HANSARD
West Midlands Combined Authority (Transfer of Police and Crime Commissioner Functions) Order 2024
- Motion to Approve
- 7:45 pm
- That the draft Order laid before the House on 7 February be approved.Special attention drawn to the instrument by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, 15th Report, 17th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.
- My Lords, if approved by both Houses, this order will transfer police and crime commissioner—PCC—functions from the West Midlands PCC to the Mayor of the West Midlands. The first mayor to exercise PCC functions in the West Midlands would do so following the next mayoral election, which is scheduled for Thursday 2 May 2024. This maintains the direct democratic accountability for policing and crime in the West Midlands, as the mayor will be elected by the people of the West Midlands on the basis that they are to exercise the functions of the PCC for that area.The incumbent PCC for the West Midlands will continue to exercise the functions until the end of his elected term of office. The person elected as mayor, from the point of taking office on Tuesday 7 May following the mayoral election, will act as the single, directly elected individual responsible for holding the chief constable and police force to account. The mayor will be accountable to the people of the West Midlands for this responsibility. Their functions would include issuing a police and crime plan; setting the police budget, including the PCC council tax precept requirements; appointing and, if necessary, suspending or dismissing the chief constable; addressing complaints about policing services; providing and commissioning services for victims and vulnerable people; and working in partnership to ensure that the local criminal justice system is efficient and effective.Part 1 of the Government’s review into the role of PCCs cemented government’s view that bringing public safety functions together under the leadership of a combined authority mayor has the potential to offer wider levers and a more joined-up approach to preventing crime. The Government’s levelling up White Paper, published on 2 February 2022, sets out our aspiration to have combined authority mayors take on the PCC role where feasible. By working in partnership across a range of agencies at local and national level, mayors can ensure that there is a more holistic, unified approach to public safety.
- While the Minister is on the consultation, could he conclude it by telling us the number of consultees and the responses that they gave, and can he give us some numerical attachment to that so that we get some idea of how the consultation went?
- I can and will do so shortly.Incorporating the PCC functions into the role of the Mayor of the West Midlands preserves the democratic accountability that underpins the PCC model and at the same time reduces the risk of competing democratic mandates within the West Midlands Combined Authority area, providing greater clarity for the electorate on who is responsible for public service functions in their area.The exercise of PCC functions by the Mayor of the West Midlands is a significant step to realising our ambition for more combined authority mayors to take on PCC functions, as is already the case in Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire. It will mean that people in the West Midlands will be served by a mayor who will have a range of functions and levers comparable to those of the mayors of Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and London, and they will be able to hold their mayor to account for this enhanced range of responsibilities.The Government have also laid a similar order which, if approved by both Houses, would see PCC functions exercised by the Mayor of South Yorkshire, following the rescheduled mayoral election in May.I turn briefly to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bach. The noble Lord states that the transfer of functions is taking place without the consent of the other relevant local authorities. When PCC functions are transferred to be exercised by an existing combined authority mayor, Section 107F of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 requires the consent of that mayor to enable the making of the order. The Mayor of the West Midlands provided his formal consent to the Home Secretary on 7 February. The consent of any other local leader is not required by statute. This reflects the fact that it is the mayor themselves and not the combined authority or the leaders of the constituent authorities who will exercise the PCC functions, as it is a central tenet of the PCC model that only the individual elected to exercise the PCC functions may do so, whether that individual is a PCC or a mayor.
- Moved by
- At end to insert “but this House regrets that the draft Order entails the transfer of power being completed without the consent of other relevant local authorities; and notes that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee concluded that the public consultation required by law was not commenced before an initial decision was made.”
- My Lords, in short, my amendment is based on two separate but interlocked criticisms of the Government and their conduct. First, I argue that the Government, in their desire to see the current Mayor of the West Midlands add the role of police and crime commissioner to his already extensive portfolio, have deliberately subverted the principle that they themselves put into earlier legislation: that there should be real democratic support before such a fundamental change. In other words, proper consent for such a course was considered essential before such a transfer of power could take place. That has not happened here, as a deliberate part of the Government’s strategy.Secondly—and here the Home Office is the main culprit—the timing of and background to this statutory instrument have been rightly criticised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. In an extremely critical report, the committee points out what can only be described as incompetence by the department. The headline of a release put out by the committee to accompany its 15th report put it like this: “Elections potentially undermined by poor process, says Lords Committee”. The release said that:“The Committee expressed concern that both Orders have been laid before Parliament close to the intended date of the next election (2 May 2024), less than the minimum six months in advance that is regarded as good practice”.These two points combined will, I hope, persuade the House to say that this behaviour all round should be deprecated.I will give a little more detail. In exactly 50 days, on 2 May, there will definitely be an election for the Mayor of the West Midlands. The present incumbent is a Conservative. On the same day, and with the same electorate, covering exactly the same area of Britain, there may be an election for the stand-alone role of the police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands. The present police and crime commissioner, elected some years ago, is Labour.
- 8:00 pm
- Forget the general, region-wide consent that was part of the devolution deal when the West Midlands came under the auspices of a mayor; part of that deal was that there should be broad democratic support. Now all that is required is the consent of the mayor—yes, really, the only person who has to consent is the person who wants the job. That is not consent in any real sense; it is the precise opposite—it is Newspeak language. It is not that broad democratic support that the Government once believed in—it is very nice work if you can get it. Many politicians, of the sort that we soundly and gravely criticise in this House, day in and day out, from other countries, would stand up and applaud this achievement; it is what happens in countries where democracy counts for little: it should not be happening here.
- As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard— I am very glad to see him in his place—said on 23 October, when I do not think he was fair on himself:
- “I know very little about the politics and governance practices of the West Midlands, but when I lived in America I was privileged to watch at close hand the governance practices of the Deep South and of Mayor Willie Brown’s San Francisco and Mayor Daley’s Chicago. As I listened in both the previous debate and this afternoon to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, explaining what looks to me like a rather unusual practice developing in the West Midlands, I was strongly reminded of the practices of state governments in the Deep South of the United States. I do not think that is a road we should go down”.—[Official Report, 23/10/23; cols. 416-17.]
- Why has it taken so long to bring this statutory instrument before Parliament? After all, as the Government Minister said during ping-pong on 23 October:
- “Commencement at Royal Assent enables the Government to adhere as closely as they can to the Gould principle of electoral management, whereby any changes to elections should aim to be made with at least six months’ notice”.—[Official Report, 23/10/23; col. 418.]
- This section of the new Act came into being immediately on Royal Assent, and the Home Secretary agreed to the mayor’s proposals and publicly said that the statutory instrument would be provided very soon. However, that statutory instrument never emerged: why? Simply because the Government failed to read its own Act of Parliament, which received Royal Assent less than six weeks after it had been passed. They had not noticed that there was a section that made it clear there needed to be a consultation before Section 62 could be implemented. Thus, the Home Secretary’s decision was invalid and had to be scrapped.
- That was an extraordinary mistake, particularly for a statutory instrument that was already tight up against the date of the election. Only this morning, our scrutiny committee in this House published an additional short report, following an exchange of letters with Home Office officials and Ministers, and it repeated its description of what had taken place as “extraordinary”. Consultation was rustled up at short notice to last between 20 December and 31 of January—just think of those dates. It started almost as our Christmas holiday began and went right through the New Year break, so it was not surprising—here I disagree with the Minister—that the response was hardly heavy. To add insult to injury, as has been found out this evening, the result was against this change, although of course I do not make too much of that point.
- Predictably, the Home Secretary gave permission again for the transfer of power. This statutory instrument followed, and the Government are up against this very tight timetable that is entirely of their own making. Those who have read the scrutiny committee’s report will know there were other issues that concerned it, but the most concerning is that the Act of Parliament was not properly read by the Government, and thus this situation arises.
- I agree and argue that the House should regret this statutory instrument on two grounds. I believe the throwing out of democratic norms in order to give your mate a job that he wants is the most grievous ground for the regret amendment. We should regret this statutory instrument both for the liberties it is taking with our democratic arrangements and for the mismanagement that means no one in the West Midlands knows, just 50 days before the election, how many elections there will be and who the candidates are. The House should surely say, “This is just not good enough”. I beg to move.