Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bexley (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 29, I will speak to Amendments 31, 39 and 40. In my previous contribution, I suggested that there were many parts of this Bill about which there are major concerns, and the multiagency child protection teams for local authority areas is the most concerning. The main concern is that statutorily responsible directors of children’s services should not be mandated in statute to develop this way of working. The preference would be that the local working practice should be at the discretion of local areas in how they arrange child protection services.

The problem this is trying to solve—the sad deaths of Star and Arthur—will not be solved by this proposal. The proposal is set to separate out family help and child protection, but that could mean that workers in family help will believe that they are not responsible for child protection, as it is managed by a team elsewhere.

However, the reality of life is that the family help team need to be able to identify when a child or a family situation has tipped into risk and is unsafe, in order for the MACPT to be alerted to get involved. In Star and Arthur’s case, even if the team had been in place, the children may not have been referred, because the workers involved did not recognise the potential risks to both children.

I know the Minister said the other day that the findings of the pilots would be published in spring 2025, but we are about to go into summer, and they have not been seen yet. That means that the model has not been fully tested and has no research to back its veracity. Surely that has to be done before the Bill comes into effect.

The MACPTs are predicated on staff being supplied from the police and health as a core for the team. We know the financial pressures these services are under, so this is likely to be impossible to achieve at this national scale. There is also the uncertainty around the future of the integrated care boards—ICBs—in the health world, and no certainty that safeguarding budgets will not be reduced. There is no additional funding to achieve this. What happens if health and police cannot provide staff for the MACPTs? Where does the buck stop? Many believe that the requirement for MACPTs should be removed from the legislation or that it should be made that they can decide locally how these services will operate.

Amendment 29 seeks to clarify

“what support the Secretary of State will require multi-agency partners to offer”.

There was a conversation here on Tuesday evening about the role of schools, ably led by my noble friend Lady Spielman. Will the Secretary of State be mandating what the partners are responsible for? We know of the discussions about budgets. Will the Secretary of State be determining that money should be ring-fenced, and who will determine what partners are responsible? Health and police are named, education seems to be in question, but there are others that will potentially have a role as well.

Amendment 31 looks to ensure that there is an effective multi-agency team. We are all aware of the need for consistency of involvement in safeguarding. An effective multi-agency team will need to have consistent involvement. There will need to be ownership of involvement, and attendance or participation will need to be assured.

Amendments 39 and 40 seek to clarify how cases that cross local authority borders will be managed. These amendments are clear. It would be good to understand how issues that straddle local authority borders will be managed and where the responsibility lies, because we all know that our borders are porous. I beg to move.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I am really concerned about these child protection teams. Well-intended as they are, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, has explained, there are some dangers in the arrangements that are being proposed.

The good intention behind this is that it addresses one of the fundamental problems we have had in child protection in the past: many of the authorities that are charged with confronting the child abuser have become frightened of them. Consequently, when someone should have gone into the house and dealt with it, they have walked away. I am afraid it has happened to the police at times, as well. Generally speaking, it is better that, when it is necessary, there is someone there who is prepared to take on that frightening person who has done so much damage to a child or a baby.

My concern is that if the police are to be included in this team, it will lead to a certain amount of confusion about their role. First, why are the police there? Generally, the police are there to enforce the law and to use the skills they have in that respect. They are not there because they are particularly good at child protection. That is why social services and health visitors exist and why schools receive incredible training and are very good at helping children and their development. For police officers, that is generally not their skill set. They are there to investigate crime and to confront the people who are the suspects.

--- Later in debate ---

There is no change in accountability between the local authority—

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister on one point that she raised. I can hear that she feels that the accountability point is probably going to be okay, but, to combine a couple of things that she mentioned, the team can call on the right skills at the right time. That is obviously a major argument for this team. The only skills that the police really bring, because they are not child protection experts or experts in children’s development, is the ability to investigate crime; they bring nothing else to the table, really, apart from the fact that they are generally, I hope, innately nice people and reasonable people. I am not saying that they have no skills—that is really not my point—but the professional skills they bring to the table and the professional powers which are invested in them by law are all about how they investigate. If the team turns to them and says, “So it is your turn now to go and see this father”, or this mother, actually, that is not for them to call; that is for the police to call. That is the fundamental thing.

While I am on my feet, and to save a later interruption, although the Minister may be coming to it, on the point that has been identified about the gap in knowledge where each of the agencies holds data that the others may not have access to, that is why the MASHs were created. That is why we have people sat in groups around the country, as has been mentioned already. That is what they are supposed to be doing. It may be that this report has concluded they are not doing it as well as they could, but I am not sure this team is going to fill the gap. That is what the MASHs were really intended to do.

My final point is on the evaluation, which I know the Minister said is going to be published. The only piece of data I will be really interested in is how many fewer children got hurt or died, or whose development was not interrupted, or to what extent the satisfaction of the families involved was enhanced, as a result of this team’s intervention. They are the two core issues: basically, did kids get protected more by getting hurt less, and can we prove it? The rest, I am afraid, is a bit soft, in my view.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Lord on his final point. That is exactly the objective in what we are trying to do here. Whether or not the evaluation, after a relatively short period of time, will give us conclusive proof about that, I would be unsure, but that is absolutely the objective.

Working backwards through the noble Lord’s points, I think he is right that the police play a very important role in multi-agency safeguarding hubs. But that, of course, is what happens at the point at which people or other agencies are thinking about referring into the system. Quite often, it helps to provide earlier support or more clarity about whether or not children should be being referred into the system. It is not specifically about child protection, which, as I was saying at the beginning, is probably the most difficult and the most crucial point in thinking about the point at which the child is in the system.

I am surprised at the noble Lord, because I think he undersells what police officers do. He knows that the officers that he was responsible for would have known, when they were being called out to domestic abuse cases, what intelligence they had about the likelihood of children being exploited through gangs or in other ways. They would have known who in the local community were, frankly, getting into trouble and whose children were therefore likely to be in danger. They would have known the events that had happened that had brought disharmony or difficulties into communities. They would have known who was taking drugs and who was dealing them. All of that information, you could imagine, could you not, at the right point in the consideration of a child’s case, would be really, really important for getting that full story about the child. That is why I think it is right that police are involved in this.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, raised the point about funding, which is a fair point. That is why, as I have previously talked about and will talk about again, there is more investment for this initiative that the Government have put in place, but I would also, as I think I have been saying, be clear to policing that this is part of their responsibility. In very many police forces, they are recognising that the multi-agency child protection team enables that to be as effective as possible in the way in which it is put together.

Turning to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, and spoken to today by the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, which seek to include social workers with expertise in working with children with disabilities in the multi-agency teams, I absolutely agree that the teams should be equipped to identify, understand and respond effectively to all children and their families. I reassure the noble Baroness that there is, as I was describing earlier, already sufficient flexibility for safeguarding partners to determine which social work and health practitioners are most suited to work in these teams. I could imagine that there would be times when it would be appropriate to have a social worker or a health worker with expertise in disability involved.

The point is that it is important to determine in the legislation, as this Bill does, who the key, compulsory members of the team are, then to have in regulations the other agencies that could be called on to support the multi-agency child protection team. It is just not appropriate to list in the legislation every single agency or worker who might potentially be involved, but that does not mean that they are not important.

Extradition (Provisional Arrest) Bill [HL]

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Tuesday 4th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support the Bill and have just one suggestion for how it could be improved. Martin Hewitt, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, described this legislation as filling a loophole in the law, which is a fair description. It is also supported by Lynne Owen, the Director-General of the National Crime Agency. Neither person would generally want to widen police powers, but they do want to make them effective.

Presently, police officers have powers of arrest only for category 1 countries, which includes all members of the European Union, so it is not a radical departure to give them powers to arrest before the extradition warrant has been agreed. Although people have expressed concerns about that, in this sense, it is a power that exists already for category 1 countries, unless a judicial warrant has already been sworn.

The problem is that in category 2 countries, an officer may become aware that a person has been notified as wanted for extradition, but until the warrant has been sworn out, they cannot arrest. Of course, there is no warrant because the UK was not previously aware that the person was in the UK—or I guess police would have been looking for them—and therefore no one has been able to apply for a warrant of extradition. I wonder whether the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, about Sections 73 and 74—neither of which I am an expert on—rely on the fact that someone knows that those people are in the country. These changes are merely to cope with the fact that an officer may come upon or discover that someone who was not previously known to be in the country is available and may therefore need to be taken into custody for a warrant to be applied for.

A series of helpful and reasonable steps have been put into this Bill. It does not cover all category 2 countries—it is the Five Eyes countries. They are all our significant partners, relying on jurisprudential rules which are very similar to ours, as well as Switzerland—I do not think anybody would doubt that it observes the rule of law—and Liechtenstein. Some people have expressed a view that perhaps Russia might be included as a category 2 country. It is not. We have no extradition agreement with Russia. In fact, I think its constitution prevents anybody being extradited from Russia, so even if we were to decide to have an extradition treaty, it would have something of an obstacle to overcome should it decide to agree with us.

The circumstances that this power might be involved are: a stop and search of a pedestrian or a vehicle, which has already been mentioned; an arrest for another offence when the arrest is refused or when the person is released before the warrant can be sworn out; or when an officer starts an investigation, during which they come across a suspect or witness who is wanted.

Although it has not been mentioned tonight, it is possible to argue that the officer should not advise the person that there is a notice in place and that there is to be a hearing to avoid warning him and him absconding. However, if that was a strong argument we would not already have this power for category 1 countries, so I do not think that is the best argument to pursue. It is quite possible that if someone is arrested in this country from a category 2 country for an offence that is nothing to do with the extradition and is then released it might put him on notice that the police might start checking to see whether there is an extradition warrant and if the individual knows he is wanted for a serious offence he may then abscond, or certainly be hard to find, so there are good reasons why the arrest power for category 2 countries is a good idea. It creates a level playing field with category 1 countries. I do not think that is unfair or unreasonable.

A further safeguard is to be added for category 2 offences, which is that the offence for which the suspect is wanted needs to be classified as serious. That test is whether somebody in this country would serve three years’ imprisonment. That is not available for category 1 countries, such as those in the European Union. Poland has not been mentioned today, but it has been criticised for seeking extradition of its citizens for very minor offences, such as shoplifting, and clearly wasting everyone’s time. Poland is a member of the European Union and a category 1 country.

The first test is whether a three-year term of imprisonment is available. If it passes that test the second test is whether the National Crime Agency is prepared to certify that the offence remains serious. Someone can go to prison for 10 years for criminal damage, but criminal damage worth £25 will not lead to a 10-year prison sentence. It would lead to a minor outcome. It is therefore very unlikely that the NCA would certify that it was an offence that should be put on the police national computer to make sure that that person was excluded from the country.

Some people expressed the view that the NCA may not apply human rights conventions. It already does that, even with European Union extradition warrants. Those rules will not change. It has excluded some applications on those grounds, such as sexual orientation, political affiliations or things that are disproportionate.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I do not doubt what the noble Lord is saying, but my question was about how we can be assured about transparency in holding to account those issues. We may know that things are hunky-dory now, but I am sure that the noble Lord would accept that that is not quite the same has having the procedures available to test them.

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

I agree. We should be reassured in two senses. The NCA is one arbiter. It has been putting things on the police national computer for many years. Individuals can pursue their civil rights if they think or find they have been wronged. If an arrest is made, these cases will of course be heard in a court, where suspects are legally represented and able to make the case that this is an improper allocation of a notice. It is a fair challenge, but there are systems in place that would provide a remedy within a fairly short period of time.

We all understand why it is difficult to calculate how often the power of arrest for category 2 countries will be used. However, we know that in 2018 there were 1,394 arrests in England and Wales for category 1 offences. Interestingly, only 28% of those cases would pass the seriousness test if they were moved to category 2. Fewer people would be affected by the powers of arrest and extradition if any European countries were to come within category 2.

Some may argue—and have argued—that, in negotiating with other countries, we put ourselves at a disadvantage by unilaterally helping another country to extradite criminals it takes to its country. However, for serious offences, the UK has the benefit of excluding a suspect from the UK until their criminal justice process is completed; we get a definite benefit from that.

It is also true that the constitutions of some countries require another country to have constitutional arrangements in place to enable extradition before they can reciprocate. In that sense, this is an enabling provision; it allows a country to respond to the fact that the UK would have this in place.

I have a quick suggestion for improving the extradition process—which, in my view, has long been unhelpful. All those arrested, with or without warrant, have to be transported to one court in Westminster. These are long journeys for the suspect, their families and everybody else involved in the case—the police, witnesses et cetera. It takes time and money, and with weekends, and this potentially extends to a four or five-day period. Surely it should be possible to have regional courts in our big cities, which could hear these cases. I think it has been suggested in the past that, due to its specialised nature, the London Bar is the best place to respond to these cases. However, surely there should be a system designed for the suspects and, in this instance perhaps, not for the Bar.

I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, that we do not want to see countries added to the list if they have systems that we do not respect. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, that there are already at least two countries in the European Union which we might challenge as to whether they would pass that test. In one country—we do not need to name it—political interference, or attempted interference, has been apparent in the selection of judges, yet there is a very low bar for getting an extradition warrant. In another country, both politicians and police are corrupt. Noble Lords may ask why we have extradition treaties with these countries, but we do—we still allow for extradition to these countries. That seems quite a challenge in the European Union, let alone somewhere else; we have to be careful and ensure that we are on a level playing field with everyone.

I support the Bill, which will create a level playing field and, in part, provide a flexible opportunity to retain an effective process as we leave the European Union—although I acknowledge that the Government have said that that is not their intention.

Health: Alcohol Abuse

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I will try to answer the question differently. The noble Lord points to the wide variety of harms that alcohol causes—the economic cost is something like £21 billion a year. We can see the involvement of alcohol abuse when looking at domestic violence—later this year, we will be considering the domestic abuse Bill—and the effect it has on children. The children of alcoholic parents must suffer terribly, and of course poverty is one of the effects of alcohol.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased that the sobriety scheme is being rolled out, but it would help to hear a timeline for it. People may be aware of one benefit of the sobriety scheme. It came from South Dakota in America, where district attorneys, sick of seeing people die on the roads, introduced compulsory testing every day for a year. It led to a huge reduction in the number of people killed on the roads, but also the amount of domestic violence because, when the drunk drivers got home, they had been assaulting their partners. We experimented with this in the Met and it worked well, but I am concerned that the certainty of outcome is not as clear in our scheme because, should someone fail the test, we move them to the courts rather than insist on one day’s imprisonment. Will the Minister update us on the scheme and say whether we are prepared to look again at the penalty imposed at the conclusion of a positive test?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am afraid that I do not have an update on the scheme for the noble Lord, but I concur with everything he said. I will write to him with an update and place a copy of the letter in the Library.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I will restrict my comments to the police and criminal justice parts of the Queen’s Speech. I will first deal briefly with three issues that have come up in this debate. The first is longer sentences for violent and sexual offences. People may imagine that I would naturally support these, and I do support long sentences for serious offences. However, there has been sentence drift upwards, and parole reduction, over the last 20 years. The consequence has been a prison population, now, of around 85,000. There is a serious risk that that is too many. It is possible that we need to look seriously at that—if we allow it to continue, we will have worse problems, not less crime. In particular, we need to be more honest in our sentencing. If we were able to say, “You will go to prison for six years, but you will stay in prison for 10 should you not behave in prison or show that you have reformed your ways”, I think people would understand that but at the moment the reverse is true. Therefore, I think there is something more to do about sentencing—not necessarily making sentences longer.

My second point concerns the point raised by my noble and learned friend Lord Hope, based on the case of Helen McCourt, a young woman of 22 who was murdered in 1988 in Merseyside, an area I used to police. Her mother, Marie, has conducted an incredible campaign, for good reason, to try to identify the place where her daughter’s body was disposed of, but I am not sure that the remedy put forward is the correct one. There is a danger when, if someone cannot or will not admit where they disposed of a body, they will have a longer sentence. I propose that they should have a discount for providing the location of the body, because there is the danger my noble and learned friend described of somebody who is not guilty being trapped in prison for far longer than they should be if there is a miscarriage of justice.

My final, simple point is that I profoundly support the suggested sobriety tagging system. We started one in the Met about four years ago and it was effective. It came from a scheme in South Dakota in America and can make a profound difference where someone’s offending pattern is based on their alcohol intake and they cannot stop. The electronic tagging of people with that problem can produce a strategic difference, but not if we run only pilot schemes; we must have a UK-wide—certainly an England and Wales-wide—solution.

I want to confine my main remarks to the proposals in the Queen’s Speech about the police, the majority of which I welcome. The confirmation of the replacement of the 20,000 police officers lost is a good thing. It will take a few years, but it is appropriate. As a result of the banking crisis of 2007 we saw large cuts in public spending. I was never of the view that the police were singled out for worse treatment, but I think the cuts went too far and that they should have been remedied earlier. Even now, it will take at least until 2022 before we see police numbers return to the levels we saw back in 2009, but it is a good thing and we should celebrate it. We have to be careful not to worship police officer numbers, but there will always be a need for a critical mass of people to provide a police service, particularly, as we have heard, with a growing population and growing demands of different types, be it online or on the streets. There will be a period when those on the front line are overrepresented by the least experienced. This is a logical consequence of rapid recruitment and its effects must be mitigated, but I cannot see how they can be avoided, because it is essential that we get those officers back out on the street.

I also welcome the plan to enhance the police covenant. Apart from its direct benefits, it will also build trust between this Government and the police service. For too long there has been a suspicion among those on the front line that they have not had the Government’s support. Whether that is true or not is a different question, but that perception has certainly been there, and the enhancing of the police covenant will help to remedy a lack of trust. The proof will be in how it develops in the coming years.

I am sorry that the proposals on policing do not touch on three big areas which I think are vital to consider for the coming years. The first—it will be no surprise to the Minister to hear me say this—is that the structure of policing remains an enigma. We have a National Health Service and a British Army; we have a Security Service and we have 43 police forces. The criminals do not quite respect those boundaries. It seems to me that our investments have been fragmented in the development of policing over the years and they will only continue to be fragmented if we allow that structure to continue. We have maximised localism, which accounts for a huge amount of inconsistency and, I fear, a sad lack of development over the years.

There is no discussion in the Speech about making prevention a strategic priority of the police in the way that has allowed massive progress in the fire service and the health service. In my view, a cross-government approach to the design of place and things—alcohol control, drug control and drug policy, self-education to help people reduce the chance of being a victim and a strategy that concentrates on young people—will have profound effects. I am afraid I have seen no clear explanation of that.

Finally, there is a need to prioritise improvement in police technology. I agree that we need people—I have already said that I support the huge increase in the number of police officers. However, the use of good technology that will enhance artificial intelligence, such as facial recognition—used properly and respecting privacy—is vital to improving the police, as well as the service they provide.

Metropolitan Police: Use of Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I agree with my noble friend on all counts. Coming back to his point about hard-working people, I saw the protesters described last week as “Glastonbury meets Waitrose”. Some of those people do not know what it is like to have to use the Tube because you simply cannot use the bus. It affects people’s pockets, particularly those of the hard-working people of London.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I was glad to see the Home Secretary’s publicised support for the Metropolitan Police. These are difficult judgments. On the last occasion that Extinction Rebellion carried out its protests, the police were criticised for failing to take action. Here, we see them criticised for perhaps taking too much. It is a difficult position to land fairly on. When we have the threat of airports being closed and the Tube system being shut down, this is a serious a matter for London, as it is for the country generally. Perhaps the use of this power is a reasonable response on this occasion.

Pakistan: Aid Programmes and Human Rights

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this debate. Pakistan has the opportunity to be a great country, but presently its development is limited by an overpowerful military interfering in democracy and a lack of respect for the rule of law and human rights. This is most obvious in its treatment of minorities. As we have heard, 95% of the people are Muslim, and Pakistan has recently created a sense of exclusionary nationalism focused on a definition of Muslimness which has had a dire effect on the status of minority groups, as declared by Minority Rights Group International in 2018.

We have heard that Pakistan was founded on religious tolerance, but recent years have seen the problems of extremism and of minorities being persecuted increase significantly. On human trafficking, the Government said recently:

“The UK Government’s approach to tackling modern slavery … in Pakistan is to reduce the permissive environment through community-based activities and to strengthen legislative and policy frameworks for more effective”,


protection of those affected.

A reasonable question for the Minister is: against a background of worsening religious persecution, what confidence do the Government have that their anti-trafficking programmes can deliver value for money when the structures of the state seem to be undermining them? The Government insist that their aid programmes are blind to religion and are determined by need and need alone. This is for entirely understandable reasons, not least wishing to avoid giving preferential treatment to people of a particular religion, which could easily be viewed as discrimination, but the “need not creed” approach is failing Pakistani minorities. The most marginalised and persecuted groups are most commonly defined by their religion. In Pakistan, blindness to religion is hindering our ability to help. Consider the case of the more than 1,000 Pakistani Christian girls trafficked to China since 2018. The traffickers are specifically targeting Christians, even waiting outside churches with signs promising Chinese Christian husbands. This an example of faith-targeted human trafficking. The UK’s anti-trafficking programme is well established in Pakistan, but if it remains blind to religion it will be less effective as a result. I serve as a trustee of an anti-human trafficking charity, the Arise Foundation. It summarised the problem, that,

“prevention work is most effective when it addresses why people are at-risk. If our aid programmes remain blind to the fact that the faith of these girls is putting them at risk, how can they possibly be effective?”

So I put that question to the Minister today: what steps are being taken to incorporate religion as an indicator of vulnerability in Pakistan? No one wants our aid programme to discriminate unjustly, but if a misplaced sense of political correctness is preventing us from reaching these girls and others like them, I would argue that we need to change our mentality, fast.

I wonder about the apparent blind eye that is being turned. The Pakistan Foreign Minister said last week that there was no truth to the reports that I have just outlined, but I have had a report from a senior official in Pakistan who told me directly that the reports were credible and that 65 Chinese and 16 Pakistani nationals have been arrested already within the ongoing investigations. Can the UK confirm whether it believes the reports or finds that there is evidence for them? I think there is good evidence, as has been said, that we need to target our aid wisely and reset the dial for the strategy of suspending it.

Knife Crime

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for this useful opportunity to reflect on the progress of the Government’s serious violence strategy, announced last year, in reducing knife crime. The Government have taken useful action which has been effective in reducing knife crime, but there remain significant questions as to whether their approach will be successful in the longer term.

At times in today’s debate it has been suggested that there are alternatives and that the choice is between short-term and long-term measures. I am afraid that the reality is that we will need both. If we do not take some of the short-term measures, people will die while the long-term measures take effect. There will therefore have to be tactical responses as well as some of the more profound strategic measures. I continue to urge the Government to have a profound crime prevention strategy, which I do not think is in place. This can also be said of health but it is certainly true of crime. The strategy should have five elements: design of places and things, drug abuse, alcohol misuse, mental health, and self-education so that people can protect themselves from becoming victims.

Although today’s debate has veered, quite understandably, into discussion of economic circumstances and the level of government support for vulnerable individuals, it is about the impact of government policy on knife crime. While low economic vibrancy can certainly lead to more crime, the debate is specifically about how government policy is affecting knife crime. Why is the current situation disproportionately causing people, particularly young people, to stab one another?

The effective measures taken include finding an extra £1 billion, or something of that order, for police funding, which is a good thing. There has also been an increase in the average sentence for those convicted of a second knife offence. My friend the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and others are not persuaded that prison sentences are the answer, but they certainly must be part of the answer. As I think he acknowledged, if someone is stabbed or there is an offence of serious violence, the young need to know that this is a terrible thing and that there is a serious consequence in the most extreme cases. It will happen only on a second conviction, and the average sentence has risen to eight months. The dilemma is that to arrest and to take serious action against someone carrying a knife before stabbing someone is a preventive measure against the murder that may subsequently occur. If we take no serious action against those carrying knives, we will have problems. The initiation of local serious violence units to work long-term on a public health approach, which the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, talked about, is a good investment, and I am sure that we will see its benefits in the coming years.

I do not necessarily share the confidence we have heard in the data we are offered to decide whether things are getting better or worse. The reports by the House of Lords Library are very good but are based on data that concludes in December 2018, and here we are in June 2019 and someone was stabbed to death yesterday. We do not know whether things are getting better or worse. Surely that data should be available. The statisticians often want this data to be perfect, but it must be available and transparent. I hope the Government have that data, and the police should have it so that they know whether or not the action they are taking is helpful. We also need statistical information because it helps us to stop having moral crises about things that may just be blips. I do not think the rise in knife crime is a blip, but there are statistical ways of checking that. This type of crime is seasonal. When the weather gets warm, the profile is different. Certain things can affect crime which can be analysed statistically. The bottom line is that every murder and stabbing is a serious event that we all need to take seriously, as we are doing.

My analysis, which is supported by that of the serious violence strategy, is that there are four principal causes of what we see at the moment. First is the increase in the supply of cheap cocaine, which has destabilised the controlled drug market, leading to more violence. Secondly, the distribution methods have changed such that there is now online ordering and delivery of drugs to customers rather than collection from their dealers. The very young are becoming involved in this, which is leading to the issue of county lines we see right across the country. Thirdly, clearly too many young people are carrying knives, and they are not deterred by being caught or by its consequences. Finally, communities that are getting younger see higher incidence of violence.

The questions that remain for the Government concern two things that have been in their control but have aggravated the situation I described. The first is the loss of 20,000 police officers since 2010. I am afraid I still cannot understand why, if the Government are putting £1 billion in, they have promised only 3,500 more when officers cost on average about £50,000 each; £1 billion should provide about 20,000. I do not understand why there is such a big discrepancy between the promise and the money being put in. My second point has been picked up by many people: the exclusion of young people from schools and the limited effectiveness of the pupil referral units, which I am afraid are becoming pathways to crime rather than inhibitors of it.

The questions that remain for the Government are these. First, if it is true that police officers costs on average £50,000, why can the Government not promise more officers? When they arrive, can they give any kind of assessment to the police about where they will put them? If they end up being shared politically or equitably that will not be the right way to distribute them.

Secondly, the National Crime Agency, which is charged with stopping the importation of drugs, still does not have a tier 1 objective to try to control the supply of controlled drugs. It has a very vague set of words and the performance data is almost meaningless. What about stopping some of the drugs getting in? How much is getting stopped and seized, with people being arrested and put in prison for 80 kilos of heroin? These are vital things that the NCA should have. The Government have not given it an objective to explicitly stop that supply.

Thirdly, have the Government considered amending the criteria for intrusive surveillance to monitor online ordering? It is currently reserved for the most serious of crimes, such as 80 kilos of heroin being imported, but in these cases we have very low volumes of cocaine being delivered and somebody, such as a 16 year-old who delivers it, dies. That is a serious event, which is why intrusive surveillance is so important to match the nature of the problem.

Fourthly, what is the Government’s analysis of the adverse impact of educational performance indicators on exclusions from schools? What are they doing to improve the performance of pupil referral units? Fifthly, what technology is being made available to the police to improve the quality of stop and search? That can make a real difference.

Finally, I recently did a documentary TV programme in which I suggested that there should be a tsar to pull this together. As a result, I saw the Home Secretary say that he did not agree with tsars. As it happens, I am not entirely confident that tsars always work, but if Ministers do not like tsars, who is pulling this together? Who will drive it forward and who will make sure that, across government, someone will do something week by week and day by day, and not report in six months’ time, when, sadly, things get out of control? It needs a drive. Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, said, sometimes central government can make things happen.

Emergency Services Network

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by the National Audit Office Progress delivering the Emergency Services Network, published on 10 May, in particular its finding that the new emergency services communications network may go over budget by at least £3.1 billion.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the emergency services network aims to deliver an ambitious world-leading digital communications network for the emergency services by 2022, resulting in savings of £200 million a year. When fully implemented, its mobile technology and infrastructure will transform the emergency response of police officers, firefighters and ambulance crews. This will result in faster and better treatment for victims.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. The Audit Commission has provided an excoriating judgment on this Home Office-run project. Not only has the cost risen by 49% but the project should have finished in 2019, while it is now hoped that it will finish in 2022. The Audit Commission has no confidence that this project will be delivered, given that a technical solution is not defined, and the police have no confidence. So will the Government guarantee that the extra funds needed for this project—which will be significant—will not be taken from the police, fire or ambulance budgets?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to point out what the NAO report says. I am not going to sugar-coat the cost and time overruns, but we can take some comfort from the fact that a new team is in place, and the additional costs should ultimately be recouped. But I take the point that a reset is needed, that the project needs to run to time and cost, and that that needs to be done as a priority.

Victims of Crime: Mobile Phone Data

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness and all that she does for victims. I concur with her that at the point victims are asked to sign a form they may be in a highly traumatised state. This process is nothing new—it has not just happened today—but the standardised form is new. However, I take on board the fact that victims and potential victims are in a vulnerable state when they are asked to sign the form. There is nothing to preclude a victim having a legal representative with them at the time they are asked to do this. However, I take the noble Baroness’s views on board and, as I have said, the CPS has undertaken to review the form.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I am concerned about these proposals for two reasons. First, the major cause of some of the problems is demand. We have had far more reporting of sexual offences over the past few years, there is a greater availability of devices for recording digital data and there is far more social networking. There is a huge amount of information to trawl through and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, it is no good giving even more access to this type of material if the police do not have the skills and resources to act on it. It would have been a good idea to talk about that alongside this proposal. Although resources have been going to the police, they have not been in this particular area.

More fundamentally, I am less relaxed than some noble Lords who have spoken about whether it is okay to trawl, as that is how it will be seen, through someone’s material. It will be seen as an intrusion into the privacy of the victim, even though I am sure it is not intended in that way. We have got to the stage where a person is now entitled to withdraw consent at the point of the sexual offence. It does not matter about sexual history or what happens after the event. Many of the offences where disclosure has been an issue have been about things and communications which have been shared after the event. I wonder, as a point of principle, why it is relevant to search someone’s communications before or after. Surely it is the event and the consent. We are in danger of moving away from that fundamental principle, which has been fought for an awful lot over the past 20 years, and this seems to be a backwards step.

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)]

My Lords—

Police: Recruitment Criteria

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

It is absolutely right that good-quality candidates should be allowed to come forward. That is why there are a variety of options available to candidates. As I said to the noble Lord earlier, it is important that candidates do not necessarily need a degree to be able to go into the police force, but that they are educated and trained to degree level going forward, to make the best police officers.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the purpose behind the College of Policing’s accreditation system is to do two things? First, as the Minister has already said, it aims to make sure that the training received is of a high standard—surely we all agree with that. At the moment, 50% of police officers recruited are graduates already. Secondly, for officers who have worked for 30 or 40 years in some cases, perhaps investigating murder, cybercrime, rape and other policing matters, it is really important that we accredit to graduate standard, because it allows those officers to move on to other careers at the end of their police career. It is not good enough to carry on as we have in the past, where we have not accredited great skills—but that does not mean to say that everyone has to be a graduate.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right and, of course, speaks from the highest experience. To be able to go on and do something else with the skills that you have accrued through, say, policing is really important. On the point about accreditation, it has to be recognised that the pattern of crime, and therefore of policing, has changed so much over the years. Police need to be trained in the new and emerging activities that criminals are undertaking—digital crime, for example.