Metropolitan Police Service

Debate between Baroness Browning and Lord Clinton-Davis

Monday 18th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, who, in the course of the Bill, has given advice and a very clear steer on the need for a pool of senior officers for whom leadership is a key component in their training and development. The Government take police leadership and issues affecting it very seriously. Police leadership is key to ensuring that officers across England and Wales are able to provide a high-quality service to the public. Peter Neyroud set out his views on the future of police leadership and training in his report of 5 April. The Government are currently considering the responses received during the consultation period on the report. We will set out our position in due course, and we will set out our response to the second part of Tom Winsor's report following its publication next year.

I hope the noble Lord is reassured that we are taking on board the need for leadership to be placed at the heart of policing. I have asked, during the passage of the Bill, for volunteers to come forward and advise on the development of a pool of senior officers so that, for example, when there are vacancies, there will be a good choice from as large a pool as possible of people of the right standard, qualifications and leadership skills.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

My Lords, would it not be infinitely preferable for the Government, and particularly the Minister, to consider the events of the past few hours and days with some calm, and therefore to postpone reflection on the Bill until the Government have had a chance to come to a sensible reaction?

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I can only repeat to the noble Lord what I said to others who sought to identify this as a matter that should result in halting legislation on police reform and social responsibility—I believe that around the country police forces and communities are crying out for the sort of reform that the Government are bringing forward. I have not changed my mind since I made that point five minutes ago.

Police (Detention and Bail) Bill

Debate between Baroness Browning and Lord Clinton-Davis

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Browning)]

My Lords, I am sure noble Lords are aware of the circumstances in which this Bill comes to us from the other place. However, I will summarise the position in an effort to assist the House in its unavoidably brief examination of the Bill.

Since the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, known almost universally as PACE, came into force in January 1986, it has placed an upper limit of 96 hours on the period of pre-charge detention for a person arrested on suspicion of having committed a non-terrorist offence, provided that detention past 36 hours is authorised by a magistrates’ court. That period of detention could be interrupted by one or more periods of bail, and detention time would run up to the time limit only when the person was in police detention; the clock would be paused during any period or periods of bail.

That understanding of the limits on detention was shattered last month when the High Court, sitting in Manchester, issued its written judgment in the Hookway case. The court held that, as a matter of statutory construction, the maximum period of 96 hours runs from the time that a person’s detention is first authorised and is not paused by a person’s release on bail. Once the police service had the opportunity to consider that judgment, alongside advice from some of the most eminent members of the Bar, it advised my right honourable friend the Home Secretary that the judgment posed major operational difficulties for it and that the judgment needed to be reversed at the first available opportunity.

Let me make it clear to the House that we had to wait until we had the written judgment, so that we could understand its scope, and had also tested with ACPO whether it could continue to protect the public, including victims and witnesses, within the detention and bail framework as redefined by the ruling. ACPO’s very clear advice on 30 June was that any mitigating action it might take could endure only in the short term. That is why my right honourable friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice made an Oral Statement in the other place that very same day, setting out the issue and promising urgent legislation to give certainty to all those involved in the process of pre-charge detention and bail.

That urgent legislation is of course the Bill before us today.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

My Lords, have there been any discussions with the Bar Council and the Law Society concerning this matter?

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, there have certainly been exchanges of correspondence with the Law Society. I am not sure whether that included the Bar Council, but the Law Society is certainly aware and has exchanged correspondence.

The Bill has only two clauses and a single effect: to return the law to where it was commonly understood to have been for the previous 25 years. I cannot emphasise strongly enough that all we are doing here is restoring the status quo ante. The Government are quite clear that the Bill in no way widens police powers. So that there is no doubt, it may assist the House if I say a little more about Clause 1, which contains the substantive provisions.

Subsection (1) of Clause 1 has the effect of making clear that all time limits and time periods in Part 4 of PACE are to be read as including time actually spent in detention and excluding time spent on bail. Those limits and periods include initial time limits under Section 41 of PACE, superintendents’ extensions under Section 42 and warrants of further detention under Sections 43 and 44.

Subsection (2) of Clause 1 amends Section 34(7) of PACE. That section provides that when a person returns to detention from bail, whether that return is previously arranged or is as a result of being arrested for breaching bail, the person is to be treated as having been arrested for the original offence and the remaining detention period will have deducted from it the time previously spent in detention. The amendment in subsection (2) makes clear that those calculations also exclude the time spent on bail.

Subsection (3) of Clause 1, as part of the Government’s wish to return the law to its previous position, gives the Bill retrospective effect. I realise that that may be a matter of concern to some of your Lordships as a matter of principle—I will come on to that. As your Lordships will have seen from the Explanatory Notes that accompany the Bill, the Government have considered very carefully the issue of retrospective effect. We have come to the firm conclusion that, if the Bill is to fulfil its objective of returning the law to the position that was commonly understood before the judgment of the High Court in Hookway, it must be expressed as always having had effect. That is because, as the many lawyers in your Lordships’ House will be aware, the Hookway judgment also had retrospective effect. If the Bill were not to apply to the past as well as the future, there would be very real questions as to the legality of many past detentions, both before and since the Hookway judgment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Browning]

I certainly do not disagree with the noble Lord on the general principle, and I will take his point back with me.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

What I do not understand from what the noble Baroness has said is whether counsel even asked the Supreme Court for an earlier date. All we have heard is that it would have fallen on deaf ears, but we do not know. Why did counsel not ask for that?

[Baroness Browning]

Counsel did ask for that. The original date was in October or November. Counsel went back and asked for an earlier date, and that was why it was brought forward to July.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

If the Supreme Court had understood that Parliament would not be sitting at that particular time, should they not have been made aware that Parliament was going to rise on 20 July?

[Baroness Browning]

I do know whether or not the Supreme Court, in bringing forward the date to July, was made aware of the date on which Parliament was sitting. The Home Office was clearly actively involved in these things, but of course the GMP was approaching the court, not the Home Office. I cannot specifically answer the particular point raised by the noble Lord, but I will endeavour to find out for him.

I can only reiterate the point that I made in my opening remarks. I know that this is a matter for the Constitution Committee, but we really do not believe that we are undermining the constitutional separation of powers by asking Parliament to legislate to reverse the effect of a High Court decision in advance of the issue having been decided by the Supreme Court. As has already been pointed out, had we waited we would have been in recess when that determination was made. The House will not return until September. We have already heard about the urgency of the need to take action in this matter, particularly from the noble Lords, Lord Condon and Lord Dear; nor has the point been lost on us in our discussions with ACPO that these are really serious matters.

The daily problem of the management of bail and offenders and the impact on victims of crime have rightly been pointed out by the opposition Front Bench, particularly in certain circumstances; the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, raised the question of domestic violence and people going back into the same area where they have previously committed a crime. These are very serious operational matters for the police to have to contend with.

Picking up on points raised around the House, I hope this is something we shall deal with when we have the consultation on bail and bail conditions. The police are between a rock and a hard place at the moment in trying to manage this. They are doing incredibly well, but as has been pointed out they can manage this only in the short term. If we were to ask them to manage it throughout July and August and well into September, before this House could come back to this issue, some of the cases that would come to the attention of your Lordships, and through the legal profession, would give cause for concern, not because of the police deliberately doing things that perhaps are outwith their powers but because of the very difficult position that they are in in having to manage these matters even now.

It remains to be seen whether Greater Manchester Police proceed with their appeal once this Bill is enacted—although I understand that it is their current intention to do so—and if so, what view the Supreme Court will take. The Constitution Committee may well want to consider this legislation in the light of that judgment, whatever it may be, and may well return to this later in the year. We will of course study that and carefully consider any report on the broader issue.

Members have touched on the matter of a sunset clause, although I noted that this has not been pressed particularly hard, and I am grateful for noble Lords’ understanding of it. Given that the Bill does no more than restore the law on the calculation of the detention clock to the position that it was commonly understood to be in 25 years prior to the Hookway judgment, we see no case for a sunset clause in this instance. Indeed, this is one of those instances in which a sunset clause could well have an adverse effect, in that it would perpetuate the very uncertainty about the proper interpretation of part 4 of PACE, which we are seeking to address in passing this Bill.

Finally, let me respond to the point raised by my noble friend Lord Thomas, and touched on by other noble Lords, on the wider issues involving bail and the consultation that we are going to put in place. No hard evidence has been received, but sufficient concern has been expressed from so many quarters that we need to get this right. Examination cannot be rushed; there needs to be an ordinary process, including consultation with the police, the CPS, and legal practitioners. Noble Lords have indicated that there is an understanding in the House that we could not include that in the Bill before the House today. I welcome support from all sides of the House for the Bill.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Baroness Browning and Lord Clinton-Davis

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I would not dream of presuming what the noble Baroness’s husband has made of all this. That would be a step too far for a mere Minister. My noble friend referred to the uniqueness of police forces across the country. That is the essence of this matter. Each police force is unique in its nature. Nobody is suggesting that what works in London will be exactly replicated in the Devon and Cornwall forces, or any other force. That is why piloting such a scheme would not give us a representative picture of what one sees in forces across the country. It would be interesting perhaps, but I genuinely believe that it would not take us any further forward, and it would cause delay.

There are practical problems associated with pilots, such as how they would be chosen, who would decide that matter and who would be denied democratic policing while they were carried out. Also during the piloting scheme the two different forms of police governance would be running alongside each other, which would cause uncertainty. The noble Lords, Lord Condon and Lord Dear, with their vast experience in this area, referred to the uncertainty that this would create not least among chief constables. We are looking to the chief constables to show the leadership that is needed in working with the police and crime commissioners on these reforms to introduce the change that will allow the public to believe that the duo at the heart of these reforms will make a difference to the way that they see the police and can engage with them and with policing matters in their area.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

Is the noble Baroness arguing that there are no common factors, or that there are some? Is it not reasonable that where there are some, the alteration that is envisaged should take place?

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, of course, there are common factors across all police forces, although each force is unique. However, notwithstanding those, I believe that spending time on pilots would cause uncertainty, as I have said. Costs and delay would arise in sorting out this publicly recognised issue—that the public want to engage with policing in their area and to be represented by somebody who is democratically accountable directly to them. That very important matter is at the heart of these changes.

Noble Lords have continued to ask about checks and balances. I cannot commit to changing the text of the Bill in order to satisfy the demands with regard to pilots. However, I am genuinely open to discussing checks and balances across the piece. I say to my noble friend Lord Bradshaw that although I have attended meetings, I have not yet held meetings to discuss checks and balances, as I promised the House on the previous Committee day. A letter will be sent out today to those noble Lords who have expressed an interest in the protocol, inviting them to meet immediately after the Recess so that I can hear their views. Other meetings will be offered as the Bill goes through your Lordships’ House. I hope to hold them before the Bill leaves this House. Given those assurances, I hope that the noble Baroness will not press the amendment.