Queen’s Speech

Lord Dear Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dear]

My Lords, given the recent barrage of criticism of the Home Office, I may make a welcome change. I want to throw a bouquet in the direction of the Home Office on one point and words of encouragement tinged with some disappointment on the other.

I start with the words of encouragement, which flow from a certain disappointment—that there has not been a move within the Crime and Courts Bill to remove the word “insulting” from Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. I shall not go into detail on this, because I spoke at some length about it on Second Reading of the Protection of Freedoms Bill on 8 November last year. Those who are so minded could check what I said in Hansard at col. 192. Put very simply, the use of the word “insulting” within the current legislation is proving to be a grave impediment to the exercise of free speech. Some noble Lords will know that I have spoken on several occasions in the past to try to preserve the existing situation where we champion freedom of speech above almost everything else.

The first Public Order Act in 1936 used the term, “criminalising, threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”. The words, “threatening, abusive or insulting” have been carried through successive legislation. They now find themselves, 50 years later, in the 1986 Act—the current Act. I will not weary your Lordships with the detail but certain sections of that Act—Sections 4, 4A and 5—give a descending ladder of seriousness. Right at the very bottom of that—the least serious, if you like—is “insulting”, in Section 5.

To put it simply, what is happening today is that those who stand up in public and express views that are unpopular to some members of society find that they are in grave danger that those who disagree with those views will invoke the police and insist on action being taken—“I have been insulted; therefore, officer, become involved”. The police may or may not become involved. If they do, they may or may not charge. If they charge, the Crown Prosecution Service may or may not prefer charges. But whatever happens and however the situation winds up, it has a very serious chilling effect on the exercise of free speech.

The Home Office instituted a consultation on 13 October last year, which concluded three months later on 13 January this year, but in the ensuing four months we have heard nothing about the consultation. I am somewhat disappointed at that. I urge the Home Office to look very closely at what has been said, to report the results of that consultation as quickly as it can and, I hope, to look for early inclusion of the removal of those words from the relevant legislation.

Those are my words of encouragement. The bouquet that I throw to the Home Office is the inclusion within the Crime and Courts Bill of the creation of the National Crime Agency, the NCA. We have travelled a long road on this, starting with the creation—I vaguely remember this—of the regional crime squads in the 1960s, through the national crime squads, the National Criminal Intelligence Service and SOCA, the Serious Organised Crime Agency. We now stand on the brink of the NCA. The media have labelled it the British FBI. To some extent that is understandable. However, although there are some similarities, organisationally and constitutionally the FBI is very different. Nevertheless we should make no mistake about it: the creation of the NCA is absolutely essential, given the current range of problems that we as a society face.

I want to focus on Clauses 5(5) and (7) of the Bill, which concerns the creation of the NCA and gives the director-general of the NCA—if such an organisation is created—the power to direct local compliance from local police organisations. I believe that some may well fly in the face of that and say that it runs completely against the grain of what we did in the previous Session in creating police and crime commissioners, localising policing and placing a local focus on local problems. However, we do not need to remind ourselves of the internationalism of problems—the fact that drugs on the streets of Evesham may well have been imported through Rotterdam; that illegal workers in fields in Cambridgeshire may well have been trafficked from eastern Europe through Southampton; and that teenage prostitutes in London may well have been trafficked from the Ukraine through Heathrow. In other words, local problems are created nationally and internationally. However, if the power to direct local compliance does not lie in the hands of the director-general of the NCA, I fear that the move towards localism, which I support in so many ways, will cause the NCA to founder. It would become something akin to a crime tsar and would certainly espouse a pious hope that something will happen, but without it having the wherewithal to pursue it and to get total national co-operation.

I conclude by referring to one word. The word “direct” is undoubtedly tough and it undoubtedly smacks of, and is, central intervention, but I do not believe that it is contradictory to the move in other ways towards the localisation of policing. It is absolutely essential to deal with international and cross-border national crime. It is the very bedrock of what is envisaged within the National Crime Agency. It is, in fact, the keystone to the whole creation of the agency and without it the agency would founder. I commend the Bill to your Lordships in those terms and I very much hope that we shall see the word “direct” in Clause 5 when the Bill is passed and becomes law.