Police Reform Bill [Lords]

Public Bill Committee, 23 May 2002.

Police Reform Bill [Lords]

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I beg to move,

That—

(1) during proceedings on the Police Reform Bill [Lords] the Standing Committee do meet when the House is sitting—

(a) on Tuesdays at half-past Ten o'clock and at half-past Four o'clock, and

(b) on Thursdays at half-past Nine o'clock and half-past Two o'clock,

except that on Tuesday, 11th June 2002 and on Tuesday, 18th June 2002 the Committee shall not meet at half-past Ten o'clock;

(2) the proceedings shall be taken in the following order, namely, Clauses 1 to 7, Schedule 1, New Clauses and New Schedules relating to Part 1, Clause 8, Schedule 2, Clauses 9 to 12, Schedule 3, Clauses 13 to 35, Schedule 4, Clauses 36 and 37, Schedule 5, Clauses 38 to 42, New Clauses and New Schedules relating to Chapter 1 of Part 4, Clause 43, Schedule 6, Clauses 44 to 91, Schedules 7 and 8, Clause 92, remaining New Clauses, remaining New Schedules;

(3) the proceedings on Clauses 1 to 7, Schedule 1 and New Clauses and New Schedules relating to Part 1 (so far as not previously concluded) shall be brought to a conclusion at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, 11th June 2002;

(4) the proceedings on Clause 8, Schedule 2, Clauses 9 to 12, Schedule 3 and Clauses 13 to 27 (so far as not previously concluded) shall be brought to a conclusion at 5 p.m. on Thursday, 13th June 2002;

(5) the proceedings on Clauses 28 to 34 (so far as not previously concluded) shall be brought to a conclusion at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, 18th June 2002;

(6) the proceedings on Clause 35, Schedule 4, Clauses 36 and 37, Schedule 5, Clauses 38 to 42 and New Clauses and New Schedules relating to Chapter 1 of Part 4 (so far as not previously concluded) shall be brought to a conclusion at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, 25th June 2002;

(7) the proceedings on Clause 43, Schedule 6 and Clauses 44 to 62 (so far as not previously concluded) shall be brought to a conclusion at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, 25th June 2002; and

(8) the remaining proceedings on the Bill (so far as not previously concluded) shall be brought to a conclusion at 5 p.m. on Thursday, 27th June 2002.

We look forward to serving on the Committee under your chairmanship, Mr. Stevenson. I have done so before, and I am confident that we shall make good and orderly progress. Although there is broad agreement throughout the House on many of the key objectives and principles of the Bill, the Committee will want to consider it in detail. Judging from the debates on Second Reading and in the other place, there are two contentious parts under part 1 and chapter 1 of part 4. The programme motion will allow adequate time for careful consideration of those provisions and the time that has been agreed through the usual channels will ensure that the Bill, as a whole, is properly scrutinised.

It has been 16 days since the Bill was debated on Second Reading, so there has been considerable scope for tabling amendments, an opportunity that has not been lost on Opposition Members, and the two-week Whitsun recess will provide a further opening for members of the Committee to table amendments before we resume our proceedings on 11 June. I hope that we can agree the programme motion.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I endorse the Minister's welcome to you, Mr. Stevenson. I, too, have served on Committees under your chairmanship and I am pleased to have the opportunity to do so again. I extend in absentia a welcome to Miss Widdecombe, who will also Chair some of our sittings.

The Minister was right to say that the Bill has received a large measure of support—perhaps more so from Opposition Members than from Labour Members. It is the absence of certain provisions from the Bill that the Government are unhappy about. They want to put those back, whereas we are more content with the Bill in its current form. We shall obviously table minor amendments as well as amendments to the more major provisions to which the Minister has referred, and I share his view that there is time under the programme motion to do that.

The Minister said that there have been 16 days since the Bill was discussed on Second Reading, but there is a dearth of Government amendments. I accept that he has concentrated on amendments to part 1, which we shall discuss today and at our first sitting after the recess, but I look forward to the Government tabling those amendments that he prefaced in his speech on Second Reading. Obviously, we shall need adequate time to discuss not only those amendments that were referred to in another place, but those that deal with sex offenders and the other issues that have been promised, and which will be new to the debate. I hope that the hon. Gentleman can give us plenty of time to study them and perhaps table amendments to those amendments.

Although, we shall examine all the Bill's provisions in Committee, we shall deal with the contentious issues to which the Minister referred on a wider scale when the Bill is discussed on Report. I accept that it is outside your purview, Mr. Stevenson, and that of members of the Committee, but I wish to put it on the record that we hope that some issues can be returned to at that time.

I appreciate the way in which the Ministers in the other place responded to the amendments tabled by the Opposition. That welcoming approach means that, setting aside the big issues, the Bill is considerably better. There were amendments to a whole raft of different clauses that were not in the original draft. The Government listened, and conceded the amendments.

I hope that we will continue to take the same consensual approach, and I am encouraged in that by the Secretary of State's speech to the Police Federation of England and Wales conference last week, when he apologised and said, ''I have made mistakes.'' So say all of us. Therefore, I hope that the Home Office approaches this stage of the Bill with a degree of

chagrin and, perhaps, a willingness to listen to the pertinent arguments of Opposition Members. With those remarks, I am content to support the programme motion, and I look forward to the Committee stage.

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

I, too, welcome you, Mr. Stevenson. We know each other from other avenues, but I look forward to your chairmanship and that of Miss Widdecombe. Given her personality and knowledge of this subject area, I suspect that she may find it difficult to keep her opinions to herself as we proceed.

It is nice to begin on a note of harmony and agreement. We agree on most of the Bill, especially as it has been amended. We also agree about where we disagree, which is useful. Ministers in the other place, and, indeed, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth), have responded in a productive and sensible way to some of the concerns expressed, and I look forward to further useful exchanges as the Bill progresses. When we debated the Proceeds of Crime Bill, the Under-Secretary showed a willingness to listen and respond to genuine concerns, and I am confident that he will show the same response to this Bill.

On a personal note, I thank hon. Members who congratulated me on my recent wedding, which took place last Saturday. The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) tells me that he has already done 30 years without remission, but we can get time off for good conduct if that is appropriate. I take issue with one Conservative Member, who suggested that I should have been at the Programming Sub-Committee on Monday rather than on my honeymoon. I had other priorities on Monday and that would have been taking duty a little too far.

There are only one or two issues of substance on which there is disagreement between the parties. I hope very seriously that the Government will listen to those issues and not railroad something through simply because that is the position that they have hitherto adopted. I am confident that Opposition Members will be putting forward good arguments, and, with a degree of flexibility and understanding, we may yet find our way through to an agreement. Certainly, that is the intention of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) and myself.

Hon. Members who attended the Programming Sub-Committee will know that we suggested an alternative programme motion in respect of the last sitting, which we think is too long. We would have preferred more time on one of the earlier sittings. I do not intend to push the matter again this morning, simply to register it for the benefit of the Committee. On the last day, 27 June 2002, there may not be enough business to keep us going. Then again, I am always surprised by the ability of hon. Members to fill space whenever it is provided, so perhaps my fear will be unfounded.

Question put and agreed to.

The Chairman: I remind the Committee that there is a money resolution in connection with the Bill, copies of which are available in the Room. I also remind hon. Members that adequate notice should be given of amendments. As a general rule, my co-Chairman and I do not intend to call starred amendments, including any that might be reached during an afternoon sitting. Finally, I remind hon. Members that the Committee will not be meeting on the mornings of Tuesday 11 June or Tuesday 18 June.Clause 1National Policing Plan

Clause 1 - National Policing Plan

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

I beg to move amendment No. 132, in page 2, line 23, at end insert—

'(vi) the setting of any objectives under sections 26 or 71 of the Police Act 1997 (c.50); and

(vii) the setting of any objectives under section 89 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 (c. 16).'.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 133, in page 2, line 24, leave out ', plans and advice'.

No. 76, in page 2, line 26, at end insert—

'(d) must contain the appropriate information on financial resources and constraints as may be provided by the Secretary of State.'.

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

The amendments relate to the national policing plan. My colleagues and I are in favour of that concept, and the amendment is one example of where we wish to go slightly further than the Government. If there is to be a national policing plan, it should be just that—a plan that takes account of all policing. Our difficulty with the clause is that the policing plan covers the 43 police authorities, but does not take account of the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad. Obviously, what those bodies do relates to the 43 police authorities and the work of the 43 forces. It is difficult to understand how a policing plan could be comprehensive if those bodies are not included in it.

From April 2002, the Home Secretary has been able to set national objectives for the Central Police Training and Development Authority under section 89 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001. He can also set objectives under sections 26 and 71 of the Police Act 1997 for NCIS and the NCS; he already has those powers. However, three sets of national objectives, produced separately, do not suggest the coherent national policing planning that perhaps should be achieved. We fear that the clause misses an opportunity to bring those sets of objectives together, and to produce a comprehensive and coherent message for policing across the country.

The clause also has the disadvantage of reinforcing the doubtless inaccurate impression that the Government are more concerned with keeping as much control as they can over 43 police authorities than with paying attention to NCIS and the NCS in the way that we would like. I am sure that the Minister will say that that is wholly inaccurate, and that it is scurrilous of me to have even thought of the

suggestion; nevertheless, that is open to that interpretation, given the way that the provisions are set out.

Amendment No. 133 is rather different from amendment No. 132, and we are surprised that they have been grouped together. Amendment No. 133 relates to the words ''plans and advice''. A theme of the Committee will perhaps be, as it certainly was on Second Reading and in the Lords, the extent to which it is appropriate for the Home Secretary of the day to micro-manage or intervene on the police's day-to-day operational activities, or in any way curtail improperly or unwisely the activities of a chief constable.

My colleagues and I—and, I am sure, Conservative Members—will be defending the traditional tripartite arrangement between chief constables, police authorities and the Home Secretary, and will argue that we change that at our peril. The Minister will therefore understand that we are always on the look-out against back-door methods of changing that arrangement. It may not be the Government's intention to do so, but the provision would nevertheless give an avenue for a Home Secretary, now or in the future, should he or she wish to go down that track.

I have concerns that the words ''plans and advice'' in page 2, line 24, give the Home Secretary of the day wide powers to include practically anything that he or she wishes in the national policing plan. The words ''plans and advice'' could go against the spirit of that tripartite arrangement if the Home Secretary were determined that they should. After all, the powers that the Home Secretary is being given under subsection (6) are already significant, especially when added to the powers that he already has under previous legislation, such as the Police Act 1996. Subsection (6)(c) still allows further information to be given, so I am not quite clear about the necessity for including ''plans and advice''.

The Minister will know that this matter was raised in the House of Lords; this is a duplicate amendment from the other place. My colleagues in the Lords felt that Lord Rooker, perhaps uncharacteristically, had not addressed the point, and that is why amendment No. 133 was tabled again. I look forward to the Minister's responses on those subjects.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I wish to speak to amendment No. 76. Clause 1 introduces the concept of the national policing plan. In many ways, it is the precursor to the whole of part 1, and to some other parts of the Bill. It sets the framework for the powers that the Secretary of State seeks to take in later parts of the Bill. They add considerably to the powers in the 1996 Act, which was passed under the previous Conservative Government, and to which we will frequently refer. That aspect of the 1996 Act was contentious, because the Secretary of State took new powers, but this Bill, and this clause, go a lot further.

The Home Secretary already has powers to set objectives and performance targets, to issue codes of practice, and even to require the retirement of a chief constable—a point that we will address later. Those are immense powers, but the power to issue a national policing plan builds on them, and takes them quite a lot further.

We do not object to the overall principle of a national policing plan, but we have reservations with regard to the amount of detail that it might contain. Amendment No. 76 seeks to insert into the clause an obligation for the plan to include an explanation of the resources that the Home Secretary will make available in order for it to be executed. It is perfectly reasonable to expect that. Other amendments—some of which have not yet been dealt with—address some of our other concerns.

A plan that does not include any indication of the resources that are available will be relatively meaningless, because it will be impossible to judge whether there is a realistic chance that it will be fully and successfully carried out. The clause includes an obligation on the Home Secretary to lay the plan before Parliament: when hon. Members judge it, they will want to know what resources are attached to it.

I suspect that, when we debate the police settlement each year, the Minister is already armed with all the information that comes forward annually. However, that is usually debated in February—or in January—which is far too late to be able to assess the national policing plan for any year.

We shall, of course, need to have information about the overall total standard spending for the police force, but we will also need to know the individual standard spending assessments, and whether the Government are making assumptions about efficiency savings. We will also need information about any changes in the formula of allocation, and about capital budgets and top-sliced amounts. During the past few years, the Government have had a tendency substantially to increase the sums that are top-sliced for specific funds—most notably the crime fighting fund, with regard to which they said, ''This is taken off the top, and we will distribute it according to our own criteria, outside the total standard spending.''

Funding for centrally provided services, and any transitional arrangements, must also be taken into account. It will also be necessary to be able to assess the resources against what has already been allowed for in previous years—I have referred to the huge increase in top-slicing.

Individual police authorities have been worried over the years about the late indication that they receive on the amount of resources that will be available. That occurs late in proceedings, which makes it difficult for them to make necessary calculations and judgments on council tax decisions. Amendment No. 76, which is different from the other amendments, has been tabled to suggest that no national plan can be complete without an indication of the resources that are available to implement it. Indeed, as the amendment

says, the plan cannot be complete without the provision of information about constraints that may be put on those resources by the Secretary of State.

I referred to top-slicing funds for central allocation, and a later group of amendments addresses the ways in which the Secretary of State could constrain how the resources are used. It would be right to insert an obligation into the national plan that it should include information about the planned resources that the Government will make available and allow to be spent. I hope that the Government understand the need for cohesion between a plan and its resources and that they will look favourably on the amendment.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I shall primarily address amendments Nos. 132 and 133. I broadly welcome the annual national policing plan. However, we are discussing a strategic document and such a document should be coherent and comprehensive, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) mentioned. I fail to see why we do not include the three other bodies that we suggested.

I took the opportunity to read about the NCS. It is strange to have separate plans that are not dovetailed into the national plan. For example, the squad is staffed by 1,450 officers who are seconded from police forces throughout England and it has 36 locations throughout the country. In terms of accountability, there are 10 elected members of local police authorities, who are nominated by the Association of Police Authorities, on the NCS authority. Such facts are among the reasons why one must look at the whole.

If one reads the section of the NCS website entitled ''Added value'', one sees a vision of how everything must been seen under one umbrella at some stage. The squad is described as

''a national police agency under single command with overall responsibility for direction and control and with sufficient mobile resources to undertake large scale protracted operations''.

The squad's own technical support is

''capable of deploying sensitive and sophisticated technical equipment and assisting other police forces as appropriate''.

Again, links are there all the time. The squad supports

''other police forces as appropriate in their investigations of serious crime.''

In other words, there is continuous interlocking, which is also true of NCIS. One of its strategic aims is

''The provision of services to enhance the co-ordination and development of criminal intelligence to combat serious and organised crime.''

The details show that the NCS and NCIS are not stand-alone organisations because there is a single objective to which we are all signing up: reducing crime and tackling it effectively. I ask the Minister to consider seriously the amendment.

With regard to amendment No. 133, I share the worries of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes about the term ''plans and advice''. Perhaps the word ''plans'' has a specific connotation because we can always consider the word ''advice'' in terms of additional guidance. However, when the words are put together, the phrase is open-ended about what could

be incorporated under it. That is my concern, and if the Minister agreed to something more precise, we would know where we stood and what the phrase asked for.

With regard to amendment No. 76, we have a problem of timing throughout the process. If we have separate plans for all the different bodies, they will be published at different times of the year. Equally, the timing must be right on financial constraints so that it makes some sense of the annual policing plan. The plans must go together, which is what links the three amendments.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I do not want to stray too far into clause stand part territory, but it may be helpful if I explain one development in the Government's thinking since the publication of the police reform White Paper and earlier discussions in another place. The national policing plan will be informed by discussions in a non-statutory national policing forum, as we set out in the White Paper. It suggested that the membership of the forum consisted of police and Home Office interests with some representation from victims and witnesses organisations.

We have discussed the forum over the past few months, particularly with police service interests. They said that they would welcome a wider range of inputs, including those representing the local government and health agencies with which they work in partnership locally to reduce crime. I hope to be able to announce the forum's membership in the near future, but I thought that it would be useful for the Committee to know that we are moving in that broader direction in response to discussions with police service interests. That was a useful part of our consultations.

I shall deal with plans and advice and the question of broadening the content of the national policing plan. I do not want to anticipate later debates, but I shall give one example of an issue that might be covered in the national policing plan but would not be appropriate to cover as a best value performance indicator or a Secretary of State priority. As the Committee will know, having commissioned a report last autumn into a day in the life of a police officer, which deliberately raised the issue of bureaucracy higher up the agenda of policing debates, a taskforce led by Sir David O'Dowd, the recently retired Chief Inspector of Constabulary, has been working with the police service on how to tackle red tape and bureaucracy.

I cannot say what will be in the first national policing plan, but it is highly likely that we would want some reference to the implementation of recommendations arising from that report. We would want to see forces and police authorities throughout the country address that. It would not be appropriate to lay it down at this stage as a code of practice or a best value performance indicator, and it will be a rather different priority from those that the Home Secretary has set previously. None the less, it is sensible that such references should be in such a report. The hon. Member for Lewes said that the issue was not addressed in another place, but it is the sort of thing that could be included.

I shall deal first with the amendments concerning NCIS and the NCS. I shall ask the Committee to reject them, but I want to acknowledge that a point of

substance has been raised. The amendment is inappropriate because NCIS and the NCS have their own statutory framework. The lines of accountability are different as, for example, the Home Secretary appoints the chair of the service authority and, since 1 April 2002 under the existing legislation, has the power to appoint the director general of both NCIS and the NCS. It is a very different line of accountability, and because consultation procedures for setting the priorities of those national organisations are laid out in statute, it would be odd to have two different pieces of legislation to use to set the priorities. The amendment would give rise to confusion, which is why it is inappropriate.

However, I acknowledge that we cannot say that serious crime happens here while ordinary policing happens somewhere else. One subject of discussion in the national policing forum, as it is in all our discussions with the police service, will be the interface between the work on serious crime that is done at police force level and that which is done at national level. There is an interrelationship, and it affects workloads. In the run-up to the World cup, NCIS co-ordinates the anti-football hooliganism activity, but police forces co-ordinate the seeking of banning orders. We want to ensure that those issues are properly taken into account when we develop the national policing plan. The consultation requirements enable the Secretary of State to consult directly with the NCS and NCIS where that helps to shape the plan. I assure Liberal Democrats and other hon. Members that we acknowledge the issue at the kernel of the amendment, but we do not agree with the wording.

I turn to the amendment relating to the Central Police Training and Development Authority. The authority has been renamed Centrex to reflect its developed role as the new home for the national centre for policing excellence. Centrex supports the development of policing in various ways, and has its own statutory objectives. However, I acknowledge that it is right for people to expect its objectives to be compatible with the objectives and priorities of the national policing plan. Future Home Office Ministers will have to ensure that CPTDA—as it is in the legislation—is given appropriate objectives to support the plan.

I understand the point made by the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire, but it is not workable. After some to-ing and fro-ing in another place, it was agreed on a Government amendment that there will be a deadline for producing the plan in normal circumstances, but not in the event of a general election, major event, or outrage such as 11 September. The idea is to ensure that the national policing plan can inform Government decisions on the allocation of resources, and those of police forces and police authorities when they set their own objectives and allocate resources locally. The plan therefore needs to precede the resource-setting process. We anticipate that questions about resources will be raised

when we draw up the plan and in discussions with the national forum. People will know the broad picture on available finance, as the spending review makes it a matter of public record. People will look back at the progress made in the previous year, and the extent to which resources were perceived to be sufficient to meet all the set objectives. I am sure that there will be a discussion on the relationship between finances and objectives.

I may regret saying this, but there has to be a chicken and an egg somewhere in the process. In the annual cycle, having the plan in place in November will inform decisions shortly after on the allocation of resources nationally and locally. That will enable Parliament to consider the settlement, and to debate the adequacy of the national policing plan in due course. That can then be brought into the consideration of next year's plans, and will enable us to take adequately into account the financial issues about which the hon. Gentleman is concerned. The amendment would make it difficult for the process to happen smoothly and efficiently.

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

I am grateful for the Minister's detailed and lengthy response to the amendments. I am happy to accept that the wording of our amendment is not perfect: that is the advice of the Minister's officials. However, I am grateful that he recognises the serious point to the amendments. The forum that he mentioned is a helpful step forward, and doubtless we will support it. With respect, however, that is not the whole answer. A method needs to be found to bring together the different elements of policing throughout the country in one plan. As the Minister said, people cannot say that serious crime happens in one place and less serious crime elsewhere. I am not convinced that the method to achieve our objective is in place.

The Minister has been good enough to recognise that there is a case for the amendment, and I hope that he will return in due course with a proposal to improve the arrangements, which are insufficient. The Minister smiles, which I think means he agrees—I am optimistic as always. As I said, he recognises that we have a case, and perhaps that will evolve over time. In those circumstances, I am happy to beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I beg to move amendment No. 126, in page 2, line 26, at end insert—

'(f) shall not include specification by the Secretary of State of the numbers of—

(i) police officers; or

(ii) civilian officers designated under section 35,

to be employed in any police area.'.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this we may discuss amendment No. 127, in page 2, line 26, at end insert—

'(g) shall not include specification by the Secretary of State of the numbers of community safety schemes under section 36 to be established in police accreditation areas.'.

I advise hon. Members that there is a mistake on the amendment paper. In amendment No. 127, the word ''accreditation'' should be after the word ''safety'' on the second line, rather than after the word ''police'' on the final line. I hope that that is clear.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

Yes, Mr. Stevenson, although I was reading a different version with the correct wording. I live in optimistic anticipation that the precise wording of the amendment is significant because the Minister intends to accept it.

This group presages a debate that will take place some weeks from now on part 4, in which the Government introduce the concept of community support officers and community safety accreditation schemes. Following Second Reading, the Minister and the rest of the Committee will be fully aware that there is a dispute between the sides on this issue.

Without going through the whole debate about CSOs now, I repeat the point that my colleagues and I made in the Chamber: we have no difficulty in supporting the concept of civilians helping and being involved with the police, but we have difficulty with the types of police powers that they are given. In part 4 and schedule 4, the Government seek to give civilians a very wide range of police powers. Some are in the Bill now, and I suspect that the Government will seek to bring back at least one. As a result, there is a suspicion at the back of many people's minds that at some stage in future, a Government—the convention on these occasions is not to accuse the current Government of an ulterior motive—may seek to use CSOs to supplant regular police officers.

One argument is that CSOs will be cheaper to employ than regular police officers. We shall come to that larger debate later, but there is no doubt that employing CSOs would involve a huge cost saving. A future Chancellor of the Exchequer could say to the Home Secretary, ''I realise you need more people, but it would be cheaper to put CSOs on the streets, rather than regular officers.'' The worry is that there would be a gradual diminution in the standard of policing as a result.

On Second Reading, the Minister was challenged in a number of ways to rule out that possibility. My hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) challenged him on the issue of funds, to which the Minister replied:

''I see nothing wrong with funds being made available for the development of CSOs.''—[Official Report, 7 May 2002; Vol. 385, c. 60.]

None of us sees anything wrong with money being made available for that so long as it is not exclusively for the development of CSOs. Yet when my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) asked if he will

''guarantee never to compel a police force to adopt an action plan that includes the forced deployment of CSOs''.——[Official Report, 7 May 2002; Vol. 385, c. 60.]

the Minister was, to put it mildly, evasive, as the record shows. He would not rule that out.

However, last week at the Police Federation conference, the Home Secretary, in his new emollient mood, said:

''We are not going to force this on any police area.''

Most people would take the word ''force'' at face value to mean that there would be no pressure whatever, rather than taking it literally to mean compulsion.

The amendments are drafted in the spirit of the Home Secretary's statement to the Police Federation, to ensure that the Bill states clearly that the national plan will not include an obligation on police forces in respect of how many CSOs, for example, should be employed under the accredited community safety schemes. Such decisions are rightly for chief police officers and their authorities, as we shall discuss under part 4.

Hon. Members should not be super-critical of one another, but it is imperative, in the spirit of the Home Secretary's statement last week—especially in view of his evasion of the issue on Second Reading—that the Bill should include a clear statement as proposed in the amendments.

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

We support the amendments for two reasons. First, as the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire explained, they would include in the Bill the Home Secretary's statement that no force will be applied to require police authorities or police forces to have CSOs.

Some of us are slightly suspicious about the meaning of the word ''force'' in that context. If it means a legislative requirement stating, ''You must have CSOs,'' it is clear that that will not be forthcoming from the Home Secretary. However, whether there will be financial incentives to employ CSOs, or financial disincentives if they are not employed, is a different matter. Will pressure be applied through the police standards unit, for example? That is a much more open question. It is important to support the amendments to make it clear that the Government's intention is to allow independence at local level, whether or not individual police authorities feel it appropriate for CSOs to be employed in their area.

The second reason for supporting the amendments relates to the independence of police authorities and of chief constables. Amendment No. 126 makes a separate and important point to which the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire did not refer. The Government come under criticism from several sides in recent years for the number of police officers and for the fact that we have returned to the situation in 1997. There is a plan to increase the number to 130,000. Although it is easy for Opposition Members to criticise the Government for the drop in police numbers—the previous Conservative Government were also criticised for their failure on that—the important point is that it is not morally correct to criticise them for failing to match police numbers if we are also arguing that they should not have the power to set the numbers for individual police authorities. Opposition parties sometimes argue a contradictory case on the matter.

I am not in favour of the Home Secretary determining police numbers for individual police authorities; that would be wholly inappropriate. He

can of course give guidance and, importantly, provide money for the employment of more officers, but how police authorities spend their money is ultimately a matter for them. It is, for example, up to chief constables to decide whether civilianisation should take place or whether money should be invested in technology. That is why the amendment is sensible. To be fair to the Government, if we argue—as many of us do—that the Bill should not allow the Home Secretary to intervene in micro-management, it ill behoves us to criticise the Government for failure on police numbers when they do not have the power to regulate those numbers. We should reach a deal whereby we do not give the Home Secretary the power but do not blame the Government for a subsequent perceived failure on police numbers.

The amendment seeks to ensure that CSOs are not brought in by the back door and questions whether the Home Secretary of the day should determine police numbers.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The hon. Gentleman talks about bringing in CSOs by the back door. If he watched BBC London television news this morning, was he as astonished as I was by the lead item that the Metropolitan police are today commencing a recruitment campaign for new community safety officers? Does he agree that it seems premature for the Met to be recruiting people for whom the statutory power does not yet exist?

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

I did not see that item on the news this morning, but if people are being recruited to exercise powers that have not yet been given, that would be premature. Any police authority or chief constable can recruit such people under existing legislation. On a wider point, the enthusiasm of the Metropolitan police for CSOs has not been mirrored in the rest of the country. I congratulate Sir John Stevens on his success in capturing the Government's ear—but the price of that success has been the fact that Ministers have not listened to other chief constables.

I see nothing in the amendments to which the Government could object. I will probably always be surprised by the Minister's response: he will no doubt come up with some argument against them, but they are perfectly sensible, are in line with Government policy and put in place important safeguards, so I hope that he will consider them carefully.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Stevenson. It is my birthday today and I could not think of a better birthday present than to be on the Committee serving under your chairmanship. I am happy to accept birthday presents from any Committee member, maybe in the lunchtime break.

I support the amendments. I and my party have no real objection to the national policing plan; my police authority in Cheshire told me that the proposals seem to be a repackaging of current practice. If that is the case, all well and good. However, I notice that in the excellent Home Affairs Committee report—it was a

great shame that only one member of that Select Committee, who is not present today, was put on the Standing Committee; that is not quite joined-up Parliament—Sir David Phillips, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers and chief constable of Kent, said that he had no problem with a national plan if it gave a greater sense of corporate direction and was kept at a strategic level, but that he would have a problem if it were too prescriptive and strayed into micro-management. The amendments would ensure, in respect of the deployment of forces and CSOs, that that would not happen.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset was right to draw attention to the Minister's floundering on Second Reading. The Minister knew that he had made a mistake because he had to intervene later to clear up exactly what he said. After a good question from my hon. Friend the Member for Witney—who is a good friend of my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) and myself—about compelling police forces to use CSOs through the funding mechanism, he asked the Minister again:

''Will he guarantee never to compel a police force to adopt an action plan that includes the forced deployment of CSOs?''

The Minister started to answer,

''To say that there could never be a point in the future—''

whereupon he was interrupted, but he continued:

''Let us be clear; at some point in future, it may be clear to everybody, including the community which is suffering, that policing is not being approached in the most effective way, so it would be ridiculous to go through the whole range of measures today and say, 'We will never do this or that.'''—[Official Report, 7 May 2002; Vol. 385, c. 60-61.]

He was referring to the old clause 5, but the possibility remains that the national plan could be abused by some future Home Secretary who does not share the good intentions of the present Home Secretary. We should accept the amendment to ensure that that never happens.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

In politics, one lives and dies by selective quotation. In my days in opposition, I may have been guilty of that myself, so I cannot entirely complain if the same tactic is used on me in Committee. It remains reasonable to clarify what I said on Second Reading and in my later intervention.

I said that the intention behind the Bill was not to use clause 5 or any other clause to impose CSOs. I repeated that the intention was not and never had been to use the Bill or clause 5 as a backdoor route to impose CSOs. I went on to say:

''Nothing in clause 5 overrules the provision elsewhere in the Bill that it must be the chief constable's decision whether he or she wishes to appoint CSOs.''—[Official Report, 7 May 2002; Vol. 385, c. 69.]

The position should have been pretty clear by the end of the Second Reading debate. I should also like to put on record what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said at the Police Federation conference last week:

''We are not going to force this on any police area.''

Furthermore, on 13 March, in response to a question from the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson), my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said:

''Of course community support officers will not be imposed''.—[

Official Report

, 13 March 2002; Vol. 381, c. 888.]

ÌNorman BakerÌ: I accept that the Minister and his colleagues have no intention of imposing CSOs, but with respect, that is not the issue. We are debating whether the provisions, as drafted, would allow a future Home Secretary to impose CSOs. I contend that they would and the amendment is designed to prevent it.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I am not sure that I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Given the powers and structures of the Bill, the right time for that debate is the first sitting after the recess, when we shall seek to reintroduce clause 5 in an amended form. The argument about powers to impose directions on chief constables applies there, but it is not relevant to the context of the national policing plan, because the Secretary of State has no powers to enforce it. The plan exists to guide and shape the future direction of the police service. Police authorities and chief officers need to take account of it in developing their own police plans, but the Home Secretary's powers—dealt with in part 7—are confined to pointing out to a police authority where its plan is out of line with the priorities of the national policing plan. There is no linked power, for example, to rewrite the policing plan of a particular police authority to incorporate the issues raised today or any other matters. There is a debate to be had, but we should have it when we consider new clause 4 and the powers that it gives. It is not relevant to the national policing plan.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

I am grateful for the Minister's assurances about compulsion, but would it be within the scope of a national plan issued by a Home Secretary to say that it would be a good idea if police forces introduced CSOs? It would give strong moral pressure, if that is the right phrase, to police forces, and if it was backed up with ring-fenced funding, police forces would have almost no option but to introduce CSOs.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I hope that the national policing plan will reflect, as the entire process that we are trying to establish in the Bill should do, best policing practice across the country, which will be established on the basis of what is proven to work. The aim of the exercise is to have a framework for policing that respects and builds on the tripartite structure, which we value, as do Opposition Members, but ensures that we have ways to identify what works well, delivers safe communities, tackles crime in local communities and spreads that best practice. We would expect the national policing plan to pick up on many such issues, including, for example, bureaucracy.

I see no objection—I hope that the hon. Gentleman would not either—to the national policing plan saying that forces should give priority to using established best practice and Sir David O'Dowd's recommendations. There is a broad range of issues that should properly be within the remit of the national policing plan. It is important to look at what the legislation says. Because of the controversy surrounding CSOs, there is some danger of building a

conspiracy theory about how the system is intended to operate or how the legislation would enable it to operate.

The question of how far the Secretary of State's powers of direct intervention go is focused in the original draft of the Bill in what was clause 5. We will seek to reintroduce those provisions in an amended form later. We can discuss the matter then. Now we are discussing the national policing plan. At the end of the day, there is no power for the Secretary of State to say that it should be rewritten. The national policing plan is of great value.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Does the Minister understand that Opposition Members are particularly suspicious, without having to erect a conspiracy theory, because of what police authorities and local authorities repeatedly tell us? Certainly, that is true in my area. Their freedom to decide what is best for their area is increasingly constrained by Government diktat. In other words, the whole question of being allowed to do only what the Government will provide for in the way of funding on a strictly ring-fenced basis—

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Order. The hon. Gentleman should keep his intervention as brief as possible.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Yes, Mr. Stevenson.

The Minister understands the point that I am making. Will he also respond to the question that I raised in an intervention on the hon. Member for Lewes? Even though we understand that police forces want to recruit, surely it is wrong for them to start a recruitment campaign for a type of officer for which there is not yet a statutory authority?

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Before the Minister replies, I should point out that I intend to have a stand part debate on this important clause. We need to concentrate on the issues specifically referred to in the amendments, which so far has been the case.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

In that case, perhaps I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I will deal with the position of the Metropolitan police service in the stand part debate. The local government White Paper set out the Government's determination to try to reduce across Government the extent of ring-fenced funds for local authorities. I will not pursue that point now. I hope that I have responded to the other issues raised in the discussion.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I am grateful to the Minister for his attempts to answer the question. I think that he starts with a difficulty, because he advances two wholly different arguments: first that the amendments are not necessary, and secondly that the clause is the wrong place to put them.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Order. Sorry to interject again. I should just like to make it clear to hon. Members that the amendments are perfectly in order, and that the clause is indeed the right place for them.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I had no doubt about that, Mr. Stevenson. I was challenging not the Chairman but the Minister, who said that they were not relevant to the national policing plan. I had no doubt that the amendments were in order; otherwise I should not have tabled them, and you would certainly not have selected them.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) says, the policing plan could provide the basis for a Home Secretary to lay down plans that would impinge on police forces' powers, whether or not the Minister or the current Home Secretary intends or expects it to. Let me give the Committee an example. The Home Secretary has for some months been saying that his plan is to have 130,000 police officers in post by the end of March 2003. As that is his plan, one assumes that if a national policing plan were in place today, that would be part of it, so one could make the immediate assumption that a future policing plan might say that by 31 March the following year, there would be 130,000 police officers plus 10,000 community support officers, or whatever figure the Government of the day choose.

I strongly contend that such targets would not appear in the plan. I cannot believe that the current target of 130,000 for next year would not have been in the present plan if such a thing existed. One could put a target for CSOs, or indeed accredited community safety schemes, into the plan. As that is the foundation for much of the Bill—certainly for the ensuing clauses in part 1, including the new clause to which the Minister referred—I think that the issue is pretty critical.

The Minister chided me on my selective quotations. I am happy first to plead guilty and secondly to accept his corrections, as he made a volte-face and supported what the Secretary of State said to the Police Federation—that the Government do not intend to force CSOs or accredited safety schemes on police forces. If that is the case, there is absolutely nothing wrong with agreeing to the amendments in order to ensure that such targets do not appear in the plan. It is eminently probable that they would if such a plan were in place now.

If we do not want what is roughly old clause 5, now new clause 4, to be a backdoor route for such an imposition, we could address that issue later. I would like the beginning of the Bill to state, quite clearly, that no national plan can say that the Government believe that there should be X number of CSOs or any of the other officers, even regular ones. In some ways, I share the view of the hon. Member for Lewes that police authorities should make those decisions.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

It would be useful to clarify that point. The hon. Gentleman refers to the Government's target of 130,000 police officers. Is he telling the Committee that he thinks that the Government are wrong to have that target? That would be of great interest to everyone.

Mr. Paice: The Minister knows our position full well—we have debated the issue many times. If 130,000 police offers are deployed in England and Wales by 31 March next year, Opposition Members will be delighted. However, it is our view, as it was in government, that the real decisions about staffing should be taken by police authorities. That is a direct reflection of resources.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I want to pick up on the point about resources. I am sure that we would all like higher and higher national targets for police numbers. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman agrees that, although we would be delighted if there were extra funds, there is a danger that the money will be prescribed if the amendments are made? The balance between police and other support should be the choice of the local police authority, whereas nationally we must all fight for the greatest resources and the greatest number of police that we can have.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I largely agree with the hon. Lady, but if we concentrate on resources for too long, I suspect that you will jump to your feet yet again, Mr. Stevenson.

I return to the substance of the amendments. They are complementary, because amendment No. 126 deals with regular officers and CSOs, while No. 127 concerns accredited schemes. It is important to have such measures in the Bill.

Dame Cheryl Gillan (Conservative, Chesham and Amersham)

Does my hon. Friend agree that, if the Minister agrees with the premise of the amendments, it seems crazy to rely on Pepper v. Hart for interpretation after the provisions are in statute? For the sake of plain English, and so that the legislation can be easily understood by their successors, the Government should accept the amendments.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I agree, although I have been advised that Pepper v. Hart would not apply in such a situation, because it covers not what is supposed to be in the Bill or what the Bill means but the Government's intent. It is essential that the Bill clearly sets out what the Government purport to intend, which the main Opposition parties agree with.

Vera Baird (Labour, Redcar)

Is not the amendment slightly misguided, if its purpose is to keep up the numbers of police? It would remove the ability of the Home Secretary to specify the number of police. A chief constable who is keen on CSOs and the community accreditation scheme—as the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis seems to be—would then be free to get the balance wrong in the other direction. That is the main problem with the amendment.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

One of the themes that we want to bring to the Bill, as we did in the other place, is our worry about the choice to make national decisions being removed from police authorities and chief constables and being given to the Home Secretary. Such decisions should be left ultimately to the chief constable—or the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis—in conjunction with his police authority.

Norman Baker: Does not the force of the intervention of the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), for whom I have tremendous respect, carry the underlying assumption that, if there were more centralisation, there would be more police and the service would be better run? That is the completely wrong assumption.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman.

Dame Cheryl Gillan (Conservative, Chesham and Amersham)

My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset said on Second Reading that Pepper v. Hart did not apply, and that has been confirmed in Committee. Does not that make it doubly worrying that we are relying purely on the present Minister's interpretation? That confirms that there are no safeguards to ensure that what he asserts now and what we wish to achieve will ultimately end up in the Bill.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

My hon. Friend is entirely right. I have rehearsed the arguments for the amendment. Nothing would stop a future national plan containing references to specific numbers of CSOs, accredited safety schemes or regular officers. That will be the basis on which many other parts of the Bill, including the powers under new clause 4, will be founded, so it is right that it should be written into the Bill. Unless the Minister can pledge to me that his and the Home Secretary's statements can be enshrined in legislation elsewhere in the Bill to ensure that there is no central direction, I wish to push the matter to a vote.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I merely repeat that the kernel of the issue is, with respect, not the national policing plan, which is, as I explained, not enforceable, whatever is in it. I hope that it will be a consensus of best practice, developed after consultation. The critical question for debate is whether there is a power to direct a chief constable to employ CSOs, and I have made my position clear on that. I recognise the importance of that debate, and I suggest that it takes place when we discuss new clause 4.

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

Does the Minister not accept that if one lays a track, that determines the direction in which the train goes?

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I am not sure that I understand that. There are differences between us. Clearly, the Opposition parties believe that the Government are wrong to set a target of 130,000 police officers and to deploy the finance for those officers. The Liberal Democrats have a right to say that they disagree with us. The Conservative party said, ''You shouldn't do that sort of thing. We wouldn't want to see that number of police officers in a national policing plan.'' I believe that the Government have taken a reasonable, right and proper decision to increase the number of police officers and make the finance available. The vast majority of people will find it extraordinary that it has been suggested this morning that that should not happen.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I cannot but react to that last jibe, because the Minister knows that he has completely misinterpreted what we said. Talk about selective

interpretation—that is a complete misrepresentation. We believe that the national policing plan should be resource-led, and we welcome the availability of resources for 130,000 police officers. We have no objection to the Home Secretary talking about money being available for 130,000. We object to the concept of ring-fencing funds, which is highly applicable to the amendments. The concept is being used for the crime fighting fund and could be used to make money available solely for the employment of CSOs. It would be much better for money to be available for extra manpower, womanpower, personpower or whatever politically correct phraseology I should adopt. If money is being made available for those people, the choice of who they are—whether regular officers or CSOs—should be for the police.

Ian Lucas (Labour, Wrexham)

Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that a future Home Secretary would overtly set up a national policing plan that would prescribe a reduction in the number of police officers?

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

That is not what I said. The hon. Gentleman has obviously not been listening. The Minister has done nothing to allay my concern that the policing plan as currently defined in the clause could lay out objectives for the number of CSOs or community accredited safety schemes that would then be a basis for later clauses. We have not yet reached new clause 4, so we cannot debate it, but I am certain that if the Government had the powers contained in the old clause 5, those powers would reflect back to what was in the national policing plan.

Ian Lucas (Labour, Wrexham)

Is not the point that, if the Home Secretary prescribed a situation in which the number of police officers would decline at the expense of the number of CSOs, he would be directly, politically accountable for that and be held to account by the electorate in due course? We are being overt in setting priorities, and there will be political accountability at the end of the process.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

The hon. Gentleman has simply undermined the Minister's arguments. I think that he should sit a further row back if he is going to make such comments in future.

We are worried not about the process being overt but about whether the figures would be in the plan. The issue is not the Home Secretary saying that there will be fewer police officers. I repeat the example that if a policing plan had been in place this year, I have no doubt that the figure of 130,000 regular officers would have been in it. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to make the supposition that next year's plan might say that in the following March there would be 130,000 officers—no reduction—plus 5,000 or 10,000 community support officers. The Home Secretary should not decide that resources that are available for CSOs should be spent on CSOs. If a chief constable receives extra resources, he should be able to decide whether to use them to employ CSOs or more regular

officers. The hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) is shaking his head. He obviously does not trust chief constables.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Are our suspicions about the way in which these matters might be handled in future years—if the amendments are not accepted—reinforced by the fact that we are starting to hear speeches about the ''police family''? That blurs the distinction between fully trained and properly qualified police officers and people who might have less training. One can see the hand of the Treasury trying to muddy the waters. We might not see 130,000 police officers in future plans.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

My hon. Friend is entirely right. The Bill does not apply to only this Government and this Home Secretary, because it will be on the statute book for many years. That is our worry.

I have rehearsed the arguments and I am not convinced by the Minister's responses. I shall press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 7, Noes 13.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I beg to move amendment No. 109, in page 2, line 31, leave out

'persons whom he considers to represent the interests of chief officers of police'

and insert

'the Association of Chief Police Officers'.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 115, in clause 6, page 6, line 17, leave out

'persons whom he considers to represent the interests of chief officers of police'

and insert

'the Association of Chief Police Officers'.

No. 116, in clause 6, page 6, line 27, leave out

'persons whom it considers to represent the interests of chief officers of police'

and insert

'the Association of Chief Police Officers'.

No. 120, in clause 20, page 19, line 37, leave out

'persons whom it considers to represent the interests of chief officers of police'

and insert

'the Association of Chief Police Officers'.

No. 121, in clause 22, page 22, line 25, leave out

'persons whom he considers to represent the interests of chief officers of police'

and insert

'the Association of Chief Police Officers'.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I, too, welcome to you to the Chair, Mr. Stevenson. I also welcome your co-Chairman, Miss Widdecombe, who will chair our future sittings.

The amendments are purely probing and are all to the same effect. We simply want to explore the benefit of replacing in the clause the person whom the Home Secretary of the day

''considers to represent the interests of chief officers of the police''

with the well-known and highly regarded Association of Chief Police Officers. I appreciate that that was debated in the other place, but this is a refinement of a Lords amendment. If a future Home Secretary seriously fell out with the leader of ACPO, he might create a new organisation that would tell him what he wanted to hear. That would not happen now, and may seem far-fetched, but we wanted to see what the Minister thought, and whether there was any reason why ACPO should not be named in the Bill.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

ACPO is an association for chief officers and other senior ranks in the police service, and is the key body for consulting representatives of chief officers. There is also a registered company—the Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Some years ago, ACPO split to produce another body—the Chief Police Officers Staff Association—that could concentrate on the trade union functions of representing chief officers rather than professional issues of policing practice. We consulted ACPO to some extent about suspension powers, which we will discuss later, but dealt most directly with CPOSA, as chief constable members consider it the most appropriate body.

The wording avoids the danger that an organisation might change its structure and its name in the future. The simplest thing to do was to follow the practice and the language of the Police Act 1996. ACPO is the representative body of chief police officers and the professional body that we will consult.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I understand what the Minister is saying. As I said, we are not discussing issues of principle, and perhaps the Government may consider tabling an amendment if they are persuaded by our argument. It might provide an extra safeguard if reference were made to ''the organisation that is generally considered to represent the interests of chief officers'', rather than relying on the discretion of the Home Secretary of the day.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I have a feeling that parliamentary counsel would throw a fit if we asked him to write that into legislation. The formula has been used since the 1996 Act, and has never given rise to any problem or confusion. It has enabled us to deal flexibly with the

restructuring of an organisation to deal with staffing and employment. It is well understood, everyone knows what it will do, and it is satisfactory.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

As I said, the amendments are probing. In the light of what the Minister has said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 2, line 32, at end insert—

'(ba) the Service Authorities for the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad;

(bb) the Director General of the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the Director General of the National Crime Squad.'.

This is part 2 of our earlier discussion about NCIS and the National Crime Squad. Hon. Members will recall that the Minister accepted that there is a need, in producing a national policing plan, to take account of their activities, and that it is impossible to separate what is done by those two bodies and by the 43 police authorities and police forces. The amendment would ensure that NCIS and the NCS are consulted as part of the plan's preparation. Unless I am mistaken, the Minister recognised the need for that consultation, so I look forward to his accepting the amendment.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

We certainly see some benefit in the amendment. We would be happy for it to be in the Bill, for all the reasons that the hon. Gentleman has given.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

Hon. Members will be aware from discussions in another place that the original draft of the Bill did not specify long lists of people to be consulted, on the basis that if it did, everyone would want to add people. We accepted the strength of the argument that it was important to specify chief officers and police authorities, and we were pleased to table amendments to that effect.

This amendment, however, takes us into slippery slope territory. One could refer to a variety of interests—such as representatives of witnesses and victims—that the Government said in the White Paper would be consulted in drawing up the national policing plan, and ask why they are not listed in the Bill. Indeed, I can see the hon. Member for Lewes drafting an amendment for Report stage as I speak. However, I hope that the Committee accepts what I said earlier. We recognise the kernel of the issue. Developing the national policing plan relates to the 43 police forces, but we must ensure that that is not a disparate or separate activity from the work and priorities of NCIS and the NCS. The flexibility in the Bill about who is consulted will enable us to ensure that those bodies have an opportunity to contribute to developing the national policing plan as appropriate.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman accepts my assurances. I accept that he has raised an issue worthy of discussion, but adding more and more consultees on a statutory basis, as would inevitably happen if the amendment was accepted, would not be helpful.

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

I hear what the Minister says and I suppose that his argument about a potentially endless list is valid. However, it was not entirely fair to

compare victims and witnesses, important though they may be, with direct parts of the police family, drawn in many ways from existing police forces and police authorities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said.

Once again, the Minister asks us to rely on his assurances and good will. As I have said, I have no problem with his assurances and good will, but how long will he or the Home Secretary be in office? We are not here to draft legislation based on the personalities who happen to be in office at the moment and what they are likely to do. Our role is to draft useful legislation that will stand the test of time.

Kevan Jones (Labour, North Durham)

Half an hour ago, the hon. Gentleman argued that local police authorities should be the supreme bodies. How can he reconcile that with his request for a national body to be consulted on the national policing plan?

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

I can do so for the very reasons that I gave half an hour ago, if the hon. Gentleman was listening. If a national policing plan is to make sense and be accepted, it must indeed be national and take account of all police who are active throughout the country. It is not sufficient simply to pick up on the police authorities in the plan and ignore the rest. The Minister says that he will consult the bodies to which I have referred and take their views into account, but he is not willing to make that explicit in the Bill. He may take what they say into account, but what is to prevent a future Minister or Home Secretary from declining to do that? They might say, ''I'm not in favour of all this consultation nonsense: it takes up the time of the Home Office officials, and I have better things to do.'' They might then ask their officials, ''Who do we have to consult? Who can we get away with consulting? Let's get this thing out of the way quickly.'' The officials might reply, ''Well, Minister, you must consult these authorities and the chief police officers.'' Then they might begin to recount what the Minister's predecessor had said about the matter, but the present Minister might interrupt them and say, ''Never mind what my predecessor said. We will cut off the process there.''

That could happen, which is why the Minister must base legislation on what could happen, rather than on what he wishes to do in the next three months.

Kevan Jones (Labour, North Durham)

As is usual for a Liberal Democrat, the hon. Gentleman is saying one thing to one audience and another to another.

If NCIS or the NCS were to argue for something in the policing plan, and the local police authority said that it wanted something else, which of them would get supremacy? Would the local police authority have more say than the national police?

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

The Home Secretary would have the final say, because it is his plan. However, the Home Secretary should listen to local police authorities and

the NCS. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that the Home Secretary should not listen to those bodies, I do not know what planet he is on.

If we are going to have a proper national policing plan, it should not incorporate only the Home Secretary's views, nor only the representations of chief police officers and police authorities. It would be sensible to insert what the amendment proposes.

We have already had a Division this morning, so I am not inclined to put this matter to a vote, but I think that what the Minister has said is wrong, not because I do not believe his good intentions but because, if this is not written into the Bill, he will not have a national policing plan that is a plan in the true sense of that word.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

The Committee covered most of the substantive issues during its discussions of the amendments, so I do not intend to speak for long.

The hon. Member for Surrey Heath asked about the Metropolitan police service, which has begun a publicity campaign today that will lead to a recruitment process for CSOs. The position is simple: the decision was taken by the Metropolitan police service. Any powers that those CSOs have when they are employed will be determined by the Bill in its final form—as enacted. If there are no such powers in it, they will have no statutory powers; if there are limited powers, only limited powers will be available to them.

The Metropolitan police force made a judgment. It has the resources, and it wishes to go ahead with the process of recruiting CSOs. It will take time to advertise the concept of CSOs—to explain what the job is about and to attract interest in it. Therefore, it will take time to get people into training. The force wants to start the process now because it believes that having such people available as soon as possible is good for the people of London.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Can the Minister think of any other examples of situations in which a new type of authority is being established, and a recruitment campaign is going on for something, when there is not yet any statutory authority for doing that? I cannot.

We all recognise that the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is doing a splendid job in difficult circumstances, and that he is anxious to increase the number of people available to him. However, as it is clear from all the debates in the media that this whole issue is controversial, does the Minister think it wise—

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Order. Interventions must be as short as possible. The hon. Gentleman has made his point. If he catches my eye to indicate that he wishes to take part in the debate, I will happily try to accommodate him.

Mr. Denham: The Metropolitan police are acting under section 15 of the 1996 Act, which was introduced by the Conservative party when it was in Government. That section enables it to employ civilian staff.

I come to the powers that CSOs would be able to exercise. If the Bill were to fall for some reason, there would be civilians who were called CSOs. They would not be statutory CSOs under an Act, but under current legislation the Metropolitan police are perfectly entitled to go ahead with the recruitment process. As I said, it is a matter for the Metropolitan commissioner and the Metropolitan police authority.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I hear what the Minister says, but he and his officials should reflect on the way in which the idea has been presented. It is for media organisations to choose how they present stories, but the idea was presented in this morning's media with shots of police officers in full uniform, which did not imply that people would be recruited as civilians. Is the Minister prepared to examine that? If Parliament is to have any relevance, it is important that bodies do not jump the gun. When controversial matters are being debated and a Bill is still going through the House, it is perhaps unwise for some of its more controversial aspects to be the subject of a media campaign. I am sure that the Minister will have discussions about that matter, and we look forward to hearing from him if, having spoken to the people responsible for the marketing, he has any further thoughts.

We have had a good debate on many of the issues that arise from clause 1. As my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire and others have mentioned, many of the issues will come back for debate at a later stage, so I shall not detain the Committee any further.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 - Codes of practice for chief officers

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I beg to move amendment No. 111, in page 3, line 29, at end insert

', subject however to the views of the police authority and his own judgement as to what is effective and efficient in the area in which that function is to be discharged.'.

The clause introduces codes of practice for chief officers. There was considerable debate in the other place when the clause as originally drafted was introduced by the Government. I am pleased to say that as a result of those debates and many amendments tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends and spokesmen for the Liberal Democrats and other parties, the Government introduced their own amendments, and the clause is now much better. It would have been unacceptable in its original form. A lot of consultation is now included, and the concerns of ACPO and other police representative bodies have been taken into account.

However, one concern remains, which relates to the last sentence in the new section provided for by the clause. New subsection (7) says:

''In discharging any function to which a code of practice under this section relates, a chief officer of police shall have regard to the code.''

When it was debated in the other place, Lord Rooker twice made a point about the codes of practice, and I am sure that he was right. He said:

''They are not binding on the chief constable.''—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 March 2002; Vol. 632, c. 136.]

On 28 February, he referred to the fact that he had written a long letter to many Lords in response to concerns about the centralising aspects of the Bill. The letter, he said, referred to

''guidance which is purely advisory''.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 February 2002; Vol. 631, c. 1581.]

There is no doubt that the Government intend that the implementation of codes of practice should be discretionary, but there is concern about the phrase ''shall have regard to'' and precisely how much power it will give to a Secretary of State, considering the other powers in the Bill, to intervene if a police chief constable decides not to do something along the lines of the code of practice.

Paul Stinchcombe (Labour, Wellingborough)

I understand the hon. Gentleman's argument, but does he genuinely believe that the amendment is necessary? Clearly, regard should be had to the code of practice; the chief constable should also have regard to the police authority and, having done so, will exercise his own judgment—so why do we need the amendment?

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

The point is that it is not clear from the way in which the clause is written that the chief officer can ultimately exercise his own judgment. If the clause is accepted, giving the Home Secretary considerable powers of micro-management, he or she could refer back to the fact that a chief officer had decided to use his judgment not to adhere to a code of practice and intervene by micro-managing that police force. The amendment seeks only to provide that a chief officer can exercise his own judgment, in consultation with the police authority, on what is effective and efficient in his area. It seeks to insert into the Bill the proposals already made in the other place by Lord Rooker.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

There is not at present a sufficiently effective means of disseminating and embedding proven good practice across the police service and the provisions for strengthening those mechanisms are an important part of the Bill. There are many advantages, which have been rehearsed in other places, to having local police forces rather than a national police force, but one of the disadvantages of that can be that good practice that is developed and proven in one area may spread only slowly to other areas. We sometimes see that in the variations in the performance of police forces, albeit in similar areas, in different parts of the country.

The Bill seeks to introduce a framework for enabling and supporting all forces to come up to the standards of the best. That was set out in the White Paper on police reform, which was published before Christmas,

and was described as a three-tier structure for promoting best practice. Two of the tiers have a statutory basis, unlike the third—guidance from the Home Office, ACPO, or the Association of Police Authorities.

In practice, the amendment would cause everything other than the regulation-making powers to collapse into mere guidance. It became clear in the long discussions that the police reforming working group held last year with chief officers, the Police Superintendents Association and the Police Federation that a middle tier of guidance, setting out best practice, is necessary. It would be the duty of a chief constable to have regard to that guidance, while retaining his professional discretion on how it might be followed or applied—or not, in a particular case. It therefore constitutes the middle ground between later clauses of the Bill that specify certain types of equipment, for example, and areas of best practice.

As we said in the White Paper, we would use guidance selectively. Most people would be in no doubt that while we may not need now to drive best practice across the service, in addition to the consultation laid down in the Bill, it would have been useful in the past in terms of such issues as the management of occupational health and sickness in the police service—an area of huge variation throughout the service.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

The Bill requires the Secretary of State to lay the codes of practice before Parliament. There are some exemptions. Could the Minister make it clear that those exemptions are on grounds of national security, prevention of crime and jeopardising the safety of persons, and would be the exception to the rule? As drafted they could be very broad because the phrase

''could prejudice the prevention or detection of crime''

covers almost everything that the police do.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

If an important piece of guidance, such as the ACPO guidance on the use of firearms, became a code of practice—there is pretty good standardisation here but it might be perceived as a need if forces were veering away from best practice—we would not want to put it in full in the public domain because it includes important operational matters that could put the lives of police officers at risk. The clause has been drafted to cover such areas. It is not intended that there will be a vast body of secret codes of practice covering how ordinary crimes are investigated or problems are tackled.

Norman Baker (Liberal Democrat, Lewes)

Will the Minister give a guarantee that codes of practice will not be used for any operational decisions? It could be argued that it would be efficient and effective to soft pedal on cannabis use in Lambeth. Could he give an undertaking that such matters will not appear in a code of practice?

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

The aim of the code of practice is to ensure that we establish best practice across the service. Nothing that we do here can direct how an

individual is arrested or a crime is investigated. Interpretation of the best way of achieving the law is a legitimate area where existing best practice can be considered, such as in public order situations. Nothing in this can fetter the discretion that individual officers must have when carrying out their policing practice or that chief constables must have when taking decisions about individuals.

I do not want to give a definitive list of the areas of crime that will be considered. We are committed to consult with the police service about the priorities and I do not want to pre-empt those discussions. I give these only as examples. If we find that there are clear best practice models for dealing with persistent offenders that we would want to incorporate into codes of practice, they would be the subject of this sort of guidance. It is extremely unlikely that a police experiment in one place would leap into a code in practice. The consultation procedure, which will be supported by the national centre for policing excellence, will provide a structure that will say that we cannot take a particular view on a type of policing without good evidence of what works.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I am grateful for the Minister's response. As I tried to make clear in my opening remarks, we are not concerned about the codes of practice. Many concerns have been raised but most were answered satisfactorily in the other place. We are simply concerned about their relevant significance vis-a-vis the judgment of a chief officer on the ground. The Minister used the word ''guidance'' again just now. I interpret his remarks as endorsing those of Lord Rooker when he said that they would not be binding on the chief officer. What is ultimately the interpretation of ''shall have regard'' to the code? Would disregarding the code—or, perhaps, having looked at the code, deciding that local circumstances require doing something else—become a ground for intervention on the basis of the powers that we are to debate later?

Mr. Denham: It is a matter for later debate, but it is an important issue. The potential powers of direction will be triggered by the performance of the police service—in other words, how well it is doing in respect of key indicators such as fear of crime, tackling burglary, and so forth. Enforcing something different from this place will not be a substantive issue: if the police service is catching criminals and the public is happy with the reduction of crime, no one will interfere. It is not an input-side mechanism. If, however, performance on dealing with persistent offenders is appalling and a code of practice on that matter is obviously being ignored, the existence of that code of practice would be a material consideration to be taken into account. The process is driven by what the public receives from the policing service. That is the starting point.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I am grateful for that helpful explanation. We have not yet had the crucial debate surrounding the issue: we are debating in a vacuum. I shall not press the amendment to a vote: it was mainly a probing amendment and the Minister has responded fully, albeit without assuaging all my concerns. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

Unless the Opposition parties want further debate, I believe that we have covered the relevant issues. Other important points have already been put on the record in another place, so I see no need to detain the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Further consideration adjourned.—[Mrs. McGuire.]

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-two minutes past Eleven o'clock till this day at half-past Two o'clock.

Stevenson, Mr. George ( Chairman)

Baird, Vera

Baker, Norman

Brooke, Annette

Challen, Mr.

Denham, Mr.

Follett, Barbara

Gillan, Mrs.

Hawkins, Mr.

Irranca-Davies, Huw

Johnson, Mr. Boris

Jones, Mr. Kevan

Kumar, Dr.

Lucas, Ian

MacDougall, Mr.

McGuire, Mrs.

Munn, Ms

Osborne, Mr. George

Paice, Mr.

Prentice, Bridget

Stinchcombe, Mr.

Stoate, Dr.

Standing Committee A

Clause 3 - Powers to require inspection and report

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I beg to move amendment No. 112, in page 3, line 33, after 'time', insert

'subject to giving at least eight weeks prior notice to the relevant police force, service or squad and the inspectors of constabulary'.

George Stevenson (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent South)

With this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 113, in page 4, line 3, after 'time', insert

'subject to giving at least eight weeks prior notice to the relevant police service and the inspectors of constabulary'.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Unlike those that we debated before lunch, amendments Nos. 112 and 113 are not merely probing amendments. They deal with important matters of substance. Opposition and Labour Members agree that inspectors of constabulary should have powers to carry out inspections. We do not have a problem with the general principle of the clause. Indeed, the arrangements for inspectors of constabulary have been well established for many years. However, given the Government's proposed extension of the powers under the Police Act 1996, we want scope for those who are to be inspected to receive warning.

We do not want a force to be taken completely by surprise. It has not been the tradition of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary for it to behave like an emergency hit squad and carry out dawn raids. For many generations, this country has had a high standard of policing. I am sure that that is agreed throughout the House, as is the fact that HMIC has a high status. Those who have held office in the inspectorate have been people of exceptionally high calibre. I have dealt with them through my work as a barrister for many years in the midlands and subsequently my work as a Member of Parliament, and I pay tribute to their work.

We must be aware that police forces have heavy commitments. The same applies in spades to people who undertake the important work of the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad. I recently had a meeting with the director of NCS, Bill Hughes, so I am especially up to date with its work. I hope to visit NCIS soon. It seems entirely appropriate that, if bodies with important responsibilities are to be inspected, they should have an opportunity to prepare for that inspection.

I wish to draw a parallel with that from another area of public life. If a school is to be on the receiving end of an Ofsted inspection, the head teacher and governing body are given several weeks' notice of that

inspection. They are told when the inspection will take place and they have an opportunity to prepare for it. The inspection will be of more value if there has been an opportunity to prepare the ground to ensure that the inspectors see what they need to see. A warning will not enable a force to hide anything, but will give the inspectors an opportunity to do their job properly. The Minister may say that, as a matter of practice, the inspectors will give warning of an inspection. That has been so in the past, so why should such a provision not be outlined in the Bill?

During our researches for the Committee stage of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) came across an interesting document from Her Majesty's chief inspector of constabulary, Sir David O'Dowd CBE, QPM, CIMgt. In the foreword to his report of March 2001, he says:

''HM Inspectorate of Constabulary has a statutory role to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of police forces; recently, our remit was extended to encompass the inspection of best value reviews''.

We may return to the question of whether ''best value reviews'' actually leads to the proper and natural meaning of best value in the English language later in our proceedings. Sir David O'Dowd's most crucial point comes in the last subclause of his sentence:

''and from April 2001 we have a new role—the inspection of local or basic command units (BCUs).''

That is interesting. When we debate some of the most crucial divisions between the Government and the Opposition parties on the Bill we shall return to whether the Government's centralising tendency has gone too far, and they are trying to micro-manage down to the basic command unit level.

Interestingly, there has been a recent change of practice, which I understand did not require statutory authority. HMIC is going to go down to the basic command unit level. If that is the case, it reinforces our view that there must be a safeguard in terms of timing. Inspections must be detailed and accurate, and a force on the receiving end of an inspection should have prior warning.

I will listen with interest to the Minister's response. The amendments have been tabled in a constructively critical spirit because there are serious issues to be discussed.

Bridget Prentice (Labour, Lewisham East)

I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman's remarks. He used the example of Ofsted, which informs the head teacher and governing body of a school of an inspection. Why has he not included the police authority in his amendments? That would be the logical extension. I am not encouraging him to go down that route because I do not agree with his argument, but why did he not include it in his basket of people who should be informed?

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The hon. Lady makes a good and characteristically helpful point. We did not include the police authority because, knowing how police forces work, we felt that the minute that the force was told, the authority would be informed, but I entirely accept the spirit of her comments. We would be happy if the Government said, ''We are quite happy with the spirit

of the amendment, and will introduce a Government amendment that includes police authorities''. There is no intention to leave them out, but from my understanding of the various police forces with which I have dealt, both as a parliamentarian and previously, whenever a force is informed, the first thing that the chief constable does is to ring up the chairman of the police authority. The hon. Lady is quite right; we could have included police authorities. I hope that I have covered the serious issues in sufficient depth and I will listen with interest to the Minister's response.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

I rise briefly to support the amendments introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) and to draw the Committee's attention once again to the evidence of Sir David Phillips, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers to the Select Committee, which the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Ms Prentice) will remember. Throughout the Bill, but especially in this clause, there is an overemphasis by the Government on basic command units. He made the point that those units are not complete entities within a police force. They rely on much central revision within a police force. Indeed, when he was asked by the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron):

''Is there too much stress on BCUs in what the Government is trying to do in the Bill?''

Sir David replied:

''I have suggested to them that perhaps there is. The entity that they need to concentrate on is the police force because essentially BCUs are not independent and the command of the entire police force is with the chief constable.''

Why does the Minister think that the Home Office is justified in sending an inspection team to a basic command unit? What would that do to undermine the authority of the chief constable of the force if, for example, he did not think that such an action was correct?

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I shall reinforce the good point that my hon. Friend is making. He will appreciate that my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire discovered in the report by Sir David O'Dowd that the change to the inspection of basic command units was announced before the Home Secretary said anything about it and before the Bill becomes law—of course, we do not know the form in which it will become law. We are discussing a significant change. We want to know whether the chief inspector of constabulary is jumping the gun, as I suggested this morning that the Metropolitan police might have done.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. Obviously, this point foreshadows a later debate that we shall have. I wonder how the divisional superintendent in Macclesfield, which is the police division that covers most of my constituency, would react to an inspection team coming in although the chief constable were not wholly happy with that. To whom would she consider that her line of command applied: the Home Office, the inspection team or the chief constable? There is a real danger that if the

Government go underneath the chief constable's line of command, they will undermine chief constables' responsibilities.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

On this occasion, Opposition Members may have misunderstood the current position. The amendment does not have particular merit.

Let us be clear about the current position. As a consequence of the changes that were announced some time ago, a programme of basic command unit inspections is well under way. That complements the inspections of police forces as a whole. I would have to get back to the Committee on the exact number of inspections, but more than 40 have been undertaken and the results have been published. Inspections have been undertaken in Lambeth and Bristol. The inspections are routine and notification of them is given in advance on the same basis as inspections of forces. In recent years, the inspectorate has developed thematic inspections on several issues to examine how similar issues are treated throughout different police forces.

Current legislation does not allow the Secretary of State to request the inspection of a force in response to a specific circumstance or worry. I cannot think of a reason why that should be limited to occurring only after an eight-week wait. For example, let us say that the inspectorate carried out an inspection of a basic command unit within a force and discovered that the chief superintendent—that is likely to be the rank—was unable to deliver an effective policing service because of a central direction that came from constabulary headquarters. The chief inspector might report that to the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary would like to be able to say, ''You had better have a look at this particular issue.'' He would not necessarily want an inspection of the whole force's activities, which is the basis of the current HMIC programme. I cannot understand what anybody would gain by responding to such circumstances by saying, ''But we will have to wait eight weeks to deal with it.'' That would be an artificial limitation.

None of that takes away from the fact that everybody accepts that people would normally be notified in advance of routine force-wide or BCU inspections. Reference was made to Ofsted. However, we would limit flexibility if we accepted the amendment.

I shall respond to the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne). In the police, there is much debate about how much responsibility should be delegated or devolved to BCUs. There are wide variations in the levels of financial responsibility that have been devolved. This is a complex issue, because there can be high levels of devolution in a police force area where there is a strong central framework setting out the aims, objectives and methods of policing, but, on the other hand, in another area, devolution can allow a wide variety of policing methods. Therefore, this matter is not simply about saying, ''We either delegate, or we do not.''

In the police reform White Paper, we set out proposals to take a more structured approach to examining the evidence about which levels of devolution and delegation produce the best policing results. Those proposals are currently being taken forward.

Most people in policing recognise that the basic command unit is a key operational part of a force, as its name suggests. There is a value in being able to look at the work of a BCU to see how effectively it is operating, as part of the HMIC inspection programme.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

Does the Minister accept that most of the people in the police service who have commented on the legislation have said that the Government are wrong to try to inspect and interfere down at the level of BCU? They might accept that the BCU is a basic command unit—as the name states—but most of them do not accept the Government's argument about this matter.

George Stevenson (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent South)

Order. The amendment is about giving notice of inspections, rather than the principle of inspections. There will be an opportunity to debate that principle in the clause stand part debate, but I am sure that the Minister will have wanted me to make that point, before he gets back on his feet.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

We should, perhaps, return to that matter in the clause stand part debate. However, I do not agree with what has been said about it.

The amendment addresses the part of the clause that allows the Secretary of State to require an inspection by HMIC. With regard to that, currently there is flexibility, and I cannot see why we should artificially impose a period of eight weeks.

Practical issues might arise. The HMIC might say that all of its resources are committed and that it does not have sufficient people on the ground to conduct an inspection. That sort of thing would be worked through in practice. There will be circumstances in which there is no need to send somebody in quickly, and it is clear that it is desirable to give notice, where it is appropriate to do so. However, the amendment proposes an artificial restriction.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The Minister said that, under the current system, forces that are to be inspected are routinely notified in advance. How much notice is routinely given?

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I shall come back to the hon. Gentleman on that. However, I know that it is a considerable period of time because, before the end of a year, I, as the Minister responsible for such matters, receive the HMIC programme for the following 12 months. That indicates the forces and the BCUs that are to be inspected, and the subjects of the thematic inspections. Indeed, discussion has already taken place about the subjects of the thematic inspections for 2003. Therefore, a considerable period of advance notice is given to forces that are to undergo the routine HMIC inspections.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I am grateful to the Minister for that response because it appears that he has confirmed that he is notified well in advance—far more than eight

weeks in advance—and one assumes that police forces and BCUs are also notified well in advance. We chose a period of eight weeks for the amendment because we thought that that was a realistic minimum period and that, in practice, notice might be given as far as three or even six months in advance. I have no doubt that the Minister will write to me and other Committee members about that, when he has received more detailed information.

HMIC are giving such advance notice under the current system. However, in clause 3, the Government are introducing a new power, which we would say is very much part of their centralising agenda. The argument seems to be that the Secretary of State must have this power in case he is especially concerned about a BCU or a force. The Secretary of State must be able to demand and insist on an inspection. At the level of what we would call attempting to micro-manage, it is even more important that the force on the receiving end should have at the very least eight weeks' notice, or perhaps more, although that is what we have set out as a minimum.

If, in some cases, current practice is to give far more than eight weeks' notice, there can be no reason why that period should not be put in the Bill. Surely if a Secretary of State is demanding that, there is every extra reason why our amendment should be accepted. In light of the fact that we think that this is an important matter, I propose to press the amendment to a Division.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 3, Noes 13.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

It is worth drawing the Committee's attention to the inspectorate's evidence to the Home Affairs Committee. It said:

''There is particular support for the widening of the powers of the Secretary of State to require specific inspections. This fits comfortably with HMIC's current practice under risk assessment of targeting our efforts rather than scrutinising the whole of a force.''

It is probably of advantage to the Committee to know that the inspectorate, which is independent of Government, supports the provision.

We discussed, primarily in relation to amendments Nos. 112 and 113, whether there should be a time delay before an inspection takes place, and I shall not go over that again. The other part of the clause allows the inspection required to focus on a particular aspect of the police force. That is because the power to

require an inspection is currently linked to wider powers for dealing with the efficiency and effectiveness of the force. Clearly, there is a case for considering a particular aspect of a force's activity.

There is little in the Bill specifically about BCUs. There is, as I say, a debate in policing about the degree of delegation. We believe that the BCU is an important part of the command structure of the police service. The responsibilities of chief superintendents, superintendents or commanders who are in charge of BCUs are great, and we wish to strengthen support for them. As we have set out in the White Paper, we are carefully considering how we can establish the most effective levels of devolution to BCUs. There is debate on those issues within the police service. We are convinced that BCUs must be strong and capable, although they must be so within the overall framework set by the force.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

We accept what the Minister said about the BCU being a crucial part of how police forces operate. However, we have a huge concern, to which we will return in other debates. I do not want to labour the point now but it is important to put it on the record in the clause 3 stand part debate, given what the Minister has just said. We think that there is a grave misunderstanding on the part of the Government that the man from Whitehall knows best—that a future Home Secretary will be better able to understand what should happen within a BCU—and that his demanding inspections down to BCU level is part and parcel of a huge mistake in the Government's thinking. It is part of Whitehall's attempt to micro-manage. My noble Friend Lord Dixon-Smith said when he successfully introduced amendments to the Bill in another place that his experience during many years of public life led him to the conclusion that the man from Whitehall usually does not know best. I respectfully agree with him. It is unwise for the Government to start thinking it sensible to take powers to intervene down to BCU level. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton rightly said on amendments Nos. 112 and 113, we are greatly concerned that the Government are fundamentally wrong.

Kevan Jones (Labour, North Durham)

Is it not the case that those who carry out inspections are not men from Whitehall but former senior officers, many of whom have held chief constable rank or the equivalent? We are not talking about civil servants from the Home Office, but those—certainly those whom I have met—with a lot of experience in operational policing.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The hon. Gentleman is right, and in the previous debate I paid tribute to the people who run and work for HMIC. However, the Government are starting a new trend of the Home Secretary demanding inspection. The Minister made that clear when he responded to amendments Nos. 112 and 113. Never before has there been a power for a Home Secretary to demand an inspection, which is what I meant when I spoke of micro-management from Whitehall. If the matter were left, as it has been in the past, to HMIC, that would be different. The hon.

Gentleman needs to focus on the change that the Government are making in clause 3.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

Does my hon. Friend agree that if there is a cause for concern over the BCU it will extend through the police force that manages the division? The inspections should therefore remain at police force level because it will reveal systematic problems with the police force.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

My hon. Friend is right. We have taken that very stance because to start cherry picking the BCUs would lead to all kinds of problems. As my hon. Friend rightly says, if there is a problem with a BCU it could be a symptom of a wider malaise, and the people best able to judge that are the senior people to whom the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) referred—those who have been appointed to HMIC. With the greatest respect to the many distinguished holders of the office of Home Secretary, the Home Secretary, of whichever party, is not best placed to make that judgment. We are worried that the traditional tripartite relationship of policing in this country could suffer if a Home Secretary undermined independent judgment.

Kevan Jones (Labour, North Durham)

I find it difficult to understand in which circumstances the Home Secretary could undermine the inspection process. An inspection will not be carried out by the Home Secretary, or by any other politician, but by senior police officers and the inspectorate. How could we arrive at a situation in which a Home Secretary might undermine the inspection?

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I do not think that what we are seeking to do here would in any sense undermine inspection. We do not want to repeat the debate that we have just had on amendments Nos. 112 and 113, but the Government must justify the change.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

The hon. Gentleman started his intervention by talking about the ability to inspect particular parts of police forces, and I set out the logic behind that. He then shifted his argument and said that the Secretary of State should not have the ability to require an inspection to take place, so it is reasonable to ask why the previous Conservative Administration introduced such a power in the 1966 Act.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The difference, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton said, is that something might need to happen for a force as a whole, but at basic command unit level that is a step too far.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

Many forces have at least four or five basic command units, including a couple of large urban areas and a number of rural areas. If a problem becomes apparent in only one urban area, the hon. Gentleman is saying that he prefers the previous powers, which would require every aspect of the entire force to be involved. The clause allows us to look at where the problem is, which is sensible.

This goes further than my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham suggests, because in practice BCU inspections are conducted largely by acting BCU commanders working under the supervision of the

inspectorate. They are the people who, on either side of their secondment to the inspectorate, actually do the job. Such peer inspection is valued in the police service.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

That was a long intervention—almost a speech. Suffice it to say that I do not agree with the Minister, for the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton. I shall not repeat them, because the point has been sufficiently made. We shall not call for a Division on clause stand part, because we called for one on amendment No. 112, which was the really serious issue. I am prepared to drop the matter at this stage, but I wanted to flag it up because it will be relevant to debates on other clauses. We are seriously concerned about attempts to micro-manage, and this seems to be yet another example of the Government getting it wrong.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4 - Directions to police authorities

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 4, line 28, after 'may', insert

', after consulting the police authority responsible for maintaining that force about the remedial measures needed,'.

George Stevenson (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent South)

With this it will be convenient to take the following: Government amendment No. 130.

Amendment No. 134, in schedule 1, page 90, line 18, after 'Ministers,' insert

'and the NCIS Service Authority about the remedial measures needed,'.

Amendment No. 135 in page 90, line 34, after 'State,', insert

'and the NCIS Service Authority about the remedial measures needed,'.

Amendment No. 136, in page 91, line 26, leave out from 'State' to 'as' in line 27 and insert

', after consulting the NCS Service Authority about the remedial measures needed, may direct that authority to take such measures.'.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

We are pleased that amendment No. 2 may have provoked Government amendment No. 130. The amendment would provide a layer of consultation with police authorities about the remedial measures necessary for a force that might, unfortunately, be deemed not to be efficient or effective. That would mirror Ofsted, with which one would expect such consultation. As I understand it, Government amendment No. 130 places an obligation on the Secretary of State not to give any direction until there has been consultation and the police authority has been given the opportunity to make representations and proposals for remedial measures. That is important, and we are pleased about it.

Amendments Nos. 134, 135 and 136 are consequential on Government amendment No. 130. It is right to have equality of treatment not only for police authorities responding to any directions or suggestions from the Secretary of State, but for other national bodies—NCIS and the NCS. I note

Government amendment No. 131, which we shall discuss later, but we shall pursue our amendments, because they go further that that.

The amendments are important, because they would add an extra layer of consultation about remedial measures. They are more inclusive and entirely match the sentiments expressed in amendment No. 2 and Government amendment No. 130. We want the relevant service authority to have some input right across the board into the improvement of the service, because we believe that there must be a two-way exchange.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Like the hon. Lady, my hon. Friends and I were pleased that the Government responded to amendment No. 2. My hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire and I subscribed to it because we were working on the same basis. As the hon. Lady rightly said, Government amendment No. 130 deals with part of the same issue. We support her comments. These are important matters, and she is right to say that we shall come back to related matters when we have the big debate on schedule 1, Government amendment No. 131 and Government new clause 4.

We support the hon. Lady's thinking. She is right to say that relevant matters are raised by amendments Nos. 134, 135 and 136. It is appropriate that the Government are moving in our direction in Government amendment No. 130, so we shall listen with interest to what the Minister has to say.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

Given the suggestions of support for Government amendment No. 130, I shall not detain the Committee too long. However, as we are introducing new material in the Bill, I should probably set out the case for the record.

Government amendment No. 130 reintroduces safeguards in respect of the power to direct police authorities that were implicitly rejected in another place when it voted to remove the parallel power to direct chief officers. I believe that on that occasion the focus of attention was on what was then clause 5 and the amendment to it. However, the proposals that we have included here were effectively lost at the same time.

The power to direct police authorities to take remedial measures to correct underperformance is not new. Clause 4 simply re-enacts, with modifications, section 40 of the Police Act 1996. The power was originally introduced by the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994. In putting the case for section 40, I can do no better than quote from the proceedings of the Standing Committee that considered the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill. The then Home Office Minister, Charles Wardle, said:

''New section 28D gives the Home Secretary the power to give directions to a police authority when an inspectorate constabulary has reported that, in his opinion, the relevant police force is, or is about to become, inefficient or ineffective. That aspect involves the power of last resort, which can be exercised only where there is an independent opinion from the inspectorate that the police authority is failing in its fundamental statutory duty to secure the maintenance of an effective and efficient police force for its area.''—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 24 May 1994; c. 268–269.]

Clause 4 is not breaking new ground, but section 40 of the 1996 Act as it stands includes few safeguards. We have already introduced a number of such safeguards in another place. New subsection (2) will restrict the direction-making power so that a police authority may only be directed to take remedial measures that are relevant to the shortcomings identified by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. New subsections (3) and (4) will require the Home Secretary to report to Parliament on the exercise of the direction-making power in any given case.

Government amendment No. 130 introduces further safeguards to ensure that the power to direct is a power of last resort. It places a duty on the Home Secretary to put to the chief officer and police authority the evidence that a force or part of a force is failing and afford them an opportunity to make representations. The Home Secretary is then placed under a duty to have regard to such representations.

If, having considered any representations, the Home Secretary remains of the opinion that remedial measures are required, he must afford the police authority the opportunity to put in place its own remedial measures before it is directed to do so. If the police authority identifies appropriate remedial measures that fully address the area of concern there will be no need for the Home Secretary to issue a formal direction.

The amendment also enables further procedural requirements to be set out in regulations subject to the affirmative procedure. Before making such regulations, the Home Secretary is required to consult the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities in the usual way. Such regulations would, for example, provide for further consultation with a police authority on the terms of any proposed directions. Those are powerful safeguards that were not included in the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994. The safeguards built into Government amendment No. 130 effectively supersede the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) and moved by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke), whom I urge not to press the amendment, because we are introducing the type of consultation that she seeks.

Further Government amendments will deal with the other issues raised by amendments Nos. 134 to 137. New clause 4 will introduce a parallel power to direct chief officers that will include a similar set of safeguards. I do not want to pre-empt the debate on new clause 4, but suffice it to say that the power to direct a police authority is not sufficient on its own to tackle underperformance. Police authorities have a variety of mechanisms by which to hold chief officers to account. In the first instance, we shall look to the chief officer in a police authority to address underperformance, but when a police authority has not been successful in working with a chief officer to improve performance, it is our view that the Home

Secretary must have the option of directing the person responsible for the control of the force.

The revised section 40 and new sections 41A and 41B of the 1996 Act must be seen as a package. Whichever power is used, it should be used only as a last resort after close consultation with the police authority and chief officer concerned. Amendment No. 130 will ensure that that happens.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I thank the Minister for his comments. As I said, we want to withdraw amendment No. 2. I am heartened by his remarks on amendments Nos. 134, 135 and 136, and I emphasise that those points need to be picked up. I accept that there is some sense in waiting until we debate Government amendment No. 131, and I thank him for his reassurances on balancing the level of direction, because we all want to achieve efficient and effective policing. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I beg to move amendment No. 137, in page 4, line 30, at end insert—

'(1A) No police force, whether in whole or in part, or generally or in particular respects, shall be regarded as not efficient or not effective or about to cease to be efficient or effective under subsection (1) above, on the grounds that the chief officer has not—

(a) designated any persons under section 35 of the Police Reform Act 2002; or

(b) established a community safety accreditation scheme under section 36 of the Police Reform Act 2002.'.

We focus yet again on directions to police authorities, and we want reassurances and safeguards on the extent of those directions. The Minister has already hinted that the point made here may be covered elsewhere in the Bill and in other regulations, and I shall listen to his comments with interest. The amendment is nevertheless important.

We keep drawing parallels with Ofsted. The reports might contain strong recommendations on the balance of staffing. We want to ensure that CSOs are not imposed by the back door. We are genuinely concerned that the Bill might allow the Secretary of State—obviously not the current one—to use the power to take remedial measures and empower police authorities to adopt CSO schemes. I feel sure that the Minister will agree, given that he stated so forcefully this morning that there is no intention to force CSO schemes on police authorities. The amendment should be totally acceptable in that context.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

We agree with the spirit of the amendment. I agree with the hon. Lady: the matter is very important. She also quite rightly cited what the Minister said before lunch: no police force will be absolutely impelled to go along with the various schemes that the Government are keen on, such as accreditation and CSOs. If that is the case, there is no reason why the Bill should not safeguard that position. We would be very uncomfortable if a chief constable and a police authority were penalised in any way because they felt from their expert knowledge of their area that it was not appropriate to have accreditation or CSOs.

It is extremely important that something along the lines of amendment No. 137 should be in the Bill. We are not tying ourselves to the particular wording, but we think it would be terribly helpful to have a provision that makes it clear that a force cannot be penalised for not going along with accredited schemes or CSOs. Like the hon. Lady, we will listen with interest to what the Minister has to say, but we consider this an important matter.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I shall not bore the Committee by repeating what I have said already about our intentions for CSOs. We need to be careful about the approach taken in the amendments. In debates such as this, a constant refrain asserts that the legislation might be all right as long as I and my colleagues are Ministers, but questions the future. There is equally a danger that an obsession with one issue, however controversial it is at the moment, can lead people to draft bad law and table poorly thought-out amendments. I am afraid that the amendment falls into that category.

There has been much discussion about CSOs. I had understood that the Opposition parties, at least in another place, welcomed the provisions in part 4 enabling chief officers to designate support staff as detention or escort officers. Forces are already civilianising their custody functions, and the Bill should provide a new impetus for that. We cannot be certain, but it is conceivable that in five years' time, civilian detention or escort officers could well be the norm.

If we look to the future, we cannot rule out the possibility that HMIC could undertake an inspection of a force that continued to employ only police officers in its custody suites. If other forces had achieved, for example, a 10 per cent. saving through civilianisation with no loss of effectiveness, the amendment would debar HMIC from commenting on the efficiency with which the police force uses its resources, or the opportunities taken to civilianise detention duties, even if established best practice across the vast majority of forces suggested that that was a good way of freeing up police officers for other duties. That is the practical effect of amendment No. 137.

Mr. Hawkins rose—

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

The amendment shows the difficulties of focusing in such a narrow-minded way—as in so much of the debate—on one element of the provisions, and trying to rule it out. Effectively, it is an approach that would hamper HMIC in drawing on the experience of good practice. We do not know that it is good practice today—let me make that clear. The use of escort or detention officers in an expanded role is new, so we have to wait until there is some evidence, but clearly there is a possibility that it will be shown to be efficient and effective, and it could be promoted by HMIC.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I am glad that the Minister added his parenthesis, because when I first alerted him to the fact that I wanted to intervene, he had not made it clear that the facts had not been established. I am glad that he has now made that concession. If he is relying on a judgment of what is best practice and what is not, will

there not always be the danger that a Whitehall judgment may not be accurate?

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

We are talking about HMIC. We have to trust someone. The hon. Gentleman is in danger of arguing himself into a corner. A person who is not from the police force could form an opinion on how it is operating. It has been recognised for an enormously long time that an independent inspectorate is necessary. The inspectorate accumulates a great deal of knowledge from forces throughout the country about what is efficient and effective. As we discussed earlier, its role has been extended under the Government. Far from saying that it is wrong that the inspectorate should be able to form a view about this or other issues, we consider it an important tool in support of the Secretary of State and value the advice that we receive.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

We have made clear our enormous admiration for the work of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. We are not seeking to undermine it, but the amendment would protect a force that chooses on the basis of its local judgment not to adopt the particular extra practice of the CSOs and accredited schemes that the Government are introducing. Why should a force be regarded as ineffective or inefficient because it has not adopted such a practice? Surely that matter should best be left to local judgment.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

We could be discussing traffic wardens in the 1960s. If a force chose to use its police officers to issue parking tickets, instead of traffic wardens, the hon. Gentleman would expect the inspectorate to say that that was ludicrous. We have established best practice throughout the country and we do not want our police officers to undertake such work. We are not in a position to say that it has been proved that the powers that we are introducing will produce efficiency and effectiveness. There is a huge consensus that the powers will achieve that, but that has not been proven on the ground. To say, however, in 2002 that we should introduce primary legislation that would prevent the body of evidence that builds up over the years from being used by the inspectorate to provide advice and make a judgment about efficiency and effectiveness would make bad law out of the current debate about CSOs. I strongly urge the Committee to resist the amendment.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

There is a fundamental difference between advising on good practice and making that crystal clear, and introducing a power to force local police authorities to take certain action. I am sure that the traffic warden example can be dealt with by advice, guidance, good practice and publicity, without a power being forced on the police. After all, there are circumstances in which police carry out other jobs.

Vera Baird (Labour, Redcar)

If the intention is to stop something being forced on the police, is not the amendment misguided? It would stop expert inspectors saying that in a particular part of the Redcar division in, say, Grangetown, the police are not dealing effectively with litter because they do not have CSOs. The amendment would stop that being declared. It may or may not be necessary to direct that the power must be introduced, but the amendment

would prevent inspectors from considering matters and reaching a decision.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

The intention of the amendment is to avoid direction and tunnel vision, as much as anything. We want to ensure that a judgment is not made about deficiency or ineffectiveness simply on the grounds that the chief constable has not adopted a CSO scheme. If we examined a broader range of targets and outcomes, the point made by the hon. and learned Lady would be answered.

The adoption of CSOs must be voluntary and not in any way under duress from the Secretary of State. That is the bottom line. When I hear the justification from the Government it makes me increasingly nervous that the CSOs will be imposed. I endorse what Conservative Members have said. Although we generally welcome the Government amendments, my hon. Friend and I would like to press our amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 11.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I beg to move amendment No. 78, in page 4, leave out lines 34 and 35.

The amount of power taken unto the Secretary of State in the Bill is the issue that separates Opposition parties from the Government. I apologise to the Committee for my short absence, and the point may already have been made, but clause 4 revises section 40 of the 1996 Act and describes powers to give directions to a police authority.

Section 40 has never been used, despite the Act's being in existence for the past six years. The existing power has not been used by the Home Secretary in the previous Conservative Government, who was in office for only a few short months after the legislation was enacted, by the present Home Secretary or by his predecessor. Why do we need the dramatically increased range of powers envisaged in clause 4, and especially subsection (2)(b), which the amendment would delete?

There can be no reasonable argument against the idea of the inspectorate producing a report identifying the strengths and weaknesses in a police authority or BCU, as the clause envisages, or suggesting that measures be taken to remedy those problems. With that there can be little dispute. The dispute is over whether the Home Secretary has complete freedom to

dictate what the remedial measures should be. Subsection (2) says that

''Those remedial measures must not relate to any matter other than''—

and the first bit is non-contentious—

''a matter by reference to which the report contains a statement of opinion falling within subsection (1)(a) or (b)''.

That is perfectly sensible; the remedial measures should address what the report says. The problem is that paragraph (b) follows, which says that the measures must also not relate to anything other than

''a matter that the Secretary of State considers relevant to any matter falling within paragraph (a).''

That gives the Secretary of State carte blanche to consider any matter relevant to the measures on which the inspector has passed opinion.

I have taken the liberty of looking at one or two HMIC reports. They are comprehensive, and it beggars belief that it should be necessary for the Home Secretary to have powers to go beyond what is in the report. I shall refer to two examples, both of which are relevant to members of the Committee. First, I shall quote the report of Hampshire constabulary's latest inspection—the latest one on the inspectorate's website, anyway—which was in 1999. That, of course, is the Minister's constabulary.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the most recent Hampshire constabulary report on the inspectorate's website is from 1999?

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

Yes.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I shall have to have a look at the website.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

I take it from that that there has been a more recent inspection, but whether that is the most recent report is irrelevant to my argument. The fact is that it contains a series of recommendations, one of which is

''That the Force considers how to co-ordinate pre-existing projects, on the Force control room, on systems of core handling and on public safety radio communication. In so doing it should review the timescale for selecting the preferred option arising from the core handling project and match its implementation with the move to a single tier control room.''

That is a pretty detailed obligation on, or recommendation from, the inspectorate, and I should have thought that it was perfectly adequate as an issue on which the Secretary of State should require remedial measures to be taken. However, the Bill proposes that the Secretary of State should have powers to include anything else that he considers relevant. I find that prospect difficult to understand.

Secondly, I shall quote a report from my own constabulary. It is a report on a BCU inspection—I tried to get even closer to the ground—in the central Cambridgeshire unit, which only just touches my constituency but is obviously relevant. Its recommendations are even more detailed. For example, it asks that

''The existing arrangements in respect of custody facilities at Wisbech police station be urgently reviewed.''

Wisbech is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss). Such recommendations are the minutiae of policing issues. I am not suggesting that the recommendation is not important—it is, particularly if one is taken into custody in Wisbech. My point is, why should the Secretary of State have powers that allow him to go beyond even the recommendations in BCU reports? That is why I believe it necessary to delete subsection (2)(b).

The case is quite clear: the provision is an open-ended opportunity for the Home Secretary to decide of his own volition what he considers to be relevant. There is no challenge to that, and no opportunity for people to appeal against what he considers to be relevant. It would provide a Home Secretary—not necessarily this one—with an opportunity to get involved in minutiae. That is unnecessary and may carry a risk when the power falls into the hands of future Secretaries of State.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire has conjured up a worrying prospect, but let us consider the issue.

There are two parts to the process. First, HMIC conducts an inspection; secondly, the Secretary of State directs a response. The proposed change from the previous section 40—which I think that the Committee will agree to—is that the inspectorate should be able to report on part of a force, rather than only on all of it. Perhaps one of the reasons why the intervention power has never been used is that a very high threshold must be reached before a whole force is deemed to be failing.

However, to leave that aside, we are currently debating a different question—what powers to direct should the Secretary of State have? It is always dangerous for Ministers who are on their feet to offer to consider amendments, but I am half-inclined—I will go no further than that—to suggest that we should remove all of subsection (2) of new section 40, and revert to the wording that was used by the previous Conservative Administration. I assume that hon. Members are happy with that wording. It states:

''the Secretary of State may direct the police authority responsible for maintaining the force to take such measures as may be specified in the direction.''

Section 40 does not require the matters on which the Secretary of State gives directions to bear any relation whatever to the issues that have been identified by HMIC. The new draft was produced because I felt—although, perhaps, I got this wrong—that that was too broad a remit to give to the Secretary of State, and that there should be some relationship between what the Secretary of State responds to and the problem that has been identified by HMIC.

However, if the Committee has a problem with the new wording, I shall consider reverting to the wording introduced by the Conservative party in the previous Parliament. I am sure that Conservative Committee members would accept that.

However, there is a reason why we have structured what we have done in this way. Although the

inspectorate reports are very detailed and comprehensive, it is always conceivable that, when a problem has been identified by the inspectorate, further matters will come to light that are relevant and should be taken into account.

For example, if HMIC criticised a force for consistently slipping with regard to the burglary target that it has been set under best value, it would set out its recommendations in its report on the force, and the Home Secretary could use that, by employing new section 40(2)(a), as the basis for issuing directions against the police authority. He could do that because the police authority owns the best value targets for the police force. The HMIC report might identify—in the way that the hon. Gentleman said—that the force was failing to meet its target because it was failing to offer decent prevention advice, and because its investigative techniques did not follow proven best practice. Under the amendment, the Home Secretary could only direct the police authority to require action to be taken to put right policing practice in those two areas—prevention and investigative techniques.

However, let us suppose that the CPS inspectorate was looking at performance in this area at the same time, and, having studied the work of CPS, it advised that the force had poor file quality and, as a result, there was a failure successfully to prosecute persistent offenders in the area, so that they were free to re-offend. Any sensible person would say that the Home Secretary should be able to take into account that wider source of evidence, which is relevant to the problem identified by HMIC.

In practical terms, I do not think that it is possible to specify in the Bill all the conceivable sources of additional evidence that might be available to the Home Secretary. That is why new section 40(2) is worded in this way. However, if the hon. Gentleman would prefer us to revert to the wide-ranging powers of the Secretary of State that were introduced by the Conservative Government, I shall give active consideration to that before Report.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

Well, that is a tempting offer. However, as the Minister knows, the world has moved on a little bit since 1996, otherwise we would not be having this debate because the Government would have left the legislation as it is. We have moved on, but I remain of the view that the envisaged powers and those that are in existing legislation are over the top and go beyond what is necessary. I am not entirely convinced by the Minister's technical example of why he believes that the powers are necessary.

We must reflect on what the Minister said and I want to read his technical explanation to try to understand it more clearly. We might wish to return to the matter on another occasion. I want to know what the Minister's colleagues said in opposition to the clause in 1996—we might well find something of interest to entertain the Committee. Until we reach that stage, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I beg to move amendment No. 114, in page 4, line 45, at end insert—

'(4A) A report under subsection (3) shall set out fully the increased costs to public funds which will be required to make the police force or any part concerned efficient and effective and the full costs of any remedial measures recommended.'.

This is a matter of substance and not merely a probing amendment. I said before lunch that we would return to the issues of what the Government often refer to as so-called best value. The chief officers of my police authority in Surrey and the two local authorities in my constituency think that the current practice is very far from the normal and natural meaning in English language of ''best value''. They have found that the so-called best-value procedures have been incredibly expensive and have served no good purpose.

I suggest that the requirement that we propose in the amendment represents plain common sense. It is rather akin to the compliance cost assessment that is required in every statute. We must be able to know what it will cost to make things work. We should always have a weather eye on the cost to taxpayers of what is proposed. Nevertheless, when one knows the cost of something, it might still be the right thing to do. I do not suggest that something that would genuinely make a force efficient and effective should not be done because it is expensive. We want efficient and effective police forces. One should always be aware of costs so that value judgments can be made.

There are occasions when a marginal improvement would be very expensive. One could say that because a force is pretty effective, it is not worth while to spend a huge amount of taxpayers' money of the sort that was wasted on the dome or Wembley—as the House heard today—for only a marginal improvement. We must always be careful to examine costs, and I hope that we shall hear a constructive response from the Minister. I accept that the Minister may say that that would not be a good way in which to do it, and that the Government will bring forward Government amendments at a later stage to incorporate the concept, and if he were to say that we would listen to him. It is important, however, that the report should have a compliance cost assessment in it whenever such things are contemplated.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

We can take the amendment as a covert attempt to make the Home Office responsible for the costs that may be incurred by saying that a police force should do things differently. Let us remember, however, the basis on which the provision will work. From the outset, a police authority is funded to maintain an efficient and effective police force. Direction-making powers, including those introduced by the previous Administration, exist for use when a police authority fails to maintain an efficient and effective police force. That is wholly separate from a situation in which the Government may decide that a police authority should do something. In the spending review 2000, for example, we decided that there needed to be a greater focus on rural policing, and we introduced an additional £15 million of funding, which was allocated to forces according to how sparsely their areas were populated.

If a police authority fails to use its resources effectively and has to invest extra money in order to correct its own failings, that is its responsibility and it should be accountable to the local communities that it serves. The amendment is misplaced and does not build on the purpose of either the HMIC inspection or the direction-making powers that we, and the previous Government, have framed.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I am not wholly convinced by the Minister's comments. He started off by saying that the amendment is a covert attempt to make the Home Office pay for the costs of the measure. If it were such an attempt, I am not sure whether it would be covert.

In the time of the Minister's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), there was a problem in my county when the previous Home Secretary, who is now the Foreign Secretary, decided that Senator Pinochet should be placed under house arrest. The former Home Secretary went on television and said that the costs of the house arrest would not fall on Surrey police or the council tax payers of Surrey, but would come out of Home Office funds. Unfortunately, it did not turn out that way. The total cost of that policing operation was £1.1 million, but the Home Office reimbursed Surrey police only £600,000. People in my area were very unhappy, and all the Surrey MPs went to see the former Home Secretary. We managed to get an extra £200,000 out of him, but we did not get the full cost. The Minister thinks that the amendment is a covert attempt to make the Home Office pay for things, but if we wanted that we would do it overtly.

That is not the point, which, with respect, the Minister has slightly missed. Even if a local police authority has to pay, Parliament and taxpayers are entitled to know the cost. There is always the question of who judges what is efficient or effective. I am not sure that my judgment of what is efficient or effective would always be same as that of the previous Home Secretary or, indeed, the current Home Secretary. Of course, the current Home Secretary has spent most of his time in office dismantling all the things that the previous Home Secretary did to such an extent that the press has described his actions as dismantling the house the Jack built.

I revert to what I said in moving the amendment. We want to see the text in the Bill. That may be a matter to which we return on Report, but at this stage I do not propose to press it to a vote. Before withdrawing the amendment, I hope that I can ask the Minister to reflect carefully. The amendment is not a covert attempt to make the Home Office pay. It is about transparency, and everyone being aware of the cost to public funds of such reports. I hope that the Minister will seriously reflect on that, and may be prepared to table Government amendments to similar effect. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment made: No. 130, in page 4, line 45, at end insert—

'(5) The Secretary of State shall not give a direction under this section in relation to any police force unless—

(a) the police authority maintaining that force and the chief officer of that force have each been given such information about the Secretary of State's grounds for proposing to give that direction as he considers appropriate for enabling them to make representations or proposals under the following paragraphs of this subsection;

(b) that police authority and chief officer have each been given an opportunity of making representations about those grounds;

(c) that police authority has had an opportunity of making proposals for the taking of remedial measures that would make the giving of the direction unnecessary; and

(d) the Secretary of State has considered any such representations and any such proposals.

(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations make further provision as to the procedure to be followed in cases where a proposal is made for the giving of a direction under this section.

(7) Before making any regulations under this section, the Secretary of State shall consult with—

(a) persons whom he considers to represent the interests of police authorities;

(b) persons whom he considers to represent the interests of chief officers of police; and

(c) such other persons as he thinks fit.

(8) Regulations under this section may make different provision for different cases and circumstances.

(9) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section shall not be made unless a draft of the regulations has been laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House.'' '.—[Mr. Denham.]

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Vera Baird (Labour, Redcar)

I want to raise a minor drafting point of the kind that will lead the Minister to regret having lawyers on the Back Benches. I do not suppose that anyone who is not an expert in reading legislation will actually read this clause, but if they did, they might hesitate at subsection (2). At the moment it says:

''Those remedial measures must not relate to any matter other than (a) . . . or (b)''.

Is there any good reason why it does not just say that those remedial measures may relate only to (a) and (b)? That is infinitely easier to read, more straightforward and easier to follow.

George Stevenson (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent South)

If there is not any good reason for it to be worded that way at the moment, I am that sure someone will find one. The point is well taken.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 4, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5 - Regulation of equipment

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I beg to move amendment No. 138, in page 5, line 48, after 'vehicles', insert—

'(aa) batons, CS spray devices and other items used for public order control'.

George Stevenson (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent South)

With this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 79, in page 6, line 1, at end insert—

'(c) information and communication equipment.'.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

Under the clause, the Secretary of State can make regulations for the use of equipment in order to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of

police forces. As we know, he must consult the police chiefs and police authority groups, and have any regulations approved by Parliament. However, the current clause stipulates only vehicles and protective clothing as equipment. I suppose it is slightly odd for the Liberal Democrats to argue for more centralised control, but I shall force myself to do it. We would like to pinpoint the equipment that might be the subject of the Secretary of State's rules and regulations, not to impose uniformity of approach, but, in terms of the devices, to make an argument for some sort of national standard, whether we are talking about the dimensions of a baton or CS sprays—pepper sprays have been mentioned. Such things are either safe or are they are not.

Our amendment may not be accurately worded, but I should like the Minister to take the spirit of our points on board. The clause could quite genuinely work towards the efficiency and effectiveness of the police force by setting standards for the sort of items that might be used for public order control. The amendment is intended to make the clause more specific, and force the Secretary of State to consult relevant groups and obtain the backing of Parliament before making regulations relating to defensive weapons, on which so much relies. Our final point is that we want the police to have absolute faith in the equipment that they use.

Kevan Jones (Labour, North Durham)

The amendment is just another example of Liberal Democrat double-speak. Earlier amendments suggested that things should be left to local police authorities, but this amendment would extend national standards to include extra devices; the list could be further added to.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I thought that I had explained why there appeared to be an inconsistency—I made a joke against us about that. I am going on holiday and will travel on an aeroplane on Monday, so I am certainly pleased that national standards will be applied. For much equipment, it makes sense to have approved national standards; for example, it gives a sense of certainty on what can be used for crowd control. When one considers crowd control in different parts of the country and in different circumstances, an awful lot can be said for having consistent standards.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

Amendment No. 79 is probing because I am perplexed by one aspect of the clause, which will replace subsections (2) and (3) of section 53 of the 1996 Act. Other hon. Members might have discovered, as I did, that those subsections did not exist in 1996, but were added in 1997. Importantly, section 131(2) of the Police Act 1997 states:

''The Secretary of State shall consult the Police Information Technology Organisation before making regulations under this section relating to information technology.''

I realise that things have moved on, and that we now have Airwave. I have already debated that with the Minister, who has answered my outstanding parliamentary questions, for which I am grateful. The roll-out of Airwave is proving extremely problematic and is causing several forces immense concern and cost, which is deflecting them from fighting crime and from using Airwave in that fight.

New subsection (2C) in clause 5 specifies that

'' 'equipment' includes—(a) vehicles; and (b) headgear and protective and other clothing.''

The hon. Lady's amendment would add further items. The effect of the clause will be to remove information and communications equipment from regulatory powers. It is perfectly valid to want regulatory powers relating to equipment, and the Government have adopted that position, but one either specifies things or one does not. Bill after Bill produces the same debate. As with any list, something is always left off, but it is odd that in producing such a small list of an (a) and a (b), information and communications equipment has disappeared from new subsections (2) and (3) of the twice-amended section 53 of the 1996 Act.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

Perhaps a possible explanation is that by ring-fencing £500 million the Government have already stuffed the mouths of police authorities with gold to force them to accept Airwave. Regulations are not required, because money has been used.

James Paice (Conservative, South East Cambridgeshire)

That is of course a possible conclusion to draw from such an omission. As I said, the amendment is only exploratory at this stage because I am puzzled about the clause. I came equipped with a catalogue of Airwave problems, but I shall not detain the Committee by going through it. The Minister realises that we have a serious problem in rolling out Airwave, which illustrates that a Government of any complexion should not get too involved in technical arrangements. It might have been better to have simply specified Airwave and left it entirely to the forces rather than the Government getting involved in it. However, that is a slightly separate matter. The issue is whether we have an exhaustive list and, if we do, why information and communication equipment is not on it. I look forward to the Minister's explanation, which will probably be perfectly reasonable.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I am pleased that the two amendments have come so swiftly after the intervention by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), because I get to make my speech about lawyers. In summary, a large part of my response will be that I am advised that the wording is necessary in order to cover areas where there might have been doubt. The list is not intended to be exhaustive.

The subsection does not seek to provide a comprehensive list of categories of equipment that fall within the ambit of the regulation-making power. The clause instead relies on the common construction of the term ''equipment'', but I am advised that it is necessary to identify items that are not immediately obvious as being equipment. When we talk about items issued for public order control, we could be referring to anything from side-handled batons, handcuffs and CS sprays to riot shields and tear gas. It is the view of those who advise Ministers on the drafting of legislation that such items would conventionally spring to mind when talking about

equipment used by the police and, therefore, would be covered by the word ''equipment.''

Information and communication equipment is even more obviously equipment. Indeed, the wording of amendment No. 79 contains the word ''equipment.'' Radios, command and control suites and IT systems are all clearly equipment. Therefore, there is no need to specify them in the provision. In moving an amendment similar to amendment No. 79 in another place, the noble Lord Dixon-Smith was quite right when he said that

''in reality the word ''equipment'' is probably sufficient. Once one begins to create a list, it can go on ad nauseam.''—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 March 2002; Vol. 632, c. 169.]

However, when the drafting of the clause was considered in detail, the question was raised as to whether issues such as vehicles, headgear and protective clothing, for example, would spring readily to mind as police equipment, even though they are pieces of equipment that the police use in their day-to-day work. Therefore, they are specifically mentioned to avoid any argument as to whether they are clothing or means of transport rather than equipment. They are also items for which safety or public recognition implications could mean that it would be in the interests of efficiency and effectiveness that all forces use the same items of equipment.

I hope that the Committee will accept the explanation in the same way that I did when I was advised on the appropriate way of wording the clause by those who advise Ministers on the proper drafting of legislation.

Paul Stinchcombe (Labour, Wellingborough)

Speaking as a lawyer, I wonder if the provision would not be even clearer if the words ''for the avoidance of doubt'' were inserted in the new subsection. Otherwise, I fear that the same arguments of restrictive interpretation might apply.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's suggestion. There are points at which Ministers of all Administrations come to rely on legal advice and the drafting advice of parliamentary counsel.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

It is usually disastrous.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

That may be. However, in the light of the debate, I shall discuss the matter again with my officials and advisers to ensure that we have the drafting absolutely right. I believe that there is common intent across the parties in the Committee about what the clause is intended to achieve. If we feel that it is necessary to bring forward any clarification on Report of the issues that have been raised by my hon. Friend and by Opposition Members, we will do so. If not, I hope that the Committee will accept that we have drafted the measure with the best intent and on the best advice available to us.

Annette Brooke (Liberal Democrat, Mid Dorset and North Poole)

I thank the Minister for his comments and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

In the light of the Minister's characteristically helpful and constructive response

on the amendments, I hope that he and his officials, when reconsidering the clause, will also take account of the significant views of the Association of Police Authorities. The association told my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire and me that it is concerned that, with the bulk of police authority budgets already being spent on police and support staff pay—and also police pensions—any statutory requirement on authorities and forces to purchase or use particular equipment or adopt particular practices will mean even less scope to allocate resources to tackle local priorities.

The Minister will be aware from the many debates that he and I have had with others in the Home Office ministerial and shadow ministerial teams that we are always referring to the huge differences between what an inner-city police force in London, Liverpool, Manchester or Birmingham might need and what rural Cumbria or Surrey might need. I share the concern expressed to us by the Association of Police Authorities that the provision should not be too prescriptive.

I accept what the Minister said when he quoted Lord Dixon-Smith saying that a list can go on ad nauseam. My noble Friend was absolutely right. I also accept the helpful suggestion made by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Stinchcombe) that a general phrase, such as ''for the avoidance of doubt'' might be an improvement. The Minister was helpful in agreeing to consider that again. However, I hope that he will carefully consider the wider context and whether the clause is too prescriptive and goes too far towards micro-management. Perhaps the Government will reconsider the whole matter before Report.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

I support what my hon. Friend said. I am a member of the Public Accounts Committee, which recently considered the Airwave project and questioned the permanent secretary to the Home Office. One of the conclusions of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee was that if local forces had been able to procure their equipment locally instead of having a national system, we would have saved about £300 million. The Home Office's argument was that Airwave, as a national system, brought additional benefits, although the Public Accounts Committee, which is an all-party Committee, was not entirely convinced. That is a good illustration of my hon. Friend's point that being over-prescriptive with police authorities and forces when acquiring equipment sometimes costs a lot of money and does not allow police authorities to be responsive to the specific needs of their areas.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

My hon. Friend brings to the Committee his great experience of the Public Accounts Committee, and I am grateful to him. Does he agree that in the light of that Committee's findings, it might be wiser to leave things as they are in section 53 of the Police Act 1996? The Association of Police Authorities has said that at present the Home Secretary has the power to require only that equipment used for police purposes satisfies certain design and performance requirements.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Many police authorities were reluctant to take Airwave and did so only because they were given the money and told to spend it on that and nothing else.

Kevan Jones (Labour, North Durham)

Is it not pretty fundamental that in a small country such as the United Kingdom, individual forces need to talk to one another? Having a common communication system is sensible, as the Defence Committee recognised in its inquiry into home defence to which my right hon. Friend the Minister gave evidence yesterday.

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

The experience of both the military and the police with national communication systems has not been good. Lancashire police force, which neighbours my force in Cheshire, had loads of problems using Airwave. Greater Manchester police hope to have the communication system up and running in time for the Commonwealth games—it is one of the Government's targets—but the system is not yet operating. The equipment has many problems.

Kevan Jones (Labour, North Durham)

I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says, but would he not agree that it makes sense to have a communication system that is common to each constabulary, because they have to talk to one another?

George Osborne (Conservative, Tatton)

I remind the hon. Gentleman that, although there are several different mobile phone companies, one can still call different mobile phones. Indeed, many police officers now carry mobile phones because they find them more effective than their existing radio systems or the Airwave system. I support the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath about being overly prescriptive in stating what equipment must be used by police forces in England and Wales.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

I hope that I can allay the Committee's concerns. The ability to standardise should not be equated with particular types of procurement. There are some dilemmas, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham is right.

This is one of those weeks. Yesterday I was up in front of the Defence Committee dealing with issues such as counter-terrorism, civil contingency and so forth. That Committee had been highly critical of the way in which the Government previously allowed fire authorities to procure radio systems on a different basis to that of the police. It is not for me to anticipate what the Defence Committee will say in its report, but I think that it will welcome the fact that the decision has been revisited in the light of the events of 11 September.

There are issues on which, even within the House and the Select Committee system, people look to the Government to deal with standardisation where appropriate. The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire has a great interest in and considerable knowledge of information technology-related issues in the police service. He resisted the temptation to get into a big discussion about Airwave, and I will do the same. However, I predict that when—in the Select Committee or elsewhere—we examine the roll-out of Airwave, we will learn from the forces with the earliest experience of implementation plans that

they were left to individual police forces to develop. There is a difference between forces that had a single contractual approach to everything—from handsets to control centres to the system itself—and those that decided to buy the handsets separately and have a separate control centre contract and the Airwave system. There are lessons to be learned, but I will not go too far down that line.

The intention of the clause has been broadly welcomed. The Association of Chief Police Officers advocated a more corporate approach in the document that it published in September. It states that in

''moving from a fragmented legacy (old systems) environment which inhibits significant structural change to a unified national Police information systems environment which meets the needs of Citizens, the Service, operational staff and Government . . . will yield very significant operational and quality of service benefits.''

In a 1998 report on officer safety, HMIC said:

''Of concern is the lack of consultation in some instances between forces and other agencies when determining the most suitable officer safety equipment. There are cases where the in-depth, expert research carried out by the Police Scientific Development Branch (PSDB) appears not to have been given due weight and preference has been afforded to the advice from what could best be described as ''well-meaning overnight experts''.''

We can all take the warnings that have been reasonably raised that neither public nor private sector procurements are without fault. That should not, however, deflect us from the central aim of the measure, which is to bring about an appropriate degree of standardisation where it is necessary to promote the general efficiency and effectiveness of the police forces maintained for England and Wales.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6 - Regulation of procedures and practices

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

It is important to reflect on the fact that the Association of Police Authorities briefed my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire and me on the basis that it has a similar worry to the one that I expressed about the previous clause. The association considers that clause 6 will increase significantly central control over policing. It said that it welcomed recognition of that in another place and the fact that the Government accepted some of the concerns expressed by Lord Dixon-Smith and others, and tabled some amendments.

Reference to operational matters was removed in another place. Regulations can now be made only when they assist forces to collaborate and HMIC has now to certify that the regulations are ''in the national interest''. We welcome those significant changes and obviously the Government are content to accept the logic of what was proposed by many noble Lords. Even taking account of the changes that have been made, however, the Association of Police Authorities

has still expressed some worry. It is important to put that on the record.

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

This is an occasion when the process of parliamentary scrutiny has done the job well. We have made no secret of the fact that the Bill, while delivering the powers that we wanted, also delivered powers that went far wider. I admit that there was a gap between what we said we wanted to do and what the clause would allow. Given the safeguards, the changes that we introduced in the light of that criticism have made it about right.

The examples that we have used are primarily of a cross-border nature, when the adoption of different practices by different police forces undermines the total effort. The national intelligence model is more than an IT system. It deals with how information is gathered and analysed, and how police officers are deployed in an effective and targeted manner. Criminals cross police authority boundaries, and if one force is using the national intelligence model and another is not, the effectiveness of both forces in dealing with serious crime can be weakened. I am enormously encouraged by the progress that is now being made by forces throughout the country in adopting the national intelligence model. Some of the debates—even of a year ago—about whether it was the best way forward seem to be falling behind us.

Towards the end of last year, members of the Police Federation of England and Wales cited a second example. There are cross-border agreements between police forces to help each other in times of civil disturbance. The nature and level of training for public order disturbances can vary from force to force. It is a worry if someone is drafted in suddenly from a neighbouring force to deal with a difficult situation on the ground who is used to different command structures or approaches. I am not sure that the situation is as serious as I may have suggested, but the principle of the clause is that we may wish to deal with the way in which practices are carried out. It is not an open-ended power for the Home Secretary to pick and choose what he wants to do. He must receive advice, and matters are subject to a tough test, but they must be in the national interest, not the interests of individual forces. Given those safeguards and the fact that we have noted the reservations of the police authorities, we have got the clause about right. That is probably the view of the police service as a whole.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 7 - Equivalent provision for NCIS and NCS

John Denham (Labour, Southampton, Itchen)

The clause will bring schedule 1 into effect and ensure that equivalent provision is made for codes of practice for chief officers under clause 2 and directions to police authorities under clause 4 to apply to the National Criminal Intelligence Service, and similarly that provisions under clauses 2, 4 and 5 will

apply to the National Crime Squad. Clauses 5 and 6, which cover regulation of equipment and regulation of procedures and practices, do not apply to NCIS because it is not an operational policing organisation. If the reintroduced clause is successfully accepted, the same will apply.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Further consideration adjourned.—[Mrs. McGuire.]

Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes past Four o'clock till Tuesday 11 June at half-past Four o'clock.