Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dear]

My Lords, we are working against the clock this evening so I will not repeat any of the powerful arguments adduced so far. I say simply that I agree with them and support the amendment.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

This is an extremely important issue and not one that we should rush through simply because we are fed up. I am sure that I have just as much stamina as the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, although I am not required to take the whole Bill through this House. We have to consider and debate these issues seriously because, after all, that is the function of this House.

This is a problem of the Government’s own making in that, having decided that police and crime commissioners—and for that matter MOPC in London, although the issues are slightly different—have substantial, individually held powers, the question then comes: what do you do in circumstances when there is a vacancy or someone needs to act while that happens? The Government cannot have it both ways. They cannot say, “Actually, it will be okay and we can have a member of the staff of the police and crime commissioner’s office to act in this function”, and at the same time say, “The police and crime commissioners are so important and will be so busy that they have to work full time on these functions”. What are they working full time on?

They are presumably setting direction—I am sure they are not intervening in operational matters because the Government are clear that they will not be doing that. They will be providing guidance on what is regarded as important to the electorate of that policing area. Among their duties will be setting the level of local taxation. There is no other area of British public life when something that impacts on taxation is not decided by people who are elected. If the noble Baroness wants to interrupt and tell me of one that I have not thought of, I would be delighted to receive it. There is no such area.

This is one of the most important decisions and it is one that will matter very much to the public in the area concerned. The task of being an elected politician is to balance what you believe are the important aspirations that you might have for the public service concerned and how much money can readily be raised in taxation. That is an issue that this and previous Governments have struggled with, and those who are actively engaged in local government struggle with it each year. You have to make a judgment and you can make it only if you see both sides of the equation. You see the side of expenditure and you see the side of what it will mean in taxation. Only somebody who is elected will have that perspective of what the public want in terms of services delivered and what they are prepared to buy through taxation. The public are not always single-minded on these matters. We are all aware of those stresses and strains, which is all the more reason why it must be an elected politician who makes that judgment. Only an elected politician with the authority of being elected can strike that balance knowing what the electorate of the area feel.

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Before my noble friend sits down, perhaps I might ask whether he has given any thought to the situation of a police officer in the force who has received money from tabloid journalists. Would that be the responsibility of the chief constable or of the commissioner? If it would be the responsibility of the commissioner, how would someone standing in from the panel be able to deal with that?

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

If such a circumstance were to exist—and clearly this is all very much in our minds at the present time—I suspect that the first people who will recognise the level of public concern that is going to exist are going to be individuals with a personal, direct elected mandate in an area. Under the Government’s model, where you have an elected police and crime commissioner who has not been disqualified, removed from office or incapacitated, then maybe that works and that individual would express concerns.

There is a fascinating article by Daniel Hannan, who I know is of enormous influence within the Conservative Party. He complains, incidentally, that the Government have got the nomenclature wrong; they should not be called police and crime commissioners but should be called sheriffs. He points out that there is a historic British tradition of the local sheriff, who is not the guy with the five or six-pointed star badge, but an ancient, semi-feudal office. The City of London has sheriffs, so it must be all right, because it is the same medieval construct that brought us corporations themselves.

In those circumstances, the directly elected individual —and this again is the point of the Government’s proposals—is going to be the person who will sense that this is something of deep concern to the public and that something should happen. In the circumstances of my noble friend Lord Hunt’s amendment, the point about it is that, rather than have some official who has never had to face an electorate making those judgments and decisions, it would at least be someone with a personal electoral mandate, albeit not for the whole force area, but for a part of it, who would be reflecting the public concern about such matters and taking the appropriate action in those circumstances.

Again, I think the Government’s arguments are flawed and they really need to address what is actually a very serious problem, which would manifest itself most seriously in circumstances where something is seriously going wrong.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I will intervene briefly, mainly to support what my noble friend has said.

On the previous intervention, the issue of offers of payment by the media to certain police officers is very much on our minds at the moment. In my view, this issue is not—and never has been—a really central and massive problem, but it has always been there. When I introduced my Freedom and Responsibility of the Press Bill 20-odd years ago, we looked at it then but it has never been dealt with so I would say it should be considered, particularly in the structure that Government are setting up. There will be a temptation for certain police officers to be paid by journalists. Usually, the journalist makes the approach, in my experience, when any offer is made. Journalists will talk about what they do on a confidential basis—“Do not quote me” and so on—but such things are said. Usually, the sums of money are not huge—perhaps £20 for a bit of information and a bit more for another piece of information.

We all have two or three concerns about this Bill, but on this particular aspect there is a danger of what you do if there is an issue of corruption, however small it is overall, and how it is dealt with. I hope that the Minister will deal with that point, which my noble friend made very adequately from the Front Bench, but has just been added to by my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

I have Amendment 235A in this group. The noble Baroness spoke about matters which I raised at the previous stage, mentioning a number of criminal areas which do not respect boundaries. This amendment is arguably a little more local, but I have been asked to raise it by Justice, whose concern is exactly what I articulated at the previous stage and what the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, has articulated now. It is concerned that the creation of commissioners could result in what it calls—it is rather a good phrase—a competitive “race to the bottom” on populist law and order policies. It mentions what one might call the “invisible” crimes, such as domestic violence and crimes against vulnerable individuals and members of minority groups, which do not dominate public concern in the way that street crime and anti-social behaviour do.

The Bill deals with offences such as terrorism and organised crime, which require a national policing response. Child neglect has been acknowledged in another part of the Bill, but aggravated crimes against minorities and a whole list of other matters, with which I shall not detain the House, may not be a priority—indeed, it is extremely unlikely—for any commissioner seeking an electoral mandate.

I made the point to Justice that we had already covered some of this ground, to which it responded rather honestly that it was important to make the rhetorical point. Although it is almost half-past nine on perhaps our last day on Report, I shall make the point not very rhetorically, not very eloquently, but in quite a heartfelt manner.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I do not think that some of the issues that we are discussing in these amendments are rhetorical matters. My Amendment 239 approaches the issues which my noble friend Lady Henig raised in Amendment 235 from a slightly different perspective.

Some 35 hours ago, I sat listening to the Home Secretary introduce the new CONTEST strategy for the United Kingdom. That document, which pulls together the efforts being made to counter terrorism, is fundamental to the issues that we are talking about here in relation to the national strategic policing requirement.

Of course, this document describes the importance of having a national network feeding in to the counterterrorist effort—if we do not have such a national network, we cannot deliver effective counterterrorist policing. That is why it is so important that the Government have put the strategic policing requirement into the Bill. What makes it difficult for us in your Lordships’ House to consider these matters tonight is that, of course, no one, as far as I am aware—certainly none of your Lordships—has yet seen the strategic policing requirement, or a draft thereof.

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[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble friend served with me on the Joint Committee on the national security strategy. Will he help the House and contemplate how the strategic policing requirement might fit in to the national security strategy? Would it be part of it or relate to it in any way? It has certainly not been mentioned, as I am sure my noble friend would agree, in our meetings on the national security Joint Committee.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The Government are trying to square the circle of putting a very high priority on national security—the national security strategy, the creation of the National Security Council—and their policies on police and crime commissioners. Clearly, the potential danger with police and crime commissioners elected with a local mandate to articulate the concerns of local people is that some national priorities will not be given the same priority at local level. Now, I am sure that no sensible police and crime commissioner would say, “I am not interested in anything being done on counterterrorism”, just as no sensible police and crime commissioner would say that they did not want to see anything done on serious crime. However, when there are 41 directly elected individuals, some of whom will fight very fiercely contested local elections, or be facing fiercely contested re-election, the question of whether the same priority is given to national security matters as is given to other matters becomes a real issue.

Because of our particularly slow progress as a House on other matters before we arrived at the Bill tonight—we are making rapid progress compared to the progress earlier—I had the opportunity of listening to a presentation downstairs from Professor Dave Sloggett, a nationally known expert on counterterrorism issues. In a rather chilling 15-minute tour d’horizon, he simply spelt out the sorts of threats that we face, which are contained in the CONTEST strategy, and the context in which that is taking place at the moment. Yes, Osama bin Laden has been killed, but that does not mean that al-Qaeda goes away. We are actually seeing a fragmentation and each of the different affiliates going their own way, each presenting slightly different threats.

We have Gaddafi in Libya, who has made an explicit threat of suicide bombers in European cities; and there is the changing situation in Northern Ireland, where we have just seen two nights of sustained rioting and serious disorder. Again, the fact that that has not impinged significantly on the rest of the country makes it all the more likely that there will be an aspiration for it do so. We have the challenges of the Olympics. In moving her amendment, my noble friend Lady Henig referred to issues around cybercrime, and it is interesting that the CONTEST strategy for the first time refers to the cyberterrorist threat. These are issues in which local police forces have got to play their part; they have got to raise their game. They are not necessarily issues which will immediately emerge as the priority for the elected police and crime commissioner in every part of the country, yet every part of the country is potentially affected.

Let us consider the way in which Roshonara Choudhry self-radicalised herself, dropped out of her university course and, having listened to speeches and read material on the internet, decided that an appropriate thing for her to do to take forward the cause would be to assassinate a British Member of Parliament. She then researched Members of Parliament on TheyWorkForYou.com and purchased two kitchen knives. Fortunately for Stephen Timms, a Member of Parliament in the other place, she decided on the day that it was easier to conceal in her clothing the shorter of the knives. That is an example of the kind of threat we face.

Not so long ago an individual in the south-west of the country seriously injured himself in an attempt to blow up a restaurant in which families with young children were having meals. Again, he was an individual who, as far as we know, was not significantly connected to any of the networks.

It will be the responsibility of local policing, local special branches and local intelligence to pick up on these issues. If you get to a stage where this is seen as not the responsibility of a local police force, your ability to combat these threats will be severely weakened. That is why the strategic policing requirement is so important.

It is also important in the context of serious and organised crime because we all know that if you do not maintain consistent and strong pressure on the issues around serious and organised crime, gradually the quality of community life in all kinds of areas will begin to deteriorate—and yet this will not be an immediate priority for many police and crime commissioners.

The Government have, properly, written into the Bill a strategic policing requirement. However, they have not specified how it will be enforced and how they will make sure that it is met in every force area. My noble friend Lady Henig has tabled an amendment which would require Her Majesty’s Inspectorate to produce a report on an annual basis and lay it before Parliament to assess how the strategic policing requirement is working. My amendment has a different focus; it seeks to consider what happens in each individual force area. It does not specify that the report should be laid before Parliament because sometimes the content of that report in relation to the strength, willingness and effectiveness of local forces in combating terrorism and serious and organised crime would best not be publicly shared.

I know that the Home Office does not want to be top-down on all kinds of issues, but on these issues it needs to be top-down, which is why it has postulated a strategic policing requirement. This will give the Home Secretary a snapshot for each police force area and a national overview, if you take the position that has been put forward by my noble friend Lady Henig, of what is going on and where there may be weaknesses. Whether that will result in a formal intervention by the Home Secretary or a less formal intervention with the chief officer of police and the elected politician who leads those areas applying pressure, I do not think really matters. What is important is that the Home Secretary has that information and has it as a tool. Further, it is important that the locally elected individual—the police and crime commissioner or the MOPC in London—is aware of where they stand in terms of meeting the strategic policing requirement. They may well have a rose-tinted view of what the level of problem is or what needs to be done. This gives them that information and the opportunity to decide. I find it extraordinary that there is nothing in this Bill about monitoring how the strategic policing requirement is to be met, how it is to be achieved and what is to be done about it.

These amendments are put forward in a genuine attempt not just to assist the Government to achieve their objectives, which as you know are constantly at the forefront of our thoughts on this side of the House, but because it is critically and crucially important for the national security of this country and indeed for our ability to deal with serious and organised crime.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, I hope I will be forgiven for making a short intervention in support of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, and indeed in support of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, as to its principle. This Bill is to a great extent about the accountability of the police. The whole purpose of the Government’s policy, which I applaud, is to make the police more accountable to the public. The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, is attempting to do precisely that—to give visible evidence of that accountability to enable the public to judge from a document how accountable the police are in terms of the strategic policing requirement.

The noble Baroness referred to the work of the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, which I used to be. The independent reviewer is required to produce at least two reports every year which enable Members of both Houses, who use the reports extensively, and others to judge the performance of the authorities in relation to counterterrorism law. We have an independent reviewer of the relatively new Northern Ireland provisions for what is now public order law in Northern Ireland. This role has been carried out since it was introduced by Mr Robert Whalley. He has been very successful in ensuring that those important parts of the law he reviews in Northern Ireland, which can prove, as we have seen in the past couple of days, very controversial in the context of everyday life, are accounted for in the legislative assembly of Northern Ireland and in this Parliament.

Following the legislation in relation to the UN money-laundering provisions for named terrorist suspects, we introduced recently an independent review which is going to be carried out, as I understand it, by David Anderson QC, who succeeded me as independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. There again, we will have a report which will deal with issues relating to a part of the strategic policing requirement. Those who carry out such roles from time to time have been asked ad hoc to carry out reports which call to account those who have been involved in aspects of counterterrorism and related policing.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary has a distinguished and respected record of impartiality. It has been able to secure changes in policing practice around the country by the kindly method of report, constructive criticism and engaging, sometimes, the support of those in both Houses of Parliament. It seems to me that there is nothing to be lost and potentially much to be gained from the transparency of a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, particularly given the importance of the strategic policing requirement, which has been amply described during this short debate, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Harris.

I take issue with the noble Lord on only one detail. He suggested that it might be difficult to write a report that would be published that engaged with matters of national security that are best left unsaid. I can tell the noble Lord that there are ways of doing this; it can be done. With the co-operation, which is always available, of the security services in particular, there are ways of writing reports that do not damage national security but deal fully with all the principles that need to be discussed.

I therefore believe that this is a constructive proposal and I hope to hear that the Minister will also allow this matter further consideration with a view to something being brought forward at Third Reading.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I will do my best to get that information to the House as soon as possible.

As I said, it is part of the intention of this Bill to build in some constructive tensions between the local and the national. We all understand that policing is a constant dialogue between local, regional and national, although I suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, that things have changed a great deal in the last 20 or 30 years. Certainly when I was a candidate in Manchester many years ago, there was a small Special Branch that dealt with the IRA, but there were not the cross-cutting collaborative units that we now see across the north of England—drugs units, organised crime units and counterterrorism units, which are now part of the network in which our police forces co-operate with each other. My perspective on policing is a West Yorkshire one, but the Yorkshire Post, the Bradford Telegraph & Argus and the local radio stations do not simply focus on local crime, partly because local and national issues, such as parades by the English Defence League and drugs heists in which the drugs have just been imported from some other country, are very much part of the local scene. Therefore I think that the widespread fears suggested by the noble Baroness may be exaggerated.

Clause 80 sets out the strategic policing requirement, which is an update of the Police Act 1996, as noble Lords have said. That strategic policing requirement is now being extensively consulted on by the Secretary of State, ACPO, the Association of Police Authorities, the Metropolitan Police service and others. Clearly that is going to be a major part—

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, while I am fascinated to hear that this consultation is taking place, on the last occasion on which I saw representatives of the Association of Chief Police Officers—I believe it was last week—they had not yet seen a draft of this document, so I am slightly bemused by that. Parliament has to see it. We cannot understand what the balance is going to be between the local and the national unless we can see that document, even in draft state, and understand it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Clause 80 sets out in some detail the principles of the strategic policing requirement. It is there in the Bill. There is a question of how much detail we want to write in to the Bill, but Clause 80 sets out the fundamentals of that requirement. Clause 96 adds to that the backstop power for the Secretary of State to intervene if, in her opinion, local police forces are not paying sufficient attention to the strategic policing requirement.

I add that “have regard to” is not, as has been suggested, a weak statement. It is a commonly used phrase for a strong and appropriate duty, which places an obligation on the chief officer and the PCC to comply with the strategic policing requirement. In policing terms, the duty to have regard has previously applied, for example, to codes of practice that have been used to implement a national intelligence model across all 43 police forces in England and Wales, to codify the use of police firearms and to ensure compliance with the IPCC statutory guidance on handling police complaints, which suggests that this is a widely used and strong duty.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The Minister says that this is intended to be a strong requirement. Clause 80, which he referred to, says,

“must, from time to time, issue a document”.

What I am trying to clarify is: how can we see what the impact of that strong requirement is unless we know what the Government's intentions are for the document's contents? That is not asking to have the wording of the strategic policing requirement written into the Bill. The Bill already says that there will be such a document, but none of us have seen one. The Minister has talked about consultations but as far as I am aware—I wait to be corrected—last week no full-touch document had been circulated for comments, despite the expectations set out in here.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I promise to get back to the noble Lord as soon as possible with an update of where we now are on that. I stress that it is normal practice to pass legislation without all the details of the regulations being tied up before that Act is passed, because ongoing negotiations about how the regulations will be carried through are often under way. I am assured that negotiations and consultations on the strategic policing requirement are well under way.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The Minister talks about regulations but I did not actually think that the strategic policing requirement was going to be put in regulations. I thought it was simply going to be a document. There have been plenty of occasions when the document has been so pivotal that Parliament has been advised of what the content of regulations will be. Draft regulations have been circulated so that people can understand what their scope is. As I understand it, this is regarded as one of the central planks in determining what is local and what is national. I believe that Parliament should therefore see this document in draft form before we can move forward.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I promise to get back to the noble Lord with a situation report, certainly by the time we come to Third Reading. On Clause 96, I am also informed that the backstop power available to the Secretary of State to intervene where forces are not having sufficient regard to national priorities has never been used. It is there as a backstop power but police forces, chief constables and police authorities have necessarily recognised that there is a thread between neighbourhood policing and local, regional and national priorities. The neighbourhood police groups which I have been out with in Leeds and Bradford are also looking at potentially vulnerable individuals, at people who may be radicalised and at areas where drugs are being dealt or supplied. That feeds into a national intelligence chain and is part of what we all understand as policing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, stressed the importance of criminal activities which, in some cases, do not respect boundaries. She also talked about the invisible crimes of domestic violence, vulnerable adults, child neglect and aggravated crimes against minorities. Again, I have sat in on MAPPA groups—multi-agency areas—where police are working with other local social services and non-governmental organisations, precisely to look at those invisible crimes. Part of the way in which attention is drawn to these crimes is by local voluntary organisations working with police and other agencies at the local level. In the nature of these cases, much domestic violence and child neglect is essentially local. Those elements which are not local—child trafficking, sexual abuse, online sexual exploitation—are dealt with now increasingly by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and other forms of collaboration between local police forces and national agencies, which indeed will feed into the national crime agency when that is developed. Again, in this case there is not a tension but a thread between local violence, local disorder, local abuse, and those more limited elements in which children are trafficked or abused and the internet is used for these purposes. I can assure the noble Baroness that this does not need to be written again into the Bill. Having said that, I hope that I have given sufficient assurance to those who tabled these amendments to enable them not to press them.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Surely the Minister will know from the debate that we have had on the European Bill that many noble Lords in this House talk of little else.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

Before Minister comes back on this, I say that this is not just about whether or not this is a document published for Parliament; it is about ensuring that there is a focus on the strategic policing requirement. That is something which the Government have not yet conceded. While I am on my feet, and to prevent me getting up again, can he tell us what he actually means by a situation report? Does that mean that when we get to Third Reading which, as far as I am aware, is still only a few days away, we will have in front of us some idea as to what this document will look like?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I had not promised to give the detail of the strategic policing requirement, which is currently under negotiation. I am happy to give noble Lords a situation report on where negotiations stand regarding the definition of the strategic policing requirement. That is the most that I can do.