Baroness May of Maidenhead (Con)

My Lords, the bedrock of British policing is the office of constable. That is an office under the Crown. The Government are now going to introduce the licence to practice, given by the Government. At the same time, it appears that the Government are going to reintroduce targets for policing. The experience under the Blair Government was that policing targets distorted police behaviour and meant that, all too often, local policing priorities were ignored. The Government are also going to introduce a huge national bureaucracy in the national police service, and we read of a “hands-on Home Office” and greater powers for the Home Secretary. Given this combination, how will the Government ensure that we will not see national diktats completely overriding local policing requirements and, particularly, that we are not going to see the police subjected to undue influence from the Home Office and the Home Secretary? I remember November 2008, when the parliamentary office of the then Member of Parliament for Ashford was searched by the police without a warrant, reportedly because of influence from Government Ministers. How are the Government going to ensure, in this centralised police service and centralised model, that there is not going to be undue political influence that relates not to the policing interests of the citizens but to the political interests of the Government?