King’s Speech

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome some of the measures in the King’s Speech relating to crime, particularly on RIPA and regulatory powers, and on the sentencing for serious offences. Although I stand by my position, which I stated the other day, that there is still space for having far fewer people in prison, I think we would all agree that, for serious offences, we need to take serious measures.

I will refer to two contemporary issues, which therefore may be a bit contentious. First, I welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement of a review of the law surrounding firearms officers. This brave and fearless few—who, on behalf of 66 million people, stand forward to take on people who are armed or otherwise so dangerous—deserve our support. They very rarely discharge their firearms, but, when they do, they are under inquiry for years—that cannot be right. It is right that they are held to account, but not for years. I hope that this review will have far more success that the review I instigated with the support of the Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, which took two years to make absolutely no changes at all. I hope that this one will be bold and quick.

My second area of contemporary concern is around protest. We all know that there is a real challenge, for both politicians and the police, in deciding whether to ban a march—it is never easy and very rarely done. I was the commissioner when we did it twice, even though for 60 years it had never been done. It was to do with the EDL protesting outside mosques, and I remain convinced that it was the right thing for everybody involved.

However, these are difficult decisions trying to balance the right to protest against the problem of serious disorder. The discussions around this topic should take place privately, not publicly; otherwise, the concern of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, around the judiciary might transfer itself to the operational independence of the police, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, referred earlier. I worry that the pressures being placed on the police at the moment do not always form wise judgments in the end. So it is important that these important discussions take place privately and observe the process, which is that the police call for politicians to make the decision, not that politicians call on the police to make the request, even though there is an element of both in the private discussions. It is vital that those conventions are respected.

My final comments are around hoping that in the King’s Speech there would be more strategic alignment in some of the proposals. It could have been about repeat victims, repeat offenders or repeat locations. It could have been a way to prioritise resourcing. It could have been about targeting prevention. I have talked here before about having statutory duties, in the way that fire does. Things are designed not to burn. Why do we not design cars not to be stolen? A good point was made about devices but, unfortunately, I doubt that that would be entirely successful, given the fact that these devices are available online from abroad; a large number of them already exist. So it is a good start, but it is vital to get the design of things and places right. It is one element of prevention, including drugs, alcohol, young people and education, to which we do not have a strategic approach.

Secondly, I welcome the Home Secretary’s requirement for the police to attend burglaries. My only concern is that it does not go far enough. It would not be a bad idea for them to attend all crimes, because I can guarantee that, if you do not go to a crime scene, you will not detect it. To all those who say that it is not possible, I say this: even in London, there are on average four crimes per hour per borough. There are not 10,000 crimes an hour. Shoplifting is just one symptom of a deeper malaise, I am afraid, because it also affects car crime. People are not getting attendances. People are not gathering evidence that is there; they are trying to make a decision over the phone about whether any evidence will be collected. In my view, that is not wise, so I do think it is possible for that convention to be extended rather than restricted.

Noble Lords may think that my next point is tactical, and some may regard it as novel and unfair. Is it not about time that cyclists became more accountable for their bad behaviour? I do not know whether it is an age thing, but I find it really annoying, when you are using a zebra crossing or a pedestrian crossing of any type, or there is a red light, and all the vehicles stop and you are trying to make your way through the traffic but cyclists just ignore the law and go through. Think about the number of times we must all have seen or experienced this threat and, sadly, sometimes an injury.

One thing that has sparked my interest in this is a barrister who contacted me. I had never met the guy before, but he was having real trouble with a police investigation. He had a spiral fracture of a leg as a result of being hit on a crossing, when there was a green light for him, by a cyclist. The trouble he had trying to get some investigation or outcome was pretty awful. That is a symptom of a deeper malaise. It is not easy to put a long registration plate on a cycle—we all get that—but there has to be a clever way of holding cyclists to account, through either insurance or other things. The time has come for this to be placed on the agenda, so that people take seriously the safety of other people, particularly pedestrians.

My final point is around technology. I would have liked to have heard a little more about strategic intervention around crime involving technology. The noble Lord, Lord Borwick, may talk later about facial recognition; there is a fair debate to be had about how far that should go. There are great opportunities there, including, for example, body-worn video having more facial recognition, which would make stops and searches far more accurate. If I know that somebody is on bail for carrying a knife, it will make that intervention far more accurate than me asking, “What’s your name? Where do you live?”, which indicates that I do not know who the hell they are and why I am stopping them.

Finally, I will mention something that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, mentioned: tagging. To get it on an industrial scale would be good. The Government may not be aware that the product of that tagging goes to a commercial company and there is no live monitoring by the police. It takes an email 24 hours to get to the police indicating that somebody has breached a tag and was at the scene of a crime—not a very wise idea when it is capable of being far better than that.

Those are my points about the King’s Speech. As much as I think that there are some good points in it, it could have said more.