Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Codes A, B and D) Order 2011

Debate between Baroness Neville-Jones and Lord Geddes

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)]

My Lords, the order 2011 obviously relates to the codes of practice that are in operation under the 1984 Act. Under Section 66 of that Act, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has a duty to issue codes of practice to regulate the police in the exercise of their powers. The proposed revisions to Codes A, B and D will keep the codes of practice in line with legislative change and are, obviously, part of the Government’s programme to modernise the police and to reduce bureaucracy in policing. I will explain some of those changes.

On 20 September, under Section 67 of the 1984 Act, my right honourable friend prepared and published drafts of the three codes of practice for statutory consultation. Representations on the content were taken from a number of independent organisations, such as Liberty and StopWatch, as well as from professional bodies such as the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Police Federation.

I am aware that the Merits Committee has raised a question about the length of the consultation period, but I stress that the process extended well beyond the normal four weeks. Individual discussions were held with concerned parties following their responses so, although the formal process may have ended at that point, discussion continued on the responses. Indeed, individual forces are conducting their own consultations on how the changes will affect the communities that they serve and on how the changes should be implemented. In particular, the Metropolitan Police is beginning an engagement programme shortly on exactly that issue.

I shall deal with the PACE Code of Practice A first and with Code B and Code C subsequently, given that Code A is the most substantial and will, I suspect, be the code that we focus on. Many of the proposed changes to Code of Practice A follow from the need to reverse the increase in paperwork that hampers police operations and leads to encounters with the public that are unnecessarily prolonged and bureaucratic in character. For stop and account, draft Code A removes the national requirement to complete a form recording each encounter. That potentially frees up many hundreds of thousands of hours of police time, both on the street and in the back office, and will allow officers to increase the quality—and shorten the duration—of those encounters, which should be no more than brief.

It is understandable that some worries have been uttered about that change, particularly in light of the origin of the current national recording requirement. Your Lordships will recall that the Stephen Lawrence inquiry report of 1999 raised awareness of the impact that the police have on the people whom they encounter, particularly in black and minority-ethnic communities. However, since recording was implemented in 2005, we have seen little evidence of widespread disproportionate use of stop and account in relation to black and ethnic-minority communities and a vast increase in police bureaucracy. When examined at a local level, many forces show little evidence of any form of disproportionate use of stop and search as a tactic in dealing with BME communities and consultation with community groups has not really raised concern about the use of stop and account. That is why we propose to remove the national requirement for recording stop and account and leave the decision on whether to continue to record the ethnicity of the person stopped to be decided locally, according to perceptions of local need.

By that, we mean that there will be some communities in which the question of ethnicity is sensitive, so the local police force will judge whether, in the light of that, it is right to continue to record, but the force will not be obliged to do so. In communities where ethnicity is not particularly an issue, we see no need to continue that burden. As the House will know, we take the view that individual police forces know their own communities better than Whitehall and are best placed to analyse their own statistics and understand how they might use the tactic and what its impact on ethnic-minority groups might be.

On the other hand, given the intrusive nature of stop and search, we think it right to continue to have a national requirement governing the minimum level of recording of stop-and-search encounters. Therefore, we are making a distinction between stop and account and stop and search. The proposed changes to Code A do not diminish the importance of recording these encounters or the monitoring of the use of the powers. In accordance with Section 1 of the Crime and Security Act 2010, we are reducing the number of pieces of data to be completed on a stop-and-search record from 12 to seven. We are reducing the quantum of information, but we are not saying that no record needs to be made. We believe that leaving out some of the pieces of information currently demanded, and having others recorded automatically by the new technology, will save many hundreds of thousands of hours of police time.

Key information about each encounter, including the self-defined ethnicity of the person stopped, will still be recorded. Mobile technology is being encouraged and minor amendments have been made to the language of Code A to encourage its further use. The sorts of things that we envisage are airwave radios and BlackBerrys, which could enable the police to reduce the amount of effort and time that they put into each encounter. The outcome of a stop and search will be recorded as part of the custody record for those detained as a result of a stop and search. That means that we will not have, as at present, two sets of records, as everything will be incorporated in the custody record.

Code A also details the changes in the use of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 stop-and-search powers, which I set out to the House on 8 July last year when I repeated a Statement made by the Home Secretary. The inappropriate use of this power has ceased in the light of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Gillan and Quinton case. Clearly, more will be said about this in your Lordships' House tomorrow, when we look at Section 44 along with other elements in the counterterrorism review. I very much regret that, due to a hazard of timing, it will not be possible to have a more detailed discussion of those items today, but I have no doubt that there will be further opportunities to take up any issues that remain outstanding.

Comments have also been made concerning the draft guidance that was put in place on the Section 60 stop-and-search powers following the Gillan and Quinton judgment about Section 44. In the light of responses from those concerned, the Home Office amended the September draft of Code A—the draft that we put out for consultation—to make it clear that there is no ethnic profiling or unlawful discrimination in the use of this power. All authorisations under this power must be supported by clear intelligence. Recording of race or any other protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 may on occasion be relevant but that must never be the sole reason for stopping someone under Section 60. This is how we arrived at the outcome that we did in order to emphasise, among other things, that consultation does have effect in real life.

Others have suggested that Section 60 should be amended in line with the changes that we have made to Section 44 following the Gillan and Quinton judgment. We have not done this, as we consider that the Section 60 power can be distinguished readily from the provision in Section 44 that the ECHR declared incompatible with Article 8 of the ECHR. We do not think that the relevant section fell foul in the same way. Moreover, there is currently an application for judicial review of a Section 60 stop and search before the High Court, on which it would not be appropriate to try to predict the outcome or to take the debate on the issue further today.

However, Section 60 is used differently across England and Wales. Many police forces authorise the power for use on only one or two occasions a year, whereas others may never use it at all. As a national document, Code A should not restrict the use that forces make of the power based on how other forces operate but should simply cover national requirements and allow local practical application of the power to continue. As I say, this is an area where there is significant variation in use. We should not judge the use of a tool such as Section 60 purely on the basis of national statistics.

Here I want to make an important point. Figures are quoted in the press to the effect that black people are 26 times more likely to be stopped and searched under Section 60 than white people. We regard such statistics as potentially extremely misleading because of the distribution of the actual use of the power. Some 76 per cent of all the Section 60 stop and searches in 2008-09—before this Government came into office—were conducted by the Metropolitan Police in London. I suggest that that means that measuring the use of the power against the ethnic composition of the national population as a whole gives a false impression of what actually goes on. When we compare that 76 per cent with the cosmopolitan population of London—obviously, leaving the remaining 24 per cent for the rest of the country—the results are much less disproportionate.

I turn briefly to the other two codes. Code B governs the searching of premises and the seizure of property. The changes bring the code up to date with changes in legislation and the relevant judgments of the higher courts and are largely technical in nature. The proposed changes provide guidance on the powers to search the premises of individuals subject to control orders as well as on the police’s power under Section 18 of PACE to enter and search premises occupied or controlled by a person under arrest for an indictable offence.

The majority of the changes to Code D, on identification issues, reflect the amendments to the power of the police to take DNA and fingerprints for recordable offences that are made under Sections 2 to 7 of the Crime and Security Act 2010, which was passed early last year. The changes fill existing gaps in the ability of the police to take biometric material in connection with criminal investigations and ensure that the national DNA and fingerprint databases are populated primarily with the profiles of those who have been convicted of offences by the courts rather than with unconvicted people. The detail of how the Government will meet the commitment to adopt the protections of the Scottish model for DNA retention will be outlined in the freedom Bill that is to be introduced shortly. Clearly, that will require amendment to the code in due course, but what we have done is bring the code into line with the existing state of the law.

Code D also provides the police with necessary guidance on the use of mobile fingerprinting equipment, which is a fairly recent advance and is not intended to be used routinely or on a whim in investigations. The equipment must be used only when the police already suspect a person of committing a crime and only when they have a need to confirm a person’s identity, following the example set down in guidance designed to prevent abuse. If an officer is unable to confirm a person’s name or has reasonable grounds for doubting the name given, it would be right and proper to use the devices in those circumstances. An image of one or two fingerprints may be taken and checked against the existing fingerprint database. This reduces the need for arrests purely for the purpose of confirming identity, which will save valuable time and resources both for the police and those whose identity is in doubt. I want also to emphasise, because it really is important, that the fingerprints taken on those devices are automatically destroyed by the devices themselves, so there is no way in which, covertly or inadvertently, fingerprints taken under those circumstances, where they are not available for retention, could be retained. As soon as the search is concluded, the prints are explicitly excluded from the police’s wider powers to take and retain fingerprints on arrest.

Concerns have been raised about how we will ensure that these codes are interpreted and applied in a consistent manner across all forces in England and Wales. The codes need to balance the requirement for central guidance with the freedom for forces to operate specific processes and procedures in the way that meets local needs. We have been trying to strike such a balance, and the Home Office continues to work closely with a range of interest groups on these issues.

The revised codes of practice follow important principles, such as reducing bureaucracy and increasing efficiency as well as protecting the civil liberties of our population at large. I think that the House will agree that the landscape of policing is always evolving. It is important, therefore, that the codes of practice, which are a key source of guidance to the police, are kept up to date and that the public know the position. The changes are fully supported by the police and I hope that they will have a real impact on day to day policing. I commend the draft order and the attendant codes to the House.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

Before the debate on the order commences, perhaps I may ask noble Lords please to be kind enough to turn off their phones. The rather curious noise is caused by having mobile phones still switched on.