that the local authority associations are dissatisfied with the way in which standard spending assessments and revenue support grants are arrived at.
If I am arguing for greater transparency, it should not be thought that I am agreeing that the existing local government finance system is successfully transparent. There was a time in the early 1970s when I thought I understood that system. That period lasted for about six weeks and then changes took place and I lost that understanding. I have never regained any successful understanding of local government finance since that time. Others who have been involved in that area, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, might feel that complexities are piled upon other complexities in local government finance at such a rate that it is difficult to keep up with them.
The proposed new subsection (4) of this clause can be interpreted in a number of different ways. The subsection may permit the Home Secretary to determine the grant distribution rules and then apply them to police authorities only by reference to the particular circumstances, which have yet to be determined, of equal authority. Line 36 on page 10 of the Bill refers to the,
whole or any part of the aggregate amount of grants"—
that is, the grant to all police authorities. If there is freedom to vary the parts of the aggregate grant as between police authorities, is it not possible, at least, that the Secretary of State is being given power to vary his grant on his own terms between police authorities? Does that not mean that the phrase "without modification" in line 39 on page 10 of the Bill, has no real value? This is an opaque subsection. We believe that our alternative wording in Amendment No.101; namely,
"The Secretary of State shall issue common rules, which shall govern his determination of the allocation among police authorities of the aggregate amount of grants"
is not only fairer but much easier to understand. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: The effect of Amendment No.101 is to require the Secretary of State to apply common rules when allocating available grant to police authorities. The Bill takes particular care to avoid imposing too rigid a set of rules and specifically provides a discretion on the part of the Secretary of State, rather than a duty, to use rules to allocate grant. The Bill is also particular in providing the Secretary of State with a power to apply
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any rules to part of the total grant only, and also lets him treat different police authorities differently. There is good reason for that.
Amendment No.100 would require the Secretary of State to set out these proposed common rules in his report. It is therefore related to Amendment No.101. Work is in hand to devise a means of allocating grant to police authorities on a fair and equitable basis which is determined by the need for policing in each area.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said that at one time he believed he understood how the standard spending assessment formula worked and that he understood it for about six weeks but after that period it was changed and he no longer understood it. Of course it is a complicated formula and we are trying to find a new formula. However, it is never easy either to find a new formula or, having found it, to understand it. We want to be as objective as possible. However, it is extremely unlikely that any rules which may emerge from such an exercise will allocate grant fairly to both a provincial police authority and to the Metropolitan police district. In addition to local policing, the Metropolitan police, as we know, additionally carry out a range of national and capital city functions for which finance must be provided.
We are also anxious to avoid any one police authority experiencing a significant change in its resources from year to year. We intend to introduce any changes gradually by limiting to an acceptable level the changes which may occur from one year to another. The Bill allows us to do that. We would not be able to do that if the amendments were accepted. My fear would be that the immediate application of common rules could result in some police authorities suffering a sudden and unacceptable decrease in funding.
For those reasons I do not believe that we could apply common rules in the way proposed by the amendments. It would not be fair to do so. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, will realise that we are trying to make sure that such changes as are necessary are introduced gradually so that no police authority suffers a severe decrease in funding in any one year.
9.15 p.m.
Lord Renton: I am a little puzzled by some of the wording in subsection (4). It states that:
"the Secretary of State may exercise his discretion by applying rules decided upon by him and then applied without modification"—
so far, so good—
"by reference to the particular circumstances of each authority".
I do not know how he is to refer to the particular circumstances without finding it necessary to make a modification.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Lord, Lord Renton, has a point. There are internal contradictions in subsection (4). The allocation is of the whole or any part of the aggregate amount of grants. That is extremely loose and fluid. Then the Secretary of State exercises his discretion, which again is fluid. Then he applies rules which he decides upon himself without modification, which appears to be slightly more rigid.

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We welcome any assurance of transitional relief, which I believe is what the Minister was referring to; in other words, that any changes will be introduced gradually. However, that offer has led him into a misunderstanding of what is contained in the amendments. The noble Earl referred to the dangers of a rigid set of rules. The amendments do not propose a rigid set of rules. They propose that the Secretary of State should issue common rules. If he does not want rigid rules then he will not have rigid rules. That is up to him.
Nor is there anything in the amendments which makes it impossible for the Secretary of State to issue rules which include transitional arrangements to make sure that changes in grant take place gradually over a period of years. That transitional relief element of the Minister's answer is a red herring as regards the amendments. The Home Office appears to be determined that the Secretary of State can do what he likes about grant and can allocate grant between authorities without any real consultation or transparency in the way in which he does so.
I do not consider the answer at all satisfactory. It did not adequately answer the points raised in the amendments. Nor did it answer the criticisms which the noble Lord, Lord Renton. and I made of the comprehensibility of subsection (4). I shall beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but this is a matter to which we shall wish to return at a later stage.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No.101 not moved.]
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No.102:
Page 10, line 41, leave out subsection (5).
The noble Lord said: With Amendment No: 102 we turn to subsection (5) of Clause 13, which is even more curiously worded. It states:
"The considerations which the Secretary of State takes into account in making a determination under subsection (2)"—
which is the determination of the aggregate amount of grants and the distribution of those grants—
"and the rules referred to in subsection (4), "—
which are the curious rules about the "whole or any part", "without modification", and the "particular circumstances of the authority"—
"may be different for different authorities or different classes of authority".
That seems completely to negate any of the suggestions in the earlier subsection to transparency, to rules, to consultation or anything else. In other words, the Secretary of State consults, he sets up rules, he applies them without modification, and he can apply them differently to any authority or any class of authority.
If one were charitable one might think that there was a possibility that the Metropolitan police authority could be thought of as a different class of authority and that that may represent a desire to make a distinction between the Metropolitan police area and the areas outside the Metropolitan police area. In that case it is an idea which has yet to find expression on the face of the Bill. As matters stand, it is a classic case of saying, after
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well over half a page of verbiage, that the Secretary of State may do what he wants. It is a thoroughly unsatisfactory way to draft the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Monkswell: I support the amendment. The anxieties I have had are crystallised. One of the important aspects of the police force is its political impartiality. That consideration does not apply to many other local government functions. Local politicians have a much greater say in how services are delivered, the effect of which has been to produce political tensions. Over the years we have seen different classes of local authority areas with different types of local authorities being treated differently by governments of both political complexions. That is bad enough with different types of local authority areas. I refer, for example, to revenue support grant being given in one year for urban areas, and in another year for the rural shire areas.
Recently, the situation has become more blatant. We have classes of areas receiving apparently specific preferential treatment. I think of Westminster and Wandsworth, and the zero or low poll tax that they seem able to levy. Such political favouritism strikes people as blatantly unfair. It is important that we do not arrive at a similar situation with regard to the police. 'They should be above politics. The Secretary of State should not only be unable to show such favouritism; he should not appear to be seen to do so. I make a plea to the Government. The Bill needs to be redrafted to ensure openness and fairness which everyone can see and to ensure that different police forces are not favoured because of some political correctness in their activity.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: Perhaps I may take up the point raised by the noble Lord. I fought the case in this House. There was a clear and openly declared argument as to why the Westminster council should have had additional help at the time of the introduction of the non-domestic rate. The reason was that all the money—it was a huge amount—which the City of Westminster was entitled to claim went direct to the Treasury. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, took part in the debate. However, the City of London was considered to be so different from other areas that reference to it was taken out of the Bill, as later were references to Westminster and then Camden. I cannot allow the noble Lord's remark to go unchallenged. The matter was discussed and well aired in this House.
Lord Monkswell: Perhaps I may reply. That may be the reality. The problem is that it is not the perception. That is important. The people of this country should see that their police are not being subjected to political pressure, particularly from the Home Secretary.
Earl Ferrers: These matters are always confusing and complicated. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, feared that the Bill as drafted would enable the Secretary of State to do what he likes. There is always a difficulty in trying to find a formula which is suitable, using it and sticking rigidly to it so that it has to apply to every conceivable set of circumstances and there can be no flexibility attached to it. The noble Lord's amendment removes subsection (5) of the new Section 31, which is

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inserted by Clause 13. That subsection allows the Secretary of State to take into account different considerations for different police authorities or classes of police authority when he decides the amount of grant which each authority should receive. It also allows the Secretary of State to apply different rules or formulae to different police authorities or classes of police authority when allocating grant between them.
One effect of the amendment would be to prevent my right honourable friend from providing the Metropolitan police with sufficient money to cover its national and capital city functions. That effect would obviously be undesirable and would act against efficient and effective policing.
The new Section 31(5) is not limited to the Metropolitan police. There could be other classes of police authority, depending on the size of the population in a police area, the extent to which the police area is urban, and so forth. So although one has to have a formula, there must also be flexibility within it. That is why I think it would be wrong to remove that flexibility which I fear the amendment would do.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: Frankly, that is gobbledegook. There is no point at all in having rules if the rules may be different for different authorities or different classes of authority. We may as well just say: "I think the Met. should have this, Lancashire should have that and Gwent should have the other", and set different rules for each of them and go ahead and allocate the money.
The idea in subsection (4) of having rules which are decided and then applied without modification, which are then permitted to be modified—in other words, to be different for different authorities—is self-contradictory. I know perfectly well what the Government are trying to do; I am under no illusions about it. I suspected that part of the excuse for it would be the differences between the Met. and other police authorities; but it does not get away from the fact that all the talk on the earlier part of Clause 13 on the considerations being taken into account or the rules being set is completely vitiated by the last two lines on page 10 of the Bill.
Lord Renton: Will the noble Lord allow me to intervene? The contradiction to which he referred—and he has made a valid point—could be simply removed by omitting from the penultimate line of subsection (4) the two words "without modification". Then the Home Secretary would have the flexibility which I personally think he should have and which my noble friend has advocated.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The noble Lord, Lord Renton, is removing the contradiction by that suggestion, but it is going in the wrong direction. He is then confirming our view that the clause gives the Secretary of State all the discretion he wants. The words "without modification" are of no value in the light of the phrase in subsection (5):
"may be different for different authorities or different classes of authority".
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It has no function, no purpose; it is redundant. We would much prefer to see the words "without modification" retained and to remove the phrase:
"may be different for different authorities or different classes of authority".
Alternatively, at least the words:
"may be different for different authorities"
should be removed. We might be prepared to argue about "classes of authority", but "different authorities" gives the game away. We know what the Government want to do. They want to set their own rules and they do not wish anyone to know what the rules are. We shall continue to resist this kind of discriminatory provision in such Bills.
Incidentally, although I do not wish to get into the argument about the funding of Westminster, I seem to remember that having won its first battle about the non-domestic rate, Westminster seems to have received very favourable treatment on the cost of snow clearance. Its costs were almost certainly virtually non-existent; but it was given much higher grant status than many northern authorities which have snow clearance problems. Westminster had it coming and going and still does, as regards the distribution of revenue support grant. The effective pleading of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, does not make the outcome any more just. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No.103:
Page 11, line 7, after ("time") insert (", in the financial year concerned").
The noble Lord said: For the purposes of this amendment, I turn to subsection (7) of Clause 13. I will read out the provision in toto to remind the Committee of the extraordinary situation in which it finds itself:
"A grant to a police authority under this section shall be paid at such time, or in instalments of such amounts and at such times, as the Secretary of State may with the approval of the Treasury determine; and any such time may fall within or after the financial year concerned".
I know what the approval of the Treasury would be on these matters. The Treasury would set a grant and pay it five years late because that would be very good for the public sector borrowing requirement. What conceivable justification can there be to allow the Secretary of State, with the approval of the Treasury, to pay indeterminate amounts of grant after the end of the financial year concerned?
If there is a case for specific parts of a grant, perhaps performance-related parts, to be paid after the end of the year—I cannot see a case for it but I can see how somebody may argue it—the Bill should say so. What it should not do is give the Secretary of State and Treasury the ability to pay as little of the grant as they like within the financial year concerned. Having risked antagonising the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, by my remarks on the previous amendment, I hope that as a responsible local government person she will feel inclined to support the amendment. Late payment of grant to a local authority or police authority can be extremely damaging. If it is necessary to have a deferred payment

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the reason and amount should be spelt out in the Bill. There should not be carte blanche for late payment as is provided in the Bill.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I do not intend to go into great detail about snow. After all, the snow was offset by the large refugee contribution. We could go on debating that matter forever.
Referring to the particular amendment, I wondered whether the wording in the Bill was to enable people to receive money in terms of the accounting procedures rather than in reality. I will be interested to hear the reply of the noble Earl.
Earl Ferrers: I am frightened to give a reply. The last reply I gave was said by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, to be gobbledegook. I suppose he meant by that that he could not understand it. I do not know whether or not he will be able to understand this reply. He was a bit hard in asking what conceivable justification there could be for paying a grant after the end of the financial year. He said that it was a wicked Treasury ruse so as not to pay grant for another five years. It is always fun to go off at an extreme and exaggerate. I think that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, will realise in the quieter moments of this evening when he has left the chamber that he has made the most monumental exaggeration that he has not intended to make.
The fact is that the effect of these three amendments will be to require that all grant is paid to police authorities within the financial year to which it relates. Of course, in the vast majority of cases all grant will be paid in the year to which the grant relates; otherwise, police authorities cannot function and will have no money to secure the maintenance of efficient and effective police forces for their areas.
There is a provision in new Section 31 that permits the Secretary of State, after he has made his main determination for the year, to vary that determination. This could mean that either a different total amount of grant was available or that the amount of grant to be made to certain police authorities was being changed. That could happen if local or national circumstances changed significantly during the year.
New Section 31 (which is Clause 13 of the Bill) requires that all reports setting out determinations of grant, including those which vary an earlier one, must be laid before another place and receive its approval. It is perfectly conceivable that the Secretary of State might make a fresh determination varying an earlier one towards the end of the financial year. If these amendments were adopted, the fresh report would need to receive the approval of another place and the grant would all have to be paid before the end of the financial year. If that were not possible, the grant could not be paid. That would make nonsense of the provision which allows the Secretary of State to vary his original determination. At worst, another place could approve a revised payment of grant just before the end of year guillotine, leaving no time for it to be paid. It is essential that we have some flexibility here.
That is why we would not wish to see the noble Lord's amendments accepted. 'But it is a perfectly good
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reason to say that there should be flexibility and in this case, far from the Treasury not wanting to pay the grant for another five years, it enables it to pay the grant, which should the noble Lord's amendments be accepted it might not be be able to pay.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: With his usual moderation, the Minister accused me of monumental exaggeration. But he only achieved that by misrepresenting both the amendments and my arguments for them. I specifically admitted the possibility that there might be some part of a grant which would have to be paid after the end of the year. I said that if there were some good reason for paying a grant after the end of the year, that should be explained in the Bill and late payment should be limited to that part of the grant.
On reflection, I rather doubt whether my moderation was justified. I could have been a good deal more extreme. After all, in local authority finance for a number of years there have been cash limited payments rather than payments based on spending. The £17 billion revenue support grant is all successfully paid on a cash limited basis within the revenue year concerned.
In the old days, when there were grants based on actual spending, it is quite true that payments were made the year after and sometimes the year after that. Sometimes the accounts were not closed for a couple of years after the end of the financial year concerned. But with the introduction of cash limited payments, that was no longer necessary and the Department of the Environment now pays all its grants within the financial year concerned. Police authorities' grants are now to be changed from grants based on spending, where there could be a case for late payment, to cash related grants, where there is no case for late payment.
The Minister has succeeded in misrepresenting the position about payments to a very substantial extent. In his reply he made no reference—though he would have been duty bound to do so if he had been representing the position fairly—to the difference between spending related grants and cash limited grants. I wonder whether he would care to explain to the Committee 'why cash limited grants, which are paid by the Department of the Environment within the year, cannot be paid by the Home Office within the year.
Earl Ferrers: I do not know that I would particularly like to explain that. But I have no doubt that there is a very good reason for it. I shall see what that reason is and let the noble Lord know.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It seems to me that this is a fundamental point about which the Minister should have known. I shall seek the opinion of the Committee on this amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lyell): The Question is that Amendment No.103 be agreed to. As many as are of that opinion will say, "Content". To the contrary, "Not-Content". I think the "Not-Contents" have it. Clear the Bar.
Division called.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: Tellers for the "Contents" have not been appointed pursuant to Standing Order No.51. A Division therefore cannot take place, and I declare that the "Not-Contents" have it.
Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
[Amendments Nos.104 and 105 not moved.]
9.43 p.m.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Baroness Hilton of Eggardon moved Amendment No.106:
Page 11, line 36, at end insert (", with diplomatic protection and with major public events").
The noble Baroness said: Amendment No.106 again concerns the police grant. This subsection of Clause 13 allows grants to be made for national security matters. The amendment is a probing amendment to establish what comes under the heading of "national security". We suggest that diplomatic protection should be included to clarify what the grants can cover.
Providing protection cover for diplomats and other people who are threatened is an expensive outlay for a force and varies greatly from one part of the country to another. It requires five police officers to maintain 24-hour coverage and that is an extremely heavy drain on the budgets of smaller forces. It may also be required erratically. People may visit a country house or go on holiday to a different county from time to time. Those occasions may not be predictable by a force. Our feeling is that that type of erratic outlay should be covered by a central grant.
Does national security cover the cost of policing, for instance, the Conservative Party conference? That is a considerable outlay for the individual forces of Sussex and Lancashire when the party conferences take place there. The cover of the Conservative conference in particular is an extremely heavy drain on the local police force, particularly following the Brighton bombing. If those events are covered by the term "national security", there is no need for the amendment. The amendment is intended to spell out to some extent what is included under the "national security" grant.
Other major public events which happen within a force area from time to time and which cannot be predicted are pop festivals—a heavy drain on police manpower—and, alas, street riots. If there is major public disorder within one of our cities and mutual aid is required, that can mean extremely heavy expenditure for the force concerned. I am somewhat comforted by what the Minister was saying earlier about grants. He seemed to suggest that there was some flexibility in the ability to give forces extra grants during the year and other grants not budgeted for. However, I should be grateful for elucidation of "national security" and whether it covers these unforeseen and erratic events which can throw out a force's budgeting.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I obviously agree with the amendment as my name is attached to it. I realise that one cannot spell out in the utmost detail what is meant by "national security" in every conceivable case but I think that some more general indication should be given. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, said, there is the question of party conferences. The party conference
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of whatever government may be in power is obviously more at risk of terrorist attack than the conferences of parties which are not in power. My impression is that there is support for police cover at party conferences. No doubt the noble Earl will tell me whether that is true. If not, it is an immensely heavy burden on the forces in Lancashire and Sussex in particular.
As the noble Baroness said, the burden of providing cover, particularly for diplomats, in some of the smaller police force areas is now extremely substantial. It would be helpful if the noble Earl were able to say what action can be taken to clarify the matter.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I see that my Amendment No.106A is grouped with Amendment No.106. That is obviously because it covers more or less the same topic although my interest is the Metropolitan police service. It is therefore of interest that the noble Baroness has covered so widely the areas outside London on which I would not have been able to comment so well.
The Metropolitan police service performs a large number of national and international functions. I use that wording in my amendment because of its role as the police service for the capital. Those functions include protection of the Royal palaces and members of the Royal Family, protection of diplomats and diplomatic premises, the investigation of terrorist offences and compilation of associated intelligence, armed personal protection for Ministers and other VIPs, national Special Branch responsibilities, international investigations carried out at the request of the Government and the extradition of fugitives wanted in a foreign state.
Under existing legislation the Metropolitan police receive an extra 1 per cent. in specific grant to cover the cost of these national and international functions. The shire forces receive a specific grant of 51 per cent. of eligible costs and the Metropolitan police receive 52 per cent. The actual value of the extra 1 per cent. to the Metropolitan police gives them about £15 million in a year in addition to the specific grant of £35 million. However, the actual cost in 1992–93 was £69 million. So there was a shortfall of at least £18 million. The latest estimated cost for the current year is £95 million. We are therefore talking about considerable sums of money.
I was interested when the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, referred to party conferences. There are also huge football programmes. There must be all kinds of things throughout the country where special demands are made of the police force. It is very important for us to have recognition of the very special costs associated with these matters. I support the amendment.
Lord Monkswell: Perhaps I may use this amendment to ask a question about this part of the Bill. It says that a grant can be made in connection with safeguarding national security. Is that aimed at effectively setting up a tranche of police funding that will be geared to national security and that therefore, in each police force, there will be a certain sum of money for safeguarding national security? Alternatively, is it for making exceptional grants to police forces which are subject to exceptional circumstances? If the grant is to meet such circumstances, surely there are going to be

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other exceptional circumstances and unforeseen occurrences which will arise apart from those affecting national security.
We need some explanation as to the purpose of these grants and whether the Government have a mechanism. How would they envisage reimbursing a police authority which is subject to really exceptional and unforeseen expenditure which it would be unable to meet in normal circumstances?
Earl Ferrers: The amendments would make the funding of diplomatic protection and major public events, and national and international functions, exceptions to the general rule of police authority funding as provided under the new Section 31. Grant allocation under the new Section 31 requires the approval of another place before any payment can be made. The only exceptions to that in the Bill are grants for capital expenditure and in connection with national security.
Capital funding for major projects at least cannot be catered for in the same way as the bulk of police authority funding. By its nature it is lumpy and driven by factors different from general police running costs. If a police authority needs a new headquarters building, for example, it needs a great deal of money for a year or two and then none for a long time. It may not be possible to quantify how much it will need at the start of the financial year. For that reason we need the separate provision in the new Section 31A.
The purpose of tae new Section 31B is to allow grant to be given for particular police operations against threats to national security which cannot be funded through the normal grant mechanism. Obviously, it is important to keep these exceptions to an absolute minimum. The provision reflects our experience in practice that there are just one or two such cases in which there is a need for special funding provision, but the Committee will understand that I would rather not go into detail on matters relating to national security. My noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes, quite correctly referred to the fact that the Metropolitan police gets 1 per cent. extra for the international and national responsibilities which it carries out. That is a fact.
These amendments propose adding to those exceptions. I do not believe that there is a need for that. The funding of diplomatic protection, major public events and of national and international functions, can be dealt with perfectly adequately under the new Section 31. Certain items of expenditure such as these do fall unevenly on individual police authorities and we realise that. It might be possible to take account of them in the formula which my right honourable friend, together with the Association of Chief Police Officers and the local authority associations are currently seeking to devise as a means of funding police authorities by reference to the need for policing. If not, there is still no problem. There is no requirement for any funding allocation formula to apply to all the grant available. Provided my right honourable friend can justify his allocation of grant, and provided the allocation receives the approval of another place, he has discretion over the allocation of grant. Special funding needs can therefore
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be catered for. New Section 31 is flexible enough to accommodate them. It is not necessary to treat them separately.
One or two of your Lordships referred to party conferences. The policing of party conferences is the responsibility of the local force. I know that it makes fairly severe inroads at any one time, but it is the responsibility of the local force although central government contributes in some shape or form to the security arrangements for party conferences. However, I do not think that amendment is about party conferences. This is a general provision relating to national security. It includes diplomatic protection, but is not confined to that. That is as far as I can go on national security.
As I have said, the Government contribute to the security arrangements for party conferences, but the policing of the conferences is the responsibility of the local force. I hope that the Committee will feel that it is reasonable that we should have such limited exceptions but that there should not be too many.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I am grateful for that response although I am still not terribly clear about what comes under the heading "national security". I should have thought that a little more could have been said without betraying any secrets. We shall consider the Minister's reply carefully. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes Baroness Gardner of Parkes moved Amendment No.106A:
Page 11, line 36, at end insert ("and national and international functions. ").
The noble Baroness said: I wish to move this formally because I have already spoken to it—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: Does the noble Baroness not want to move her amendment?
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I wish to move it formally.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: The Question is, That this amendment be agreed to.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: Perhaps I could ask for some procedural assistance. I thought that by moving the amendment formally it would appear in Hansard, which otherwise it would not, and that the Minister would be able to say that he had already spoken to it and that I would then be able to withdraw it.
Earl Ferrers: I am most grateful to my noble friend for telling me what to do. I have already spoken to this amendment and I think that my noble friend understands what I have said.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 13 agreed to.
Clause 14 [Conduct and efficiency of police officers]:
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Baroness Hilton of Eggardon moved Amendment No.107:

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Page 12, line 4, after ("procedures") insert (", agreed between the Home Secretary and the Police Staff Associations, ").
The noble Baroness said: We now move on from matters of police grant to consider matters relating to conditions of service. We are now into the area of police discipline, pay, remuneration, probation, promotion, rank structure and so on.
The proposed discretionary powers in this clause strengthen the Secretary of State's current obligation to consult the police negotiating boards and the Police Advisory Board on professional matters. In any organisation it is essential that one carries the members of that organisation with one. If there is no obligation on the Home Secretary to agree questions of procedure and discipline with the staff associations, the morale and good conduct of the police service will be adversely affected. This amendment is therefore intended to ensure that the staff associations are formally involved in reaching decisions with the Home Secretary about the regulations. I beg to move.
10 p.m.
Lord Bethell: I am an adviser to the Police Federation and I can say that there is a fair amount of support for the amendment. There is a vague idea of what the procedures envisaged in Clause 14 would be. Many serving police officers fear that they may have an adverse effect on their chances should they ever, as innocent policemen, be the subject of disciplinary proceedings. In particular, it has been suggested that under the procedures there would be a less onerous proof of guilt on a police officer charged with an offence; that the burden of proof would be reduced from "beyond reasonable doubt" to "on the probabilities of the matter". I should be grateful if my noble friend the Minister would comment on that.
Lord Renton: I hope that my noble friend will not accept the amendment. In my opinion it would be unconstitutional. We are dealing with regulations which are to be in the form of secondary legislation. To say that the regulations must be agreed with the police staff associations in effect gives the associations a veto as to the contents of the regulations. If the amendment were to read,
"after consultation between the Home Secretary and the Police Staff Associations",
that would be perfectly in order and would meet the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton. My comments about Amendment No.107 apply with equal force to Amendment No.108. Having said that, I hope that it will prevent me from making a certain speech.
The Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham: In rising to add my support for both the amendments, I wish to say that their purpose is to ensure consultation with and involvement of the relevant police staff associations. It is important that the public have confidence that complaints brought against the police by the public are dealt with fairly and squarely. But it is equally important that police officers must be protected from malicious and ill-founded complaints being brought against them
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and that the present principle in operation—namely, searching for the truth, with the necessary safeguards for the officer—should be retained.
In the main, police discipline proceedings result from complaints against officers. The majority of these complaints are malicious and are a form of counter-charge against officers who have executed the duties with which we charge them. If you, as a police officer, believed that as a result of a complaint against you for doing your honest duty to the community you could be tried before a kangaroo court, operating with a substantially reduced level of proof, what would your reaction be? If I were such a constable at risk of complaints against me which could jeopardise my job and my future as a result of the diligent application of my duty, the way I would avoid such dangers would be to avoid those duties. I would, for example, drive more slowly to an incident or take a wrong turning; turn the volume down on my radio or turn it off altogether; walk around the corner before any incident and keep walking, and also keep my job.
It is my belief that the legislation has professionally emasculated the operational effectiveness of the police service, though dedication and courage remain. I would hate to see us drive those qualities away too. When the whistle blows we want those front-line bobbies to come out of the trenches and confront our common enemy. Under this threatened legislation, if those bobbies want to stay in a job they will stay safely below the parapet—would not you? The police service in its entirety must have absolute confidence that the system is fair.
What is so wrong and terrible about consultation that prompted the Home Secretary to announce his decision on police misconduct at the Police Superintendents' Association Conference at Torquay in September of last year? At that time, all three staff associations thought that they were still in the period of consultation.
We are constantly being exhorted to guard against waste in all its forms. We are told that we must increase our efforts to become more efficient and provide better and more cost effective services and yet here we are ignoring and rejecting the vast amount of knowledge and professional expertise that has been built up over many years by the three police staff associations. That was offered to the Government with all the goodwill in the world but it has been cast aside and, therefore, wasted. Can we afford to indulge in that obscene form of waste? I ask the noble Earl to take note of that and to listen to what the three police staff associations have to say. After all, they are the experts who remain, in the main, anxious to help.
I conclude by quoting from a letter dated 28th January this year to the Home Secretary from the president and secretary of the Police Superintendents' Association. It says:
"The police service is not against change, but what we ask is only that change takes place after proper and careful evaluation of what is happening now, followed by careful planning and development of what might replace it. The best change—the change likely to succeed and improve—is the change which is implemented by, driven by, and supported by, those involved in carrying it out".
Earl Ferrers: This clause is about the provision of the establishment of procedures in which a member of

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the police force can be dealt with by dismissal, the requirement to resign, reduction in rank, reduction in rate of pay and reprimand or caution; in other words, how those procedures are to work.
My noble friend Lord Renton was quite right that the staff associations have a clear interest in the content of regulations which affect their members. But it would be quite wrong to fetter the Home Secretary's discretion so that he can only make regulations with regard to police officers provided that he has first had the approval of the staff associations.
As my noble friend said, that would give the staff associations a veto on the regulations. My noble friend said he thought that the point would be met if my right honourable friend had to consult the staff associations before he made the regulations. That is exactly what he does. My right honourable friend is obliged to consult the police advisory board under Section 46 of the Police Act 1964. The staff associations are all represented on the police advisory board. Therefore, they will be consulted before the Secretary of State lays the regulations. However, I believe that it would be going too far to require their consent because that would mean that if the Secretary of State wished to produce regulations which he thought were necessary and appropriate and the staff associations did not agree, then my right honourable friend would not be able to lay those regulations. That would be wrong.
I give the noble Baroness the assurance that consultation will take place on those matters. Moreover, I should say to the noble Earl, Lord Winchilsea, that I understand the anxieties of the staff associations, which he expressed. Regulations will be produced which will change that to which everyone has become accustomed and that creates anxiety. But it is right that there should be a more simplified system than hitherto, and the associations will be consulted before the regulations are laid.
Lord Bethell: Can my noble friend address the point that I raised with him about the reduced burden of proof in disciplinary cases?
Earl Ferrers: I apologise to my noble friend for omitting to address that point. I wonder whether I might write to him on the matter.
Lord Bethell: Yes.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I do not want to make heavy weather of the matter at this late hour. However, as the noble Earl will recognise, the point raised by his noble friend is fundamental to the anxiety in the police service about the new disciplinary regulations. As it happens, I believe that there is a case for change; indeed, I have made that decision publicly clear. But, nevertheless, there is widespread concern on the question and it is essential that it should be cleared up on the Floor of the Chamber at some stage so that we have a record of the Government's position.
Earl Ferrers: Perhaps I may assist the noble Lord a little in that respect. The criminal burden of proof was always held to be necessary in the past. We are trying now to make such disciplinary matters more a question
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of managerial decision. Perhaps I may put it this way. If a person is considered to have done something sufficiently criminally wrong, he will be taken before a court and subjected to the criminal burden of proof. Then, whether or not that person has been convicted by the court, you consider whether that officer is of a sufficient capacity and quality to be a competent police officer. In other words, those concerned will have to consider whether they wish that man to remain in the police force. That is a disciplinary matter which should not be subject to the criminal burden of proof but which should be subject to the lower burden of proof which is more likely than not as in a civil case. Therefore, there is a difference. However, it is mostly a managerial decision whether that officer is considered to be a sufficient kind of person to remain in the police force.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: I hope that the noble Earl will forgive my intervention. I hate to be tiresome at this time of the evening, but is he saying that a decision on the facts on which that managerial decision will be taken will be decided on the balance of probabilities and not on the criminal burden of proof?
Lord Renton: Perhaps I may follow up that question. I should have thought that Members of the Committee would have appreciated that it is in the interest of the members of the police forces that the strictest and strongest burden of proof should prevail before they are found guilty of anything. If we are to relax the burden of proof, it cannot be in their interest.
Earl Ferrers: I shall try to help Members of the Committee. If a person has done something criminally wrong, he will appear before a court and be subjected to the criminal burden of proof. It is possible that the court will acquit him and find that he is not guilty of a criminal offence. But then the chief constable is entitled to ask whether that person is of a sufficient calibre to be a policeman. That is a managerial decision. The chief constable may well consider for a variety of reasons, and even though the person may not have been convicted by a court, that nevertheless he is not a suitable person to remain in the police force. That would require a lower burden of proof.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I do not intend to pursue the point now. As the noble Earl has recognised, we are discussing a highly complex issue. If the noble Earl thinks it a good idea—and, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Bethell did—it might be better if the noble Earl was able to give a fuller explanation of what is proposed on Report. In that way, he would have the opportunity to consider carefully what he will say. It is to be hoped that that would also meet the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Bethell. As we all know, the issues are highly sensitive. It is obviously most important to get it right.
Lord Bethell: The noble Lord is quite correct. The point I raised is fundamental and one which rouses the greatest anxiety among members of the Police Federation of England and Wales. It would be very much to the advantage of everyone and, I believe, to the police service, if the matter could be cleared up on the

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Floor of the Chamber on Report as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, and not in a letter to me from my noble friend.
10.15 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: Of course, I would be entirely happy to do that. I was inveigled into answering by my noble friend's question. That was probably unwise as these are sensitive matters. I hope that in anything I said I have not gone over the bounds of propriety or correctness. I was going to suggest that I should write to my noble friend, send a copy of the letter to the noble Lord and lay a copy in the Library. That may be the best thing to do. Then, if my noble friend wishes to return to the matter or raise it on Report, we can do so.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I return to the amendment and the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Renton. It should refer to consultation and not agreement. I shall withdraw the amendment at this point and perhaps return to the matter on Report with an amendment that refers to consultation with the staff associations. I believe it is important to have this matter on the face of the Bill although the Minister has assured us that consultation will take place. As I said, I will return on Report with an amendment that refers to formal consultation with staff associations. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Earl of Winchilsea and Nottinghamhad given notice of his intention to move Amendment No.108:
Page 12, line 29, after ("terms") insert (", of a type agreed between the Home Secretary and the Police Associations, ").
The noble Earl said: I have already spoken to this amendment.
[Amendment No.108 not moved.]
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No.109:
Page 12, line 29, leave out from ("made") to end of line 30.
The noble Lord said: In moving the amendment I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos.130 and 143 which stand in my name. Amendment No.130 relates to the Scottish part of the Bill and Amendment No.143 to the Northern Ireland part. Amendment No.109 is grouped with Amendments Nos.110 and 111. I understood that the Association of Chief Police Officers was most uneasy about the possibility of fixed term contracts for people of their rank. It seemed to me, looking at the Bill, that it was probably unsound for the regulations laid by the Secretary of State to be the cause of fixed term contracts for anyone because they are of doubtful value in these circumstances. There is a slight feeling that, if this is done by central government, it is a move in the direction of central control of the police force on a matter of great detail which can seriously affect people. It seems to me that the best thing to do is not to have that facility available within the regulations.
However, that does not mean to say, as I understand it, that individual police authorities might in their own wisdom introduce fixed term contracts for people of certain ranks, whatever those may be, and that that would be something for the police authorities themselves to negotiate. I would like to see much less
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direction from the centre. Members of the Committee are well aware of my feelings in that regard from what I have said on earlier occasions. I am reinforced in that view from what I have heard in listening to the debate today. I believe that the more these matters can be decentralised, the better the situation will be. I would hope therefore that I might receive a little support. However, at this stage, I view this as a probing amendment to discover how my noble friend will react to it. The nature of his reaction will determine what I do next. I beg to move.
Lord Renton: I wish to support my noble friend's amendment for another reason. The flexibility for which my noble friend Lord Ferrers has pleaded in other contexts at earlier stages of this Committee stage has much to commend it, especially when we come to consider fixed term contracts for fairly senior police officers. An officer may have reached the rank of superintendent at an earlier age than most officers do, and he may be fit for a good many more years' service in that rank. For the police authority and the officer concerned to be tied down to a fixed term may eventually deprive the police authority, and the chief officer of police, of the services of a valuable member of the force who should be allowed to continue to serve in that way.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: I should like to support the amendment. There is universal agreement among sensible people and the police that the Government's proposal would be a step which causes great unease and certainly would not add to the efficiency or the status of the police.
Earl Ferrers: I know that the prospect of fixed-term appointments has caused a number of people anxiety. My noble friend's Amendment No.109 is intended to prevent fixed-term appointments in any rank. Amendment No.130 deals with the same matter in relation to Scotland, and Amendment No.143 covers the point in respect of Northern Ireland. The Government have already accepted that fixed-term appointments are not appropriate for rank and file officers, but they do have a part to play in the appointment and management of chief and assistant constables.
The intention of Amendments Nos.110 and 1l1 is to limit the conditions applying to fixed-term appointments and performance-related pay to those which the Home Secretary was able to agree with other people. The Home Secretary will, of course, continue to consult the police authorities and the police staff associations before introducing or amending police regulations, as he is required to do by statute. The Government place great emphasis and value on the consultation process. But we cannot agree to a proposal that the Home Secretary's authority to regulate in respect of matters for which he is accountable to Parliament should be constrained by the need to secure the prior agreement of other interests.
There is another significant difficulty with Amendments Nos.110 and 111. While the amendments require the Home Secretary to reach agreement with

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representative bodies, no means is provided of establishing which people can be said to be representative for these purposes.
The Government's proposals for the introduction of fixed-term appointments are sensible. They are consistent with increased emphasis on performance and accountability in the police, and reflect established arrangements in other employment sectors.
Relating pay t performance is, and is generally considered to be, a perfectly reasonable proposition. Distinguishing particularly good performance from the average provides an incentive to people to improve the effectiveness of their contribution. That benefits both the organisation and the individual. The amendment does not prevent the introduction of performance-related pay for rank and file officers or even chief constables. It only says that it cannot apply to assistant chief constables. That would provide for a situation where the financial rewards of the top managers were not dependent upon the quality and effectiveness of their contributions to the police force, but the pay of rank and file officers would be related to the annual appraisal of their performance. I am sure that the Committee will agree that that would be an odd situation.
I acknowledge that fears about increased political pressure have been expressed, but events have shown that chief constables are not greatly susceptible to political pressure; rather the opposite. Appointments to chief officer posts are already made by politicians in local government, with the consent of other politicians in central government.
If the prospect of fixed-term appointments were so objectionable, one wonders why the Police Negotiating Board recommended in 1992 a pay settlement which included acceptance of the principle of fixed-term appointments for chief constables. Both police authorities and the Association of Chief Police Officers wanted fixed-term appointments at that time. Of course, I recognise that what is right for chief officers may not be right for superintendents. That is why we would not consider fixed-terra appointments for superintendents until we have reviewed their operation for chief officers. However, superintendents are senior managers; they are responsible for day-to-day operations in police forces, and we would not wish to rule out fixed-term appointments for them. Regulations would be needed even to allow police authorities at their discretion, to appoint chief officers for fixed terms. I hope that that explains the position.
Lord Renton: Can my noble friend deal with a point which has not been mentioned but which may help us all? Is it envisaged that there will be an opportunity to extend fixed-term appointments year by year? If that is the case, then the point that I made about flexibility would be met.
Earl Ferrers: It would depend upon the nature of the fixed term appointments. The fixed term appointments may be, for example, for four years, with the possibility of extending the period to seven years. It would depend upon the nature of the fixed term appointments.
Lord Knights: I am not sure whether there is some confusion. I am speaking to Amendments Nos.110 and 111, although they have not yet been moved. The Minister has in some sense responded to those amendments. I wish to make these points.
Fixed term appointments and performance related pay are somewhat foreign to police officers. Such concepts seem always to be more appropriate to occupations where employees have transferable skills, whereas the skills of a police officer are generally unique. Performance related pay has seemed more appropriate to the commercial world of profit and loss accounts and perhaps repetitive tasks. The noble Lord, Lord Plant, referred to some of the difficulties of setting up the necessary performance indicators.
Be that as it may, I understand that assistant chief constables have accepted in general terms the Sheehy proposals in the matter, although I personally worry about the effect that such proposals might have on the readiness of a superintendent to put himself forward for appointment as an assistant chief constable with, say, seven years to go before his pension and the possibility of having to leave after three years as an assistant chief constable. That matter has to be addressed.
How will the proposal affect the pension provisions? Different considerations apply to chief constables. I had assumed that the provisions would be discussed later when Clause 4 is recommitted. Somewhat similar provisions to those which I now propose were included with regard to chief constables in Amendments Nos.73 and 74 which were not moved earlier this week.
I must respond to what the Minister said about the effect on chief constables. I believe that if a chief constable is under pressure from a police authority to respond to its wishes in some regard, and he falls back on his independent position, as he is entitled to do, if that occurs 12 months or two years before he is due to apply for a continuation of his appointment—if indeed his conditions allow him to do so—that must affect his judgment unless he is a very strong minded man.
The purpose of the two amendments is to ensure that fixed term appointments and/or performance related pay are not built into the conditions of service of assistant chief constables unless they are in a form which has the agreement not only of the police authorities for whom they work but also of the assistant chief constables themselves. The conditions of service of police officers, which of course include their pay, are laid down in a statutory instrument made by the Secretary of State by virtue of the powers given to him by Section 33 of the Police Act 1964 which the clause seeks to amend. Those regulations cover the administration of police forces and include not only pay but leave and many other matters. Before making such regulations, the Secretary of State is required by the Police Negotiating Board Act 1980 to place a draft before that board for its consideration and, if necessary, conciliation and arbitration procedures which could follow. He does not have to accept the board's views on the draft or any arbitration award which may be arrived at where the board is in disagreement.
The amendments seek to ensure that the new provisions are not forced upon assistant chief constables

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in terms which they themselves have not agreed. I understand the argument advanced a few moments ago that the Home Secretary must not be restricted as to what he can do and that he should not be put in a position where he cannot do something unless someone else agrees with it. But I am sure that the Minister will agree that not much will be achieved if officers are forced to accept conditions of service which they do not find acceptable.
10.30 p.m.
Lord Renton: Before the noble Lord sits down, can he say whether he envisages that fixed terms should be capable of extension?
Lord Knights: I certainly hope so. I view with considerable dismay the possibility of a chief constable being told on appointment, "It is for three years and no more". To be quite frank, if I were in that position, I should say: "Thank you very much, I'll stay as an assistant chief constable under my old conditions", if they were better.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I think that the noble Lord, Lord Knights, has for the first time demonstrated the practical problems of this group of inter-related issues: performance-related pay, fixed term contracts and the issue which we shall come back to on 1st March, the character of the new police authorities. There are real risks involved and I hope the Committee has paid attention to the practical experience of the noble Lord, Lord Knights. If we go too far down the road of, for example, fixed term contracts, and it is made clear—as it may often be—in the advertisement for the post, what the character of that fixed term contract will be, one has to accept that a number of very able police officers will not apply for the jobs. Once one has reached the rank of superintendent after, let us say,20 or 25 years' service, there are still a substantial number of attractive opportunities outside the police service. If you pressure senior officers too much in terms of the contracts they are being invited to sign—as I believe is a risk—I think you will do lasting damage to the quality of applicants for many senior positions in the police service. The Committee must recognise that, because it is fundamental to the debate which we are having.
Not only is that the position as regards applications for jobs as chief constables but—the noble Lord, Lord Knights, is absolutely right—why should a superintendent who will not be affected by the fixed term contract apply for an ACPO job? After 25 years' service or whatever it may be, his pension is approaching and he will often, if he is an officer of ability, have opportunities to go outside the police service. Alternatively, he could stay at his present rank, knowing that his contract cannot be terminated.
I say this to the noble Earl not because I want to re-open the issue on Clause 2 but because he should recognise that. There is a great fear in the police service about the politicisation of police authorities. That is a fact. It is because of the inter-relationship of all those issues that I believe there are serious problems here which have to be recognised.
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As regards performance-related pay, I do not start as a doctrinaire opponent of performance-related pay in all circumstances. That is an absurdity. I think it works often in some parts of the private sector—not in all parts. Some large public companies have had it demonstrated to them clearly in recent weeks that there can be real problems in making an estimate of what kind of performance-related pay a particular employee should obtain. However, I think the Committee must recognise that as regards public service there is no evidence that it has had any effect at all. It has been introduced in the Civil Service, as the noble Earl is aware. I put a series of questions to the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, when he represented the Treasury in this House. I asked what evidence there was that performance-related pay worked. The answer was that there was no such evidence; it does not exist. That is the Government's own view of the matter, not mine.
I have dealt with the question of the fixed term contract. The noble Earl said, correctly, that chief constables have shown in the past that they cannot be pressured into doing things that local politicians and, I hope, sometimes national politicians want them to do. That is true. But as the noble Lord, Lord Knights, said at the beginning of his speech, the situation changes radically when a chief constable is coming up for renewal of his contract, six, seven, eight or nine months ahead and he is being pressured by some members of the police authority to take a certain action which he regards as undesirable and unprofessional. There will be some courageous chief officers in future who, if this regime is imposed upon them, will maintain a principled position. But let us face the fact that there will be a risk that some chief officers who want their fixed-term contracts renewed will succumb to that kind of pressure. The Committee has to recognise that fact. There is no point in passing this legislation without realising the serious practical problems that will arise from its implementation.
Lord Knights: Perhaps I may quote a hypothetical case, following the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich. It was not many years ago that a very strong-minded chairman of a police authority pressured the chief constable of the force to place a traffic warden in a certain position when members of his union were going to or leaving their particular work. The wrangle went on for weeks. I am quite sure that under a fixed-term appointment the chief constable's contract would never have been renewed.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: I rise to support the amendments. I have little to add to the arguments that have already been advanced by the noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Knights. Studies have been made in the industrial world which show that performance-related pay is counter-productive, lowers morale, increases competitiveness between individuals, reduces cooperation and teamwork and generally lowers production rates. That takes place at a level in organisations where perhaps one can measure performance. Quite clearly, it is much More difficult to measure the performance of people of the rank of assistant chief constable, chief constable and so on. Do

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you count the number of meetings they attend or the number of letters they write? How do you measure performance, at that level? I think that this is nonsense. It will set up enormous bureaucratic machinery that is not conducive to good morale, co-operation and the kind of spirit that one wants to see in our police services.
I refer to the dangers of fixed-term appointments with centrally-run police authorities. The worst dangers arise in the context of police authorities as currently outlined in the Bill. We hope that they will have a slightly different shape by the time the Bill leaves this House. The current shape of the police authority, the Home Secretary's power to appoint additional members and set policing objectives, the police authority's power to set local objectives and the setting of targets by the authority against which the chief constable's performance is to be assessed all add up to a horrendous mountain of things where it will be impossible for anyone to be successful. Crime will continue, police officers will continue to have complaints made against them and things will go wrong. You cannot run an organisation that is high in morale, co-operation and motivation if you impose these restrictions and burdens upon it. Therefore, I wholeheartedly support these amendments.
Lord Mottistone: I return to Amendment No.109 which started off this discussion. I have one question to put to the Minister. He responded to my noble friend Lord Renton who asked whether fixed term contracts could be extended. He said that there might be an example of four years being extended by three years. Will the regulations referred to in the subsection that I seek to amend by Amendment No.109 be sufficiently broadly drawn so that individual police authorities will be able to strike their own fixed term contract deals with the people they want to employ at higher ranks? Will they be able to provide for a four-year contract with an extension of three years by joint agreement, or will they be so tight that in effect only the Secretary of State sitting in Whitehall can decide what is to be in those fixed term contracts? Has the matter got far enough for my noble friend to be able to give me an answer to that?
Earl Ferrers: Needless to say, the regulations have not yet been produced. But the idea is that fixed term contracts will be capable of extension but not an unlimited extension. I cannot tell my noble friend at the moment whether there will be just one form of contract that will apply throughout the country. I rather doubt it. I should have thought that within certain parameters police authorities would be able to make their own arrangements with regard to the conditions which the regulations state.
Lord Mottistone: That is extremely helpful.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: Will the Minister say something about the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Clark, with regard to pensions? How will they be affected if the three-year or five-year term ends before the person is due for a pension? The fixed term contracts in industry are a different matter altogether. They are there to attract good people from other companies to come along and put right trouble in the company. They
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are subject to the ruthlessness of big business. No good man will take such a job unless he has a fixed term contract so that if he gets the sack he can sue the company for a great deal of money. That is the reason for fixed term contracts in industry. I cannot see that they have any relation to the police service.
Earl Ferrers: The advantage of fixed term contracts is a two-way one. A chief constable who joins a police authority can be very good and go on and on. Eventually there may come a time when it might be a good idea if he did not stay on. The idea of a fixed term contract is that a chief constable can take the job and if he is very successful the contract can be renewed. Alternatively, at the end of his contract he can move on to somewhere else. It introduces an area of flexibility, which is good.
As regards pensions, they will have to be adjusted in the light of the fixed term contracts, because all those pensions come under the police negotiating board and are matters that have to be considered when the fixed term contracts come into operation.
Lord Mottistone: I take great pleasure in my noble friend's latest reply to me. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Brougham and Vaux): I call Amendment No.110.
Lord Knights: I do not think that my amendment should be moved.
Lord Harris of Greenwich Lord Harris of Greenwich had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No.110:
Page 12, line 31, at end insert:
("() At the end there shall be inserted
"() Regulations under this Part of this Act shall not contain reference to fixed term appointments for deputy or assistant chief constables unless by agreement between the Secretary of State, persons representative of police authorities and persons representative of chief constables". ").
The noble Lord said: This amendment stands in my name also. Our names are on it together. I intend to say only a few words. I must say to the noble Earl that a number of points have been made this evening, as he will recognise, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Knights, concerning fixed term contracts. We shall have to have a detailed response from the noble Earl in the future in a substantial debate which might conceivably take place on Clause 4 of the Bill, which is one of the clauses that will be dealt with on Re-committal.
As I and the noble Lord, Lord Knights, indicated, the fact of the matter is that not only is there widespread concern in the police service about these matters. The interrelationship between a new type of police authority, a fixed term contract and performance related pay has to be debated far more vigorously than is possible so late on a Thursday evening, as it is now.
Having said that, which is all that I wanted to say—and that we shall have to go into this matter either on Clause 4, when we come to it, or alternatively on Report, because these issues are absolutely fundamental, as this brief debate has demonstrated-I shall not move the amendment.
[Amendment No.110 not moved.]
[Amendment No.111 not moved.]
Clause 14 agreed to.
Clause 15 [Appeals against dismissal etc.]:
10.45 p.m.
Lord Bethel Lord Bethel moved Amendment No.112:
Page 12, line 35, after ("resign") insert ("or is reduced in rank, or made subject to a permanent bar on promotion, ").
The noble Lord said: This is the first of several amendments that I have tabled about matters that arise out of the changes in police discipline as envisaged by the Bill. I must apologise for detaining the Committee at such a late hour. My only excuse is that the matter is of some importance. That has already emerged from previous discussions.
Many Members of the police service believe that the Government have adopted a rather strange attitude towards the question of police discipline in that they wish to change fundamentally the rules that have applied up to now over disciplinary action in what is, after all, a disciplined and rigid public service. My noble friend the Minister referred to a new managerial approach in the police service, and there have been references to performance-related criteria.
My noble friend also wrote to me saying that he looks forward to seeing the normal flexibility of the workplace in the police service. I wonder whether it is appropriate to have that sort of flexibility in the police service or whether, indeed, it is possible. That is why I tabled the amendment; and with the leave of the Committee I shall speak also to Amendment No.113. If the Committee will be extremely indulgent to me, I shall touch on Amendments Nos.114 to 116 and Amendment No.119 on the understanding that I shall speak briefly or not at all when they come up later this evening.
It is dangerous to envisage some of the proposals put forward by my noble friend. Amendment No.112 would enlarge the right of appeal of a policeman when he is charged with an offence to those who are reduced in rank, have a freeze put on their careers or are fined. As presently drafted, the Bill will give a right of appeal only to those dismissed 'from the service or who are required to resign.
I envisage problems in that regard. Can one imagine a policeman, reduced from the rank of chief inspector to constable, wishing to carry on in the service? Would not such a finding by a disciplinary tribunal amount, to all intents and purposes, to a requirement to resign? Yet such a finding could be issued against a charged policeman on a disciplinary offence without any right of appeal. I hardly think that that is the sort of justice a policeman expects when he is facing all the problems that we know he faces on a daily basis. Likewise, a sentence could be passed on a policeman that his promotion would be indefinitely halted, or that he would be subject to a fine of up to £750. Again, those are severe punishments; and, under the Bill as drafted, they would not be subject to the right of appeal. I hope that my noble friend will be able to look again at those sections of the Bill and say that he will consider tabling his own amendments at Report stage.
I should mention that other professions where strict discipline is enforced by the bodies themselves, such as the Law Society, are not making changes of this sort. A solicitor who faces being struck off the register of course has the right of appeal under all circumstances; he may seek professional advice and have professional representation at his hearing; he has the right to call evidence and to cross-examine, or have his legal representative cross-examine, any witnesses in the matter on his behalf. And the level of proof to find against him is that the matter be proved beyond reasonable doubt—a point which seems to be a little vague at the moment and about which we hope to hear more shortly.
All that must be seen against a background where the police are under increasing pressure and where there are large numbers of people in society who see the opportunity to complain against the police as a growth area. I can tell the Committee (because I have just received from my noble friend an answer to a Written Question) that in 1985 the number of complaints dealt with in the Metropolitan police area was about 4,000. The figure has risen to nearly 8,000 in less than 10 years. On the other hand, the number of complaints substantiated has hardly risen at all. The figure has risen from 141 to 150. There is a great temptation among people who run up against the police to lodge complaints against them. It happens on a regular basis, often for malicious reasons.
What frightens me is that a complaint against a policeman may be used in order to deal with that policeman on the basis of a supposed lack of confidence or lack of popularity within his police station. These complaints are made so often that it is surely right that they should be dealt with on the highest level of justice and with the highest level of protection available to the accused police officer. Otherwise, it will be open season on police officers who face difficulties and accusations from members of the public with whom they come into conflict.
I shall not detain the Committee further at this very late hour, but I hope that we shall be able to debate these matters at a more appropriate time in the future, either during this Committee stage or on Report. I shall be anxiously awaiting what my noble friend can say on the whole question of police discipline; not just on the amendment I have put down, but on the principle of the matter. I beg to move.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: Having been involved in introducing in this House the first police complaints Bill, which set up the original Police Complaints Board, I should like to say something about this issue.
That Bill was not greeted with universal enthusiasm in the police service and nor was its successor, which went a great deal further. Nevertheless, I think there has been an immense improvement in the past 20 years in terms of public confidence in the complaints system, a complaints system which sometimes leads inevitably to disciplinary action being taken against police officers who have misconducted themselves. I therefore do not start off with any prejudice in this matter against change

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but I am to some degree at least sympathetic to some of the arguments—not all of them, if I may say so—of the noble Lord, Lord Bethell.
I am very seriously worried about proposals in the Bill which deny an avenue of appeal to officers convicted of disciplinary offences, except of course those who have been sentenced to be dismissed or required to resign. and about proposals which preclude the right in such cases to legal representation. It was the present Government who extended the right of legal representation in police disciplinary cases. I believe that decision was taken by the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, when he was Home Secretary; or if not by him, then by his successor. I was surprised at the time that the Government had gone so far as they had, but they did so. We are therefore faced with a situation where it is now being suggested that some of those rights should be removed. That makes me slightly uneasy because I can understand some police officers being seriously concerned about the removal of a right of appeal, particularly in some of the most serious cases.
I wish to cite a particular example to the noble Earl, but I do not ask him to react to it tonight. It demonstrates some of the problems which are involved in this approach. I give as an example the case of an inspector with 15 years service who is reduced to the rank of constable, which is not an wholly unlikely event in some circumstances. I want to give some figures because that enables me to illustrate the degree of my anxiety.
The pay for an inspector on the top rate, with four years in that rank, on the current scales is £26,496. Reduced to the rank of constable on a 15-year rate, and again using current scales, he will get £21,267. That is a loss every year of £5,229. Assuming that the officer completed 30 years service in the circumstances which I have described, the loss is £78,435. There is no right of appeal and no legal representation. That causes me anxiety.
But it is more serious even than that. If that inspector served for 30 years and then drew maximum commutation and residual pension—using current scales because that is the only sensible way in which to approach this matter—the maximum commutation for the inspector would be £78,435 and the maximum commutation for the constable would be £53,167. Therefore, there is a loss of commutation lump sum of over £13,000. That, again, is in circumstances with no right of appeal and no right of legal representation.
Assuming a life expectancy after retirement of 20 years, the inspector's pension over that 20 years would total £264,980. For a constable the figure is £212,670. That is a loss of pension over a period of 20 years of over £52,000.
In summary, therefore—and this is the substance of the matter—the losses to an inspector with 15 years service and reduction in rank to constable, is: loss of pay in service, as I have indicated, £78,436; loss of lump sum commutation, £13,073; loss of pension over 20 years, £52,290. That is a total loss of £143,799. There is no right of appeal and no legal representation. The Government have to ask themselves the absolutely fundamental question. I am certainly in favour of vigorous disciplinary action being taken against those
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who misconduct themselves. But I am also strongly of the view that people should have a proper right to have their case heard on appeal and to be legally represented in circumstances of this sort where they can be gravely damaged financially.
I am not asking the noble Earl to respond in detail to this point tonight, but we deserve a very clear answer to this matter. I am seriously apprehensive about the consequences of what is being proposed here. I very much hope that the noble Earl will look at this matter between now and Report stage because I shall certainly be very reluctant to allow it to go through without some changes being made in the areas which I have analysed.
11 p.m.
Viscount Mountgarret: The noble Lord, Lord Harris, opened his remarks by saying that he was not entirely supportive of my noble friend Lord Bethell. If that is the case, I should like to hear him on an occasion when he is supportive. I have seldom heard such a splendid example of the dangers which are inherent in the Bill as it stands and which my noble friend is trying to remedy.
We have reached the part of the Bill that causes me great concern. I believe that it threatens to undermine the right of police officers to the natural justice to which they are entitled. The police are a force in a way not dissimilar to the military. The military, by which expression I embrace all the forces, are subject to military law which encompasses the right of appeal where most offences are concerned. I do not see why the police force is threatened with treatment different from that which has served the Armed Forces so magnificently.
The provisions threaten to make a police officer a second-class citizen-a different citizen. When a police constable arrests a criminal who is tried, convicted, and perhaps sent to gaol, that criminal has the right to appeal against anything of which he or she is found guilty. The criminal knows that, except for dismissal from the service, the police officer does not have a similar right of appeal, with the serious consequences that have been outlined in part so well by the noble Lord, Lord Harris. I find that distinctly concerning.
An analogy has been suggested between a police tribunal and an industrial tribunal. The two cannot be compared. They are quite separate. Industrial tribunals deal with employment. An employer would be very reluctant to reduce a person's rank because of the contract of employment that exists between an employer and employee. That would happen only rarely. But the police are different. When officers join, it is felt that they are suitable to remain in the service. If, however, they are found guilty of a serious offence, it is then felt inappropriate that they should retain their rank. If an industrial tribunal found that an employer effectively reduced an employee's pay by giving him a different rank, for want of a better word, I suspect that the tribunal would construe that action on the employer's part as constructive dismissal. That difference does not seem to have been embraced by the Home Office.
My noble friend referred to Amendment No.119, thus widening the discussion. I do not believe that we

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should get too involved at this stage in trying to do too much, any more than we want to extend this evening any longer than is absolutely necessary. However, it has to be said that the provisions of Amendment No.119 are something that we should bear closely in mind. A police officer may find that he is liable for the cost of his appeal. It would be wrong to allow a situation whereby a police officer feels that he cannot proceed because of that. At the moment, the police fund meets those costs for him unless the Secretary of State is minded to make a direction otherwise.
I shall not comment on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, about legal representation. It answers itself. A serious issue is being embraced in the Bill. I hope that my noble friend will take these points back, think about them again and see whether it is possible to bring forward amendments on Report which go some way towards relieving the anxieties. Although they have been expressed by only three Members of the Committee tonight, I suspect that if more Members were present they would be echoed in all parts of the Chamber.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: Having sat mute but attentive throughout virtually the whole of the debates today, I cast off my taciturnity to make the three into a four. I too support the amendments and specifically Amendment No.113. It is my misfortune, however, that in one respect my view differs from that of the noble Lord, Lord Bethell. The noble Lord said that he was seeking to enlarge the right of appeal. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, pointed out, it is not the noble Lord who is seeking to enlarge the right of appeal but the Government who are seeking to restrict it.
The Bill restricts the range of punishments which may be the subject of an appeal. In Section 37 of the Police Act 1964 the provision was simple. It stated that,
"a member of a police force who is dealt with for an offence against discipline may appeal to the Secretary of State".
It was as simple as that. There was no limitation on the orders against which he might appeal and, presumably, there was a right of appeal against any finding of fact or any punishment or disposal of the matter.
That provision was amended by Section 103 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. But the amended provision gave the same width of the right of appeal. It stated that there was to be an appeal "against any punishment awarded. " So far as I am aware, that is still the position. Therefore, we are asking for an explanation of why the Government seek to restrict the right of appeal. Members of the Committee will not have failed to notice that the limitation applies not merely to the range of punishments against which there may be a right of appeal but against the finding itself; against a possible finding of fact. According to the Bill, the right to appeal against the finding depends upon what ultimately is the punishment inflicted. Clearly, the Government, like everyone else, value this right because here they are making express provision for it. It is no light action to remove a right so fundamental for the protection of individuals. Those who seek to do so carry the heavy burden of explaining the reason.
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The noble Lord, Lord Harris, gave a vivid explanation of the possible financial consequences of some of the provisions which, if the Bill goes through unamended, will no longer carry a right to appeal. It is not merely, as the noble Lord, Lord Bethel!, put it, the serious cases. Any finding of fact against a police office for a disciplinary offence is likely to be carried on his record for at least a substantial distance into the future. It is likely to affect his whole career.
We ask: why is there a proposal to take away what on the face of it is a fundamental right of the individual, which apparently has been operating without any difficulty for a long period of time?
Earl Ferrers: Members of the Committee have argued this evening strongly in favour of an appeal to the police tribunal where an officer has been demoted or barred from further probation. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, gave a graphic description of the financial constraints which that may put upon an individual. I shall read again with interest what he said so that I can absorb it later. I have no doubt that one can always find difficult and tragic circumstances visited upon people who either lose their job or rank.
Since I have been at the Home Office, I have been appalled by the length of time that it takes for the resolution of disciplinary cases. That is different from the matter to which my noble friend Lord Bethell referred; namely, the police having complaints made against them. Of course, he is right that that often happens. A special procedure exists for dealing with that.
However, we are now dealing with disciplinary offences; that is, where a person has done something wrong and it is considered that he should be disciplined. The proposed system is much simpler than the previous system. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer of Sandwell, asked why we need to change from the present system. We wish to change the system because, if a person is disciplined, it is in the interests of justice that he should know as quickly as possible what his position is. Often people are suspended for years and then are reinstated, in which case a huge sum of money is attendant upon that reinstatement. Alternatively, a person may be dismissed—
Lord Archer of Sandwell: I am grateful to the noble Earl for allowing me to intervene. Would that not be an argument against ever giving anyone an appeal against anything?
Earl Ferrers: I do not think so and I shall explain why. We are trying to provide a reasonable disciplinary procedure so that all disciplinary cases, even those in which there is a reprimand, receive a hearing before an assistant chief constable and two superintendents. The case is considered and the person is disciplined.
If he does not like the judgment, he can complain to the chief constable, who either upholds or overturns the decision. If the chief constable upholds the decision, the person receives the appropriate penalty, which may be demotion. Under the new arrangements, if the case results in dismissal or a requirement to resign, he will

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have the right to g o before a tribunal. That tribunal will consist of a qualified lawyer, a current or ex-chief constable and a member of the police authority.
In introducing those procedures, we intend to give an officer the right of an internal appeal to his chief constable. My noble friend Lord Bethell argues that the officer should be able to take a stage further his appeal against demotion to an external body; namely, the police appeal tribunal. I do not believe that a tribunal should be granted the power to interfere in the internal management of the police force. I do not see how such an external body could form a judgment as to whether the person concerned was capable of performing the duties of the higher rank. Those are matters for internal management and not for external review. However, the position is different where a person is being dismissed or required to resign.
There is a right of appeal in all cases as regards disciplinary matters. As I explained, the officer can appeal to his chief constable against the decision of the hearing by the assistant chief constable and two superintendents. He can therefore only lose his rank if four senior officers have considered that to be the appropriate course to take. Such an officer will not now have the right of appeal to an outside force. However, I question whether he should have such a right. Who serves in what capacity in the police force is part of the management of the force. I believe that it would be very serious for the police service if police officers were allowed to continue to serve in posts for which they were not fitted and for which their senior officers considered them to be unsuitable. That is the reason why we are making the change. As a result of that change, it will be quicker and simpler. Moreover, justice will be done a very great deal quicker than has been the case under the present system.
11.15 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: Of course it will be a great deal quicker because the Government are taking away the right of appeal. If there was no disciplinary procedure and we simply had instant dismissal, it would be even more speedy. The Government introduced the right of appeal in the extensive list of cases in which it now operates. It was not a decision taken many years ago. To the best of my recollection, it was the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, and Mr. Brittan who went along with it.
Let there be no doubt about it. The Government must surely return to the issue, especially as regards the situation of a reduction in rank in the circumstances that I described. I am certainly at one with the noble Earl in saying that people who are unsuitable to serve in the police service should be removed from it. However, I am not in favour of a financial penalty of over £140,000, in the circumstances to which I referred, without any avenue of appeal and without any right of legal representation. That seems to me to be objectionable.
The noble Earl very kindly said that he would reflect on the matter. The noble Lord, Lord Knights, who has had to leave the Chamber, asked me to tell Members of the Committee that he is strongly in favour of the points that I am now putting forward. He, too, regards it as
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quite unjust to remove that right of appeal in such circumstances; namely, the reduction in rank issue. I very much hope that the noble Earl will reflect on the matter to see whether something can be done. Otherwise, we shall have to return to the matter on Report. Speaking for myself, I would find it very difficult to let the Bill leave this place with such an oppressive clause within it.
Viscount Mountgarret: My noble friend the Minister referred to the fact that he found the length of time involved with appeals and all the various procedures very worrying. Time should not be a consideration of any sort in such matters where a man's livelihood, future and retirement are at stake. If it takes a long time because of the gathering of evidence, and all the relevant things that go with it, then I say: so be it.
My noble friend did not answer my point. I do not blame him; but I should be grateful if he could say why there should be a different procedure for the police as opposed to the military court martial. I understand his point that outside tribunals should not be seen to be interfering, as it were, with the internal workings of the police. That is understandable; but in a court martial the offender is tried by people within the military—I hope I may refer to the army in this context—only up to a certain level of offence. Where the offence is a serious one, the judge advocate is called in. He is an independent person who has legal knowledge and he is in a position to advise and guide the president of the court martial as regards all the arguments that have been promulgated.
On an appeal there is usually, in serious cases, a barrister who represents the defendant. I do not see why the police should be treated in a different fashion. If we are not to have an independent tribunal for the police, we at least should have something like an independent barrister, or judge advocate—call it what you will—to guide the chief constable, or to whom the police officer concerned might refer. I still hope—I have asked for this—that some of the arguments that have been made this evening might be taken on board by my noble friend because I, and I believe a number of others, consider these to be serious matters which should he discussed again at another stage of the Bill.
Earl Ferrers: Of course I shall consider what has been said in the Committee this evening; it would be wrong of me not to do so. However, I do not propose to follow my noble friend down the avenue of comparisons with courts martial on which he is obviously an expert but on which I am not proficient. My noble friend said if the process to which he referred took a long time, that did not matter. I remind him of the old adage that justice delayed is justice denied. I remember the case of a police officer—I may have remembered this incorrectly—who was being dismissed for having taken some money out of the canteen in lieu of some Kit-Kats or Mars bars. I believe he had taken £5
The case had passed through all the appeal procedures and it was referred to me as Minister of State in the Home Office. It was then referred to my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and the whole process lasted about three or four years. I do not believe

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that kind of system of meting out justice can be correct. If my noble friend believes that in a case where such a small sum of money is involved the procedure I have described should be adopted, I can only say that he and I part company. However, I shall of course take note of what has been said this evening because these are important matters.
Lord Bethell: I am glad to hear that my noble friend will take note of what has been said this evening because although we are a "thin" Committee, I have gained the impression that there is strong feeling on the part of many Members of the Committee that amendments of this kind should be accepted by this Chamber and should be included in the Bill.
As regards what my noble friend said a moment ago, he is correct to point out that justice delayed is justice denied. However, what we do not want is rough justice. We may want more of a court martial regime but not a drum-head court martial, or execution in the field. I hope that my noble friend will bear all that in mind. One point arose from the interesting intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Harris. If I am correct in my assumption, a senior officer—an inspector or a chief inspector—who is required to resign under this procedure would resign with his pension rights intact. On the other hand, if he were reduced to the rank of constable, his pension rights would be reduced to those of a constable. He would therefore endure a more severe punishment by being reduced to the ranks than if he were merely required to resign. He would benefit financially from the so-called more severe punishment which carries a right of appeal than from the punishment of being reduced to the ranks. This is just one of many anomalies in this Bill and one of many difficulties that I hope my noble friend will look at before we resume the Committee stage on Monday. I have tabled another amendment which I hope will be discussed rather earlier in the day.
In the meantime, in view of the late hour and in view of the fact that we do not really have much of an attendance in the Committee, in spite of the fact that if there were to be a Division we would probably win it, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No.113 not moved.]
Clause 15 agreed to.
Schedule 3 [Schedule to be inserted in Police Act 1964: appeals tribunals]:
Lord Bethell Lord Bethell moved Amendment No.114:
Page 54, line 3, leave out sub-paragraph (c) and insert: ("(c) one shall be a person chosen from a list maintained by the Secretary of State of persons who have retired from the police service as chief officers of police within the previous five years. ").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No.114 I shall speak also to Amendments Nos.115 and 116. The amendments attempt to vary the composition of police appeal tribunals. They would have the effect of adding a magistrate, a representative of the professional associations and a retired chief constable as opposed to a serving chief constable. I believe that that would amount to a significant improvement in the proposals already put forward. I beg to move.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I have one or two questions to ask about this issue. First, as I understand it, at the moment on any appeal tribunal there is a representative of the appropriate staff association. If I am right on that point, and I believe that I am, why has that representation been withdrawn?
The noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, says "what?". What is being withdrawn is the right of the staff association to be represented on the tribunal. Why is it being withdrawn? An explanation has to be given.
Secondly, we are dealing with an organisation which will be hearing appeals against dismissal. Where a person outside the police service appeals to an industrial tribunal there is always an employee's representative on that tribunal. If the existing right is to be withdrawn there will be no employee's representative on the tribunal.
The two issues are clearly related. Why is this change being made? What is the justification for it? I shall be truly interested to hear the noble Earl's response.
Earl Ferrers: My noble friend referred to Amendments Nos.114,115 and 116. We feel that a tribunal of five members would be unwieldy. The proposal to add to its membership a magistrate as well as an officer belonging to the staff association of the appellant would keep the tribunal in balance, but would make it very much larger.
The Government's own proposal that one member of the tribunal should be a police authority member—who may be a magistrate—would include on the tribunal a member of the body which is responsible for the efficiency and effectiveness of the local force who is also an informed member of the public which that force serves.
The chief officer of police who sits on the tribunal, and who will in most cases be likely to be a retired officer, will have experience of the command of a force and will have served in all ranks of the police service earlier in his or her career. He or she will be able to give an informed view as to whether the officer concerned has met the standards of that service.
That membership seems to us to give the right balance to the tribunal and I do not believe that the addition of more members would do anything other than to add numbers without adding extra opinions of weight.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, asked why no representative of a staff association will be included in the membership of the tribunal. We are considering here people who are being dismissed. The matter concerned is whether that person is a fit person to be a police officer. Those who come to that conclusion would be the legally qualified expert, a retired chief constable who has served in all ranks of the police service, and a member of the police authority who is responsible to the people in the area which the police force serves. In that respect, a member of the staff association from which the appellant is drawn has no locus in the matter. One is concerned as to whether that person is a sufficiently competent and reputable person

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to be a member of the police service. A representative of his staff association would be an irrelevance in that respect.
11.30 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I have not made myself clear; and I apologise. The hour is late and no doubt we are not hearing one another with the appropriate degree of clarity. I did not ask that question. I asked a different one. Is it or is it not true that at present a representative of the staff association sits in such circumstances? If the answer to that question is, yes, he does, the next question is: why is he being removed? That requires a different answer from the one given by the noble Earl. Of course, I may be wrong. Perhaps the Minister will assist me.
Earl Ferrers: I agree that the hour is late. My hearing is reasonably all right; it is merely the comprehension that is slowing down a little. I thought that I had detected the noble Lord's question aright and had answered it correctly. I have tried to explain throughout this discussion that the disciplinary system which we propose is more geared to whether a person is a fit person to be in the police service. That is different from what has happened heretofore, when a member of the staff association was present. We believe that in the future the important matter to be addressed in this case is whether the judgment requiring a person to be dismissed or required to resign is wrong. The question at issue is whether the person is fit to be in the police service. A staff association representative is not a valid member to have on the tribunal in that circumstance.
Lord Monkswell: Perhaps I may intervene in seeking to assist the noble Earl. The issue always under question in such tribunal settings is whether a police officer, of whatever rank, is a fit person to be a police officer. While I agree with the noble Earl that the objective of the exercise is to make a judgment as to whether someone is. or is not suitable to be a member of the police force, that judgment must not be made in isolation. Perhaps I may remind the noble Earl that justice must not only be done; it must be seen to be done.
The British system has evolved to ensure that justice is seen to be done, and is done. Industrial tribunals were referred to as an example. A representative of the trade unions sits on an industrial tribunal to help to arrive at the correct judgment. That also ensures that those members of a trade union who are involved in an industrial tribunal have some confidence that justice is being, done, and can see that it is done. That is one of the crucial points. We must all accept that the tribunals do not sit in public; they are not reported verbatim in the press and media. 'Therefore, we have to find some mechanism to ensure that people see the operation of the tribunal and to enable justice to be seen to be done as well as being done.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: I must say that I was following the argument reasonably well before the noble Lord spoke; now I am not.
Lord Bethell: I fear that I am still not convinced by what my noble friend had to say. It is correct, as I understand it, that in many professional tribunals or industrial tribunals a member of the defendant's staff association is present as one of the representatives. I should have thought that my noble friend might see some merit in the idea, although I take his point about not making a tribunal too cumbersome with too many members. Of course, one wants to get such things over as quickly as possible.
I ask my noble friend to consider how a defendant, a person complained against, can be represented by a member of his staff association. It is not enough simply to say, as the Home Office says, that more flexible personal procedures are needed and we no longer concentrate on precise matters for detailed proof. It is desirable that a person should have the support of a professional association member. I am sure that would be the view of a member of the Home Office who found himself in such an invidious situation. In the meantime—
Earl Ferrers: Perhaps I may interrupt my noble friend. I believe he has put a different complexion on the point. I thought he was saying: would it not be fair for a member of the staff association to be there to represent a person?
Lord Bethell: No, a member of the tribunal,
Earl Ferrers: In that case I misunderstood him. For the reasons I have given, I do not think it appropriate for a member of a staff association to be on a tribunal where it is being decided whether or not a member of that association is fit to be a police officer. As I explained, there is a legally qualified chairman while the other two people are responsible for the running of the force—the chief constable and a representative of the police authority for the area being policed. Those are the people best placed to decide whether an individual is suitable to be in the police force, not a member of the staff association. However, as in all these matters, I shall pay attention to what has been said this evening.
Lord Bethell: I am grateful to my noble friend. On that understanding I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos.115 and 116 not moved.]
Lord Archer of Sandwell Lord Archer of Sandwell moved Amendment No.117:
Page 54, line 16, after ("may") insert ("not").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No.117, I feel it may be for the Committee's convenience if we also discuss Amendment No.118. Amendment No.120 relates to a quite separate matter, and if it meets with the Committee's approval, I propose to speak to it when its turn is reached on the Marshalled List.
I must begin by declaring an interest. I am privileged to chair the Council on Tribunals and the amendments represent the considered view of the council. The schedule makes provision for the police appeals tribunals which are to be substituted under Clause 15 for

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the present procedure of appeals to the Home Secretary. Paragraph 5 makes what appears to be a curious provision. It begins by saying that the tribunal,
"may determine a case without a hearing".
I assume that that means without an oral hearing. If a tribunal meets for the purpose of discussing its conclusions, that may be referred to as a hearing and the tribunal is unlikely to dispose of the matter without doing at least that. So I assume that what is meant is an oral hearing, but I do not propose to pursue that drafting point for the moment.
The provision is unusual. There are cases before some tribunals that can be resolved quite fairly and satisfactorily without a hearing provided that the tribunal reads the documents that have been submitted, ensures that the parties have been given an opportunity to submit whatever documents they think fit, and each side is afforded an opportunity to read those submitted by the other and to comment on them. The tribunal then reaches its conclusions on those documents. For example, if the issue turns on the construction of the documents, that is a reasonable proceeding. Each party has said in writing what it wishes to say and so no oral hearing may be necessary.
But that is an unusual situation. Normally, it is more satisfactory to give an appellant the opportunity to come before a tribunal to put his case and call whatever evidence he thinks will assist the tribunal. Certainly, that is important where anything turns on the question of which of two people is telling the truth. One has to bear in mind that many of the determinations of these tribunals will be based on disputed questions of fact which will affect the future career of police officers. The formula that is usually preferred by the council is that the appellant, or perhaps better either party, shall be entitled to a hearing but there will not be one unless it is asked for.
The present provision says that there will be no entitlement to a hearing even if it is asked for. That in itself appears unsatisfactory. But the proposition enters into what appears at first sight to be the realm of farce. I read paragraph 5(1):
"A police appeals tribunal may determine a case without a hearing but shall not do so unless both the appellant and the respondent have been afforded an opportunity to make written or, if either so requests, oral representations and any such representations have been considered".
That appears to mean that the tribunal does not have to accord a hearing, even if it is asked for, but that if it does not it must, when requested, hold an oral hearing to decide whether or not it will hold an oral hearing. I do not know whether or not I have misunderstood. If the draftsman is drawing a distinction between a hearing and something else—for example, an opportunity to make oral representations—it seems to me to be a curious use of the English language, and is certainly likely to make for ambiguity. It still sheds no light on the purpose behind the provision. The noble Earl may be able to enlighten us, or perhaps it will emerge that it is all a mistake. We can only hope that the Government do not really mean what they appear to be saying in the sub-paragraph.
Viscount Mountgarret: Perhaps my noble friend will feel that by accepting the amendment it may go some way to cut down the length of time referred to earlier this evening in regard to the hearing of cases and the consideration of appeals. It seems to me that if we cut out all these written and oral requests and representations have been considered it will cut down the time very substantially.
Earl Ferrers: I shall do my best to enlighten the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, although it will be difficult in the face of one so experienced in these matters and also in tribunals. The schedule as it stands allows the police appeals tribunal to decide for itself whether or not it wants to hold a hearing. When it comes to such a decision its members will have read with care the appellant's reasons for appealing and as much supplementary material as he has chosen to put before that body, as well as the chief constable's reply. Should the tribunal decide that it is able to determine the case without holding a hearing it will offer the appellant a chance to come before it and make oral representations as to why it should not take the course of action that it intends to take. After hearing him or her, if it still feels that a hearing is not needed in order to determine the case, I do not believe that it should be required to hold one. The point is that provision has been made for the officer to put his point of view, personally or by his representative, as to whether a hearing should be dispensed with.
It may help the noble and learned Lord if I were to explain a little further that a hearing in police appeal cases does not necessarily mean a complete rehearing of the case. In fact, those are extremely rare and are expected to remain so.
A hearing in an appeal case will offer the appellant an opportunity to say why he considers that he is fitted for the police service and why he should therefore be reinstated. But one would have expected any material of substance on this matter to have been laid before the tribunal already as the basis for the appeal. If it has not, the appellant or his representative will have an opportunity to say so when the oral representations are made. The tribunal will then have an opportunity to decide whether a hearing would be beneficial.
The noble and learned Lord's amendment offers appellants no real benefit and could operate to delay the conclusions of the tribunal. At present, delay is a significant factor in police disciplinary proceedings, as I explained earlier. That is what my right honourable friend is trying hard to minimise so far as possible.
11.45 p.m.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: It is a late hour, but I confess that I am more puzzled than ever. I hoped that the noble Earl would explain that I had misunderstood what the draftsman was trying to say. But I fear that I have understood it correctly. As I understand it, the tribunal will sit, and the appellant will come along, because he has a right to come along, in order to explain why he should have a hearing.
As the noble Earl has just indicated, the hearing will probably simply take the form of the appellant coming

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along to address the tribunal. Most of the evidence will already have been submitted. So he comes along to explain why he should have a hearing. At a certain point he is stopped by the tribunal which says, "We have heard what you have said about why you should have a hearing. We do not think you should have a hearing and therefore we will not allow you to go on and produce the next two sentences that you intended to address to us about why you should still remain a police officer. "
One can think of no more time-wasting procedure, no procedure which is more likely to irritate people, and no more wholly pointless way of doing things. I wonder whether I could prevail upon the noble Earl at least to reconsider the drafting of this provision, so that what is being said can be made clear. But I should prefer him to address the common sense of it. Frankly, to me nothing seems to be more calculated to annoy everyone and to waste time than to allow someone to come before a tribunal and speak to it but to circumscribe just what he may say when he gets there.
It is a late hour and I do not propose to pursue the matter further this evening. I ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No.118 not moved.]
Lord Bethell Lord Bethell moved amendment No.119:
Page 54, line 43, leave out sub-paragraph (1) and insert:
("() The costs of an appellant shall be defrayed out of the police fund of the relevant police authority unless the tribunal directs otherwise. ").
The noble Lord said: This amendment would put right one of the most dubious paragraphs in the Bill that is before the Committee; namely, the one that requires an appellant before a police complaints tribunal to defray the costs of his appeal unless an order is made to the contrary. I believe that that is a most unusual procedure and I urge my noble friend to correct it at the first available opportunity.
To the best of my knowledge, an appellant in a criminal case, or any other case that would come before a professional body, would receive the costs of the appeal from a fund. My amendment proposes that the police fund should defray the costs of the appeal in question.
Perhaps before the end of this short debate my noble friend will be able to indicate what would be the average costs of an appeal to a police tribunal. I suspect that it will be a substantial four-figure sum, if not more. But it is clearly a sum that will be difficult for any police officer who has recently been dismissed from the service or who has resigned to find. I predict that many police officers in that situation who believe themselves to have a case on appeal will be deterred from appealing simply because they do not wish to use any money that they may have saved to pursue an appeal, or they may not have the money, in which case they will be in no position to appeal.
I believe that this provision goes against natural justice and I ask my noble friend to accept the amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: I rise again briefly to support Amendment No.119. This is another instance
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where the Government are changing the present position. Under the present system the appellant is liable to pay costs only if the Secretary of State so directs, and that would entail the Secretary of State requiring a reason so to direct. That is the effect of Section 37(5) of the Police Act 1964.
That represents the normal practice in relation to similar tribunals. Of course an appellant should be penalised if he has acted frivolously or unreasonably and caused money or time to be wasted. But here the assumption is that he will have to pay his own costs—I appreciate that there is a distinction between paying the whole costs and paying only his own—unless the tribunal has a specific reason for directing otherwise. Clearly it cannot direct otherwise unless it has some reason for so doing.
The noble Earl was involved earlier today in a number of exchanges as to whether the Government should be castigated for making changes or castigated for allowing matters to remain as they are. But this is a change which on the face of it could operate grossly unfairly. The onus must be upon the Government to establish a reason for making the change.
Viscount Mountgarret: I too strongly support Amendment No.119. My noble friend indicated that he would look at all the arguments postulated this evening and think about them. I hope that it will be in order for him to raise these matters again at Report stage. It would not be fair to ask the Committee to come to a view at this time of night and we would not obtain a representative view of the feeling of the Chamber. They are extremely important matters and I hope that my noble friend will consult with his right honourable colleague, because this situation has to be unacceptable.
Earl Ferrers: My noble friend says that the situation, "has to be unacceptable". All I can say is that it may be unacceptable to him but that does not mean that it is unacceptable to everyone or even to the Government. There is a perfectly good reason for the provision. Whether or not it is acceptable to the individual is a matter for each person.
My noble friend Lord Bethell is quite right. The Bill proposes arrangements which are different from those which obtain at present. The reason for that is that the past few years have seen a considerable rise in appeals to my right honourable friend which have been relying solely on technical grounds rather than on the actual merits of the case, or on grounds which have little real merit to them at all. The normal practice in tribunals is for each side to bear its own costs. It is proposed that that should be the practice for the new appeal tribunals.
The tribunals will have the task of examining whether an officer who is dismissed or who is required to resign by his chief officer is fit for the police service. It seems to us right that anyone who is going to challenge the chief officer's decision—the challenging of four senior police officers (the hearing will be held in front of the assistant chief constable and two superintendents, and that will then be considered by the chief constable)—should be expected to have sufficient confidence in the merits of his case to be prepared to pay his own costs. All the costs of the appeal tribunal itself

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will be met by the police authority, and the only costs the appellant would have would be his own. We would expect tribunals to award costs in any case where the appellant won his case and in any case where they saw merit in the appeal. But the principle that the person ought to be prepared to stand his own costs seems to me to be correct.
Lord Bethell: Is my noble friend able to answer my question about the approximate cost of an appeal?
Earl Ferrers: I am sorry but I cannot do that. It would obviously depend on circumstances. The only cost would be the person who goes with the appellant.
Lord Bethell: I shall shortly beg leave to withdraw this amendment also, but it is only because we are sitting at this very late hour and because there are so few of us. Again, as several noble Lords have pointed out, I feel confident that, were there to be a true test of the feeling of the Committee, several, if not all, of these amendments would be carried. I hope that it will be possible for us to debate these matters at a later stage and at a time when there is a good turn-out of people who can discuss these matters and vote on them if necessary. All this can be avoided if my noble friend will look seriously at these questions and take on board the matters that have been raised in these short debates. In the meantime, I can only apologise once again for having delayed the Committee at so late an hour. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 3 agreed to.
Lord Archer of Sandwell Lord Archer of Sandwell moved Amendment No.120:
After Schedule 3, insert the following new schedule:
SCHEDULE 3A
("AMENDMENT To TRIBUNALS AND INQUIRIES ACT 1992: POLICE APPEALS TRIBUNALS
In Schedule 1 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992 (Tribunals under general supervision of council) after Tribunal 36, there shall be inserted—
"36A. Police Appeal Tribunals established under section 15 of the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994". ").
The noble and learned Lord said: I shall begin by repeating a declaration of interest which I made in relation to my earlier amendments. The purpose of this new schedule is to provide that the police appeal tribunals shall be subject to the supervision of the Council on Tribunals. In exercising the existing jurisdiction to hear appeals against a disciplinary finding, the Secretary of State appoints a three-member inquiry to consider the appeal and to report to him. That procedure was established by paragraph 3 of Schedule 5 to the Police Act 1964, which provided that, with certain exceptions:
"The Secretary of State shall … appoint one or more persons",
to hear appeals. I emphasise the word "shall". That was a statutory inquiry within Section 1 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1971, as it then was, and was consequently within the supervision of the council. A statutory inquiry was defined by Section 19 as inter alia,
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"an inquiry … held … in pursuance of a duty imposed by any statutory provision".
Section 12 of the Police Act 1976 amended that provision in the 1964 Act to provide that the Secretary of State "may" appoint one or more persons to hear appeals. That was later substantially re-enacted in Section 103 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. It was never intended that that should have the consequence of removing the tribunals from the supervision of the council but it had that effect because they were no longer appointed in pursuance of a duty but only of a discretion.
That consequence was not noticed at the time when the amendment was enacted but some observant character later noticed it and perfectly properly pointed it out. I am not sure when it was noticed but certainly in 1985 it was the subject of correspondence between the Home Office and the council. It was agreed that matters should be suitably amended. The Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1971, which was substantially re-enacted in 1992, provided in effect that even if an inquiry was not held in pursuance of a statutory duty, it could nevertheless be designated as a statutory inquiry for this purpose by ministerial order. It was agreed that that should be done. I disclose no confidences. This story is set out in the annual report of the council for 1985–86.
If that order had been made, I doubt whether I would have needed to trouble the Committee with this new schedule at so late an hour. I am sure that it was by oversight. After it was agreed that it should be done, it was never made; no order was made by the Secretary of State. So a consequence which was intended by no one is that for the moment an inquiry is not within the supervision of the council.
That could have been rectified in the Bill in dealing with the new arrangements which are not substantially different from the existing arrangements except that a statutory tribunal is an even stronger candidate for supervision than an inquiry appointed ad hoc. So one would have expected it to be corrected in this Bill. It was not and whether that was by oversight or otherwise, I do not know. But that need not deter the Committee. This amendment simply seeks to insert it.
If arguments are necessary, they come readily enough. First, there is a strong element of public interest in the working of this procedure. Both the police and the public will wish to be reassured that it operates properly and fairly and that the procedural rules have been scrutinised by the council. Secondly, this procedure is analogous to the procedure which, for those who are not members of the police force, is dealt with by employment tribunals. That is a point made more than once in the course of the Committee's debates today. To my knowledge, no one has ever questioned that employment tribunals should be, and are, within the supervision of the council.
Normally in moving an amendment, I would seek to anticipate the arguments which might be deployed against the proposal; but for the life of me I cannot anticipate what arguments might be used against this proposal, and why the Home Office should fear scrutiny by the council. I have had no indication that the

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Government propose to accede to it. It may help if the Committee hears the Minister and we take it from there. I beg to move.
Midnight.
Earl Ferrers: I am glad that the undoubted capacity of the noble and learned Lord to consider most things has nevertheless made him unable to anticipate the arguments which I shall give in reply to his amendment because otherwise I would have had the rug pulled from underneath my feet. The noble and learned Lord has advocated bringing the police appeals tribunals within the scope of the body which has the good fortune to have him as chairman; namely, the Council on Tribunals. But that body is not concerned with small, ad hoc disciplinary appeals bodies such as this one which have no continuing existence or staff, which are the responsibility of local police authorities and which have no links either to local or central government.
It is the police authority which is to be responsible for the efficiency and effectiveness of its force. It is as part of those duties that we have arranged for a police authority member to be a member of any such police appeals body which has to be set up to deal with the case of a particular officer. The police authority member will represent the local public interest in ensuring the good conduct and efficiency of the local police force. It is for the police authority to make sure that such an appeals body operates its procedures in a way which is fair to the police officer concerned.
In any of this we do not see a role for the Council on Tribunals whose main concern is major tribunals which generally have a permanent existence and their own staff. Indeed, we find it difficult to envisage who would respond to the council's inquires, should it make any, when the appeal bodies have no permanent existence.
The noble and learned Lord based much of his claim for a police appeals tribunal on the fact that in 1985 there was an intention on the part of the Government to place existing tribunals under his council's wing. Considering their ad hoc nature, I am surprised that that was ever considered.
Be that as it may, the new tribunals are an entirely different matter. They will be set up as and when needed by the police authority and will have no continuing existence or staff. Even that for senior officers (which will be set up by my right honourable friend) will be a rare body. We know of no senior officer tribunal which has been set up in the past 10 years. I want to help the noble and learned Lord as much as I can. I assure him that the model rules of procedure that are advocated by his council will be fully taken into account when the tribunal rules are set. I hope that that will at least give him some cause for satisfaction.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: The Minister's final kind undertaking certainly gives me some satisfaction, but I confess that I am far from fully satisfied. I did not appreciate most of the arguments that he advanced. First, he said that the new tribunals will be ad hoc, but surely the old tribunals were ad hoc. The provision in Section 37 of the 1964 Act was that when an appeal was
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made the Secretary of State should appoint three suitable persons. Nothing could be more ad hoc than that. This is a far more stable and permanent tribunal.
The kind of tribunal which the Minister described is not by any means the only kind of tribunal within the supervision of the Council on Tribunals. There are over 60—I think that at the last count there were 65—different systems of tribunals in this country coming within the supervision of the council including, for example, the controller of plant varieties. It is difficult to understand why the fact that the tribunal is convened only from time to time and may not always consist of the same members should be an argument against the supervision of the council.
Not only was it the case that in 1985 the Home Office agreed that the appropriate amendment should be made by order, but since 1964 the tribunals have been within the supervision of the council. They have been there. The council has supervised them. It never occurred to anyone to argue, "They're only ad hoc"—nor have I heard the rather surprising argument that they are not really to do with central government. Some of the tribunals which are frequently supervised by the council deal with cases between individuals. Many of the cases heard by industrial tribunals are cases between individuals.
I cannot help feeling that the situation has not been fully considered by those who advise the noble Earl. It may be that at this late hour I am not as articulate as I would hope to be at a different time of day. It may be that, as the Minister said, he himself is not as open to consider these matters as he might be at a different time. Perhaps it would be better if we both returned to the matter either privately or on the Floor of your Lordships' House at Report stage. For the moment, but only for the moment, I am content to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 16 agreed to.
Clause 17 [Reports from inspectors of constabulary]:
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No.121:
Page 13, line 26, leave out from ("published") to end of line 27.
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No.121 I should like to speak also to Amendment No.122. Both are probing amendments which have been tabled because we find some difficulty in understanding the provisions of Clause 17 about the publication of reports by the inspectors of constabulary. Our first difficulty is in subsection (1) which provides that, "the Secretary of State shall arrange for any report received by him … to be published in such manner as he thinks fit".
The next problem is in subsection (2) which provides:
"The Secretary of State may exclude from publication … any part of a report if, in his opinion, the publication of that part-(a) would be against the interests of national security".
The problem we have with the provision,
"in such manner as he thinks fit",
is that it is not at all clear what considerations the Secretary of State will take into account in using the discretion which is given to him. Let us suppose that the report is critical of a police authority. It is not intended that we should have democratic control of police

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authorities but let us assume that we do and that the police authorities are under the control of a party different from that to which the Home Secretary belongs. Clearly, the provisions in the Bill would allow the Secretary of State not only to publish the whole report but to jazz it up, issue a video, send it to the popular press and, generally speaking, to make a good deal of political capital out of it.
On the other hand, let us suppose that the report were critical of the Home Secretary and the way in which he had intervened in the affairs of the police authority. Presumably in the Bill as drafted the Secretary of State would be permitted to pick and choose and to publish as little as he liked. Perhaps he may choose the minimum manner of publication and simply lay it in the Libraries of both Houses.
We do not believe that the Secretary of State should have this degree of power, and the removal of the phrase,
"in such manner as he thinks fit",
would diminish that unjustifiable power.
The second problem that I raised was the interests of national security. Those interests are always claimed when there is any possibility of a move towards open government. "Against the interests of national security" could be interpreted as criticising the ability of a police force to deal with public disorder. We accept that it is right to exclude from publication any part which might jeopardise the safety of any person. That does not mean that this blanket exclusion for national security reasons is justifiable. We suggest that the proper phrase should be,
"would seriously jeopardise national security".
In other words, that which it is convenient to exclude should not be excluded. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: The amendments deal with the provisions regarding the publication of inspection reports. These reports have been public in practice since 1990; but it seemed right to us to go a step further and require them to be published. It is a small but important step towards even greater openness about police performance.
I would find it difficult to go along with the detail of the noble Lord's amendments. Amendment No.121 seeks to remove any discretion for the Secretary of State to decide exactly how a report should be published. In fact, we are likely to continue the current practice whereby inspection reports are made to the Secretary of State but a copy is sent to the police authority and the chief constable and is made available in local libraries in the police areas to which they relate. The copies are also freely available from the offices of the inspectorate to anyone who wishes to see them.
Amendment No.121 will still leave it to the Secretary of State to decide exactly in what form a report should be published. I believe that it is right that we should leave the matter open. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that we have no intention of making publication any less open than it is at present and we might in future decide to give these reports an even wider circulation.
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Amendment No.122 raises more important matters. Police forces deal with very sensitive matters relating to security. Inspectors can and do look at all aspects of the force's work, including those relating to security matters. I believe that the noble Lord would agree that an inspector must be free to comment on those matters without the fear that any comments that he may make will present a security risk by being put into the public domain. That is why the clause allows the Secretary of State to exclude from publication any part of the report which would be against the interests of national security.
The noble Lord's amendment would raise that threshold to matters which would seriously jeopardise national security. That may not seem a great difference but it is clearly a tougher test. It means that matters which would be against the interests of national security could be published so long as they fell short of the higher threshold of seriously jeopardising national security. I do not believe that it would be right at all to require publication of matters which are against the interests of national security.
I assure the noble Lord that in accordance with the clause the Secretary of State would take a tough view as to what should be excluded from publication. The Government wish to put as much as possible into the public domain, whatever praise or criticism an inspector may make. But the needs of openness must obviously be curbed slightly where matters of security are at stake.
12.15 a.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I confess that I am far from satisfied with the response to Amendment No.122. Unfortunately, it is the experience in many departments that whenever the Civil Service is up against the wall as regards local government issues, it simply invokes the plea of national security to exclude matters from publication. It is a very different situation in this country from, for example, that in the United States. I believe that the higher test of seriously jeopardising national security is much more appropriate than the very loose and broad way in which the phrase "against national security" is commonly interpreted. Perhaps we shall have to wait for a proper freedom of information Act under a Labour Government to achieve what we want in that respect.
I was interested in what the Minister said about the way in which it is expected that there will be publication in response to Amendment No.121. I am grateful to him for his assurance that the Government do not intend to restrict publication any more than it has been restricted since publication became normal in 1990. I must confess that the description of the publication procedures which he set out seemed to me quite reasonable.
Of course, that still leaves the Secretary of State free to publish more widely those reports which he finds politically convenient. It is not clear to me what is the criticism of the amendment. Is the Minister saying that it is wrong that the amendment limits the discretion or is he saying that it is wrong because it leaves it in place?

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It seems to us that it will be much better if the kind of publication procedures which he described were enshrined perhaps not in statute but at least as a code of practice for the Secretary of State. Secretaries of State often issue codes of practice for other people. Let us issue one for them, I should like to see something more explicit than the wide powers which are given to the Secretary of State in Clause 17. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No.122 not moved.]
Clause 17 agreed to.
Clause 18 agreed to.
Clause 19 [Common services]:
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon Baroness Hilton of Eggardon moved Amendment No.123:
Page 14, line 28, after ("State") insert ("after consultation with persons representative of Chief Constables and persons representative of Police Authorities").
The noble Baroness said: I rise at this late hour to move this amendment. It forms part of the theme that we have been following throughout the amendments to the Bill; namely, the assumption of power by the Secretary of State and his apparent reluctance to involve himself in democratic discussions with those who will be most directly affected by his decisions.
The amendment relates to the use of common services. I am very much in favour of more uniform use of such services by the police force—that is, the common use of technology, equipment and so on. However, there have been disasters in the past due to decisions within central government and the failure properly to consult chief constables and police authorities. The introduction of the forensic science service as an agency, for example, has caused considerable distortions in force budgets and a number of strange, local hiccups caused by forces adopting their own systems of sifting and various ways, entirely budget driven, to restrict the number of tests needing to be carried out due to the pricing system that the forensic science service introduced without consultation. Similar disasters happened with the introduction of the National Automated Fingerprint Identification Service (NAFIS) where there was a decision by central government and a failure to consult police forces and police authorities.
I am sure that. the Minister will say that the Secretary of State does, in fact, consult. However, I believe that many of us would feel more comfortable if it was actually written on to the face of the Bill that, before he could force police forces to use centrally provided facilities or services, he must formally consult representatives of chief constables and people representing police authorities. That would produce much greater efficiency and effectiveness in the long run and much better co-ordination and feeling throughout the police service. I beg to move.
Earl Ferrers: The regulation-making power contained in Clause 19 is not a power that we would anticipate using very much. Chief constables and police
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authorities usually recognise when it is important to participate in a common service and they usually do so voluntarily. We would only use the power where, for example, a particular police authority took such a parochial outlook that it wanted to opt out of a common service in a way which jeopardised the efficiency or effectiveness not only of its own force but also that of other forces.
The Home Office takes full account of the views of chief constables and police authorities when considering the provision of common services. Before exercising the new power it is virtually certain that, in practice, we will consult the Association of Chief Police Officers and representatives of police authorities in one of the tripartite bodies in which so much business affecting the police service is already carried out. However, I know that the noble Baroness would like to see the consultation made a statutory requirement. If she will be good enough to allow me to do so, I shall consider that proposal before the next stage of the Bill's proceedings. Of course, I cannot tell the noble Baroness what the result will be, but I shall certainly consider the matter.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: That is a splendid note of harmony upon which to finish the day's business. I am most grateful to the Minister. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 19 agreed to.
Clause 20 agreed to.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: I understand that it is proposed to finish the day's business at this point. I do not know who agreed to it, but "we" on these Benches did not. However, I do not want to ruin a most agreeable evening. Nevertheless, it might be nice if someone told us what was going on. I shall not press the point.
Earl Ferrers: We seem to have come to that stage of the proceedings at which we thought we would conclude for the day. I do not know whether noble Lords opposite wish to continue, but that is the position so far as I am aware.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: If there has been any lack of consultation, it is probably my fault. I suggested to the Government Whip's Office this morning that it would be more suitable to finish before Clause 21. I understood that had been agreed. I had a message from the Government Chief Whip's Secretary to that effect, and I conveyed that message to the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes. I am sorry that the message was not conveyed to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and I apologise to him for that.
Earl Ferrers: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, for making the matter clear. If it is convenient to him to adjourn, I can assure him it is convenient to

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me. I only hope it is convenient to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and to everyone else. If that is so, I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past midnight.