Policing and Crime Bill fails to deliver on local accountability - Huhne

4.29.00pm GMT Wed 21st Jan 2009

Liberal Democrats accuse Government of ditching localism and driving prostitution underground

Article for Liberal Democrat News - 21/01/09

"A mixture of the pernicious, the vexatious and the supernumerary" was how Chris Huhne summed up the Government's Policing and Crime Bill, which got its second reading in the House of Commons on Monday (19th January).

The Liberal Democrats did not call a division on the bill at this stage, but Chris vowed that the party would do their best to amend the proposals in committee.

He said his biggest disappointment was the fact that the Government had ditched localism, which had featured prominently in their policing green paper. Local accountability, said Chris, would enable a proper debate about priorities, allowing local police forces to use their authority as a genuine sounding board on popular opinion. Accountability to voters would also drive police forces to compare their own working methods with best practice and to improve, said Chris, explaining that this mattered because the variations in police performance are so great. "If the average detection rate were improved so that it came closer to that of the top 10 per cent. of forces in this country, nearly 400,000 more crimes would be detected each year."

Chris speculated that the reason the Government had dropped plans for elected police authorities was because, elected under the first-past-the-post system, such bodies would have been deeply unrepresentative. Research had shown that the Conservatives would have won two thirds of the seats on police authorities outside London with just 38 per cent of the vote. The answer, said Chris, was not to ditch direct elections entirely, but for police authorities to be elected by fair votes.

The Bill also contains proposals for additional powers to tackle anti-social behaviour, particularly that fuelled by alcohol. Chris recognised that this was a real concern to many people, but said that there was abundant evidence that the laws and powers already in place in this area were not being used. For example, no police authority or local council has yet used their powers to designate an alcohol disorder zone.

The most objectionable part of the Bill though, according to Chris, was the part dealing with sexual offences and sex establishments. The Government's proposals would, he said, "drive sex workers underground, into less safety, more isolation and a greater risk of disease". He said the right way to protect vulnerable sex workers would be to regulate the sex industry so that brothels are places of safety.

Evan Harris intervened on the Home Secretary to make a similar point, arguing that driving prostitution underground would make it more difficult to identify women who have been trafficked. He said we should recognise that prostitution in western societies would not be obliterated and that the key thing was harm reduction.

Paul Holmes, also intervening, asked the minister to explain why the Government were following the policies of Finland in this area when no successful prosecution had been made in the two years since the policy was introduced there.

Roger Williams used the debate to warn against reforms to the police grant formula that could cut the budget of the Dyfed-Powys police by more than £8 million.

Read Chris' full speech here