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Policing Protocol Order 2012

My Lords, since the House viewed and debated the draft protocol, we now have in front of us the instrument, which has been subject to further consultations. I am very aware that the decision to put it on a statutory basis was influenced by representations made by Members of your Lordships' House. The consultation that has continued since the Bill became an Act has of course included the Association of Police Authorities, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authority Chief Executives. We can be confident that those who really have a vested interest as well as a professional interest in what is in the protocol have continued to have an input into the document we see before us. Those important relationships, which your Lordships' House has discussed in some detail on more than one occasion, between the chief constable, the PCC, the panel and not forgetting the Home Secretary have been laid out with clarity rather than prescription. I do not think it was ever the intention to prescribe through this document. Those individual responsibilities and their inter-relationship are extremely clear in this statutory instrument. I clearly heard what was said about it not being in legal language. I am sure the Minister will reassure us in terms of any legal challenge. On reading it, I thought it was rather refreshing. Please God that more statutory instruments appear in language that we can read and understand on first reading. I hope that the Home Office will submit this document for the Plain English Award this year. That would be a first for a government department. I commend that suggestion to the Minister. It is very important not just that those who have to enact this understand it but that the wider public, too, can feel that it is something they can see, read and understand. Briefly, because the House does not need me to read out the instrument before us, I recall clearly that one matter of great concern was the operational independence of the chief constable. I believe that the language used here clarifies the responsibility of the chief constable for maintaining the Queen's peace and having direction over the forces, officers and staff while at the same time not going into that prescriptive detail that would quite clearly hamper the activities and freedom of the chief constable to take those operational decisions. That very important point has been well measured and found in the document. I remind the House that police and crime commissioners have a statutory duty and electoral mandate to hold the police to account. All too often it has been the Home Office that has, from on high, sought to do that. This moves the responsibility down to a much more local and operational level. That democratic mandate brings policing so much closer to the people who are being policed while at the same time reminding us through the appropriate section that the Home Secretary still has and may at times need to use reserve powers with regard to policing. The role of the panel, which we have debated in some detail on many occasions and on which the Government made considerable concessions when the Bill was before your Lordships' House, is very important. I am sure that in practice it will come to be seen as a very important role in holding police and crime commissioners to account. I commend this protocol. A good job has been done here. I know that my noble friend the Minister will ensure that where and when necessary, with the appropriate consultation, the protocol will be a living document that will be amended as necessary as the years go by.