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Mr. Worthington: Which police authorities in England and Wales lost control of their civilian staff to chief constables? Mr. Moss: The Minister confuses clauses 3 and 4. Clause 4 provides for the transfer of civil servants to the Police Authority. They will be under the control of the Chief Constable. I referred to clause 3, which grants the Chief Constable managerial control over civilian employees. Consultation about such a transfer of power took place in England and Wales. Mr. Worthington: The question stands: to which authorities does the hon. Gentleman refer? Mr. Moss: I do not have a list of the 12 authorities, but I am happy to obtain it for the Minister. It is not a secret. Mr. Worthington: No one knows. Mr. Moss: Well-- Helen Jackson (Sheffield, Hillsborough): Would it help if the hon. Gentleman had it? The Chairman: Order. No sedentary interventions, please. Mr. Moss: I am more than happy to ask the Police Authority to divulge the list of 12. If it has said 12, but the list comprises only two, I, for one, will be miffed. I, like the Minister, have to trust the Police Authority. If it says 12 it probably means 12. The main thrust of the argument is that concerns were expressed during consultation. The Police Authority simply asks whether it needs to go down the path outline in the Bill now, and whether the power should be transferred from the Police Authority to the Chief Constable, especially in the light of the numbers involved. We are not considering a small police authority such as those in the rest of Britain, apart from the Metropolitan police and Strathclyde police. The Police Authority is not happy with the proposals. The Minister claimed that it had endorsed the proposals when it had not. It is up to the Minister to respond to that. We may return to the subject on Report. Mr. Peter Robinson (Belfast, East): I wish to respond briefly. I take the hon. Gentleman's remarks very seriously. The Minister should consider whether he has misled the Committee on fundamental issues to such an extent that he wishes to adjourn our proceedings and re-examine his approach to those matters. It is abundantly clear to anyone who reads the initial references to the role of the Police Authority in Hansard that the Minister prayed in aid the view of the Police Authority. He did that explicitly in our proceedings on the morning of 12 February. It was clear that, as was suggested by the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) the Minister had recognised that for such a proposal to work, it was essential to have the support and agreement of the three parties concerned. There should be a tripartite agreement between the Chief Constable, the Secretary of State and the Police Authority. It is now evident that the agreement of the Police Authority has not been obtained, and that has serious reservations about aspects of the Bill. I depart only slightly from the argument of the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire in that I should have thought that a competent Police Authority--of course, the existing one is very unrepresentative--having appointed someone to a working group to be present at discussions and be party to any understandings reached, would have required that person to report to it, following which it would consider the report and present a view based on its findings. I should have thought that it was a responsibility of the Police Authority to provide the Minister with an authoritative view, rather than relying on a representative who, I understand, might not even be a member of the Police Authority, but rather an official employed by it. The Police Authority was remiss in not requiring the relevant officer to report on it, and in not giving evidence to the Minister about its view. Therefore I can to an extent understand how the Minister might, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, form the opinion that he did. However, that was clearly wrong. The Minister offered what he thought were the Police Authority's views in support of his position. To that extent he has inadvertently misled the Committee. He made it clear that he wanted what he was telling the Committee to be taken into account. He clearly considered it likely to be persuasive. As he has inadvertently misled the Committee in this context he may want to reflect on whether he should proceed on the basis on which he has relied so far. Mr. Ingram: I have not inadvertently--and certaintly not deliberately--misled the Committee. The hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) has spoken in support of the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire, who set out the history of the handling of the matter. All that history predates my time as a Minister. I think that the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire was a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office at the relevant period. The fundamental review was carried out under the leadership of the then deputy Chief Constable, who is now the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Ronnie Flanagan. It was agreed from the start that the review would be conducted on a tripartite basis. Government and Police Authority officials were intimately involved in preparing large parts of the final report. Government officials kept Ministers fully informed, as I understand it--although I cannot confirm that, as I was not the Minister at the time. Certainly, they keep me informed in my work. I can only assume that Police Authority officials kept Police Authority members fully informed at the relevant period. If that was not the case, it must be asked what the Police Authority was doing, given that it knew it had an official representing its views in the tripartite structure. Did it inquire what was being said in its name? Views were being expressed by a senior official, who was responsible for reporting back. Members of the Police Authority have a responsibility to question at any time what has or has not been said in their name. The authority appointed a representative to the tripartite body and that person was responsible for carrying such matters forward. The chief executive of the Police Authority and the Chief Constable took part in a video designed to inform RUC officers and the authority's staff about the findings of the review. The video was circulated throughout the police force and the authority. We thus had the views of an official who was acting in the name of the Police Authority, under its full scrutiny. Furthermore, an informative video about the findings and the conclusions of the review was produced for the RUC and the authority. On 10 December 1996, the Chief Constable met the chief executive of the authority and a senior civil servant. They formally agreed to the publication of the fundamental review summary in January 1997. On 8 January 1997, in advance of that publication, the Chief Constable met the full authority and briefed members on the findings of the review for two and a half hours. Members of the authority cannot therefore say that they were unaware of the import and direction of the fundamental review. They may not have attended the meeting, but they certainly had the opportunity to do so. A full explanation was given. The authority's representative played a full part in the fundamental reivew, presumably with the knowledge of the authority. If that official representative was not acting in the name of the Police Authority when he was participating in the reivew, what did the members of the authority think was going on? What did they think was being said in their name? Did they have no interest in the matter? They certainly did not seem unhappy with the conclusions of the review. Mr. Moss: I cannot answer the Minister's question. It is up to him to find out what the Police Authority was doing. We are discussing the fact that the Police Authority is still unhappy with some of the proposals in clause 3. I do not dispute that the Chief Constable briefed the Police Authority--I gave the Minister the date of the meeting in my earlier remarks. What was the purpose of that briefing? Was it for the Chief Constable to tell members of the authority about the progress of the review and for them to consider the report as it stood at that time? Or was it to show them the report that would be submitted, up the line, for endorsement under the tripartite structure? Surely the purpose of the meeting was not only to show members of the authority a report but to tell them that there would now be some progress on the findings. There is no point in having a briefing unless it leads somewhere. If the summary of the reivew's findings was to be taken forward, were members of the authority asked for their opinion? Were they asked to debate the matter internally? Were they asked to give their views to the Chief Constable or to the Secretary of State? Can the Minister answer that? Mr. Ingram: This is getting confusing. The Police Authority was not separate from the review process; it was part of the tripartite structure that produced the conclusions. It was not the Chief Constable's responsibility merely to present the findings of the review to authority. The authority has an input.
5 pmMr. Moss: One officer. Mr. Ingram: That one officer was acting in the name of the Police Authority, had been appointed by the Police Authority and was acting in its name. Therefore, it is fair to assume, he was under the Scrutiny of the Police Authority. The mechanism for reporting back comes from the official and from those who appoint him. They have a responsibility to ask what is being said in their name, what has been decided and where they go from there. That is the process for informing the RUC and members of the Police Authority to which the Chief Constable and the Secretary of State agreed. There was no adverse reaction from the Police Authority, which does not sit in a vacuum; it is part of the tripartite structure. It had the opportunity to object to or endorse the procedure. In one sense, those are discrete bodies, but they come together to form a corporate view of what happens. The Police Authority is a corporate body; it has its own functions and its own way forward. If, as was implied, the Secretary of State or officials acting in her name had told the body, ``We now want you to do this'', there would have been howls of outrage that that was an imposition by the Secretary of State. The Police Authority is independent,. It can come to its own conclusions and express its point of view. I was advised by more than one officer of the Police Authority, and I mentioned the role of the chief executive who took part in an informative video about the findings of the study. I have set out the history and details of the matter. I have not inadvertently, and certainly not deliberately, misled the Committee. I have taken the views from a detailed document submitted to those taking part in the study. I do not have responsibility for publishing the contents; that rests with the Police Authority. It is their document, not mine. It is already in the Police Authority's possession, but the authority has not reacted to it.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 1998 | Prepared 24 February 1998 |
