On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I know that you wanted to get through questions as quickly as possible, and indeed the second half have all been completed. May I, for the record, point out that there is another point of view in addition to that given by the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) at Question 22? There was no opportunity for that point of view to be expressed, but it should be said that many of us are deeply concerned at the demolition of properties in the occupied territories.

The hon. Gentleman is a sufficiently experienced Member of the House to know that he must not continue the debate under the guise of a point of order. I was quite aware of the importance of the matter, but equally, the balance of questions between the two hon. Gentlemen answering was such that I wanted to try to ensure that the Member representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission was reached, so that those questions could be put.

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. One week ago today, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) raised a point of order about the visit by three Liberal Democrat MPs to his constituency without prior notice. You ruled that it is customary that when hon. Members visit another's constituency for political reasons, they notify that Member in advance. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) visited my constituency, Hove and Portslade, last month and attended St. Patrick's night shelter, which currently has funding difficulties. I have been in correspondence with all the parties concerned with the shelter. It is a sensitive local issue, which I consider highly unsuitable to become a political football in an uninspiring leadership campaign. Will you raise awareness of the rule among hon. Members? After last Thursday's result, the hon. Gentleman might find it opportune to spend more time in his own constituency, rather than in mine.

I can only say to the hon. Lady what Mr. Speaker has said on many occasions and what I said most recently: it is a general courtesy between Members that when they visit another constituency for political purposes, prior notification should be given. We are all on an equal basis in the House and we should all respect each other's rights in relation to our constituencies. That is on the record again. Hopefully, hon. Members read Hansard.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The central objective of the Bill is to help build safer communities, and the Bill seeks to do that in two ways—first, by taking forward our agenda for delivering real, sustained and lasting reforms to the police service in various ways, and secondly, by helping to create a modern culture of respect based on the needs, rights and responsibilities of the law-abiding majority, by implementing key measures in the respect action plan launched by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in January.

Working with the police service and its community safety partners, we have made significant strides in reducing crime in the past nine years in government, and I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the police service and its partners, which can be justifiably proud of their record of achievement. However, more needs to be done. Crime and antisocial behaviour are still too high, and public expectations around quality of service are quite properly rising and need to be properly met by all public services, including the police. Further reform of the police is necessary, and the Bill includes measures for reconfiguring the police service to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The primary task of the police service is, and will remain, to prevent, deter, detect and reduce crime and antisocial behaviour. To achieve that end, we must first embed neighbourhood policing, which is central to every part of the proposal, in every community with improved police responsiveness and customer focus. Secondly, we must further modernise the police work force so that it is fully equipped to meet those challenges, which involve building an effective policing team between the police service and those who work with it. Thirdly, we must ensure greater involvement by communities in determining how they are policed.

The Bill will contribute to these goals by ensuring that we have the right structures in place to deliver sustained improvements in performance, that the accountability framework for police forces and their community safety partners is robust and responds to the voice of the citizen and that the police and community support officers have the powers that they need to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour effectively.

The Bill will impact on each of the five tiers of policing—neighbourhood policing, the borough, which is the basic command unit level, the strategic force, the national policing institutions and internationally—and drive forward our modernisation proposals.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that one of the central points of the proposal is a partnership between local communities and the police? In particular, we must ensure that young people have a good relationship with the police, which means providing them with good local facilities. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety visited Leicester on Friday, when she saw such facilities, which are key to building a strong and positive relationship between young people and the police.

As my hon. Friend has said, that partnership is central to the proposal. When we fight crime, it is not simply a matter for the police—it is a matter for the police working with every agency concerned. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety has told me about her visit and how impressed she was by what is happening. Better youth facilities are a key factor.

I note that my right hon. Friend has made tremendous progress in certain areas in the fight against crime. However, will he clarify the situation in the west midlands, where we are getting mixed signals about the transitional costs of amalgamation? Are West Midlands police and the other police forces wholly behind the change?

The Bill does not specifically concern the force amalgamations in the west midlands to which my hon. Friend referred. West Midlands police, Staffordshire police and Warwickshire police are strongly in favour of the change, and West Mercia police is not, which is why I gave notice last week that I intend to lay an order in four months' time to bring about that change following the proper statutory period of consultation.

One reason why West Mercia police is not in favour of the proposal to amalgamate into a larger force is that market towns such as Shifnal, Newport and Wellington in my constituency will experience less neighbourhood policing rather than more neighbourhood policing. The chief of police will be in Birmingham rather than in the next-door county, which is the current situation.

That perception is utterly wrong. When a major issue such as a tragic murder arises in a small police force area such as that of West Mercia police, the only way to deal with the matter effectively is to move people from the neighbourhood level. The development of strategic policing is central to the proposal.

The development of neighbourhood-level policing is at the centre of every change made in the Bill and in the reorganisation of police forces that was mentioned in the previous two interventions. What really matters to people is how crime and disorder are tackled in their own neighbourhoods. Issues as basic as abandoned cars, discarded syringes, truanting children drinking in local open spaces, graffiti and antisocial behaviour are absolutely central and put at the top of the agenda the method of policing that is at the core of the Bill.

rose—

I will not give way for the moment.

This means instilling a modern culture of respect at the neighbourhood level. The respect action plan set out a package of practical measures, which the Bill takes forward, to address the issue head on.

rose—

I will give way in a moment, as is my practice, but I shall make some more progress before doing so.

The Bill establishes a standard set of powers for police community support officers. We believe that their introduction has been a success and that taking that forward with a standard set of powers will enhance and develop that. Since their inception in the Police Reform Act 2002, community support officers have undertaken a variety of uniformed patrol tasks. Their high visibility has had a positive impact on reassurance in public places. They are accessible to communities and are key deliverers of neighbourhood policing. It is a unique role, distinct from that of a police officer. I am pleased that there is now recognition on both sides of the House of the true value of CSOs. But if CSOs are to play a full part in neighbourhood policing teams, they need appropriate powers to deal with the day-to-day problems that they encounter on the street without necessarily having recourse to a police officer. Standardisation will also end the confusion felt by the public about what powers CSOs have in their local area.

CSOs' local knowledge of young people makes them well placed to play a valuable role in dealing with truancy. The Bill therefore provides chief officers with the option of designating that power to their CSOs.

rose—

When I come to the end of the phase of my speech to do with neighbourhood policing, I will give way to Members who have comments or questions on that.

On parenting orders and contracts, we believe that effective parenting is one of the key drivers in preventing children from offending and engaging in antisocial behaviour. It is vital that the police and other crime reduction partners are supported at the local neighbourhood level by parents in creating a strong society based on mutual respect. In tackling poor parenting and providing proper support for families where it is needed, we must be aware that that is the best course of action, and we are investing substantial resources in that. In the very small number of cases where parents are not willing to engage, the Bill widens the range of agencies that can enter into parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders to secure the engagement of parents. Parenting orders are already highly successful where they are used by local authorities to combat truancy, and by youth offending teams. Youth offending teams successfully applied for 1,273 orders in the last financial year alone. The breach rate is low, and most parents subject to an order grow to value the support that they receive. Indeed, many wish that they had received such support earlier and make an articulate statement of that.

Finally in this section of my speech, I turn to conditional cautions. To tackle low-level crime and antisocial behaviour effectively, we need tools that bring rapid relief to communities and send a clear signal that such behaviour is unacceptable. Conditional cautions can be used for adult offenders who admit their guilt and are willing to comply with the conditions specified in the caution. They have already been operating successfully in six areas, starting in December 2004, and we anticipate implementing them across the country in the next 18 months. They can provide an appropriate response to low-level offending without a potentially lengthy court process and free up court time to deal with more complex cases.

The conditions that can be attached to a conditional caution are currently limited to direct rehabilitation or reparation. While those conditions have given good results, experience has shown that widening their scope would mean that conditional cautions could be used in more cases. The Bill will enable conditional cautions to involve the offender paying a fine or undertaking up to 20 hours of unpaid work—for example, making reparation to the community by clearing up litter from a park. In that way, offenders will be giving something back to the community, and more quickly and directly than if they had gone to court.

I will now pause for a moment to give way to one or two Members who wanted to ask questions.

Does the Home Secretary agree that neighbourhood policing is not just about community support officers and that local police stations also play an important part? West Yorkshire police recently proposed to close Bingley and Shipley police stations' public helpdesks to save money. Will the Home Secretary take action to safeguard local police stations that command widespread public support?

Local policing is central to neighbourhood policing and other matters. One of the exciting things that is happening in many parts of the country—I believe that that includes West Yorkshire—is the opening of police facilities in a wide range of areas such as schools, shopping centres and so on. Chief constables must examine the overall policing presence in their community, including the existing stations, and determine the best way in which to make an impact on their local communities. Much of the police estate was built decades—sometimes even centuries—ago, and reconfiguring it to fit modern policing need is a key responsibility of the police in West Yorkshire or anywhere else. That is what they have to do, and they will do precisely that.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the remoteness of community safety partnerships is one of the weaknesses of the current system? In my constituency, excellent work is being done with neighbourhood policing but individual constituents approach me rather than their community safety partnership, about whose existence they know nothing, when a problem arises. What will the Bill do to solve the problem and make community safety partnerships more accountable?

I shall deal specifically with that shortly because the coterminosity of the basic command unit and the local district council is critical. I accept my hon. Friend's implicit criticism—the performance of community safety partnerships has been patchy throughout the country. I could take him to some where genuinely outstanding work has been done in exactly the way that he would like, and to others where there has been a more desultory state of affairs. A key element of the Bill is strengthening the partnerships so that he and all hon. Members can have confidence that their local crime and disorder reduction partnership between the police and the local authorities works.

I welcome the initiative to put local policing at the centre of Government policy. Unfortunately, the reforms are having the opposite effect in Wellingborough because the senior police officer there will be moved next month to a neighbouring constituency, Kettering. I do not understand how that helps local policing.

I cannot speak about the specific case that the hon. Gentleman mentions. However, we propose the reorganisation of police authorities to reduce the pressures that can lead to moving a particular, respected local police officer to another locality. The purpose of the Bill is to make matters work in the opposite direction.

I understand the points that the Home Secretary makes about standardising powers for police community support officers. However, in Warwickshire, PCSOs are permitted to travel only by public transport, which significantly limits their effectiveness. Will he be cautious about extending their powers without extending the necessary training and equipment? He will understand that my constituents welcome PCSOs as an addition, but not as a replacement for full police officers.

The hon. Gentleman puts the matter correctly—PCSOs are an addition, not a replacement. The PCSOs have been brought into the service under the command of the police as an addition to police officers. Of course, they need the appropriate training to deal with their responsibilities.

Any extension of powers for PCSOs will inevitably begin to impinge on police officers' training. The House of Commons needs to understand clearly what powers my right hon. Friend intends to give PCSOs, how they are different from ordinary police constables, and how we can be assured that they will not impinge on the duties of those who are properly trained.

It is for that reason that the memorandum and guidance notes for the Bill set out in great detail precisely which powers will be held by PCSOs and which will not on the standardised basis. It is fair to say that many in the police, including some police officers, as well as some hon. Members, were sceptical about the merits of introducing PCSOs in 2002. However, it is also fair to say that that scepticism is now a great deal less. That is not to say that no issues remain to be resolved and I am sure that my hon. Friend will continue to raise them with her customary wit and humour, and I shall attempt to respond. However, I believe that PCSOs have made a major contribution and will continue to do so. We want to take that forward.

If the Home Secretary is going to stop short of giving the power of arrest to PCSOs, will he consider giving them the power to disperse? As the law stands, unless a specific area is designated as a dispersal zone, PCSOs have a great deal of difficulty supporting full-time police officers in dispersing a large crowd of unruly youths.

That is a fair point that some PCSOs have raised with me directly from their personal experience. That is why we have set out a detailed schedule that will be debated in Committee. However, given the hon. Gentleman's contribution, I hope that he will acknowledge that setting things out in a clear way that runs across the country is the right thing to do. The House will decide how best to deal with the issue when we consider it in Committee.

rose—

I shall give way twice more before I make progress.

I am delighted to hear my right hon. Friend say that the basic command unit and the local authority will remain in close partnership and that they will have a clear relationship with one another. But what about local residents? Am I reading the Bill correctly? Is it stating that if a persistent problem of antisocial behaviour continues to be unresolved by the police, the local authorities or the other partners, the residents will have the right to call those groups to account?

The House will not be surprised to learn that my hon. Friend, as usual, has got it completely spot on and correct. I shall make further comments on the detail of how that will operate in my speech, but it is very important that every community feels that it can successfully deliver the action that is needed to clear up their community. The Bill will help to strengthen that.

I thank the Home Secretary for his courtesy in giving way again. He has already stressed in his speech the importance of maintaining the support of communities, but is he aware that, with regard to his proposed changes to police forces, all the methods that have been used so far to test public opinion in my county of Essex—telephone or internet polls organised by local newspapers and phone-ins to Essex radio stations—have shown overwhelming support for the retention of an Essex police force in its own right and very strong opposition to proposed mergers? If he really believes in keeping the support of communities, will he take that into account before any changes are announced in the east of England counties? Will he give us an assurance that the Essex force will be allowed to stand alone?

We have already addressed this issue across the Floor of the House, and it is not a matter that is directly part of the Bill. As I said to the hon. Gentleman both across the Floor and privately, I will give him the guarantee that when we have proposals to make, we will make them and he can then comment on them.

I thank the Home Secretary for giving way again. I wanted to raise the issue of giving registered social landlords the ability to opt for parenting orders. Youth offending teams are very experienced in that regard and my concern is that registered social landlords might not be. What sort of training does he have in mind?

There will certainly be clear guidance but, to be quite candid, I am sure that the hon. Lady will acknowledge that there are real issues for the major registered social landlords. We need to try to ensure that we can deal with those issues as well. That is why we have provided the power that is set out in the Bill, but she is right to say that we require proper guidance on how that power is used. We will set that out as we go through.

I now turn to the second level of policing—at the basic command unit and borough level. As I said in response to interventions, partnerships between BCUs and crime and disorder reduction partnerships are absolutely essential, and I think we can do more. The key partnership operates at that level, but it cannot operate effectively if it works across administrative boundaries. Police forces across the country have made excellent progress already in bringing BCU and local authority boundaries into line, so that there are now only three forces that have certain BCUs that are not aligned with local authority boundaries. However, that could be changed, which is why the Bill seeks to place BCUs on a statutory footing and requires their boundaries to be aligned with those of local authorities. It also makes it a matter for chief constables to consult with key partners before altering BCU boundaries.

We have established the whole process for crime and disorder reduction partnerships. Again, as I said in answer to interventions—I will not repeat it all now—we believe that amending the structure of partnerships to reflect the changed environment since 1998, reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, enabling better flows of information, implementing national standards to ensure the best working practices and improving the accountability arrangements for partnerships are, based on what we have learned since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the key means to improving the quality of the CDRPs. The purpose of the standards, among other things, will be to raise the profile of CDRPs with local authorities so that local communities can see that they are responding to their concerns and priorities.

We believe, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) suggested in her intervention, that it will be necessary to ensure that the BCU commander and other senior representatives hold regular public sessions to help the public to hold them to account, and that local people themselves should be able to get action on community safety issues that are of concern to them. That is the reason for the community call for action that is provided for in clause 15. It will give people a way in which to trigger action on the community safety issues that are of particular concern to them. Ward councillors will be given greater powers to take up problems on behalf of their communities. I would expect that, where neighbourhood policing is working effectively, there will be little need to have recourse to the community call for action, but it is important that the mechanism to empower action exists as a backstop.

The third level of policing is the strategic police force. As the House knows, and as we have already discussed to some extent, we have already embarked on a process of restructuring to ensure that forces can effectively meet the challenges of the 21st century. Many of the provisions in the Bill are designed to ensure that the new strategic forces successfully reconfigure to deliver protective services to national standards and the public's expectations of responsive neighbourhood policing.

We want to continue to strengthen the role of police authorities, first by ensuring that their members have the skills and experience necessary to undertake this challenging role—that is not always the case—and secondly by conferring on authorities an express duty to hold the chief officer to account. We will also add further functions, such as a duty to promote diversity, by secondary legislation.

Intervention is sometimes necessary to improve performance. Therefore, in addition to measures to ensure that strategic forces are effectively held to account, the Bill also modifies the reserve powers of the Home Secretary of the day to intervene in an underperforming force or police authority. I should stress, however, that I am not taking new powers; in the case of police authorities, these powers have existed since 1994, and since 2002 in the case of police forces. The Bill simply ensures that the existing intervention powers are fit for purpose. The changes made by the Bill draw on our experience over the past three years in embedding a performance culture and helping underperforming forces to turn around their performance. The Bill widens the sources of information that the Home Secretary can consider in deciding whether to exercise his powers, and ensures that that mechanism can be operated effectively.

Also relevant to the whole of the justice system is the creation of the new justice, community safety and custody inspectorate, which is provided for in part 4 of the Bill. This new single inspectorate for the justice sector will replace the five existing inspectorates covering the police, probation, prisons, court administration and the Crown Prosecution Service. The inspectorate will create a modern, unified, strongly led and forward-looking inspection regime. It will support front-line staff by minimising unnecessary duplication of inspection and the additional work that that entails. Perhaps most importantly, by taking a holistic view of the justice system, the new inspectorate will provide an enhanced capacity to challenge whether the police, courts, CPS and National Offender Management Service are giving the public the best possible service.

The Bill also provides the police with new powers to help forces to improve their provision of protective services, which was the driver behind the recommendations of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. We will enable the police to request passenger and crew information about journeys within the UK, to mirror provisions that we have made in respect of international journeys in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill that is being considered in the other place. This power will greatly enhance the ability of the police to investigate serious organised crime and even terrorism.

I appreciate that the proposal probably looks quite logical on paper, but does my right hon. Friend think it wise to abolish Her Majesty's inspectorate of prisons? Under its existing management, it is extremely well regarded. At a time when our prisons are fuller than they have ever been and when there is a need for constant external pressure to ensure that we obtain value for money, is it wise to dilute those powers and subsume this effective organisation into one that is larger and blander?

First, there is no question of diluting the powers. That would be a mistake, and I agree with the implication of my hon. Friend's suggestion in that regard. Secondly, I certainly do not believe that the new inspectorate will be blander than the existing one. The interrelationship between prisons, probation, prosecution, police and others is an important one. I know that, from my hon. Friend's experience as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, among other things, he understands how the discontinuities in the Home Office agencies have often given rise to problems. One purpose of the unified inspection regime is to deal with that.

My hon. Friend's point is serious and it reflects concerns raised by Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons. I pay particular tribute to Anne Owers and her team for the work they have done in making clear and creative statements about how detention takes place, and indeed to her predecessors, but I believe that the joint inspectorate will be capable of dealing effectively with precisely those concerns. I give the commitment, as I have to others, that if this matter wants to be debated further in Committee, it can be. I do not think that the fears my hon. Friend expresses are well founded, although I respect his experience in relation to what he says.

With regard to the new powers to give directions to police forces and authorities, does the Home Secretary accept that there is something new here, because the requirement for a negative inspection report is to be removed? Does he not accept that, without that necessary buffer between him and police forces and authorities, he is, in effect, taking responsibility for the whole of policing in England and Wales—both its successes and its failures?

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we are widening the sources that might provoke an intervention. That is because, for the sake of argument, something such as the Bichard review of the tragedies at Soham and what happened thereafter is not a "negative inspection report", but a serious examination, which it would be quite appropriate for the Home Secretary of the day to take into account. That is why it is right to widen the basis of impulses that cause the Home Secretary of the day, at whatever time, to be able to look at what is happening. It is widening, as the hon. Gentleman says, but for good reason.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the advent of the Metropolitan Police Authority has done a great deal for relations between police and the public in London? While successive Home Secretaries and commissioners, as well as the advent of neighbourhood policing, have had a lot to do with that, establishing a police authority with a democratic basis has turned policing in London from something imposed from outside into a service that is not only of and for Londoners, but, increasingly, provided by Londoners.

I agree very much with my hon. Friend. That is one aspect of the Government's record in relation to policing of which we can be most proud. This is not historic: the Metropolitan police will establish the neighbourhood policing teams in London up to more than a year ahead of the national target precisely because of the encouragement of the Metropolitan Police Authority, as well as the personal commitment of the commissioner and his senior leadership. That relationship of positive encouragement towards protective policing is an example of accountability of the kind that the Bill is intended to strengthen.

Does my right hon. Friend accept that the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) is bound to cause some concern? The Home Secretary has praised the current chief inspector of prisons, but her predecessors, like her, trod on a number of sensitive toes and did excellent work over many years. There is a fear that the new post, despite what my right hon. Friend has just said, might dilute the excellent work being undertaken. I hope he will bear that point in mind.

First, it has been drawn to my attention by my Front-Bench colleagues that I did not pay appropriate tribute to the Mayor of London for his contribution to the improvement in policing in London, so I shall fill that gap by dutifully so doing.

On the matter raised by my hon. Friend, the key point for me is the independence of the inspectorate, which must be spiky, particularly when considering the conditions of detention and the circumstances that can arise there. That is a fundamental issue, even compared with performance management more generally.

I know my hon. Friend heard me pay tribute to the current chief inspector of prisons, but I also paid tribute to her predecessors in the role, and I do so again now. I have met them and discussed some of those issues with them as well. It is critical that that integrity of inspection of prisons, and indeed places of detention generally, is maintained, and I believe that our arrangements will do that.

I know the concern that my hon. Friend is expressing—I understand it—and as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), the former Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, it is an appropriate matter to take further in Committee as we take it forward centrally.

Perhaps I shall end comment on this point by saying that it would be a great shame not to acknowledge the very tight interrelationship, particularly on our agenda to reduce reoffending, between what goes on in prison, what goes on in probation and what goes on in the rest of the criminal justice system, including the courts.

We have missed the opportunity of trying to achieve coherence for decades, and may have missed it for ever. That includes important subjects such as information technology and data on various people. A single inspectorate may help us to achieve that coherence, but I take my hon. Friend's point about the independence and prickliness—if that is the right word—of an inspector.

It is important to consider the role of all the national organisations. We have already legislated to establish the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which from this April will take the lead in tackling national and international drug-smuggling and people-trafficking, but there is a complex web of national support agencies. We have the Police Information Technology Organisation, the National Centre for Policing Excellence, Centrex, the Police Standards Unit, the Association of Chief Police Officers, Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and the Home Office—a range of forces providing an array of services from the development of good practice to procurement, training and operational support.

There is wide agreement, especially among the police, that the present configuration of overlapping support agencies is an obstacle to the promotion of improvement in the service, and that it needs to be simplified and clarified. That is what the Bill sets out to do. Following proposals from ACPO, it will establish the national policing improvement agency. The agency will drive improvement in policing. It will create a rationalised and more dynamic national landscape, and will give the police service capacity to deliver on the critical priorities set out in the national community safety plan, including the roll-out of neighbourhood policing.

The existing organisations Centrex and PITO will be abolished, and some of their functions will be transferred to the NPIA. A number of the Home Office's policy development and operational support activities will also be transferred to the new agency, along with some of ACPO's policy functions. Its work will not, however, focus on the provision of day-to-day services, important though that may be. It will focus on the longer term, by helping to embed a culture of self-improvement in terms of performance, and of identifying and responding to the opportunities and challenges that the service will face over five or 10 years.

We must recognise that in an increasingly interdependent world, work with international partners to tackle terrorism and serious organised crime will be increasingly important. We have therefore included a number of measures to strengthen policing at international level. Computer misuse—the continued threat posed by computer hacking and denial-of-service attacks—is one of the growing new threats that can be tackled only through extensive international co-operation. To that end, the Bill takes up a private Member's Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris) to amend the Computer Misuse Act 1990. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his initiative.

The Bill provides a suitable opportunity for review of the Extradition Act 2003. As many Members will recall, the Act carried a complete overhaul of extradition law, some of which dated back to the 19th century. It also implemented the European arrest warrant. Following such a major reform of complex law, minor lacunae and operating difficulties have emerged in the first year of operation. The amendments in the Bill are intended to clarify and correct, and are essentially technical.

One aspect of part 5 has my entire support. As the Home Secretary knows, there has been close co-operation between some Conservative Members and some members of his team in dealing with sexual offences against children. In particular, there was co-operation during the passage of the Bill that became the Sexual Offices Act 2003. Subsequently, there has been discussion with at least one of the Home Secretary's Ministers and other members of his team on further measures that are necessary. One is contained in part 5, but there are also the issues of encryption and access to information on risk-assessed paedophiles. Would the Home Secretary be agreeable if the chief of the Metropolitan police paedophile unit, an academic known to his team, and I had further discussions with the appropriate Under-Secretary of State to see whether we can use this unique opportunity to deal with one or two outstanding issues?

I am very agreeable to that proposal. I pay tribute to the way in which the hon. Gentleman and others have worked with the Government. As he says, in this international world a number of changes are needed to establish a legal framework in which international co-operation can deal with criminals who, increasingly, work internationally. We should be happy to co-operate.

Does the Home Secretary agree that amendments on extradition would offer a good opportunity to clear up the grotesque anomaly whereby citizens of the United Kingdom accused of crimes against British interests in the UK can be extradited to America on the say-so of the American authorities, without any corresponding right in this country to demand that Americans should come here, without producing due cause? Is not it time that that anomaly was cleared up?

As is characteristic of the hon. Gentleman, his description of the state of affairs is wrong; it frequently is, I regret to say. However, the Bill offers opportunities to debate all those matters.

As a package, the Bill makes a vital contribution to policing and justice from the neighbourhood level all the way up to international level. I commend the Bill to the House.

I apologise to the House for the absence of the shadow Home Secretary, who is detained in the north today.

This is a curious Bill. It contains a number of disparate measures, some of which are perfectly sensible. All of us will support the principle of new powers to tackle child pornography and increased sentences for computer hacking. Other provisions such as the extension of summary justice will need closer examination in Committee, but this Bill maintains an unfortunate trend of increasing Government direction of the police.

The Bill aims to prepare police authorities for the Government's proposed regional police forces. It does not itself propose police amalgamations. The Government are already proceeding with those using secondary legislation under the Police Act 1996, but the manner in which the Home Secretary is using the powers should make the House extremely cautious about conferring on him the Bill's proposed new powers to alter the role and shape of police authorities without proper parliamentary scrutiny.

When police force amalgamations were last considered in the 1960s, a royal commission was established and it took two years to report. Legislation was introduced a year later. It was recognised that the structure of police forces is a fundamental issue on which the public, forces themselves and their authorities need to be properly consulted.

The way in which the Government are proceeding could not be more different, but it is entirely in character. The Home Secretary's proposals to amalgamate forces were announced last September not to the House but in a letter to police authorities. He gave them just four months to respond. He attempted, in the words of the Labour chairman of the Association of Police Authorities, to "bully and bribe" authorities to agree to his proposals and to meet the deadline—a tactic that backfired spectacularly when not one authority submitted. The Government did all they could to avoid parliamentary debate on the proposals, only finally agreeing to a debate before Christmas on a motion for the Adjournment when we and a number of hon. Members protested to Mr. Speaker.

Last month, the Home Secretary again gave police authorities an ultimatum, this time to submit proposals for voluntary mergers within just three weeks. Again, almost all the authorities concerned refused. Cleveland said no, Cheshire said no, Merseyside said no, Dyfed-Powys said no, Gwent said no, North Wales said no, South Wales said no, Warwickshire said no, West Mercia said no, West Midlands said no. Even Staffordshire, whose chief constable is leading—

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Second Reading debate seems to be going considerably wider than the printed Bill that we have in front of us. Is the speech of the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) related to the thrust of the Bill?

The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) is about three minutes into his speech. Second Reading debates are customarily fairly broad. I am listening carefully to what he says and I trust that it will not be long before he more directly relates his remarks to the content of the Bill. However, he is allowed to give some background to his concerns.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I thought that I would try to help. The fact is that the Bill deals with local neighbourhood policing, and many of us on the Conservative Benches are concerned that strategic police authorities will detract from local neighbourhood policing. Therefore, it is completely in order that my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) is making the points that he is making.

I am always grateful for help from hon. Members. All I ask as guardian of the Standing Orders is that speeches be related to the measure that is before the House.

Even Staffordshire, whose chief constable is leading the Home Secretary's amalgamation "hit squad", said no. Every regional opinion poll conducted on this issue has said no. Yet just one week later, the Home Secretary announced that he would proceed with compulsory amalgamations, regardless. The report of Her Majesty's inspector of constabulary, Denis O'Connor, on which the Government are relying, said:

"The constitutional implications . . . are significant."

Yet this crucial decision was announced by way of a written statement, slipped into the Library of the House at 2.24 pm last Friday, just before the House rose.

Now, we are being asked to agree that similar order-making powers be given to the Home Secretary through this Bill, to allow him to alter police authorities' structure and functions. It is hardly surprising that the Association of Police Authorities has expressed alarm at the provisions. Its chairman, Bob Jones, said:

"The Home Secretary is now proposing to give himself power to change the role and membership of local authorities . . . and the bodies which represent them. Only Parliament, not the Home Secretary, should be able to do this".

The Home Secretary claims that he has rejected the idea of a national police force, but the Government's reorganisations are moving us steadily toward this model. Twelve police chiefs, rather than 43, will effectively answer to the Home Secretary, not their local communities. As Professor Tom Williamson observed in Jane's Police Review,

"Legislation has concentrated power in the Home Secretary, who sets the National Policing Plan and specifies outcomes. In this new public management paradigm, chief constables have an executive function only which is to deliver the plan . . . Following force amalgamations, a few chief constables, reporting to a senior Home Office official in regional Government offices, will be even more centrally influenced and controlled."

The new national policing improvement agency, introduced by clause 1, will not answer to police forces or to authorities; indeed, the Government have flatly rejected a proposal from police authorities that they should even part-fund the agency. The paymaster will call the tune and the paymaster is the Home Secretary. According to the Home Office, the agency will

"assist police forces to deliver . . . national . . . priorities"

and

"support national implementation of the Home Secretary's key priorities for the police, as set out in the annual National Community Safety Plan".

In other words, the agency will effectively be the Home Secretary's enforcement arm, used to get the policing that he wants. There is already a police standards unit in the Home Office—a development that the 2004 White Paper admitted

"represents a departure in terms of how the centre does business with the police service".

How will the national policing improvement agency work with the police standards unit? How will both work with the new inspectorate for justice, community safety and custody?

Police forces are besieged with agencies seeking to direct them. Such central direction has hardly been a success story in public services. The Government have introduced the Education and Inspections Bill to give schools more autonomy, and they introduced foundation hospitals for the same reason; yet, ironically, less autonomy for chief constables and instead, ever-closer direction by Ministers and their officials, is now the backbone of their approach to policing. Only a fig leaf of local accountability is to be maintained.

The Government claim that proposals in the Bill to align basic command unit and crime and disorder reduction partnership boundaries will strengthen local accountability, but the number of BCUs has reduced from around 400 when the Government came to power to 225 today. The Government are pressing CDRPs, which are currently based on district council areas, to merge. A Home Office report, slipped out in January, gave the game away. It stated that the Home Office

"will be working closely with ODPM as well as with regional and local partners to ensure that we do not end up with merged CDRP boundaries which are out of step with the likely future structure of local government."

What "likely future structure" of councils is this, exactly? Has Parliament been informed? Of course it has not. So far the Government's plans have been announced, in the usual manner, by leaks to the press.

The Government cannot credibly claim that police accountability will be achieved through local government scrutiny when the partnerships are being altered to make them more remote from the people. In West Sussex, for instance, the aim is to reduce the number of crime and disorder reduction partnerships from seven to just one. The real decisions will be taken not in the partnerships but in Whitehall and by chief officers in regional headquarters hundreds of miles from local communities. Inevitably, they will be less answerable to local people.

The Government's proposals for local police accountability are a mess. What happened to the Home Secretary's suggestion, repeated as recently as January, for local

"policing boards . . . to hold the BCU commander to account"?

If the much-vaunted "community call to action" in clause 15 gives residents a direct means of drawing issues to the attention of the police, where does that leave police authorities? What happens if the police simply ignore the community's view?

The Government do not appear to understand the difference between accountability and public relations. The Home Secretary enthusiastically tells us that the public will shortly have the email addresses or telephone numbers of their local police officers. Good. But what matters is that the public actually get the response they want. Bournemouth police recently informed local shopkeepers that they were unable and unwilling to respond to the shoplifting of goods to less than the value of £75. Having the email address of local police officers in Bournemouth will plainly be of little use to small shop owners there.

The Government claim that they remain faithful to the traditional tripartite arrangement under which the Home Secretary, police authorities and chief constables have balanced powers. The Home Office website claims that

"this three-way system prevents political interference in policing and avoids giving any single organisation power over the entire police service."

The previous Home Secretary put an end to that. He insisted on firing a chief constable against the will of the local police authority. He even threatened to take direct control of policing in London if the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner failed to comply with his demands.

This Bill will confer significant new powers on the Home Secretary to interfere with police forces and authorities. Clause 2 will give him wide powers to prescribe the membership of police authorities, and new powers to intervene in police forces. It will scrap the statutory duty on police authorities to determine local policing objectives, replacing it with additional powers for the Home Secretary. It will put basic command units on a statutory footing—an apparently unnecessary provision, but one that the Association of Police Authorities believes may be the precursor to more direct Home Office control. The association has warned:

"These provisions represent a fundamental constitutional change, and a significant shift in the balance of power within the tripartite relationship".

It is time to restore the balance and introduce proper local accountability to policing. First, where there are major reorganisations of a local force, there should be formal mechanisms to consult the public, including referendums where appropriate—something that the Government are signally failing to do.

Does my hon. Friend agree that, after a local referendum, the Government should be compelled to abide by the result? Should that happen at 51 per cent., or should there be a higher threshold?

Of course the Government should take notice of local referendums, but they did not do that in relation to the referendum on the elected regional assembly for the north-east. In spite of the overwhelming no vote by local people, the Government have continued with their objective of regional government by stealth. The creation of regional police forces is partly a step in that direction.

Secondly, instead of police chiefs being made to answer to the Home Secretary, they should be made formally accountable to local communities, via mayors, elected police commissioners or sheriffs, or directly elected police authorities. Indeed, the Government proposed directly elected police authorities in 2003, describing them as

"a 'pure' form of local democracy—creating a direct, transparent link between communities and the police board."

What happened to that proposal? The operational independence of the police should be defined and protected. Local politicians should under no circumstances be permitted to direct the arrest of an individual or the initiation of a prosecution. However, they should be empowered to set strategic objectives for the police and to ensure that the objectives are met. Regardless of whether police forces are accountable locally or nationally, independent and transparent inspection of their performance will still be important.

I shall not respond to the general inaccuracies, but does the hon. Gentleman mean that he intends to give responsibility for the police in London to the Mayor of London?

The Home Secretary may know that we are consulting on a range of options to achieve local accountability of the police. The situation in London is more difficult because the commissioner has national and local policing functions. His accountability is already very confused and the fact that he is accountable to a number of bodies is problematic. We shall consider carefully how that should be resolved, but we will not resile from the principle, which the Home Secretary and the Government have not accepted, that police forces should be locally accountable. There is a fundamental difference between us. Whereas there are many things about which we agree in relation to neighbourhood policing, his view is that it is acceptable for the police increasingly to be directed by the Government, which is the essence of the Bill. Our view is that police forces should be locally accountable.

Concern has been expressed by a number of interested parties that a combined justice, community safety and custody inspectorate, as set out in part 4, will lose the expertise and focus present in existing inspectorates. We will want closely to examine this issue in Committee. Against that concern, which we should take seriously, is the fact that the cost of public inspection doubled from £250 million in 1997 to more than £550 million in 2002–03. There may also be significant advantages in creating a broader and more powerful inspectorate that is not so close to a particular department and can maintain its independence from Government more easily. I suspect that I am not alone in fearing that Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary was too easily deployed by the Government to support their desire to merge police forces.

When the Bill was published, the Home Office's news release proclaimed that it would

"instill a culture of respect in society",

There is not a single measure in the Bill that begins to live up to that grandiose claim. The more high blown the rhetoric in the Government's respect agenda, the more certain we can be of its vacuity. Page 20 of the respect action plan is entitled "Everyone is Part of Everyone Else". I feel sure that the whole House would be intrigued to know what that means and how it will assist the fight against crime.

Journalists are being briefed that the Bill is a "flagship measure", a crucial part of the Government's respect agenda. In fact, only a few of the proposals in the respect agenda have found their way into the Bill. Clauses 16 and 17 expand the use of parenting orders. Since only 31 such orders were made in the five years between June 2000 and 2005, reducing their use was not really an option. Yesterday, we read of an exciting new scheme under which Government "super nannies" are to descend, like Mary Poppins, on chaotic families. With the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety as the Minister for respect and nanny-in-chief in charge, this scheme is, according to The Sunday Times, the latest phase of the Government's respect agenda. Cynics who suspect that this is another worthless gimmick to be dropped or forgotten in a few weeks' time are missing the point. The story made the front page of a newspaper, so it has done its job.

The respect agenda is entirely remedial. It embodies the Government's view that problems can be solved only by centrally directed executive action. The Prime Minister once spoke about tackling the causes of crime. Today his focus is on enhancing police powers. A number of the Bill's proposals rely on the extension of police summary power and summary justice.

Clause 12 allows conditional cautions to include punitive conditions. Schedule 4 will allow arresting officers to set bail conditions. However, those proposals raise a number of serious issues. First, under the new bail conditions, the police alone will be able to make significant restrictions on someone's liberty, such as by tagging and with curfews, before they have even decided that there is enough evidence to bring a criminal prosecution. The power to impose punitive conditions in cautions will effectively allow the police to act as investigator, prosecutor and judge.

The Magistrates Association has said that is "extremely concerned" that the courts are simply being shut out of the process, but that appears to be just the beginning of a fundamental shake-up of the criminal justice system. According to an obviously well-informed commentator,

"Ministers are drawing up plans to bypass the courts in the handling of hundreds of thousands more low-level crimes. Defendants who plead guilty to most offences with non-custodial sentences would, under their proposals, be sentenced by prosecutors, in consultation with the police. According to one document circulating in Whitehall, about half of the two million cases heard by magistrates every year could be processed without the costly and time-consuming business of a trial."

The Prime Minister has persuaded himself that we have reached a watershed, where the "rules of the game"—by which he means the quaint idea that convictions require a trial first—need changing to deal with not just terrorism, but antisocial behaviour. The judiciary may take a different view.

The second concern is that the Prime Minister says that summary justice will be tough and hard, but it may, in fact, mean soft justice. The maximum penalty for a conditional caution will be £500—an attractive alternative to a stiffer fine or even a custodial sentence for offenders committing actual bodily harm, affray, criminal damage, possession of class A drugs or carrying knives. Summary justice will increasingly mean two-tier justice, with a "get out of jail with your credit card" option for those who can afford to pay the fine or the fixed penalty notice for antisocial behaviour.

The third concern is that we need to debate whether all police officers should be empowered to exercise summary justice. There might be a case for restricting certain powers, such as the setting of bail conditions, to more senior constables, who have the experience and judgment to exercise them with discretion. Alternatively, we should consider whether such powers should be exercised at least with the scrutiny of a more senior officer. Those important issues need to be debated more thoroughly and examined closely in Committee.

When the Bill was published, the Home Secretary said that it

"would help to free up police time to deal with more serious crime".

In fact, there is just one measure in the Bill that might free up police time—the provision in clause 10 to allow chief officers to accredit trading standards inspectors to issue penalty notices. If the Government were serious about freeing up police time, the Bill would tackle the bureaucracy that prevents police officers from doing their job. It would end the requirement on police officers to record every stop that they make, filling in a foot-long form that takes seven minutes to complete. It would address the fact that it takes three and a half hours for an officer to process an arrest and that only 17 per cent. of a police officer's time is spent on patrol. It would give chief constables greater discretion over the employment of support staff, thus releasing warranted officers for front-line duties. It would introduce a modern and flexible pay and employment regime. It would replace incessant top-down demands for reporting, which sap so much time and morale across our public services, with simplified performance measurement. It would free up the police to fight crime, rather than to file. But the Bill does none of those things.

The closest that the Bill gets to police modernisation is in clause 4, which would allow standardisation of the powers of community support officers. The balance of the exact powers involved will need discussion in Committee. We favour giving chief constables as much discretion as possible in that respect, as in many others, but those provisions are being introduced before we have had a proper debate about the effectiveness of CSOs. I strongly support their deployment, but the Home Office's own evaluation, published earlier this year, found

"no evidence that CSOs were having a measurable impact on the level of . . . crime or . . . antisocial behaviour".

The Government's boast that they will recruit 25,000 CSOs by 2008 must be matched by both the funding to ensure that CSOs remain employed, because funding for them is tapered, and a more rigorous assessment of how to deploy them effectively.

The fight against terrorism will remain at the top of the police agenda, so we welcome the power in clause 8 to extend police search powers in airports. For the same reason, we will be open-minded about the power in clause 9 to gather bulk passenger information for ship and aircraft journeys in the UK. We will want to be persuaded that that is necessary and that it will contain adequate safeguards.

The Bill's technical amendments to the Extradition Act 2003 appear to be acceptable, although we will subject them to detailed scrutiny. We will seek to raise the issue of the UK-US extradition treaty that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) raised in an intervention on the Home Secretary. It has not been ratified by Congress and its one-sided operation is a serious cause for concern. The treaty was sold as being necessary to deal with terrorism and serious crime, but is being used to require the extradition of offenders who have a minimal connection with the US. We will propose amendments to restrict extradition to the US under the Extradition Act to terrorism cases until such time as full reciprocity is granted by the US, and will place safeguards to ensure that, in future, extradition will not happen if the alleged crime could be tried here, under domestic jurisdictions, and there is no clear causal link with the US.

In his Dimbleby lecture last year, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner called for a national debate on policing, and said:

"It is time to decide what kind of police service we want."

This is the right time to have such a debate. Important issues are at stake: the independence of police forces; how they should be accountable; and how they should be organised both to accommodate the demand for neighbourhood policing and to meet the renewed threat of domestic terrorism. The Bill is not much of an answer to those questions. It reflects the Government's preoccupation with the incessant reorganisation of, and intervention in, public services, but it shies away from the tougher, but essential, work force modernisation agenda that would truly enhance police performance. It places new summary powers in the hands of the police, but it also weakens their local accountability—an uncomfortable mix, particularly when public trust in the service has reached a record low.

There are measures in the Bill that are of value, so we will not seek to divide the House. However, we will seek to improve the Bill to check the powers of the Home Secretary and to enhance the local accountability of police forces. We will want to scrutinise carefully the new summary powers to be granted to officers. We all want to see police forces that provide value for money, instil public confidence and are effective in the fight against crime. We will work constructively to achieve those aims.

I welcome much of the Bill. I just want to make a few remarks that I hope are helpful about some of the issues that are raised by different elements of the Bill and some of the fundamental questions that lie behind it.

There is a fundamental dilemma for any Government who try to introduce legislation that is designed to improve police performance. That dilemma stems from the nature of the police service itself. Police officers exercise unique powers, so they need to have a unique constitutional position. We cannot consider police officers simply as we consider employees of other public services. That is equally true of the courts. To maintain public credibility, the people who take decisions in our courts also have to have their unique position recognised by Governments and legislation. That is where the dilemma comes in for Governments who try to improve police performance. If police officers, or judges and magistrates, are simply left to themselves, and their autonomy so completely respected that no one tries to set the framework in which they work, past experience is that the result is like that in other public services, namely, that services become slow and not sufficiently efficient or self-critical when it comes to performance.

The challenge for the Government is to create legislation that puts sufficient of the right drivers for improved performance into the police service—and, indeed, the Courts Service—without overstepping the mark and beginning to take the decisions that it is fundamental to ensure taken by professional members of the service itself.

Over the past few years, the Government have done a good job on improving police performance. When the Home Affairs Committee took evidence on police reform last year, we were told by all sides that the performance culture of the police service had been transformed at every level. Police authorities, police forces, basic command units and neighbourhood teams were much more focused on how well they were tackling crime and the fear of crime than they were five years previously, which is one of the most significant achievements to date of the Government's reform process.

My right hon. Friend mentions neighbourhood teams. Does he agree that one way of cementing and developing neighbourhood accountability would be to establish a more formal relationship between basic command units—or, perhaps, neighbourhood units—and neighbourhood watch associations? I went to the launch of the county neighbourhood watch association in Leicestershire and Rutland last Thursday and was immensely impressed by the work that is done. Leicestershire constabulary is good at the process, but there is no obligation on police authorities to have such relationships. Would those relationships not represent a way ahead?

Such relationships are valuable, but for reasons that I shall set out I am not sure about the extent to which central Government should specify what is appropriate for each area. We must get such judgments right.

There has been a significant change to the performance culture of the police over the past few years. The creation of the police standards unit, the publication of better performance data, the fact that most crime information is available to front-line police officers in real time and the greater public awareness of police performance have contributed to that. However, there is uncertainty about the way in which we want to drive performance in the next phase of police reform. The Bill contains several valuable measures that will work in the right direction and other aspects that might not be wrong, but need to be treated with caution so that when trying to get the best possible performance the Government do not overstep the mark of their powers.

I want comment on five aspects of the Bill. On intervention powers, the Bill revisits territory that was well discussed when we considered the Police Reform Act 2002. The Government are trying, as I did initially in those days, to broaden the Home Secretary's powers of intervention on forces. I am inclined to think that hard cases make bad law. The Home Secretary referred to the Soham case and the Humberside police service in his speech and talked about the desire to be able to act in response to information that does not come from the inspectorate itself. However, as the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) said in an intervention, if the Home Secretary takes powers to intervene in a wide range of circumstances without any independent inspection of the police service, he takes for himself responsibility for the performance of not only every police force, but every part of every police force. The Government need to be careful about getting into such circumstances.

I understand that when the Soham investigation was going on, there was frustration that legislation that the House had passed in the previous few years did not seem sufficiently adequate to give the Home Secretary clear powers to intervene. However, that is not quite the same as saying that whenever something happens, the question from the media and public to the Home Secretary of the day should be, "Why don't you intervene now? You've got wide-ranging powers, so why don't you do something about it?" There is a danger that Ministers will be under intense pressure to intervene when they and anyone who is close to the police service know that it would be better for politicians to stay one removed. I hope that the Committee will consider carefully whether the Bill puts the dividing line in exactly the right place.

There is a powerful case for having a unified inspectorate that runs right across the criminal justice system. Many of the flaws in the system arise because of discontinuities, gaps and poor liaison among the courts, the probation service, prisons, the police and so on. I hope that in Committee careful consideration will be given to how the inspectorate will maintain a harsh light on the performance of individual parts of the system, and not only on the joins between the system.

In dealing with the police service, it is not uncommon to hear police officers say, "The problem is not really us; it is the way that we relate to the courts, or the way that we relate to the probation service or the prisons." There is often much truth in that. Sometimes, it is the case that the police and their performance are at fault. At present, Ministers have at hand a considerable degree of high-level professional expertise in Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. I think that in future Ministers will want to be sure that they have an equally high level of professional expertise at their disposal in examining the police service itself as well as being involved in the entire operation of the criminal justice system.

I endorse earlier interventions about the Prison Service. There is a particular responsibility on the independent inspectorate to be able to visit prisons. That is to turn up unannounced to examine the conditions in which we are holding people in custody and to have a focus on how the system operates as a whole. It must not divert from that essential role. I hope that the way in which that role will be delivered will be considered carefully in Committee.

I shall refer briefly to the proposed national police improvement agency. It is something that makes a great deal of sense in that there are disparate organisations and a great deal of police force time is wasted in dealing with them. However, there is a difference between embedding professional expertise at every level of the police service and ensuring that the police service nationally can respond to current priorities. There is a role nationally for the police service to work together, as it has done over the past year on alcohol, or as it did a few years ago on dealing with street crime. Certain issues arise where getting everyone to work together makes a great deal of sense.

Also important is having the latest and best investigative skills when dealing with murder, tackling fraud or investigating internet crime. Those skills must be learned and promulgated throughout the police service efficiently and effectively. One of the problems is that best practice is often developed in an isolated way and is not spread as quickly as it should be throughout the service. Accordingly, one of the aims of the National Centre for Policing Excellence was to be able to develop a high level of policing skills and to spread them quickly.

In moving towards a national police improvement agency, it is important that those areas of professional improvement and expertise continue to be developed and that they are not lost by an organisation that is more focused either on volume crime or on the immediate policing priority of the day, whether that be gun crime, knife crime, burglary or whatever. I hope that consideration will be given in Committee to how the agency will be able to balance those different pressures so that we arrive at the highest possible quality of policing.

As for the accountability of the police, I think that the Government have got it right in placing an emphasis on future police authorities and on those unitary council members who have responsibility for community safety measures, and also for exercising the ability to trigger community action through the local authority scrutiny committees.

A few years ago, I was quite depressed when I thought that we would have a plethora of different structures, all floating around the area that we are discussing. In most instances of antisocial behaviour it is not only a policing matter. These instances will involve youth service intervention and environmental services, for example. To focus the ability to get a response through the local authority scrutiny structures seems to me to be the right approach. I say to the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who leads for the Opposition, that I think that his party is going down the wrong track—this is a non-partisan point—in looking for separate elected bodies. There is a debate about how much local accountability to elected people we want in the police service. However, a proliferation of elected bodies rather than concentrating on local councils seems to be the wrong way to go. As I have said, I think that the Government have got it right.

I conclude on the question of additional police powers, particularly conditional cautioning and the extension of the ability to impose parenting orders to a wide range of bodies, including social housing providers. What are broadly described as summary justice measures, particularly fixed penalty notices for drunken behaviour and so on, have achieved a great deal of success. The more that we use complicated and sophisticated sentencing and orders, the more cautious we must be to ensure that the people involved have the necessary expertise to operate effectively. If we start to tell front-line police officers that they will have responsibility for designing a sentence that includes rehabilitation, punishment and restorative justice in an effort to reduce reoffending in one go, the more pressure we will put on individuals who are not trained or expected to know how to do that job. The more that we expect people without the necessary expertise in family issues to make parenting orders the more we should ask how they will obtain that expertise.

I am not against conditional cautioning or the extension of the use of parenting orders, but careful scrutiny of the way in which those powers will be exercised is required. I hope that in their consideration of conditional cautioning, Committee members will look at whether there should be a clear difference of responsibility between the arresting or investigating officer and the person who puts the condition on the order. It should not be too difficult to conceive of ways in which proper sentencing expertise is brought to bear on the conditional caution without the arresting officer necessarily being responsible for doing so. That would achieve the gain of not embarking on a substantial court procedure for a low-level minor crime, while creating confidence that there would be consistency of sentencing across the country for similar types of offence and ensuring that the sentences that are passed—that is effectively what the measures are—are appropriate to the offender and to the offence.

This is rather a sneaky Bill and, potentially, a pernicious one. If not substantially amended in Committee, it will reduce the freedom of the individual, increase the power of the state, remove the autonomy and capability of bodies on whom we rely to hold the police to account, allow direct Government intervention in police business without any objective basis on which to do so, increase the surveillance society, extend summary justice, possibly damage community relations and run the risk of increasing human rights abuses in prisons. Even the seemingly welcome development of involving the local community in policing has the potential to create dangers and difficulties, so there is much to be done in Committee.

To begin on a more amenable note, however, we support a number of the Bill's provisions. The incorporation of the Central Police Training and Development Authority and the Police Information Technology Organisation into a national policing improvement agency is a logical and sensible step forward. It almost goes without saying that we support the Government in their attempt to tackle better the problems caused by computer hacking. Given their penchant for creating surveillance databases, whether on national identity or on DNA, the security of those databases is paramount. Whatever the dangers they pose to civil liberties, they must be secure. Of course we support the Bill's proposal to tackle the illegal possession of indecent photographs of children and, indeed, the harmonisation and the extension of powers for community support officers.

The proposal that the Independent Police Complaints Commission should take on the role of ensuring that complaints and misconduct in the immigration and asylum system are properly investigated is another welcome measure. Only last week, I visited the IPCC, which will now investigate complaints against immigration and nationality personnel and exercise specified enforcement functions. That new area of expertise is a perfect translation of its function to investigate police complaints. Such work is extremely sensitive and the proposal will not only create a better system but, equally vitally, it will improve public opinion of the system.

Before I move on to the meat of Liberal Democrat concerns about the Bill, I shall touch on the section on extradition. I shall not go into detail as most of the proposals are technical. However, it is not lost on us that the Government's track record on matters connected with extradition is hardly exemplary, given that they have so singularly and spectacularly failed to deal with the unfair, unequal and embarrassing nature of our extradition arrangements with the United States. We give the US what they want—all they have to do is demonstrate to us that the person in question is the person they want—whereas when we want someone, we have show evidence against that person.

This is an extraordinarily important point, and one that we argued vigorously at the time of the introduction of the provisions. Does my hon. Friend share my astonishment at the Prime Minister's response last week, when questioned on this subject? He suggested that the only purpose of the unequal and unfair extradition arrangements with the United States was to deal with terrorism, but we know perfectly well that they are being used to deal with fraud offences, which are in no way related to terrorism. Does she not find that offensive?

Indeed; my hon. Friend is right. The previous Home Secretary signed the treaty in Washington. We put it into force by statute, but the US did sweet nothing so there is no law to be executed on their side. We undertake our unfair and unequal treatment voluntarily. That sums up our current relationship with America—we jump, even when we do not have to.

I shall cover some of our primary concerns about the proposals in the Bill. We have serious misgivings about the Government once again seeming to believe that crime can be tackled directly from the Home Office and giving powers to the Home Secretary to dictate the form and function of police authorities. The Government clearly want to match their new super-size police forces with police authorities newly reduced in size, but the proposals will reduce local accountability and take away independence and autonomy. The Bill allows for a reduction in numbers on authorities, theoretically down to one member. Tempting though that might seem to the Home Secretary, I do not believe that it is the purpose of the proposal.

Under the present system, the appointment of local authority members to such a body should reflect the political balance on the appointing authority or authorities, so the idea that each principal authority should have one seat on the new police authority and that that person should be the lead member on community safety will inevitably mean that the composition will reflect the majority party on the local authority. Applied around the country, that will not lead to political balance of any sort. Political proportionality, which has long been a tradition on those authorities, will disappear unless it occurs accidentally.

The other aspect of authority membership that concerns me is the removal of the magistrate members. They are a specified component of such an authority, and they will still be able to apply as independents. However, in the five years that I served on the Metropolitan Police Authority, I observed that the knowledge and experience that the magistrate members brought from the criminal justice system was invaluable in holding the police force to account. At a time when we are aiming for joined-up working and joined-up technology so that cases can be chased through from the police to the criminal justice system, the proposal seems a serious and unnecessary change for the worse. There will have to be an extraordinary justification or rationale for dispensing with such a valuable component of what is meant to be an independent authority holding the police to account for local people. Perhaps that is the problem—the magistrates are a bit too clever and might frustrate the Home Secretary's direct intervention in future.

The Home Secretary will be able to decide which issues a police authority looks into. That involves constraining the function of police authorities, which he will be able to control literally at will. If he believes that all or part of a police force is failing or may fail, he may direct the chief officer and/or the police authority to undertake specific measures to remedy or prevent such a failure, which will take place on his own cognisance. As has been said, in broadening the trigger that decides when he can direct police authorities, there is a risk that the power will be overused and misused. I would therefore welcome further explanation from the Minister on objectives, plans and reports for police authorities and on the Home Secretary's new role in relation to issuing such directives.

Once again, it seems that the Government are trying to diminish local accountability by allowing Whitehall to dictate, intervene and direct. The shift of control to the Home Secretary without the need for a negative report automatically means that there will be less accountability. Although the Minister may say that such interventional powers will be used only as a last resort, we do not have a definition of what the Home Secretary means by "failing" and "last resort". The power is a carte blanche for interference, and we need the Minister to clarify the terms "failing" and "last resort".

At first sight, the mini-safeguard on public engagement appears to be an innovative and welcome step, because it gives the local authority scrutiny committee a role in examining how persons and bodies responsible for tackling crime and disorder carry out their functions. As a Liberal Democrat, localism and community involvement play into our fundamental philosophy of power to the people, but we must build in safeguards both for the community and for the police. A scrutiny committee sounds great in theory because local people know what is best for the local area, but there are concerns about whether the provision could be misused.

The hon. Lady has discussed the Liberal Democrat commitment to localism and local people. Will she explain how it squares with the Liberal Democrats' traditional support for regional government, given that when that concept was put to the vote in the north-east it was destroyed by a margin of 78 per cent. to 22 per cent.?

I am happy to explain our policy outside this debate, which is about the Government's proposals.

Is that it?

Yes, that is it.

Could the proposal allow one persistent, complaining constituent to divert resources on unreasonable complaints? I am a local councillor—I am sure that other Members are or have been local councillors—and it is not unknown for those who should the loudest for our attention to hijack resources, time and issues on a repeated and regular basis. Those who need police action and who cannot get a police response will not necessarily trigger that function or use that power.

On the extension of powers on antisocial behaviour, youth offending teams will be able to issue parenting orders if they believe not only that a child is engaging in antisocial behaviour, but that a child may engage in such behaviour, which continues a worrying trend of legislation involving the prediction of bad behaviour. Although the Government's intention is obviously to help all parents to ensure that their children do not engage in bad behaviour in the future, and to help those parents who are not currently coping—which is a measure that I heartily support—the proposal may stigmatise children who have done no wrong.

When I intervened on the Home Secretary, I mentioned that youth offending teams have some experience on which to base such a judgment about a child or parent, but the Bill extends the right to make parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders to registered social landlords. Those issues are difficult for communities and my concern is that the decision should be made by those with the right expertise, which I am not convinced that the RSLs have got.