Rape: Operation Soteria

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what are the most recent rape (1) reporting, (2) prosecution, and (3) conviction, rates in England and Wales; and how many forces have rolled out Operation Soteria.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, the most recent statistics show that 70,600 rape incidents were recorded by the police in the year to June 2022; there were 2,326 prosecutions for rape and 1,019 convictions. Nineteen police forces and nine CPS areas are participating in Operation Soteria and informing the development of new national operating models for the investigation and prosecution of rape. These models will be available to all forces and CPS areas from June 2023.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer, but recent Home Office research, including under Soteria, revealed a dismal picture of police attitudes towards rape complainants and whether they are at fault for the crimes committed against them. British women are reeling from Couzens and Carrick. Is it not time that the Government took this problem out of the long grass and legislated for police vetting, training and disciplinary reform?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I spoke from the Dispatch Box last week on the review into dismissal processes. We talked a lot then about vetting and the various changes that have been made to both the vetting processes and the vetting verification processes, which are being advanced. Operation Soteria pioneered a new model which will effectively put the needs of victims above those of suspects. The initial evidence is that it is working. Avon and Somerset Police was one of the pioneering forces; it has reported an increase in its adult rape charge rate from 3% to over 10%. I do not think that is good news but it is progress.

Police: Employment and Discipline

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I said earlier that this is under active discussion. I am not part of those active discussions, but I cannot imagine a set of circumstances where they would not be considering the speed of the process.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, why has it taken from October to January just to come up with basic terms of reference? How long will it be before this review, whenever it actually begins, concludes, given the concern throughout the country and certainly across your Lordships’ House?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am afraid I do not know why it has taken a couple of months to get to this stage, and I do not know how long the review will take, but I imagine that will be dealt with in the terms of reference.

Public Order Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

I strongly urge the Government to accept this amendment, which provides holistic protections to ensure that journalists, observers and bystanders continue to have access to protest sites in order to report on what happens and to monitor police powers. It is an essential part of our democracy. I beg to move.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

The Committee will imagine the daunting privilege of attempting to follow that speech from one of the most senior journalists—and indeed one of the greatest environmentalists—in the Committee and your Lordships’ House. I want to speak briefly to explain why we have Amendments 117 and 127A. The reason is my poor draftsmanship when we conceived Amendment 117, for which I apologise. Amendment 127A is an improvement on Amendment 117 because of a defect that was pointed out to me by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. Amendment 117 had protected journalists who were covering the policing of protests only, and, of course, we need to protect journalists who are covering protests as well as the policing thereof.

I would also like to take this opportunity to reassure the Minister that, notwithstanding my fundamental concerns about the Bill as a whole, and significant provisions within it, this journalistic protection in Amendment 127A—I am grateful to the other co-signatories and supporters across the House for understanding this too—notwithstanding our fundamental objections to various provisions that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, referred to, would not in any way wreck those provisions, objectionable though they may be for my part. All Amendment 127A would do is protect journalists where any police power, not just the police powers in this Bill but police powers more generally, are being used for the principal purpose of preventing their reporting.

I know that it is very hard in Committee to persuade a Minister to think again, but this is not a request to think again about the Bill in sum or in part; this is requesting a protection for journalists that is required in relation to even the police powers that currently stand. In the case of Charlotte Lynch, and other cases to which the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, referred, journalists were arrested and detained under public order powers as they currently stand—not even the broader, blank-cheque powers to come.

So I hope that, in this Committee, those in the Box, and noble Lords and Ministers, will take pause for thought and think about whether we need a protection against current public order powers, and any to come, to ensure that the police are not using them to arrest journalists because they think that the reporting of protests per se gives the oxygen of publicity to protest and so on. Day after day, at Question Time in particular, Foreign Office Ministers stand at the Dispatch Box and—rightly and sincerely, in my view—criticise attacks on journalistic freedom across the globe. I think something like Amendment 127A would be a very important statement, putting that sincerity of Foreign Office Ministers into law in the home department.

So, I hope that noble Lords, Ministers, and Members of the whole Committee will really reflect on the noble Baroness’s speech.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee. I want to ask the Government to listen very carefully to this discussion. We have a very real issue when really serious matters, which threaten all of us, do not appear to some of us to be properly addressed. That is a very serious matter for any democracy, and those of us who are democrats do have to stand up for the rule of law and do have to say that extreme actions cannot be accepted.

But it has a second effect too, and that is that we have to be extremely careful about the way in which we deal with those extreme actions. I do beg the Government to take very seriously the fact that these extreme actions will continue, because people are more and more worried about the existential threat of climate change. The Climate Change Committee spends a great deal of its time trying to ensure that there is a democratic and sensible programme to reach an end that will protect us from the immediate effects of climate change, which we cannot change, and, in the longer term, begin to turn the tables on what we as human beings have caused.

It is not always easy to do that in the light of others who are desperate that we should move faster and that we should do more; who are desperate because they are seriously frightened and are not sure that those who are in charge have really got the urgency of the situation.

It is very difficult to imagine that we are not going to have to cope with the uprising of real anger on this subject. As a democrat, I want us to cope. As a parliamentarian, I want us to be able to deal with these issues and ensure that the public are not threatened. I echo the Deputy Chancellor of Germany, a Green Member of Parliament, who makes it absolutely clear that the kinds of actions we have seen in this country from Extinction Rebellion and similar things in Germany are not acceptable in a democracy.

The other side of that argument is that we have got to be extremely careful about the way in which we enforce the law and how we deal with this issue. Journalists play the key part in this. They must be there to report on what happens. It is in our interest as democrats that that happens. If they are not there and cannot say what needs to be said without fear or favour, none of us can stand up and deal with the arguments of those who argue that democracy does not work and that somehow they have to impose their will.

I want the Government to recognise the importance of this. In this country, a journalist must have access without fear or favour. The police must not treat them in a way that has happened again and again, and which must stop happening. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, it is not happening because of what is in this Bill, which in general I do not have an objection to; it is what happens in any case. The fact that the police could hold a journalist for five hours knowing that they were a journalist is utterly unacceptable. You cannot do that in a democracy—and nor can we talk to other countries about these things if that happens here and we do not do something to enshrine in law the fact that it should not.

Earlier, I had to deal with the question of not opening coal mines in order to be able to stand up in the world and show that we too will carry out what we ask other countries to do. This is another, even more serious, case of that. We cannot talk about repression if we in this country can be shown not to have protected journalists in these circumstances.

It is a terribly simple matter. We must put on the face of the Bill, referring to all actions, that journalists should be in the position that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, suggests. It may be that her amendments could be better done; it may be that the Government have a different way of doing it. The only thing that I ask, in order to protect democracy and ourselves—those of us who are moderates and believe in the rule of law—is that we need to have this assertion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Before the Minister sits down, and with my real thanks for the sentiment that he expressed, does he concede that public order powers in general are cast in broad terms? Charlotte Lynch was arrested for the offence of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance—a fairly broad concept—and a number of broad police powers and offences in the Bill are triggered by an undefined concept of serious disruption.

Does the Minister also concede that senior voices in policing have said that journalists who give the oxygen of publicity to protests are part of the problem? By giving publicity, they are feeding the fuel of serious disruption. I know that the Minister disagrees with that proposition but, given that there has been so much performative legislation, and that there is apparently disagreement in the policing world about what is and is not feeding a serious disruption, why would the Government not take this modest step to ensure that no one should be arrested for the primary purpose of preventing their reporting of protest?

As a point of clarification, the difference between Amendments 117 and 127A is not the class of people they cover; it is the class of activity that is being reported on. Amendment 127A is an improvement on my poorer drafting of Amendment 117 because it refers to reporting protests themselves and not just the policing.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness that I do not agree with the proposition she just outlined from senior police officers. Having said that, I have not read those particular comments and cannot comment on the specifics. I go back to what I was saying earlier: it is not lawful to detain journalists simply there monitoring protests; it is against the law. The police made mistakes in these cases. As I said earlier, we agree it was completely wrong.

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[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I have not been present for earlier proceedings on this Bill because of other commitments, for which I apologise. For that reason, I will say only a very few words. With everyone else who has spoken, I completely oppose Clauses 19 and 20 and support the amendments in this group restricting their ambit and the ambit of SDPOs, for all the reasons considered and voiced by my noble friend Lord Paddick in opening and all other noble Lords who have spoken.

The so-called serious disruption prevention orders amount to punishment that does indeed involve serious disruption: serious disruption of individual citizens’ liberties, imposed without a criminal conviction and on proof to the civil and not the criminal standard, and which can last indefinitely. These proposals are entirely inimical to principles deeply embedded in our law and to notions of crime and justice that we all hold so dear. They are an insidious attack on civil liberties. They threaten a gradual, incremental encroachment on civil liberties—the very type of encroachment that can ultimately lead to the destruction of those liberties themselves.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare a historical if not a current interest as a Home Office lawyer from January 1996 until the autumn of 2001. I was occasionally and habitually a happy and unhappy inhabitant of the Box.

I agree with—I think—every speech so far in this significant debate. I would go further than some in saying that I was always against this blurring of civil and criminal process from the beginning when, I am sorry to say, Labour did it. I was against ASBOs, CRASBOs, control orders, TPIMs, football banning orders and all the rest, because they were always about lessening criminal due process. That is always the intention when you blur civil and criminal process by way of these quasi-injunctive orders. Whether it is minor nuisance or suspicion of being associated with terrorists, whatever the gravity of the threat, you will catch behaviour without proper criminal due process and then prosecute people for the breach.

Although we do not always agree, I must commend the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, in particular on a devastating critique of this use of copy and paste in my former department. Computers are wonderful things—until they are not. I will not labour the point, save to quote the right honourable Member for Haltemprice and Howden, who has done his best on this Bill in the other place along with Sir Charles Walker, from the Times this morning:

“Serious disruption prevention orders, or SDPOs”—


protest banning orders—

“can be given to anyone who has on two previous occasions ‘carried out activities related to a protest’ that ‘resulted in or were likely to result in serious disruption’”—

which is not defined—

“or even ‘caused or contributed to the carrying out by any other person’ of such activities. This is drafted so broadly so as to potentially include sharing a post on social media or handing out a leaflet encouraging people to go to a protest—even if you did not go on to attend that protest. Those issued with an SDPO can face harsh restrictions on their liberty, including … GPS tracking and being banned from going on demonstrations, associating with certain people”,

et cetera—and the orders are renewable indefinitely, as we have heard.

I am sorry if I have made noble friends feel uncomfortable. Do not think about these measures as they would be employed today. Think about how they could be used on the statute book by another Government, not of your friends and not of your choosing, in 20 years’ time. That is why, in a terrible Bill, Clauses 19 and 20 should not stand part.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I open by echoing what the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said: all the arguments in all the amendments could become redundant if we support not putting Clauses 19 and 20 in the Bill. The strength of feeling demonstrated through this short debate leads me to believe that that may well be what we vote on when we come to Report.

I forget whether it was my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti or the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, who referred to this as copy-and-paste legislation. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, who gave the analogy of chicken coops being moved around to replicate these civil injunctions. But perhaps the most powerful speech we have heard was from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who gave six examples of SDPOs being tougher than TPIMs, which really caused me to sit back and reflect on the meat of what we are dealing with here today.

My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said she has always been against what she called quasi-injunctive orders—civil orders—going all the way back to ASBOs. This caused me to reflect, as a magistrate, on which of those orders I deal with when I sit in courts. I deal with some of them: football banning orders, knife crime prevention orders and domestic violence protection orders—I think most noble Lords who have taken part in this debate think DVPOs are an appropriate use of civil orders. But, of course, the list goes on. That is really the point my noble friend makes: there are a growing number of these civil orders that, if breached, result in criminal convictions.

To repeat what I said, here we are meeting a very extreme situation in which people planning to get involved in protest or to help people do so can potentially be criminalised for that activity. The nature of the potential offence being committed is different.

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, went through in detail, for which I thank him, the nature of the injunctions in Clauses 19 and 20, so I will not go through all that again, but I will make one point that he did not make. We are concerned that there does not seem to be any requirement for the person involved to have knowledge that the protest activities were going to cause serious disruption. That lack of a requirement of knowledge is a source of concern for us.

In the debate on the previous group, my noble friend Lord Rooker and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, spoke about the comments of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and my noble friend quoted from them. The noble Lord, Lord Beith, spoke about the Secretary of State issuing guidance to chief police officers and how that could go down a road whose potential political implications, in a sense, I prefer not to think about.

I will quote briefly from other committees which have reflected on this legislation. First, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has said:

“Serious Disruption Prevention Orders represent a disproportionate response to the disruption caused by protest. They are likely to result in interference with legitimate peaceful exercise of Article 10 and 11 rights. The police already have powers to impose conditions on protests and to arrest those who breach them. Other provisions of this Bill, if passed, will provide the police with even greater powers to restrict or prevent disruptive protest.”


Another committee, the Constitution Committee, said:

“The purposes for which a Serious Disruption Prevention Order can be issued are broad. They can be issued not only to prevent a person committing a protest-related offence but also to prevent a person from carrying out activities related to a protest. Such a protest need cause, or be likely to cause, serious disruption to only two people. This gives the orders a pre-emptive or preventative role. Furthermore, ‘protest-related’ offence is not adequately defined in this part of the Bill nor … is ‘serious disruption’. This undermines legal certainty. We recommend that the meaning of ‘protest-related offence’ is clarified more precisely.”


The Minister has a big job on his hands to try to convince any Member of this Committee that he is on the right track. The amendments in my name—the clause stand part amendments—are the quickest way to put this part of the Bill out of its misery.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

146: Clause 35, page 36, line 25, at end insert—
“(4A) No other provisions of this Act may be brought into force until a report by His Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire Services on improvements to the vetting, recruitment and discipline of specialist protest police officers is laid before and debated in each House of Parliament.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, and another in the name of Baroness Chakrabarti, require parliamentary debate of a report by HMCI on improvements to the vetting, recruitment and discipline of specialist protest police officers before most provisions of the legislation may be brought into force. They further prohibit the bringing into force of the provisions in any police area under HMCI special measures.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate those still here. We end, of course, with commencement, because that is the tradition. In moving Amendment 146 I will speak also to my Amendments 147 and 149. I also support Amendment 148 from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and Amendment 150 from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and my noble friend. We are dealing with the tension between ever more police powers on the one hand and the lack of equivalence in resources, training and vetting for policing on the other hand. This tension has been more and more exposed in graphic terms in recent months and years.

We began this evening with the eloquent speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who spoke powerfully about incidents of abuse of police power in relation to journalists. We were assured, I think sincerely, by the Minister that it was far from the intention of the Government that those things happened. The Government apparently agreed with me that those were wrongful arrests, yet they have happened more than once. There are some in the police community who hold the view that this is a legitimate thing to do to prevent serious disruption, which is undefined in statute. So, with the amendments, we are seeking to ensure that there is some check on the new blank cheque that we are putting on the statute book, in addition to blank cheques that have already been put there by broad concepts such as conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, et cetera. That is what we are trying to get at.

Amendment 146 prevents the commencement of most provisions of the Bill until there has been

“a report by His Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire Services on improvements to the vetting, recruitment and discipline of specialist protest police officers”.

In another group, the Minister said, “If they’re trained, they’re trained”. So this is about ensuring that that is the case before additional power is granted. Amendment 147 is consequential to that.

Amendment 149 is crucial at a time when more than one police force is in special measures. It provides that provisions should

“not be brought into force for any area in which the police service is under special measures, the engage phase of monitoring, or other unusual scrutiny … by His Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire Services.”

That seems to be a perfectly reasonably check on the new powers and a perfectly reasonable request to make of Ministers, so I beg to move.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendments 148 and 150 in this group, and will speak also to Amendments 146, 147 and 149.

My amendments would mean that the new offences in the Bill—the delegation of functions and serious disruption prevention order provisions—could not come into force until the Government have laid before Parliament a report assessing the current capability of police services to use the provisions in those sections. Most of the 10 police forces inspected by HMICFRS said that the limiting factor in the effective policing of protests was a lack of properly trained and equipped police officers, not gaps in legislation. If that is already the limiting factor, what assessment have the Government made of the additional strain that the new provisions will have on already-stretched police officer numbers? What is the point of new legislation if the police do not have the resources to use it effectively—or, indeed, to use existing legislation effectively?

I can understand the principle behind Amendments 146, 147 and 149 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti; the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester has added his name to Amendments 146 and 147. Were it to be within the scope of the Bill, I too would support a moratorium on giving the police any further powers unless and until Parliament had a chance to consider a report by HMICFRS into the vetting, recruitment and discipline of all police officers, not just public order officers—particularly in forces that are subject to the “engage phase” of scrutiny by HMICFRS, commonly understood to be “special measures”. With so many forces requiring intensive scrutiny and intervention by HMICFRS, and public confidence in the police being so low, the police should not be given further powers until HMICFRS has reassured the public that they can have confidence in the police use of existing powers, let alone new ones.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

What I hope I said is that our expectation is that the provisions in the Bill will improve the ability of the police to “remove and deter protesters”, thereby alleviating some pressure on the police.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

That is very helpful. I agree with the Minister that police officers—we have a fine one in this Committee—and police forces should not be treated with a broad brush, but, and noble Lords will perhaps forgive me if I say it, nor should peaceful protesters. Hence, the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and hence the bulk of criticism of this entire draft legislation in this Committee. It is an unhappy privilege to be perhaps the last speaker in this Committee; I think I was the first. I am grateful to the Minister for his fortitude and courtesy. He wants to rise again.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I just want to clarify that I mean criminal protesters.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister but, of course, if the Government are able to keep expanding the definition of criminality, that does not give much cause for comfort about protecting peaceful dissent. I am none the less grateful to the Minister for his fortitude and courtesy throughout this three-session Committee. I hope that he and his colleagues will understand that what he has heard over these days and hours is very serious cross-party concern about these measures, reflected in vast sections of the country. I have no doubt that, after a good break and, I hope, a happy Christmas of reflection, colleagues will be back and some of these matters will definitely be put to the vote. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 146 withdrawn.

UK Asylum and Refugee Policy

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a member of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and as a long-time supporter of the wonderful charity Refugee Tales. It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and to mark the end of the 90th birthday week of my noble friend Lord Dubs in this way.

My thanks, like everyone else’s, go to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for convening this timely debate on the eve of Human Rights Day. I congratulate my noble friends—two maidens in Labour, if that is not a contradiction in terms—on their wonderful and contrasting maiden speeches. I look forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, which will follow in a moment.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I always think it is apt that Human Rights Day is so close to Christmas, for the reasons he gave: Christmas is a time when so many people all over the world celebrate the birth of a very special refugee child. However, it is worth remembering why we celebrate Human Rights Day. Noble Lords will remember that it was in October 1942 that the then Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, famously wrote to the predecessor of our present most reverend Primate in the following terms:

“The systematic cruelties to which the Jewish people—men, women, and children—have been exposed under the Nazi regime are amongst the most terrible events of history, and place an indelible stain upon all who perpetrate and instigate them. Free men and women denounce these vile crimes, and when the world struggle ends with the enthronement of human rights, racial persecution will be ended.”


He was inspirational if perhaps optimistic, as it turned out.

In remembering the failure, and there was some failure, of the Allied powers to give adequate passage and protection to those desperate to flee the Nazis—I remind noble Lords that Albert Einstein was denied asylum and had to go to the United States for it—came even after Kristallnacht in 1938 heralded a policy of systematic genocide. Refugee protection is therefore perhaps the most poignant paradigm of post-war human rights.

Given the emerging understanding of the sheer horror of the pre-war and war years, it is unsurprising that the refugee convention should have been one of the earliest priorities of the post-war international legal architecture. It brings detail and binding effect to supplement the right to asylum in Article 14 of the universal declaration, came into force in 1954 and has been amended only once. The 1967 protocol removed the original limitation of the protection to those fleeing events before 1951 in Europe, so the subsequent protection was always intended to be worldwide and permanent.

We have heard how the convention defines a refugee as someone with a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a social group or political opinion, who is therefore unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin. As we heard from my noble friend Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, it is built on three principles: non-discrimination, non-penalisation and non-return, so the protection should be applied without discrimination on the basis of race, religion or country of origin but also, as international law has developed over time, on other prohibited grounds such as sex, age, disability, sexuality, and so on.

It recognises that the most desperate genuine refugees may have no choice but to flee—as from the Nazis—via illegal means using false papers, false identities and clandestine transport across borders, in breach of ordinary immigration controls of nations. The convention prohibits penalising them, for example, for criminal offences relating to their seeking of asylum or by way of arbitrary detention. Crucially, the convention absolutely prohibits their return or expulsion to places where their lives or freedoms would be in peril.

It further provides for minimum standards for the treatment of refugees. They should have access to courts, primary education and papers including travel documents. The UN high commissioner is charged with supervising the operation of the convention, which signatory states undertake to co-operate with.

The refugee convention is a vital part of human rights machinery in providing at least a basic safety net when individual nation states, which bear the lion’s share of responsibility for guaranteeing rights and freedoms, fail in that duty. To undermine it in thought, word and deed, as so many Governments have done for so much of our still-young century, is to forget or ignore the worst atrocities of the last one.

Independent Cultural Review of the London Fire Brigade

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the Independent Cultural Review of the London Fire Brigade, published on 26 November.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who are here to contribute and to listen. I am also grateful to the Minister for taking the trouble to have a word about some of these very serious issues yesterday, and especially to my noble friend Lady Thornton, with her long knowledge of the London Fire Brigade and expertise in equality issues. It is also very good to see the former Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, in his place opposite. Further, I am very grateful to the London Fire Commissioner and to the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union for taking considerable trouble to engage with me in recent days. This is in sharp contrast to my experience of raising issues around, for example, the Metropolitan Police under its previous leadership.

The LFB and the FBU are to be respected for not doubling down—neither resorting to complacent comments about a few bad apples and so on, nor suggesting that to seek to reform the culture in a brave and essential uniformed service is in any way to undermine it. Quite the contrary, they have both persuaded me that they do not support the so-called “hero” mythology—and that is in a heroic service where members literally run towards burning buildings.

I congratulate Nazir Afzal on a painstaking report that makes painful and even devastating reading. I am sure that all firefighters in London, or certainly the overwhelming majority of them, are decent human beings. As noble Lords will remember, the report was commissioned after a young black firefighter and FBU member, Jaden Matthew Francois-Esprit, took his own life in August 2020. That is really not very long ago for the family, and I want to acknowledge that. His family had substantial concerns that he had been subject to racialised bullying.

As I am not an expert on the Fire Brigade, and there are experts in the Chamber, I shall focus on the words of others, and start with the report itself. Mr Afzal said that his review

“found evidence that supports a finding that LFB is institutionally misogynist and racist. We found dangerous levels of ingrained prejudice against women and the barriers faced by people of colour spoke for themselves. Not only were they more likely to be subject to disciplinary action, less likely to be promoted and largely unrepresented at senior levels, but they were also frequently the target of racist abuse.”

He also found examples of how this was driving some people of colour out of the brigade. There was, he said,

“evidence that talented people, committed to public service were being lost as a result.”

He was encouraged to see an increase in diversity at board level, but felt that

“there needs to be more urgency in rooting out deeply prejudiced staff and inappropriate behaviour and attitudes because they undermine the hard work of the many decent, public spirited people in the Brigade.”

He also found that

“LGBTQ+ staff and people who are neurologically diverse are treated unfavourably compared to others.”

That said, he emphasised that he wanted to make an “important distinction”—his words, not mine—with similar problems experienced by the Metropolitan Police, where there have been

“flagrant examples of police officers misusing power and allowing prejudice to shape their actions”.

Mr Afzal’s team did not find the same level of “operational bigotry”. I think that what he means by that is that, for the most part, he found the very bad and the worst behaviour to be directed towards comrades and colleagues within the fire service, rather than towards the public. That is not comforting, but it is a distinction. But this is not a service that is arresting people and stopping and searching them; it is rescuing people—but apparently not rescuing them on a racialised or sexualised basis.

It is encouraging that, for all the issues that management and unions have in this country at the moment—and have had for some time—my understanding is that the union encouraged its members to participate in Mr Afzal’s investigations, to co-operate with the team and to give testimony, including in an anonymised way. That was no doubt important, because the strength of this report, and one reason why it will be very hard for people to deny its veracity, is that so many people participated in the investigation. Continued partnership between the commissioner and the leadership of the service and the union will be essential; I really urge that partnership on both institutions, and more generally.

The Fire Brigades Union told me that

“senior management alone cannot address the serious concerns set out in the conclusions of the independent review. Many of the cases and incidents reported would already have been known to … senior management and many will have been a result of … failings, either individually or institutionally … The situation is set against a background of abolishing equality targets and national strategy since 2010”.

The union feels that the Government have perhaps focused on taking advice from the National Fire Chiefs Council, but that the advice needs to be more broadly taken, including in partnership with the FBU. I ask the Minister to consider having discussions with the FBU as the Government continue to digest and formulate their response to this very painful report.

I also want to quote the commissioner, Mr Rowe, whose colleagues got in touch with me when they saw this Question for Short Debate on the Order Paper. Much to my surprise, when the commissioner came to meet me and my noble friend Lady Thornton a couple of days ago, it has to be said that he came unescorted and unaccompanied by colleagues, advisers and so on. That was interesting and refreshing. He asked me to share this:

“The independent review of LFB’s culture led by Nazir Afzal is written by the 2,000 members of staff who responded to him. In that, it is both unassailable and undeniable. In hearing our staff so clearly and in such numbers, we must for their sake and the communities they serve accept this report and its recommendations in totality. My commitment to the many thousands of courageous public servants we employ and the people of London we serve, is that we will take that courage so often demonstrated in response and turn inwards to face this problem, seizing it as an opportunity to make real change.”


I return, finally, to Mr Afzal’s report and some final words from him:

“Unless a toxic culture that allows bullying and abuse to be normalised is tackled then I fear that, like Jaden, other firefighters will tragically take their lives. This review has to be a turning point, not just a talking point. Everyone who works for the emergency services should be afforded dignity at work. That is the very least they are owed.”


I am sure that all noble Lords would agree with that.

Violence against Women and Domestic Violence

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I can tell the House that if we had not introduced the reservation, it would have taken even longer. As to why it took so long, no, I do not know the answer.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I appreciate that the Minister has said that the Government are considering removing the reservation, but can he explain a little about what the problem is? He will know, of course, that Article 59 does not give blanket residence to any class of women. It just says that a competent authority should consider their circumstances and, where necessary, give this vital protection to them.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Again, as I think I have explained, the Government are assessing the evidence that is coming back from the migrant victims scheme pilot programme.

Metropolitan Police: Crime and Misconduct

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is an absolute pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton—the noble and ever-civil Lord, I say, because I think we should search for an adjective for senior retired police officers who come to this House. It is rather unfair that they do not have an adjective in the way that some senior lawyers and military people do. We have sparred many times over the years, but I think always from a shared position of support for the rule of law. When we have disagreed, we have done so well.

It is always an absolute honour to speak in a debate with my noble friend Lady Lawrence, who is, in my humble opinion, the greatest race equality campaigner in British history.

In the remaining three minutes, I will give two thoughts. I have one for the Minister that I will keep short, because I fear that I have made his ears bleed too much of late—there is supposed to be some kind of law against that sort of thing. I also have one short thought for the noble Lord, Lord Lexden.

To the Minister, I say: we both agree that operational independence is totally essential for the police service, but, in my view, it does not remotely interfere with the operational independence of the police service to have a clear and improved legislative framework to aid with this disciplinary problem. A police discipline Bill is now required to aid the new Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and other chief constables—I really believe that, and I am not someone who urges for unnecessary legislation. Governments of both persuasions are very quick and eager to legislate for police powers and then to blame the police when those overbroad powers lead to unintended and arbitrary consequences. The other side of that deal is surely that the Government should legislate appropriately for police discipline.

My short thought for the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, is simply that I thank him. I thank him for constantly reminding me in this place that support for the rule of law, properly constrained police powers and a proper holding to account of the sacred trust that we put in the police service are truly bipartisan matters in a constitutional democracy. We may sit on opposite sides of this Chamber, but he really has my undying solidarity, admiration and respect.

Manston Update

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his answer. I appreciate that he has been a Member of your Lordships’ House and therefore, I assume, in his ministerial post for only just over a month, so this is not intended as a personal criticism in any sense. However, I do not understand the logic of saying that this is a consequence of the speed with which Manston was emptied. How did the disease get into Manston in the first place? The Minister may say that people brought the disease from other countries and that it has been spreading within Manston, but we have been living for two years inside a global health emergency. Why has it taken this death and this scandal to now introduce health screening for people arriving at our shores?

Independent Cultural Review of London Fire Brigade

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

That is very clear; there is fairly evidently a failure of leadership. However, as I mentioned, I commend the leadership of Andy Roe, who commissioned a report into his own brigade. That was courageous and, as I say, he has committed to acting on all the recommendations.

There were two recommendations on getting rid of people. One is for a historical review of complaints, which will obviously investigate potential historical injustices. I imagine that will have some sort of component to do with removing people.

I am happy to confirm that the Mayor of London has operational responsibility for this, along with his deputy. That is on the website, and he claims it for himself. This is not blaming; it is merely stating a fact.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his answer. He knows that I am always happy to examine issues of governance and new legislation where that is required, be it for the fire brigade or the police, which we will discuss in the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, on Thursday. But what is happening in our country? What is happening to the culture of kindness, decency and mutual respect among our fellow citizens and, it seems, I am sorry to say, particularly some men in our country? We now have these allegations—more than allegations; we have case after case in the Metropolitan Police, these new revelations about our much-needed and respected fire service and allegations of bullying in the Palace of Westminster, even at senior Cabinet level. The Deputy Prime Minister is now being investigated for bullying. Will we hear from the Minister for Equalities or from the Prime Minister—the first non-white Prime Minister—who has small daughters for whom he no doubt cares and is concerned? Will we hear some leadership on the culture of dignity and decency in our country?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I cannot speculate about what the Prime Minister might say so I shall speak for myself. I agree with the noble Baroness: I am disturbed by many of these reports that I have to stand here and talk about.

Technology Rules: The Advent of New Technologies in the Justice System (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, what an absolute honour to follow that contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson of Welton. Your Lordships can imagine what the contribution her fabulous communication skills and powers of analysis made to the work that we did on this report. I now have the daunting privilege of being the last member of the recently constituted Justice and Home Affairs Committee to contribute. We have also had two expert contributions from a technology expert in the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and of course the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. I will try not to repeat too much but will add just a little framing and a few points of emphasis.

First—this is relevant beyond even the vital business of this report—I had never sat on one of the House of Lords’ select committees before, and it was and continues to be a wonderful experience. This was a perfect subject to examine with the rigour of a Lords Select Committee in a totally cross-party way. It feels almost odd now to be a few swords away from the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson of Welton, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, because on the journey that we went on together on this committee, there was no significant partisanship at all. Rights and freedoms and the rule of law should not be a partisan issue. That was definitely my experience of being on the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee—she chaired it with the elegance of a society host, the creativity of a film director and the rigour of a judge.

I was reading in the press just today some comments from the American computer science genius and polymath Jaron Lanier. He was talking about the rise of these technologies in general, not about the criminal justice system in particular, and he told the Guardian:

“People survive by passing information between themselves. We’re putting that fundamental quality of humanness through a process with an inherent incentive for corruption and degradation. The fundamental drama of this period is whether we can figure out how to survive properly with those elements or not.”


That is a comment on the rise of these very exciting new technologies in general but I suggest that, of all the spheres in which artificial intelligence and these new technologies are being employed, the criminal justice sphere is special. There are great potential benefits, as we have heard, but real dangers as well. Why are the criminal justice system and the ambit of the home department so special? It is because we are talking about people’s rights and freedoms. We are thinking about the right to life and to protect people, our communities and victims and potential victims, but we are also talking about the gravest rights, freedoms and liberties of the subject. That came through very clearly in both the evidence to and the private deliberations of our committee.

I remind noble Lords that it was just over 40 years ago that, in response to the Brixton riots in this city, Lord Scarman produced his report because there was a crisis of trust and confidence in policing in so many of our communities. Not long after that legendary Scarman report, a Conservative Thatcher Government produced the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. There was inevitably some controversy attached to it but, none the less, I would consider it a piece of human rights legislation, because it attempted to set a framework of principles and law for governing police power.

We would not dream today of rescinding or repealing that Act. It has been amended, but it is still on the statute book. The idea is that police power, while essential, needs to be regulated and consolidated in one place. Of course, new and intrusive technologies have emerged. The PACE codes have had to be updated and the legislation itself has been amended, but some basic principles and ideas of accessibility and transparency in the use of intrusive police power hold still, over 40 years later.

I do not believe that noble Lords and Ministers would dream of rescinding that, and nor should the Government think that such a framework is not needed today in relation to these new powers—these powers which we cannot even see being used, or understand, because they are effectively in a black box, or in a jar in the form of the pill but I cannot say what is in the pill that I am taking. That is why regulation and framework legislation is required.

It is simply not enough to rely on the current arrangement of broad police discretion and the occasional police witness to our committee or some other forum to say, “Oh, but you know: proportionality”. We are compliant with human rights proportionality as it if is a mantra. That is not detailed enough for regulation. It would not be detailed enough for powers of arrest and it certainly would not be detailed enough for the use of drugs. We need to get into the black box: we need to prescribe it and to decide what is legitimate and proportionate in the use of this technology and its design. Legislation is absolutely essential to avoid what the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson of Welton, called the Wild West—because that is exactly where we are now in the use of this technology in the criminal justice system and, to some extent, at the border in relation to its intrusive use.

In addition to this framework legislation—the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and an AI Act for the 21st century—we need a national body that will do the prescription and kitemarking. There is no doubt that we need this because of the black box. Lay citizens and even parliamentarians cannot understand the technologies, read and decipher the algorithms, and understand whether coded bias is being baked in—which is happening.

I commend the Netflix documentary on facial technology that features the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, from this House. It is a wonderful documentary. I hope that noble Lords, Ministers and their officials—who are passing them notes, probably saying “Yes, it’s a great documentary”—will watch it.

Kitemarking is essential before any procurement of these technologies and algorithms within the criminal justice system. It should not be left to local police officers, or even PCCs, to have lunch with some people who are selling their wares and decide what is a good deal or not.

In addition to the kitemarking of the product, there is a great opportunity for His Majesty’s Government and the United Kingdom in going down the road being advocated in our report. We could be world leaders in the kitemarking and regulation of this technology. In years to come, if we take up the recommendations from this committee, there could be countries all over the world that say, “We go for the UK AI in criminal justice model”. It is the equivalent of saying they want to contract in English law or in Delaware law, or whatever it is. This technology is being developed and used all over the world, and if we get ahead of the kitemarking and regulation game, others may contract into our arrangements and adopt our technologies and systems over time.

It is completely without justification, it seems to me, for private companies to be experimenting on our populations, including with their intimate data and with policing and intelligence and so on, and then claiming that they will not engage with transparency or legality because of commercial sensitivities. That is a swindle and a scandal, and it needs to end. We would not allow arms companies or drugs companies to behave this way; we certainly should not be allowing it in these deals that are being done in the 43 forces with these people in the Wild West—I will not say who it is that rides around on horses in the Wild West, but the point is made.

To conclude, we are just asking for this technology to be governed by the rule of law, for Parliament to step up and, crucially, for Ministers to step up, as their predecessors did in the Thatcher Government in the 1980s in response to the Brixton riots and the Scarman report. Only this time, we are asking that this be done before a scandal and before a crisis of confidence that reaches the kind of levels where it will be harder to use the technology in a positive way in the future.