Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I am very pleased to add my support to the excellent response that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has prepared to the points that arose in Committee. I was one of those who met Professor Keith Humphreys, who is the senior adviser to President Obama on drug and alcohol abuse, who gave us a very helpful presentation indeed on what they are doing in the States. They have made very good progress and are intending to roll out the programme over a much wider front, given the success that they have encountered.

On the point of different cultures, the one thing that those involved in drink and drug issues know is that they are widespread throughout countries in varying degrees. Some places have bigger problems than others, but those who have problems with drink and drugs have a common problem of approach. It behoves us that wherever we see people trying a new approach, if it is producing success and the kind of results that we have heard that this scheme is running, we should spend some time looking to see whether it can be applied in our home country.

The Americans are very progressive in many areas. They try schemes; yes, some of them fail, but they abandon those and move on. The problem I find from my experience of dealing with these issues in this country is that when we get an idea, we believe that it is going to work and research it very well indeed. We then start pouring a lot of money into it, which continues to go in regardless of what is happening with the scheme, yet we continue defending the status quo when others come to suggest trying to look for something a little different.

I hope that the Government will be prepared to think again on this and to be bold. The major issues which were troubling them have, I think, been answered by the noble Baroness in her response but I would underline the two points that I made previously. First, this will not work on a voluntary basis. It will work successfully on that basis in one or two areas, but then you will find that the probation officers move on and the police change. A different culture then occurs in the area where it has been successful, so it is not maintained and it disappears. This is all that we find happens when it is run purely voluntarily on an experimental basis. It needs instead to be in the Bill and to be a compulsory operation—again, on an experimental basis.

Secondly, there is a concern expressed that we might end up with more people going into jail at the end of the day. Well, some of those people will be going to jail in any event and will be costing the taxpayer an awful lot of money in the first instance. If this alternative runs, there is a chance that there will be significantly less cost to the taxpayer and to the public at large. I suggest to the Minister one way around this difficulty. Civil servants hate sunset clauses because they are seen as a mark of failure. We should be much more flexible in our approach to sunset clauses. If they are right that this will end up with more people going to jail—I do not believe that it will, and I think that most people around the House who attended these briefings do not think that—why do the Government not consider making these amendments subject to a sunset clause and bring that back at Third Reading? We can then find a way forward which would answer that problem.

I am sorry to think that my Front Bench is not going to give its full support to this venture. The Labour Party ought to be backing this. From a number of standpoints, it is a very helpful development indeed and even though our Front Bench may not be exalting my colleagues to join us in the Division Lobbies, I personally appeal very strongly indeed to the people on the Labour Benches to vote for this amendment, if we are pushed to a vote. However, I hope that is avoided and that we get a more positive response from the Minister than we have had before.

[Lord Imbert]

My Lords, I must declare an interest before I begin in that 50 years ago, when on night duty as a new constable on the streets of London, I found that the following morning, for weeks on end, one was standing in court with a defendant who was accused of a crime that turned out to be alcohol-related. As the Committee would expect, I have conferred with my former colleagues and, yesterday morning, I spoke to the territorial operations department of the Metropolitan Police to seek its view on this amendment. It is supportive, with one caveat: that this must be a magistrate’s decision. Police must not be expected to say, “This individual committed the crime because they were drunk”. That must be a decision of the magistrate but, with that one caveat, I know that my former colleagues support this amendment as indeed do I.

--- Later in debate ---

The Government are fully committed to finding new ways to tackle the offending caused by excess drinking and ensuring that it is dealt with effectively. Although I recognise that my noble friend and the Deputy Mayor of London seek to achieve that by the amendments before us today, I am keen that we test that proposition using existing powers available to the police and the CPS. That will provide us with a helpful means of testing and developing the principles of the approach and monitoring its impact, effectiveness and potential risks before proceeding with legislative changes. To do that, we would like to identify two or three suitable areas where there is a problem with high-volume, less serious alcohol offending. That is the type of offending that blights many town centres, as has been mentioned in the debate. That is a pragmatic way forward that allows us to put into practice the principles of the noble Baroness’s amendment and begin to test the effect of a sobriety scheme to tackle alcohol-related offending.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

Are the Government contemplating putting into legislation the package that the noble Baroness is talking about, or will it be run on a voluntary basis? If it is the latter, why is it not attached to what is before us now?

[Baroness Browning]

The sobriety scheme based on conditional cautions has all the legislative power that it needs now. I do not need to put it into this statute; there is sufficient statute to run it now. If we were to move on later to something as described by the noble Baroness, we would, as I indicated, need to pick up the results of those pilots in future legislation.

If we take forward these pilots on the basis that I have outlined to the House, it will allow us to test locally some of the more challenging elements of such a scheme, including its funding, proportionality, enforcement and impact on reoffending. Although I recognise the problem that the amendments seek to tackle and am sympathetic to their objectives, I hope that the noble Baroness will understand why I am unable to support their adoption. However, I give my full support to testing the principles of the scheme that she proposes and hope to begin a number of pilot schemes before too long.