Reports and Inquiries Section 10: Reports of Chief Constable
23.This section amends section 59 of the 2000 Act, which deals with the Chief Constable’s general duty to report to the Board. Prior to the amendment, section 59 required the Chief Constable to submit a report whenever required to do so by the Board. However, where the Chief Constable considered that his report would contain information which ought not to be disclosed on any of the four grounds previously listed in section 59(3)(a) to (d) of the 2000 Act, he could refer the requirement to submit a report to the Secretary of State..
24.Subsection (2) amends section 59(3) by deleting the existing list of grounds at section 59(3)(a) to (d). Instead, the amendment provides that the Chief Constable may refer to the Secretary of State a requirement that he submit a report if it seems to him that the required report would contain information which should not be disclosed on any of the grounds listed in the new section 76A(1). The grounds listed at the new section 76A(1) differ from the grounds set out in the previous section 59(3)(a) to (d), and are explained in the notes on section 29 below.
25.Subsections (3) and (4) provide that where a requirement to submit a report is referred to the Secretary of State, he may either exempt the Chief Constable from disclosing particular information to the Board, or require him to disclose it to a special purposes committee of the Board. (Section 28 deals with the establishment of such a committee.)Subsection (4) also amends section 59 of the 2000 Act so as to allow the Chief Constable, if he believes that a report would contain sensitive information but has not referred the requirement to the Secretary of State, to supply that information to a special purposes committee of the Board, rather than to the full Board. Where he does so, the Chief Constable must identify the information in question as sensitive, and advise the Secretary of State that he has passed it to the committee. He must also produce a summary of the information that, subject to its being agreed by the special purposes committee, may be supplied to the full Board. Alternatively, if the Chief Constable chooses to supply sensitive information to the full Board rather than to a special purposes committee, he must inform the Secretary of State of this, and identify the information in question as sensitive. (Sensitive information means information of a kind set out in the new section 59(4C), as inserted by subsection (4).)
26.Subsection (5) makes transitional arrangements. These provide that the new provisions apply to any requirement to submit a report that the Chief Constable refers to the Secretary of State after Royal Assent to the Act. The new provisions also apply to any requirement that the Chief Constable had referred to the Secretary of State before Royal Assent, but in relation to which the Secretary of State had not made a decision by that date..