Offensive Weapons Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I hope the noble Lord will not mind if I intervene on that point. He is right that, if you want to commit knife crime, you could go to your kitchen drawer and probably get a fairly effective weapon out of it. But that is not the nub of this legislation or of what we are trying to achieve. There are a number of interventions we are trying to make. I think I explained right at the outset when I introduced the Bill that no one intervention is going to solve the problem in and of itself. It is the range of measures that we have in place, including this legislation, that we hope will reduce what has become a scourge in society which is blighting the lives of young people.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I should first declare an interest as chair of National Trading Standards which is a recipient of Home Office money and was responsible for the test purchases that have been talked about. However, I do not intend to comment on the detail of those test purchases—partly because I have not been briefed on them—but to make a specific point on the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about creating an evidence trail.

One of the issues of concern is young people who decide they need to carry a knife notionally for their protection. It is not that they intend to use it, but they carry it for their protection and unfortunately it then gets used. One has to be particularly concerned about that category of person. They may well have a careful parent who would notice the disappearance of a knife from a knife drawer, or they may believe that they would be stopped or other social pressures be applied if they tried to get one in a way other than online; they would therefore be attracted to the online route. So while this particular mechanism may or may not be the most effective way of dealing with it, this is the category of person one should be concerned about. It is about dealing not with those who are intent on committing knife crime but those who seek to have a knife that no one else knows about, which they can carry with them, because they think it will defend them.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. Young people are being forced to carry knives for protection. We have an awful situation where young people become both victims and perpetrators of knife crime, both in self-defence and, perhaps, more maliciously. I thank him for making that point.

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[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I had not really intended to intervene but I have come here and it is a fascinating series of amendments.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is an extremely interesting one and has much wider ramifications than the purposes for which he has put it forward. There is a real issue—again, I refer to my interests as chair of National Trading Standards—about fulfilment houses in relation to all sorts of trading standards offences and issues. The noble Lord talks about Amazon, but that is at the upper end of the fulfilment house market. There are plenty of fulfilment houses that have essentially been set up by people in their front rooms. I am not sure which of those is more or less likely to know the content and precise nature of some of the orders they are fulfilling. There are a lot of attractions in going in the direction that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, wants us to go, which would place an obligation on that stage of the distribution process as well as on the point of sale. But I suspect it raises much wider issues around how other laws—for example, consumer protection laws—would apply to fulfilment houses.

I would quite like to see fulfilment houses having to take some of that responsibility, but it is the same argument about internet service providers taking responsibility for the content of what appears on their services. There is a lot to be said for that as well. I suspect, however, that tackling the issue may not sit easily in this Bill, as opposed to perhaps a rather more widespread look at the role of fulfilment houses—an area that will grow inevitably with the increase of online markets.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

I want merely to thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for putting forward a proposition which means that the Government have to give a comprehensive answer to it.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I am not sure whether the Minister wants to introduce the government’s amendments now, so perhaps I should just ask some questions. At Second Reading, I raised the role of trading standards so it is obviously welcome that it is being addressed.

There are some obvious questions about the Government’s amendments. First, why weights and measures authorities? I confess that I have not looked up the statutory definition of a weights and measures authority, but there must be one. Why is it that rather than local authorities? The Chartered Trading Standards Institute makes the point that if the obligation was placed on local authorities as a whole, they might have more flexibility in how they dealt with the issue. Secondly, why is it not a statutory duty? On that point, the institute says that, in its experience, local authorities are less likely to provide the resources to deal with a problem, let alone with the training and recruitment of staff. The issue of resources is huge, and it is the elephant in the room in this context. We are all aware of the constraints on local authorities. It is a while since I was a local councillor, and I used to think that we had problems then. I do not know how local authorities manage now to juggle the calls on their resources, so I must make that obvious point as well as asking these few questions. It is right that the role of trading standards is recognised here, as is their role with offensive weapons as a whole, given their understanding of how the communities where they work actually operate.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I apologise for missing the first few words of my noble friend’s introductory remarks on this amendment. I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said because I wonder whether the wording in the government amendment is as precise as it is intended to be. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute—I refer to my interests in terms of trading standards—says that a correct definition, if you mean just weights and measures authorities, would be,

“a local weights and measures authority”,

in Great Britain,

“within the meaning set out in section 69 of the Weights and Measures Act 1985”.

The Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland may enforce within its area, rather than simply talking in those terms. I wonder whether a broader definition would not make sense, given that in many local authorities now the trading standards function, which is so diminished, is often spread with other responsibilities. That may be something the Government want to take away and look at to make sure that what they are trying to achieve meets the obligation.

The second point about whether this should be made a duty is important as well. People I know very well in the Chartered Trading Standards Institute try to get this both ways: they complain constantly about all the statutory duties placed on local authorities, and therefore the inability of local authorities to take them seriously, but they also say, “Here is something which ought to be a statutory duty”. The psychological effect of making it clear that the Government wish to place a responsibility on local authorities to pursue their role in this matter would be extremely helpful and valuable. If the Government were to find some way of making the resources available, so that, rather than just placing the duty, they could also ensure that local authorities had the wherewithal to take effective action, that would be extremely helpful.

[Baroness Barran]

My Lords, the amendments in this group are directed at a common end—namely, to support the effective enforcement of the provisions of the Bill by local authorities. Amendment 59 introduces a legal duty on local authorities to enforce the legislation in relation to the sale and delivery of bladed articles and corrosive substances.

Local authorities in England and Wales already regulate the sale of bladed articles using general powers in Section 222 of the Local Government Act 1972. Under that section, where a local authority considers it expedient for the promotion or protection of the interests of the inhabitants of its area, it may prosecute, defend or appear in legal proceedings and, in the case of civil proceedings, may institute them in its own name.

There is no reason why local authorities could not use the general powers under the Local Government Act 1972 to enforce the provisions in the Bill in relation to the sale of corrosive products. It is also possible for the legislation in relation to sales of bladed articles and corrosive products to be enforced by the police. Consistent with these existing powers, the Government do not believe that it is necessary to impose a duty on local authorities to enforce the legislation in relation to the sale of bladed articles and corrosive products.

That is not to say that local authorities’ enforcement powers in this area cannot be strengthened. This leads me to Amendment 60, which seeks to extend the application of the investigative powers provided for in the Consumer Rights Act 2015. These powers enable local authorities to: require information from sellers; observe the carrying on of business; enter premises without warrant; inspect products; test equipment; require the production of documents; or seize and detain goods.

Brexit: Security

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Under a deal situation, the political declaration has provisions for Eurojust, Europol, Prüm and PNR. Leaving without a deal would necessitate us relying on other mechanisms to fulfil those obligations.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, we will be relying on a 63 year-old convention from the Council of Europe. Will the Minister tell us how long, on average, extradition requests take with those countries where we currently rely on it compared with the European arrest warrant that we have with the 27 EU nations?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

It is certainly the case that the European arrest warrant is a very smooth process. I cannot give the noble Lord an estimate of the exact time relying on the Council of Europe convention because it has not happened yet. I can give estimates of what happened when we relied on the convention, but I cannot give an estimate on what has not happened yet. There is no doubt—I think this goes to the nub of the noble Lord’s point—that the European arrest warrant is a very smooth process.

Homophobic Hate Crime

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

It is up to the House to decide.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, are the Government still committed to making homophobic hate crime an aggravated offence or not?

Capital Requirements (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder if the noble Lord would like to refer to the reports of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which has considered all these measures. The answers to his questions are in those reports.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, further to the point made by my noble friend Lord Foulkes, this has obviously taken up barely a minute or two of your Lordships’ House’s time, but could the Minister tell us how many other such instruments he expects to bring in a similar vein to this House and through the procedures that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, mentioned? How much time does he therefore expect the House to have to devote to these matters?

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)]

We are in the process of preparing, which any responsible Government should do, for the no-deal situation, which is not what we want. We want the deal to go through, but we have to prepare for every eventuality. I commend the work of my noble friend’s committee in providing very detailed scrutiny of these regulations, as I also commend those Members who did actually attend Grand Committee on 12 December and provided that scrutiny in person.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

My Lords, I do not disagree with much of what has been said by my noble friend Lord Anderson. However, I have some concerns about a proliferation of independent reviewers. My suggestion to the Government is that, if there is to be an independent review of Prevent, it should be done by the new Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation who I understand is about to be appointed. After all, Prevent is part of the four-strand counterterrorism policy; it seems logical that the independent reviewer should be able to consider all strands of that policy. My only reservation would be if there were serious national security implications of any such review. That said, all independent reviewers have had to be “subtle and nuanced”, to adopt a phrase from my noble friend, about national security issues. This has been taken into account in the production of all reviews.

Of course I accept that Prevent is not a perfect policy. All policies can be improved, particularly in counterterrorism. If it would give greater confidence to the public, or rather—as I suspect the public are not too worried about this—if it would give greater confidence to those who spend a lot of time in the Palace of Westminster and the couple of square miles around it, then I see no disadvantage in an independent review being carried out by somebody already vetted and expert on counterterrorism policy as a whole.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow two distinguished reviewers of counterterrorism legislation, who more or less agreed with each other. My first realisation of how pivotal the Prevent strand is came when I chaired a focus group with mothers who were concerned that their children were being lured into radicalised behaviour. They were pleading for there to be somewhere where their children, mainly male in that group, could be referred to be helped through the process and not end up as radicalised and potential terrorists. They had huge concerns that if they raised their fears about their sons with the police, the next thing that would happen is that their doors would be kicked in at four in the morning and the young person would be taken away and interrogated, and goodness only knows what would happen after that. Those mothers were also concerned about whether there were routes within their own communities for dealing with such cases and they felt quite strongly that there were none. They did not have a solution: they simply pleaded for something to be found to help them in that situation. That is one of the strongest cases that I have heard as to why this work is so important.

Having said that, there was a desire for alliteration to have four Ps when the Contest strategy was created and, in hindsight, that the Prevent strand was included was not entirely helpful. The core of Prevent is safeguarding. We have no qualms about safeguarding young people from sexual abuse, about safeguarding those who are vulnerable or have mental health issues, nor of finding ways to steer young people away from gang-related activities—we do not necessarily know how to do it but we know that it is a good thing to do—and we have no qualms about trying to steer people away from becoming addicted to dangerous drugs. Why should we have any qualms about steering young people—or indeed anyone—away from engagement in radicalisation and in terrorism? The problem has been that it is seen as too closely linked to the counterterrorism policy and the alliteration of the four Ps.

We should be quite clear that counterterrorism is important. It has to be addressed in this way and the Prevent programme has not always been as effective as it might have been in individual cases. Again, I remember 12 years ago—I cannot recall exactly when: I would have to check my diary—visiting two Prevent projects in London in adjacent London boroughs. They had similar mixes but took completely different approaches, for no obvious reason. In one, it appeared that if someone was referred to the programme, a large, burly police officer would go around and try to talk them out of it, which, frankly, will not produce the most effective results. There was an issue, particularly at the beginning and perhaps less so now, of quality control in the way in which some Prevent activities have been taking place.

We should also recognise that the fact that Prevent has such a difficult reputation is not entirely accidental. It is not entirely the consequence of that variability in the style but because some organisations and individuals have desperately tried to traduce it and make it appear more sinister than it is—for whatever reasons we can only speculate, but that is what has happened.

My noble friend’s amendment is important not necessarily because we will end up with something very different, but we need to look at those quality control issues, to establish that it is being done as well as possible, and we need to emphasise that the mission is safeguarding and protection of the individual rather than being part of the counterterrorism machinery which necessarily leads people to conviction and imprisonment.

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[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I am very grateful to my noble friend, who is more up to date than I am. My understanding is that the only fully contested application was from the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, which won in front of POAC. The Government appealed and the Court of Appeal issued a judgment comprehensively disagreeing with the Government. The People’s Mujahedin of Iran—or the NCRI, which includes the PMOI—now functions openly throughout Europe, although its leader, Mrs Rajavi, is not allowed by the Home Office to enter the United Kingdom. My noble friend Lord Pannick and I remember this to our cost, because we were involved in a Supreme Court case on that very subject.

There is a method of seeking de-proscription. It is expensive and quite clunky, it has to be accepted. Secondly, I absolutely agree with my noble friend that there may be some organisations that have almost no membership, which do not have the resources to apply for de-proscription, and which individuals would not wish to expose themselves as being interested in by applying for de-proscription on their behalf.

However, there is another point I wanted to mention. This is a very subtle matter, particularly in Northern Ireland. It is very difficult to read the minds of some former paramilitaries, both big and small. For all we know, they may have reasons for wishing to remain proscribed. My concern about Amendments 32A and 32B relates to the wording of proposed new subsection (6A)(d), which requires the Government to “publish each such decision”. Having been involved from time to time in the area we are talking about, I believe that would potentially raise compromises for national security and undermine the stability of Northern Ireland, if that part of the amendment was required. That said, the addition of the words,

“that it is or has been concerned in terrorism”,

in Amendment 32A, which I understand from my noble friend was tabled in the last fortnight or so, provides some welcome clarity. I will give way, and then I will continue briefly.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I may have misunderstood the noble Lord and I am grateful to him for giving way. If he is objecting to the idea that the decision should not be published, how will somebody know whether an organisation is proscribed or not?

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

The last paragraph would remain: a record would have to be placed before Parliament. What I am concerned about is the giving of reasons.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

It does not say that.

Violent Crime

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

To move that this House takes note of the recent increase in violent crime and the case for a cross-governmental response that includes not only policing, law enforcement and policies on gangs and drugs but also health services, youth provision and opportunities for young people.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to introduce this debate today, and in doing so remind the House of my various interests in the register.

Nineteen days ago a man in his 30s was found with stab injuries at the end of my road. He was one of the luckier ones; his injuries were not life-threatening. However, on that same weekend the number of murders in London this year exceeded the total for the whole of 2017—and across the country the latest ONS figures suggest a 12% increase in the number of offences involving a knife or sharp instrument. But these statistics tell us nothing about the human tragedies involved in individual cases: the parents who are devastated and those who are left bereft.

What should be clear is that the causes of violent crime are complex and that there is no single, simple solution. Indeed, those who pretend that there is do a disservice to those who have died and suffered, and a disservice to their loved ones.

Let us also be clear that this is not just about London; it is an issue in all urban areas. However, the response of the Mayor of London has been decisive: creating the violent crime task force with 250 police officers based in the highest-risk localities and deployed flexibly and rapidly in accordance with the intelligence picture. This may already have had an impact on the figures, although it is too early to say conclusively. In addition, the mayor is setting up a violence reduction unit to spread good practice and identify systemic London-wide issues that need to be addressed.

At the same time, the mayor’s Young Londoners Fund—totalling £45 million—will help children and young people to fulfil their potential, particularly those at risk of getting caught up in crime, with 105 local community organisations starting projects in January, supporting 50,000 young people aged 10 to 21, with another round of projects starting in May. The importance of this is the recognition that you cannot simply police yourself out of the problems around violent crime—which is why in London there are local action plans agreed by local partners in each borough.

But the decline in police numbers has had a major effect. There will soon be fewer than 30,000 officers policing our capital city and, with £300 million still to be found from the Metropolitan Police budget in the next year, we will be back to the levels of 20 years ago, while London’s population has risen from 7 million to 9 million.

What is the consequence of that? The imperative to respond to incidents means that there are not the resources available for proactive and preventive policing. Neighbourhood policing is a shadow of its former self, which means that the police no longer have the community insights they had, that intelligence is diminished and that proactive interventions are reduced.

I have talked to council leaders who tell me that low-level drug dealing is often not targeted. If police officers are confronted by it, they intervene, but operations to disrupt such problems are no longer possible. The consequence is that dealing is normalised. Gangs feel that they can operate unhindered. They expand their operations and there are territorial disputes—and then stabbings and murders.

What is the Home Office response? I can tell you now what the Minister will say because she has said it repeatedly in your Lordships’ House. She will say that locally elected police and crime commissioners must set local priorities—she is nodding. That is true, but it is near meaningless if your resources are pitifully inadequate for the task faced. She will say that there is no correlation between police numbers and crime levels. That was true only when a measure of crime was used that showed that total crime was falling because it did not pick up the massive shift towards online crimes. She will say that PCCs can increase the police precept if they wish. Yes, they can, but only within the strict limits set by the Government, who have failed to fund £420 million of police pension commitments. We just heard the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, tell us that schools’ pension commitments are being fully funded, but the police pension commitments are not. No doubt the Minister will tell us why that is and why it is such a beneficial policy, unlike in every other major public service. It is not surprising that PCCs feel they are being left in a worse position than ever before.

These cuts are real. The number of police officers in England and Wales has fallen by 20,000 since March 2010 and is now at its lowest recorded level since the early 1980s, yet we know from the 2011 riots, which occurred before most of that reduction took place, how tenuous the thin blue line actually is. This week, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary highlighted the pressures on the police as a result of what is called the “broken mental health system”. These cuts and pressures are not surprisingly leading to a purely reactive service. This is starkly demonstrated in the latest figures for the number of drug seizures, which were down to 135,000 in 2017-18, the lowest number for 14 years, so gangs feel they can operate on our streets with impunity.

It is not just the police that have suffered cuts. In 2010, £1.2 billion was spent across the country on youth work and youth services. Last year that had fallen to £358 million: a 68% cut. Other public services, such as probation, that help to reduce the risk of crime or support young people have suffered similarly, as has the funding available to charities and the voluntary sector. Our social fabric is being stretched so thin that it has become almost transparent.

The Government’s Serious Violence Strategy—and I am sure we will hear much about it from the Minister—is simply not enough to plug those gaps. It is long on analysis and short on remedies. It recognises that changes in the drugs market have fuelled recent increases in violence but offers little as a solution. The focus of the strategy is supposed to be early intervention, which is a worthy aspiration, and indeed there is a blizzard of worthy but small-scale initiatives in the strategy. There is to be a new early intervention youth fund amounting to £11 million—contrast that with the mayor’s Young Londoners Fund, which is worth £45 million and is four times the size. The early intervention money is to be spent over two years—and that is itself a problem. Ask anyone involved in the field and they will tell you that is simply too short a period for a project to deliver a sustained impact.

I want to say a bit about police tactics and style. To listen to some Ministers, you would think the answer is simply much more stop and search. This analysis conveniently forgets that it was the present Prime Minister, when she was Home Secretary, who restricted police powers in this area and pressurised the police to make much less use of the powers they still had, so much so that the number of police stops fell to 280,000 last year compared with 1.5 million 10 years earlier. Incidentally, the figures continue to show an apparently disproportionate number of black men being stopped and, if anything, the disproportionality has increased.

Of course, stop and search should be intelligence-led. However, the changes in the law around Section 60 stops—Section 60 allows all police stops in precisely defined areas for a specific period—have made it harder for the police to respond proactively and flexibly to intelligence received. The law now requires that senior police must for good reason believe that serious violence will take place and that the power is necessary to prevent such violence. Previously the test was that serious violence not “will” but “may” take place. That change was unhelpful. Reversing it would be far more sensible than the wider loosening of the law advocated by the Centre for Social Justice and apparently contemplated by the present Home Secretary.

Section 60 powers must be used only with community consent. When you ask young people and communities what measures are necessary in a particular locality, they will often want to see more stops to take weapons off the streets and, more importantly, deter individuals carrying knives and other weapons. It requires serious community engagement, and that individual stops are conducted with respect and civility. It is always better if the officers using the powers are familiar with the areas concerned, which is why the approach taken by the Met’s violent crime task force, with teams of officers dedicated to the most high-risk areas, makes sense. The impact of having police equipped with body-worn video means that individual interactions are recorded and are more likely to be conducted in an appropriate fashion on both sides.

Other interventions would be more controversial. I have heard that the Metropolitan Police is undertaking a limited consultation about deploying armed police on foot patrols with their guns in areas where there have been violent incidents. I am not convinced that that would be helpful. It would be seen as provocative. It will inspire fear rather than reassurance. It will hinder community confidence and do little in itself to reduce the number of violent incidents. It would be more positive to maintain or even enhance schools liaison and engagement work. Facilitating data exchange makes sense. The PCC in Stafford wants hospitals to be more willing to share information about those presenting with knife wounds and other injuries. Similarly, sharing data on habitual knife carriers with the probation service and schools makes sense, but too often data confidentiality is cited as the reason why this cannot be done, even when to do so might help save lives.

I want to return to what the Government have said in their Serious Violence Strategy about early intervention and the underlying reasons for the increase in young people turning to violence, carrying knives and getting involved in gangs. We need to focus on the increasing sense of hopelessness and alienation felt by many young people, the absence of life chances, and adverse childhood experiences. A striking proportion of those involved in gang violence have been excluded from school. Too often, schools wash their hands of young people who are seen as too difficult and who are not going to help league table performance, but pupil referral units—even where they have places available, and many do not—do not turn those young people round, and there is evidence of gangs recruiting directly from such units. If at 16 you have been excluded from the education system, have poor literacy and numeracy, no exam results and little prospect of achieving the material rewards that you see others around you enjoying, it is perhaps not surprising that the apparent easy pickings of gang membership seem enticing. If, in addition, you have come from a seriously dysfunctional family with a parent or parents bowed down by substance abuse or where violence is the norm, gang membership may seem like a haven and an escape.

The Government’s Serious Violence Strategy should be ambitious in tackling such matters. Why are so many pupils excluded from school and what is being done about it? How do you stop pupil referral units failing those referred? What is being done about the inadequacy of child and adolescent mental health services in many areas to support disturbed young people, as highlighted in your Lordships’ House on Tuesday by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester? What about the online drivers of violence, such as underage sales via the internet of zombie knives, drill music glorifying violence—it was put to me that they are not musicians pretending to be gangsters, but gangsters pretending to be musicians—or the provocations that appear daily on social media with gangs exulting in their violence and on their incursions into rival territory?

It is of course a matter of enormous regret that the coalition Government dismantled the Sure Start programme that was aimed at giving all children the best foundations for their futures. In 2015, when I was leading the review for the Ministry of Justice into the self-inflicted deaths of young people in prison, we came across research carried out in Washington state in the USA over the last 30 years that demonstrated that providing intensive support to the mother/baby relationship in the first year of life was an investment by the state that paid off many times over in terms of reduced family breakdown, reduced social work and health interventions, and less engagement with the criminal justice system. Addressing those issues would be an ambitious strategy, but that is the scale of the aspiration that the Government should follow if their Serious Violence Strategy is to be more than platitudes and a list of worthy but short-term initiatives.

Tackling violent crime requires an approach that spans right across government. In 2002 the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, convened weekly meetings in COBRA with relevant Ministers and all the responsible agencies to deliver a dramatic reduction in street crime. In London, the deputy mayor for policing is hosting fortnightly meetings in City Hall to bring about multiagency collaboration on knife and gang violence in the capital. Where is the parallel grip and focus at the national level today?

Violent crime is taking lives in our cities—more in a year, incidentally, than died from terrorism in the last 20 years. We are risking the loss of a cohort of young people to gang violence and drugs. Are the Government going to step up and take the ambitious measures necessary? I beg to move.

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[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I think that is a hint. The Minister may not have been listening earlier when her noble friend Lord Agnew said quite explicitly that school pensions were being fully funded by the Government, so why is it that the schools settlement can be determined and those pensions fully funded yet at the moment she is unable to provide that commitment?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

What I am trying to trail, without giving any commitments, is that I am very hopeful that the announcement on 6 December will be that the impact of the employer contributions is mitigated, but obviously I cannot make such an announcement.

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[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who contributed; I know that the previous debate overran significantly. As we get older, we may all have cause to be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, for tweaking and developing House of Lords procedure and practice.

A number of noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Donaghy and Lady Massey, stressed the importance of the multiagency approach. However, what we have heard today from the Minister is that, yes, she understands the importance of it. She talked about 61 commitments and actions to be followed through. Perhaps she needs to go back and ask, not just in her department but across government, who is overseeing and progress-chasing that. It is all very well to have 61 actions, but they can get lost in the miasma of the government machine unless there is someone senior and central. The point of my mentioning Tony Blair’s COBRA meetings was because he had Ministers of State and junior Ministers in the room and would say, “What’s happened since last week? I expect this to have happened by next week”—and, my goodness, it made a difference.

In conclusion, it is not a question of my saying that these things were worthy; my concern was that they were worthy in the context of being platitudinous. My point too is that they are essential. When I reviewed the tragic deaths of 87 young people in prison, the reality was that most of those need never have got into the criminal justice system had there been the appropriate interventions much earlier in their lives by the agencies of the state.

Motion agreed.

Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire (Fire and Rescue Authority) Order 2018

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 21st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD)]

My Lords, my contribution to this regret Motion will necessarily be rather more targeted, as the area in question is my area of North Yorkshire, the largest single rural county in England. I was a county councillor there for 20 years and chaired its police authority for a number of those.

The Minister certainly knows my firm opposition to the introduction of police and crime commissioners. Indeed, some of your Lordships will recall that, with help from many of your Lordships, I defeated the coalition Government’s proposal—one of David Cameron’s ideas—to bring in a single police commissioner in place of the 17 or 19 members of police authorities. As we see, it was a pyrrhic victory. Nevertheless, the concerns many of us from across the House expressed have been well and truly realised across the country, not least in North Yorkshire.

Our PCC has been embroiled in an unseemly and unprofessional case of bullying some of her members of staff. She was hauled before her police and crime panel, which did a superb forensic job of getting to the bottom of the complaints and asking her to consider her behaviour. I am told her response to them was arrogant in the extreme: she denied the complaints and then tried to complain about the way she had been treated by the panel. She was found guilty of bullying behaviour, and I understand more complaints are in the pipeline.

This is a PCC who wanted to put a new police headquarters on a piece of land in the middle of a field in a small rural village. This is a PCC who auctioned off the contents of silver cabinets and much else from the old police headquarters without first asking if former officers would like to bid on any of the contents, in which many of them had a particular—and, in some cases, personal—interest. This is remembered with much anger and bitterness.

She treats people who disagree with her with utter contempt. She certainly treats members of the PCP like that. It does not stop there. All the local political parties in North Yorkshire, as we have heard from my noble friend, were opposed to her taking on the running of the fire and rescue authority. No one I have spoken to thinks she is a fit and proper person to undertake such a responsibility. The fire and rescue service in North Yorkshire certainly does not want it, but that has now been foisted on it by government decree. All the consultation the PCC says she has undertaken to establish her business case went by the board. She took absolutely no notice of anyone.

Our fire and rescue authority was not underperforming in any way. Indeed, I was a member of it many years ago, and there was always a good collaborative relationship between partner agencies. Why should the PCC want to take it over? It was running perfectly well. She says she can save a lot of money by doing so. The report in the Press in York says that she is already, just a few days into her new job, contemplating slashing the fire service. She claims the independent report she received said that the service was in an unsustainable financial position and that she would have to identify savings and set an emergency budget. She says that, as North Yorkshire’s PCC, she has saved thousands of pounds since taking over from the old police authority. I find this hard to believe. When I helped set up our first police authority in North Yorkshire, we had a clerk, a secretary and a clerical assistant. She has at least 14 members of staff. I cannot imagine that her wage bill is less than mine was, even accounting for the remuneration of police authority members.

Indeed, it appears that she has led North Yorkshire Police into its worst financial crisis since the millennium. There is a £10 million shortfall this financial year, which may come as a surprise to the people of North Yorkshire as there has been no public acknowledgement of this gathering storm. It is strange to compare that with how widely her takeover of the fire service has been publicised. She promises a proper, transparent plan for dealing with this. I wish her luck with the Fire Brigades Union.

Unfortunately, it is the Government’s idealistic policy that has brought us to this point. No proper scrutiny by anyone with any experience or knowledge of the fire and rescue service was brought in to assess her business case. The CIPFA report even acknowledged that there was no overwhelming case for change, yet the Government decided to back this politically ambitious woman, who has absolutely no experience of the fire and rescue service.

York, which has world heritage status, is fearful that some of the PCC’s proposals for saving money will reduce even further the funding of the fire and rescue service. Local councillors, who know their area best and who would have had input into any suggested changes to fire service provision, will have no say whatever from now on. York already suffers from being among the worst funded places in the country for public services, per resident, so their concerns are well justified.

Can the Minister tell me what contingencies will be put in place if all does not go according to plan and there is a major fire in the county? She will remember the devastating fire which engulfed part of the glorious York Minster some years ago. It was noted worldwide, such is the importance of that historic building. Indeed, all North Yorkshire firemen who helped to put out the fire on that fateful morning received a specially struck St William’s Cross for their bravery in tackling the blaze, and they are still worn on their ceremonial uniforms to this day. Reducing the number of engines and personnel in the fire and rescue service will do nothing to assuage the concerns of the people of York, who also rely heavily on them to deal with the severe flooding that York suffers from regularly.

In conclusion, I am very concerned that the PCC for North Yorkshire has been allowed to take over the fire and rescue service while still having further charges of bullying brought against her. The Minister, in an Answer to a Written Question about the police and crime panel’s power to hold the PCC to account, which I am grateful for, simply stated:

“Police and Crime Panels have the appropriate powers to effectively scrutinise the actions and decisions of Police and Crime Commissioners and enable the public to make an informed decision when voting”.


Well, the PCP did, but it has absolutely no power to hold the PCC to account or to correct her if necessary. It can do barely more than disagree with her. PCPs need proper teeth, as we urged the Government to give them during the passage of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill back in 2011. PCCs can get rid of chief constables on a whim, it seems; no one can get rid of a PCC except the electorate, and they have to wait for an election to do so.

Therefore, I again ask the Minister: when will the Home Office give police and crime panels enough power to hold PCCs properly to account for their behaviour and, further, enable them to enforce any recommendations they might have? Until this PCC can understand that leadership means listening to people and taking them with her, rather than bullying them, she is not suitable to hold such a vital office.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, it is, as ever, a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Harris. However, I am slightly concerned that the reputation that I may have in your Lordships’ House of sometimes being rather blunt and trenchant will be sidelined by what the noble Baroness has just said.

I am not going to talk about North Yorkshire at all—I appreciate that that is perhaps not in the spirit of this debate—but I want to pick up just one point from what the noble Baroness has said. When police and crime panels were set up as a sort of safety net in respect of police and crime commissioners, they were very much a governmental afterthought. Very little thought was given to their composition or how they could be made effective, or indeed to the powers they might have. After six or seven years, now might be a good time for the Government to review the role of police and crime panels, how they might be made more effective and useful, and how they might effectively hold police and crime commissioners to account.

However, my reason for speaking in this short debate—I will do so fairly briefly—is to ask some questions about Home Office policy on police and fire mergers. The Home Office was extremely enthusiastic about this at first, but I get the sense that Ministers have rather gone off the idea: it is proving to be rather more complicated and is not demonstrating quite the benefits that they had hoped for. Therefore, I wonder whether the police and crime commissioner for North Yorkshire is not being hung out to dry on this issue, in that she no longer has quite the same enthusiastic support and facilitation that the Home Office might offer to make this policy work. I would be grateful if the Minister told us whether the Government’s commitment is still as intense as it was when this power to bring together police and fire was first introduced.

While she is answering that question, perhaps the Minister can tell me where we are with the role of police and crime commissioners in the areas they represent and the wider criminal justice organisation. Areas of synergy between the police and fire services are rather limited. There are a few, although not quite as many as people think; it is not just that people wear a uniform and go out and help people. There are far more synergies between the policing role in a local area—particularly in relation to the objective of reducing crime—and some of the other criminal justice responsibilities. For example, bringing together responsibility for oversight of the police and responsibility for oversight of the probation services—in particular, the monitoring of ex-offenders and those who have been through the courts—might produce far more savings for the country at large and the criminal justice system as a whole.

I wonder where the Government’s thinking is on that. If I remember correctly, there was a clause that said rather vaguely that this could be looked at at some stage in the future, but the Ministry of Justice was not very keen, so it did not get any real teeth in the original legislation. However, the Home Office ought to be directing its attention to delivering real savings, to turning people away from crime and to reducing the crime figures. I would be very interested in knowing what the current Home Office policy is on that matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I just wanted to correct the Minister. There is no PCC in Greater Manchester; there is an elected mayor.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I beg your pardon. I am sorry—I was making a point about visibility and I knew that the noble Lord would pick that up the moment I said it.

A public consultation on Roger Hirst’s fire and rescue plan, outlining the fire and rescue service’s priorities over the next five years, will soon go live. Staffordshire’s police, fire and crime commissioner, Matthew Ellis, is also beginning to make real headway. For instance, a shared occupational service is providing readily accessible mental health support for all police and fire staff. I know noble Lords will join me in commending such a worthwhile service.

Last week, we saw the third police, fire and crime commissioner established in North Yorkshire, which is the subject of this debate. I am grateful to all those who have taken part. I have listened very carefully to the noble Baroness and her concerns, but I say with great respect that I disagree with the assertions levelled in her Motion. She expressed concern about the lack of assessment undertaken by the PCC. I regret that this betrays a misunderstanding of the robust process that is in place before a governance transfer is approved. Before a proposal is submitted to the Home Secretary, the police and crime and commissioner must publicly consult with all relevant local authorities, local members of the public and those employees who may be affected by the proposal. Commissioner Julia Mulligan duly undertook a public consultation to garner views on her proposal. The consultation ran for 10 weeks and received over 2,500 individual responses from residents, local businesses, employees from the police and fire service and local authorities.

Opposition to the proposal was not widespread, as the noble Baroness maintained. It is clear that the status quo in North Yorkshire had not been aiding collaboration across the emergency services. All local stakeholders agreed that some change in governance was needed to aid collaboration. The North Yorkshire branch of the Fire Brigades Union supported a governance change and the PCC’s consultation resulted in over half of respondents supporting the PCC’s proposal to take on responsibility for the fire service.

I accept that that means that some respondents did not support the proposal, but such views were in a minority. These views have been considered very carefully. North Yorkshire County Council and the City of York Council did not support the proposal, as the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, said, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, highlighted that the fire and rescue authority disagreed with the proposal.

As a result of the objections from North Yorkshire County Council and City of York Council, the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, as noble Lords mentioned, was commissioned to undertake an independent assessment of the proposal. CIPFA is independent, has substantial public sector finance expertise, and experience of working in both the policing and fire sector. Importantly, CIPFA discussed the proposal with local leaders, including the chief fire officer and his senior management team, the leader of North Yorkshire County Council and the leader of City of York Council.

CIPFA concluded that the PCC had conducted a wide-ranging consultation, with public events held on market days, and allowed adequate time for responses, especially taking account of the holiday season. CIPFA also noted that there is,

“no increased risk to public safety due to the proposed change in governance and there may be benefits in the future”,

as other noble Lords noted. On that point, I make clear that maintaining public safety is a core part of the fire and police service’s role. Its commitment to public safety will not be compromised.

The Home Secretary had due regard to CIPFA’s assessment and the PCC’s proposal alongside the consultation and representations made. In June, the Home Secretary was satisfied that the proposal was in the interests of economy, efficiency and effectiveness and did not have an adverse effect on public safety. I reassure noble Lords that the distinction between policing and fire will remain: this is not an operational takeover. I recall the very firm arguments to that end that were made in this Chamber when we discussed the Bill.

The new police, fire and crime commissioner will be subject to robust scrutiny between elections. The police and crime panel has a range of appropriate powers to scrutinise the decisions of commissioners that affect their communities. The Act makes it clear that the functions of the police and crime panel will be extended to include the fire service. The panel will need to ensure that it has the right skills and knowledge relating to fire and rescue, as well as crime and policing. To support this process, a grant uplift has been issued to North Yorkshire County Council, in respect of the North Yorkshire police, fire and crime panel.

Following this Government’s reforms, the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service will also be subject to inspection, which is a key pillar of the reform agenda. I hope that gives the noble Baroness some comfort as to some of the work going forward. I am sure she will be looking forward to the outcome of the inspection.

I am confident that the changes to fire governance in North Yorkshire will take collaboration between North Yorkshire police and fire services further than has been the case to date. The police, fire and crime commissioner, Julia Mulligan, will further develop her plans, as we would expect, but I welcome the emphasis, in particular, on streamlining senior management posts, collaboration on back-office support services and sharing buildings between the two services.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

They did not have the public-facing role that—

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, the Minister has, unfortunately, said something quite outrageous. I chaired the Metropolitan Police Authority for four years, and the number of times we went into private session was extremely small. Most of those meetings were held in public with television cameras and most of the national press present. That was the balance.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right; it was the case in London. Elsewhere it most certainly was not.

Brexit: Arrangements for EU Citizens

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

My Lords—

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm reports that victims of modern slavery and women who have been trafficked who are EU citizens will be required to pay a fee to the Home Office before they are allowed to stay? Can she explain the reasons behind that, given how difficult it can be to enable victims of modern slavery to come forward to be rescued?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord raises a very valid point about victims of modern slavery, who will be supported and helped when they come here no matter what country they are from. Depending on their situation, they will be helped either to move on within this country or to move back to the country of their origin.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 29th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

Just before the Minister responds, can I add a word, I hope not too tiresomely, on Amendment 5? If you suggest that it would be a good idea to deproscribe a particular organisation, can you do so only on the basis that it is better to deal with it in the open, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and indeed, by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, so as to discourage recruitment, or can you say that it is because you regard the organisation’s aims as essentially innocuous or perhaps even beneficial overall? If the latter, surely that would risk destroying much of the effect of Clause 1 as a whole. You would simply couple your remarks with a suggestion for deproscription. If the former, surely the amendment, if it is to be incorporated in this legislation, had better build in the need to make it plain that at the same time as promoting deproscription, you continue to condemn the aims of the organisation.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not having spoken on Second Reading, but I came to this debate on the basis that I had one point to make. Having heard such a range of views, I am afraid that I now have three or four.

To keep the flow going, I shall pick up on Amendment 5 and the argument that there should be an exemption for organisations that cease to be proscribed. I start from the same position as the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, that by and large it is better not to proscribe organisations, but to have them out in the open. When they are proscribed, they tend to reformulate and call themselves something else, and it all becomes a bit silly.

Amendment 5 could create a rather large hole through which those who wish to circumvent the purpose of these clauses would get through. People could say, “I am not arguing for what they want; I am simply saying that it is wrong for them to be proscribed because they are rather excellent people whose objectives are entirely understandable, which any sensible person in that part of the world would think is a good thing”. We could run the risk of providing a defence for people and allowing them to do things that we are trying to prevent them doing.

Moving on to Amendment 6, the question of who is a journalist is wider than has already been suggested. We are all citizen journalists now. We all have the option of putting stuff out on the web; we can blog and tweet; we can put things on Facebook, YouTube or whatever we want. Increasingly, people now define themselves as citizen journalists. Unless we go back to something very old-fashioned such as saying that journalism is a controlled profession and you are a journalist only if you have a card issued by the National Union of Journalists, which is probably unlikely, then anyone can say, “I’m doing this for the purposes of journalism, or to further journalism”—whatever it might be—“because I am a journalist; I am a citizen journalist and I am putting this material forward”. While I do not want to undermine what we would all regard as legitimate—we are all rooted in the past and think of journalism as being about newspapers and producing seriously researched articles and investigations—the word no longer means what it used to mean. Therefore, if we are going to say that there should be some sort of exemption for journalism, we need to define it much more closely than it is in Amendment 6.

I pity the Minister who has to pull all these threads together. I understand the concerns about freedom of speech; we all share them, in principle. This is all about proportionality: balancing that freedom against the harm that may be being done. It is apparent that, as the law stands, it has been impossible to pursue people who are palpably causing a great deal of damage. That is why the Government are seeking to amend it. I assume that they have not gone down the route of saying that someone must have the “intent” to do this because proving intent is rather difficult. Under those circumstances, if we put proving intent in we will be back where we started and not able to pursue some of the individuals who do so much harm.

This is why I rather like the phraseology of my noble friend Lord Rosser, who talked about a “pattern of behaviour”. This exempts people who just express an opinion on one occasion and suddenly find they have fallen foul of the law. However, somebody who has a systematic approach to pushing people in a certain direction would fall foul of it. For that reason, I hope that the Government will carefully consider Amendment 1, or something akin to it, which indicates that what should be prosecuted is not a simple isolated act—a mere expression of an idle opinion—but somebody pursuing a course of action which is designed to have this effect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, we are dealing with many difficult issues here. I thank the noble Baroness. We will, of course, have further discussions.

Amendment 1 would raise the threshold for commission of the offence from a single instance of the prohibited behaviour to a pattern of behaviour. Given the seriousness of this type of behaviour and the potential harm that can be caused, I cannot agree that the amendment is appropriate. I point out that there is no requirement for there to be a pattern of behaviour in the existing Section 12(1) offence. I therefore do not see a case for adopting a different approach for the new Section 12(1)(a) offence.

I also fear that the amendment would run into similar issues with definition and certainty to those which were raised in the House of Commons in relation to the three clicks element of Clause 3, and which ultimately led to the Government’s removing that provision. For example, how many instances constitute a pattern of behaviour and how far apart can they be?

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The noble Baroness says it is difficult to define. Presumably, the court would then have to interpret it and would say that this is clearly a pattern which is designed to have this effect.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The court might also say that it is evidence, along with other types of evidence, which leads it to a certain conclusion. Just as the three clicks approach was seen as arbitrary in debate in the House of Commons, this is probably similar in the sense that downloading, together with other types of evidence, would lead a court to come to its conclusions, as it would here.

I want to talk about the concept of recklessness. It involves a person being aware of the risk that what they plan to say will have the effect of encouraging support but none the less going on to say it. In such circumstances, a reasonable person would not have gone on to make that statement.

On Amendment 2, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, explained her concerns both at Second Reading and today that statements supporting an independent Kurdistan may fall foul of the new offence on the basis that it is a political objective held also by the proscribed group the PKK. I hope I can provide some assurance. On the noble Baroness’s example, I suggest that our hypothetical person could have a very high level of confidence that they would not fall foul of the Clause 1 offence. Support for an independent Kurdistan is a view held widely across a far broader range of people than just PKK members. To put it another way, while all members and supporters of the PKK are likely to support an independent Kurdistan, it is certainly not the case that all supporters of an independent Kurdistan are members or supporters of the PKK. It certainly could not be inferred from a statement in the terms described by the noble Baroness that the speaker supports the PKK or another such organisation; rather, they support an independent Kurdistan.

Noble Lords can take further assurance from the fact that in addition to not referencing any particular organisation, our hypothetical speaker has not said anything of the methods by which they would wish to see an independent Kurdistan brought about. Were they to suggest that this should be through means of terrorist violence, a reasonable person might anticipate that such a statement might influence the listener to support a terrorist organisation, such as the PKK, which supports the same political cause. Such a statement may well be reckless and may fall foul of the new Clause 1 offence. I hope we can agree that such a statement of support for terrorist violence would be unacceptable in any event. But in this example, there is no such suggestion of support for terrorist methods to achieve a legitimate political aim.

The same would apply to a statement in support of the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestine that does not voice support for violent methods or any proscribed terrorist organisation. There would be no basis on which a reasonable person might equate such a statement with support for Hamas or Hezbollah or anticipate that a listener would be influenced to support those organisations. As such, the statement would not meet the recklessness test and would not be caught by Clause 1. I make it clear that none of this analysis would be any different if “is supportive of” were replaced with “supports”.

Amendment 5, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, would provide an exemption from the offence for those who make statements to the effect that a particular terrorist organisation should cease to be proscribed. We will have a wider debate on deproscription when we reach Amendment 59 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. In that context, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is correct in saying that the Home Secretary regularly reviews proscribed organisations.

Perhaps I may make a few observations in the context of Amendment 5. I am happy to agree that those who make neutral statements along these lines should not be caught by the criminal law. However, I am clear that this will be the position under Clause 1 as currently drafted. The amendment, while well intended, is not needed to secure this result and would risk introducing unintended consequences. It has been a long-standing feature of the proscription system that individuals and organisations will question the proscription of certain organisations. It may be suggested, for example, that a group is not really terrorist in nature but is engaged in legitimate activism in the form of resistance or freedom fighting, or that its proscription inhibits a peace process or some other form of positive engagement and should therefore be lifted as a matter of discretion. The law already provides a clear route for people who hold such views to apply to the Home Secretary for the deproscription of any organisation. Three groups have been deproscribed following such applications.

The law also provides at Section 10 of the Terrorism Act 2000 clear and unambiguous immunity from prosecution under proscription offences for anything done in relation to such an application, including any statements made in support of the organisation.

Youth Crime: London

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the work that the police do. Of course, the PCC decides how to allocate funding to the various types of policing mentioned by the noble Baroness. I also point out the initiative to reduce moped crime, which noble Lords were so concerned about. There has been a 32.6% fall in that type of crime. That is not to undermine exactly what noble Lords are saying, which is that certain types of crime are increasing, but the police are working to reduce crime in local areas in the way that it presents itself.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has told us about a blizzard of initiatives—some worth £150,000, some worth £700,000 and so on—but that does not alter the fact that the totality of services, by which I mean the whole-system approach, which is surely what is needed here, has suffered. We have seen huge reductions in local government funding, in health funding and in policing. How on earth can the Government continue to blame local authorities, police and crime commissioners and everyone else for the fact that it is their policies that are creating this situation?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I am not in any way seeking to blame local authorities or PCCs; rather I am saying that they have budgets and they can decide what their priorities are for their budget allocations. However, I will say that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister recognise the strain under which the police find themselves, particularly in the light of changing crime patterns and of course the terrorist attacks that this country saw last year.