Police: Recruitment and Retention

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, these are very serious allegations indeed and I will of course look into them. If officers are under investigation, it may be more difficult for me, but the allegation that 50% of BME staff at superintendent rank or above are under investigation is very concerning.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support the bid from the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, to increase the recruitment of minority-ethnic officers. By the time I left the Met, one in three of our recruits was from a minority, but I am still worried. For the past three years we have seen no recruitment because of lack of resources. This means there has been a pause in the change in make-up of all our police forces. I encourage the Minister and the Government to consider the Northern Ireland approach, as instigated by the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes. It did not change at all the standards for recruitment—people were offered a place in order of ability, but also in order of their representation in society. In the Northern Ireland context, therefore, unionists got jobs later and Catholics tended to get them earlier. I seriously think it is worth considering this in a UK context, given that we still see underrepresentation in our police service, as in many public services.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I certainly agree with the noble Lord that positive action is absolutely necessary. I take his point about less recruitment happening in recent years. Now is the moment to put that positive action into place and encourage people from BME backgrounds to come forward and apply for roles in the police.

Violent Crime

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, for the opportunity to debate the increase in serious violence. It is about not only police resourcing and effectiveness, but a broader tapestry. I was not necessarily going to talk about this but thought I might quickly say at the beginning that it seems that in the short to middle term, the Government will have to address two things: resourcing and police effectiveness. I would tie the two together.

First, the loss of 20,000 police can hardly be said to be helpful. I would caution the Government on two things. Even if they said today that they wanted 10,000 more police officers—50% of the loss—it took the Met three years to achieve that growth. It takes a significant investment of time, resources and lead time to achieve that change. Unless the button is pressed now, we cannot expect a quick result. It is not in itself a quick response, although it is an important one that we have to address.

The second point concerns police effectiveness. I have said here before, and I repeat, that the police must do as much as they can with what they have, and it is not good enough for people to say, “We don’t have enough resources”. They have to do a lot with what they have across the areas that are short-term challenges, such as street-level drug markets, carrying knives and domestic violence, which we have not heard about yet in this debate, but we have previously in this House. Some of the rise in the murder rate has been attributed to the rise again in domestic violence murders, which had reduced over the last 10 years. I am afraid that if the Government were to look at some of the arrest and detection rates for those offences, they might see some terrible reductions in those interventions. That leads in the long term to the sort of rise we have seen in domestic violence.

In the short and medium term, those are the things that I would advise the Government to consider. I have mentioned them before; it is almost my “Lord West moment” of asking for more ships, but £350 million will shortly be put into the transformation fund for policing. It is not transforming anything but it is available to spend, I would argue, on more police, should that be thought to be a priority.

The three areas on which I want to concentrate are, first, the prevention of crime as a strategy; secondly, the academic underpinning of our understanding of policing and what works in policing; and, thirdly, the best structures for ensuring that we deliver on those two foundations. Prevention, as mentioned in the Government’s own serious violence reduction strategy, is what will make things better across crime generally, but particularly across serious violence. It will need partners to work together. It goes on to make good proposals on prevention and the allocation of money and other resources to make sure that the prevention strategy can be achieved. However, I would argue that, generally, we do not have a crime prevention strategy that works in the way that we have seen it work for fire.

Fires are now far less likely because things are designed in a way that makes them less likely to burn. Detection systems make any fire that starts more likely to be detected. I am afraid, however, that we have not seen that determination around crime. We have an ill-health prevention strategy, excellent academic research about ill health and an excellent good practice guide. We monitor clinical excellence with organisations such as NICE. But we do not really have a clear intellectual model on which to base our crime prevention strategy. We do not have the equivalent bodies of the ones to which I have just referred. If we did, instead of having a series of ad hoc responses in reaction to real and moral crises in crime, we would have a prevention strategy that, on the whole, would put us in a far stronger position in the future.

I would argue that there are six elements to this. One is the design of place and things. Cars stopped being stolen because they were designed better. They are just about to be stolen in larger numbers because thieves have worked out how to steal them. Houses are being burgled less because we have better alarms. In place design, we can see how CCTV can be best used. Then there is the use of light, white light in particular.

Secondly, there is an alcohol control strategy. Providing alcohol to underage young people tends to deliver more violence. Unless that is controlled not only by the licensing authorities but by the police, problems will follow. The density of licences needs to be looked at—24-hour licensing has worked but I am not sure whether we have too many licences—both on and off-licences. Clearly, a controlled drug strategy is relevant to the present rise in violent crime. Mental health was mentioned earlier; 40% of people arrested by the police and in prison at the moment have a mental health issue, and it is vital that that is woven into the strategy. Young people are disproportionately affected by crime as victims and as suspects, so it is vital that that aspect is involved. Finally, there should be advice and incentivisation to potential victims to protect themselves. We could all take better action to protect ourselves at times—not to modify our way of life, but to make sure that we are less likely to be victims. That can be incentivised by things such as insurance. Fundamentally, therefore, we have not yet embedded crime prevention in government policy or in the way in which we all react.

My second concern is that we do not have a body of knowledge on which to base that prevention strategy. If you want to be a doctor, you go to a medical faculty; if you want to be a lawyer, you go to a law faculty. If you want to be a cop, you work out how to do it. That is not good enough when 60 million of us rely on about 250,000 people to keep us safe. Our great universities ought to be dedicating research time and work to making sure that this can happen. We in the Met invested £500,000, which concluded with Professor Ben Bradford being selected to be professor of policing at UCL. Should that work, it will mean that in the future there will be more faculties to help policing develop by finding out what works internationally as well as locally.

Even if those two things were in place and we had a crime prevention strategy and that academic research, we must have a structure that best delivers it. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Harris: when there was a moral crisis around street robbery, one of our previous Governments put in place a system that said we would respond as a country, not as 46 different forces. I argue that, whether through that mechanism or another, there needs to be a catalyst that drives this action forward in the future. At the moment, it potentially just meanders into the future rather than there being a short-term hit, particularly if resources are put into this effort. It is no good investing resources that are not well targeted; a catalyst, whether an individual or a group of individuals, is absolutely vital.

Finally, in our response on health we have a National Health Service, the military responds in a united way, and the security services are all one. When we get to the police, the answer is 46, which I do not understand. I am not saying that the answer is one, but it is not 46. I assure your Lordships that it will be an inconsistent response. Whether it is on this moral issue about violence, or any future issue that we will have to address, if we continue with a 46 model, we will have inconsistency, with marked areas of excellence and marked areas of poor performance. However, the present structure is least likely to deliver excellence in the future, which this country needs, and which the big cities in particular demand at the moment. Without that, we are likely to end up with an inconsistent application of bad practice as well as good.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Harris on securing this fascinating debate exploring the causes of violent crime and whether there is a quick fix. I have listened with interest to the contributions.

Once again, I congratulate the Library on its briefing. It includes a minefield of statistics, but one thing drew my attention. Last month, the Office for National Statistics noted ongoing improvements to police recording practices but cautioned that,

“for many types of offence, police recorded crime figures do not provide a reliable measure of trends in crime, … they do provide a good measure of the crime-related demand on the police”.

Given that comment, what action does the Minister intend to take to improve the quality of police statistics as compared with the Crime Survey figures?

I looked at the core themes of the Serious Violence Strategy. According to the bullet points in the briefing, they are: tackling county lines and the misuse of drugs, and you cannot argue with that; early intervention and prevention, and we have heard a range of contributions on the role of social services, schools, health services and so on; supporting communities and partnerships—again you cannot argue with that—and an effective law enforcement. I would welcome the Minister’s views on those last words, because a number of comments have been made about the level of policing. If you look at the statistics, you will see that there is not a direct correlation, but in my own neighbourhood I rarely see police on the beat, and I think that we have not quite got the level right. I listened intently to the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman. He did not say that there was a quick fix, but he did say that we should not use that as an excuse for not having effective action. He also mentioned the question of resources, and I presume he was referring to the level of policing.

I want to come on now to the role of the police and the difficulties that they have. My noble friend Lord Harris gave us a potted history of what went on with stop and search. We have debated many times in this Chamber how dreadful that power is and how it causes community friction, and we all recognised that it should be community led. But the situation has changed fundamentally now. Most of the police I see use body-worn video. That is a significant achievement: not only is it an accurate recording of how they behave but, in the past, independent videos were taken on phones, and sometimes doctored, and then used in evidence. We should not underestimate the importance of the body-worn video. We ought to recognise that if young people, and not so young people, feel that they can get away with carrying a knife, they will do. If stop and search is one part of the deterrent process, we ought to back the police.

The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, referred to the serious and threatening increase in moped crime, which really does damage community safety and confidence. The police have now adopted a tactic. I was going to say, “More power to their elbow”, but it is not their elbow; it is the wheels on the police car. Again, there will be people who say that this is not the right approach, but I think that if you have drastic crime, you have to take drastic measures.

The other area is the prosecution of retailers, and more action needs to be taken on that. Retailers are still selling knives and, unfortunately, acid, which is used in terrible crimes.

There is also the role of social media. It never ceases to amaze me that companies can develop algorithms to improve advertising and to target their audience but somehow cannot quite manage to develop the algorithms to remove some of the disgraceful stuff that appears on social media. If anybody is seriously suggesting that the young people picking this up on their smartphones —they all have smartphones—are not influenced by it, they are not living in the real world.

I was interested to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, who has a wealth of experience. What I drew from his contribution is that if the perfect number of police forces is not one, it sure as hell is not 46, and I agree with him on that. I suppose the only thing you could say is that it is 46 opportunities to find out best practice at the moment. I think that was part of his message, and it is one that I wholeheartedly concur with.

I was fascinated by the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, who carried on in the face of adversity—well done. I agree with her point that capitalism—I was going to refer to it as industry—ought to be making a contribution, and on the importance of mentoring, training and adding value through apprenticeships. There cannot be any better solution than getting young people into worthwhile employment and inclusion in society and the world of work.

We had a fascinating contribution from my noble friend Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate. It was not quite “Dixon of Dock Green”—sorry—but it certainly described a different world of policing. The point I took from his contribution was the massive increase in the police workload. We expect a huge effort, but they cannot possibly sustain everything. They cannot cover the waterfront of crime that is out there at the moment. I hope that the Minister will respond to that and refer not only to the number of policemen on the beat but to specials and community support officers, who seem to be missing these days.

This has been a useful debate and I look forward to hearing the Minister respond to some of the constructive points of view that have been made.

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Young, would address one point. I did not want to interrupt him while he was speaking. He referred to something that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, talked about—knocking suspects off mopeds—and all our hearts are with the officers who take such action. It makes us feel better that someone took action which seems to have had some effect. My concern is whether, when someone dies, loses a leg or is brain damaged as a result of this type of event, the law will support the officers and their leaders, because corporate manslaughter remains a challenge for the police as it does for others. I would like reassurance from the Government, which is what the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, sought, that the law will support them. Fine words will not support the individual when the law comes knocking on the door of the officers who drive the cars or their leaders who support them in that policy. I have that concern and I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Young, shares it.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I was not being flippant. I hope I was making the point that I support the police in such action. However, having said that, we know that when they do take that kind of action we will have to address the points made by the noble Lord. Again, I hope the Minister will respond. We require regulation of how and when the action will be taken, but I certainly support the approach and I believe that the police should be supported.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt. To return to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, the Minister said that each force has to decide how it applies its funding. Neighbourhood policing has drastically reduced over the last few years; it has been the biggest chunk of the lost 20,000. The problem really, not that it is anyone’s fault, is that this is the part of policing that struggles to make its case. Cybercrime, fraud online and harassment online have gone through the roof, harassment generally has become an offence and sexual offence reporting, including historical offences, has risen by probably 80% in the last four years. These and other types of crime are offences about which we all say something like, “Why are we not doing something about domestic violence or harassment?” That type of offence drags in resources at pace—specialist resources, not merely volume. In comparison, the neighbourhood officer struggles to say, “Actually, I have walked down the street over the last six months and got two informants, arrested three people and intervened in a terrorist plot”. The challenge is how we collectively address neighbourhood policing, partly by resources but also by prioritisation. I think at times we all struggle to say that we did not argue for specialists when we prefer neighbourhood officers.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I totally accept the point that the noble Lord is making. I guess that all the things he is talking about require a specialist response but of course people take great comfort from the presence of the local bobby, even if he is not going to solve the cybercrime that is happening on their computer at home or deal with the terrorist plotting an offence. Those types of new offence have gone through the roof and the public have called for them to be resourced. As I say, we could talk all afternoon about police funding and the police budget. I think we are generally in agreement that a prioritisation process is necessary in any local police force but that the police have to have the resources to be able to carry it out. I think that has been widely recognised.

The noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, asked about the number of special officers rising or falling. In fact it has fallen, and part of that fall has been because recent police officer recruits have come from that cadre.

To return to the strategy, our analysis clearly points to the range of factors in serious violence, and we think changes in the drugs market are at the heart of that. We know that crack cocaine markets have strong links to serious violence. Last time the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, used the catchy phrase “the crack cocaine pizza-delivery model”, which is frightening but absolutely true. The latest evidence suggests that crack use in England and Wales is rising due to a mix of supply and demand factors, such as the increased supply of cocaine from overseas and the spread of county lines drug dealing associated with hard, class-A drugs. However, my noble friend Lady Bertin pointed out the elephant in the room, which is middle-class cocaine use, which people seem to think is harmless and a natural thing to do on a Saturday night. It is not; it is also fuelling demand in the drug markets.

In our analysis in the strategy, we also identified that increases in violence have been accompanied by a shift towards younger victims and perpetrators. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who talked about those who are both victims and perpetrators. We know that we are not alone in seeing recent increases in serious violence. The US, Canada and a number of other European countries have similar long-term trends.

We recently announced £40 million of Home Office money over two years to support the initiatives in the serious violence strategy. This includes £17.7 million for the early-intervention youth fund, and is in addition to the resources that the Government have already committed through the troubled families programme, the national citizens programme and the trusted relationship fund. Building on the ambitious programme of work in the strategy, the Home Secretary announced in October major new measures to address violent crime.

Finally, there is consultation on a new legal duty to underpin that public health approach to tackling serious violence that so many noble Lords have mentioned. This will mean that police officers, education partners, local authorities and healthcare professionals will have a new legal duty to act to prevent violent crime. The noble Lords, Lord Harris, Lord Kennedy and Lord Hogan-Howe, all talked about early intervention and prevention, as did others. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, said that early intervention was worthy. I am sure that he was not undermining it, but it is an essential part of our strategy, as it is in so many areas of tackling societal problems. We need to develop resilience; we need to support positive alternatives for young people and timely interventions to prevent them being drawn into a life of crime in the first place.

Earlier this month, the Home Secretary announced 29 projects that will receive £17.7 million from the early-intervention youth fund, which will focus on diverting vulnerable young people and those who have already offended away from crime. In addition, the Government are in partnership with the Big Lottery Fund and have invested £80 million—£40 million to the #iwillFund and £40 million to the youth investment fund—to create opportunities for young people to develop their skills and participate in their communities.

I turn to the point about county lines, which so many noble Lords have mentioned. Not only do drugs and county lines have a significant impact on serious violence, they have emerged as the most significant driver of violent crime. Tackling them is a major cross-cutting issue involving drugs, violence, gangs, safeguarding, child criminal exploitation, modern slavery and missing persons. Our response therefore needs to involve the police, a wide range of government departments, local government agencies and voluntary sector organisations.

In addition to delivering a cross-government action plan to tackle the issue, we have provided £3.6 million to establish a new national county lines co-ordination centre to tackle violent and exploitative criminal activity associated with county lines. The new centre became fully operational on 21 September and delivered its first week of intensification in October, which resulted in 505 arrests and—to answer the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton—320 individuals being safeguarded.

On 28 August, the Department for Education announced £2 million for a new national response unit that will be established to help local authorities support vulnerable children at risk of exploitation by criminal gangs. The unit will offer bespoke support to local councils and will operate from 2019 to 2022. It will build on and work alongside existing initiatives to provide strategic support to children’s social care working with multiagency partners within local areas. The Department for Education expect to launch the formal tender for the new service later this month.

I shall ask noble Lords to indulge me because I allowed interventions during my speech and I have another five minutes, according to the clock. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, mentioned the really important point of exclusions and the effect that that has in drawing children further into gangs, crime and other activities that will not benefit their long-term future. We recognise that a number of risk factors can increase the likelihood of a young person’s involvement in crime, and this is definitely one of them. We are considering what further support might be needed for children who are excluded from school, as we know that they are overrepresented as victims of serious violence.

I was very interested to hear my noble friend Lady Bertin talk about corporate responsibility in preventing serious violence. I was grateful for her thoughts on this the other day, and for raising it today, and I am keen to explore this issue further.

Noble Lords also talked about people with mental health problems coming into contact with the police. It is a very serious issue; the police are not there to arrest them but to support them. As I think the noble Lord, Lord Harris, or the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, people with mental health problems need to be taken to hospital and not to a police cell. We have banned the use of cells for children with mental health problems and, as noble Lords will know who have debated with me on this, they are used only in absolutely exceptional circumstances for adults with mental health problems. Getting people to a place of safety is the prime objective when the police come into contact with people with mental health problems.

The noble Lords, Lord Bilimoria, Lord Hogan-Howe, and Lord Young of Norwood Green, talked about moped crime. There was an important point about supporting the police in the decisions that they make. Much has been made of giving the police greater confidence to pursue suspects, and when deciding whether to conduct a pursuit the police take into account guidance from the College of Policing on the authorised professional practice on roads policing and police pursuits. The stopping of motorcycles and mopeds has been permitted in the national guidance since October 2015, and the guidance makes it clear that the key consideration is whether the pursuit is necessary, balanced against the threat of this and the harm of the pursuit to the person being pursued, the officer and others who may be affected.

My time is up. There is a whole section on knife crime, but if I go through it, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, will be unable to speak. I shall conclude my remarks there. I thank noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for the debate, and I shall allow him to conclude.

Stalking

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, although I support the spirit of the proposal, I would challenge it. I wonder whether the Minister agrees with me about how practical it is to keep creating more registers. At the last count, the sex offender register had around 59,000 people on it. They are going on it quicker than they are dying off it. The realistic approach to controlling or monitoring them in society is very limited, partly due to resourcing and partly due to practicality. If there is to be a future in this, the solution will probably be a technological one. I am honestly not sure whether a register will help.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I share the noble Lord’s point. The more registers there are, the more propensity there is for people to fall through the gaps. The crucial thing is that the registers and databases that we have work effectively.

Policing: Priorities

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, safer neighbourhood teams certainly provide reassurance to local people, and if local forces feel there should be more numbers in the safer neighbourhood teams, then that is what they should invest in. I certainly recognise that safer neighbourhood teams provide reassurance at a local level.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, as the Minister knows, I think there are two axes that the Government might follow for the future. One is that the police genuinely need at times to be more effective—just having fewer resources is not a good reason to say that they always need more resources; they have to be more effective at times with the resources they have. I have always felt that, both in the job as well as outside now. However, there is clearly a resourcing issue, and I repeat a constructive suggestion that I ask the Minister to consider. With the transformation fund for the police rising to £350 million over the next two years, which by my estimation would provide 7,000 police officers, it is a foolish endeavour when all it is for is to cover for the fact that there will not be regional police forces. It is not transforming anything; it is taking money from the police at the very time when I would argue that those 7,000 would help to fill the 20,000 gap that has developed over the last seven years.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I start by thanking the noble Lord for what I found to be an extremely helpful discussion yesterday, particularly around knife crime, and for all the incredible work he did as commissioner. He is absolutely right, and I have alluded to it in my answers, that there needs to be more effectiveness within police forces. I take his point about fewer police forces larger in number, but I think that the transformation fund is doing some very good work and is actually incentivising police forces to be more efficient.

Knife Crime

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that there are probably three major causes of the rise in violence, particularly murders, that we have seen more of in London than perhaps in the rest of the country? The first is the supply of cocaine. Street-level dealing is now online dealing—apparently it can be delivered quicker than pizza—and something has to happen to intervene in that supply. The National Crime Agency might do more because 90% of cocaine comes from South America. Street-level dealing has to be attacked by local police who must do something about that. The Government could invest more in that.

Secondly, more technology could help officers on the streets to identify the people who carry knives. There are clearly too many people carrying knives and we have to intervene where that is happening to stop the almost accidental use of knives.

Finally, there is a correlation between more young people, particularly young men, gathering and a rise in violence. We need to see more police resources invested in those areas. Does the Minister agree that the investment of resources in those areas in particular, where we have lost 24,000 police officers over the last few years, is vital now—not in the long term—for a public health attempt to improve the situation?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I agree with all the points made by the noble Lord; he will have heard the Home Secretary’s words about future funding. The noble Lord is right about the scourge of drugs, and the fact that cocaine can be delivered quicker than pizza is really concerning. The police should make the most of technology on the streets and of intelligence as well. But make no mistake: the issue of drugs is something that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has committed to tackle in the most vigorous of ways because the two are linked.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Minutes of Proceedings - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support the intentions of the Bill. I will say a little about the context that has not already been covered by the many speeches we have heard today, and will then say little about three of the clauses that have been mentioned. Before that, I will respond to the excellent speeches of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, both of which were informed and entertaining. The noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, who is not here at the moment, referred at the end of his speech to extradition cases. Although he talked about three of the inquiries that have taken place, he did not refer to one police investigation which delayed the conclusion of the first inquiry. Should there ever be a judge-led inquiry, as he would prefer, I hope that the Belhaj case that the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to pursue will be made available to that inquiry, as it would provide vital information that would help inform any future decisions in that area.

Secondly, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, has concerns about Prevent. I do not particularly share those, but I agree with her that cohesion and integration are a vital element in preventing terrorism in the future. Usually we see two elements where we get radicalisation: a lack of integration and Middle East foreign policy. Those two things tend to repeat time and time again. This is not necessarily my view of Prevent, but minority communities have become so concerned about it, and it is a strong thing, not a weak thing, to review something. The time has come to at least look at it and perhaps move on. It has achieved a lot but may yet achieve more if we are able to be flexible.

We are still reaping the effects of two civil wars which started more than seven years ago: one in Syria in 2011 and the other in Iraq a few years later. At least 12,000 people travelled from Europe to fight, particularly in Syria but also in Iraq. We know that at least 15% of the 900 UK people who went died, and that about 55% of them have returned. Some went for humanitarian purposes and some to fight. We have seen the effects of that terrorism on the streets of Brussels, Nice, Paris and, sadly and more recently, London. The next phase of our fight against terrorism is now evolving. I suggest that the Bill is a good time for us to reflect on our preparations for that future.

It will have three distinct elements that we need to plan to combat. The first is the potential for those foreign fighters to return. They are brutalised, and dangerous because of their training and their motives but also because they are now in contact with a network of other terrorists, and they may still perpetuate conspiracies. The second is the release in the coming years, and even now, of the first wave of prisoners convicted of terrorist offences during the last five to seven years. Sometimes they were convicted of other criminal offences, because, although we believed that they had a terrorist motive, we could convict them only of a criminal offence.

In prison they met people called criminals. Many of the people who we are suspicious of and worried about do not have a criminal background. That is of great benefit, because it means that they do not have access to organised criminals, who are the means by which criminals generally get hold of firearms. They have now met a lot of people in prison, and on their release they will still have those associations, along with the people they met in prison who may have become radicalised.

Finally, the terrorists will have learned from the first series of prosecutions, because the prosecutor reveals the tactics by which they were caught, and that means that they will adapt. We see that with various generations of terrorists, who adapt their tactics to meet their failures, as they see them, when successful prosecutions occur.

I will not repeat the numbers we have already heard for what I always think of as the pyramid of doom: the 20,000 subjects of interest, the 3,000 subjects of current interest, and, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, the 500 security service operations. There are a further 600 counterterrorist police operations, so that is over 1,000 live operations dealing with this threat.

The point I am supporting is that it is clearly fair to say that we have a serious threat now, as described in the threat assessment, but the numbers alone are concerning. It is a real threat that we must all think about. It is, of course, evolving, and the vectors through which the threat operates are evolving too. We need to respond in a proportionate and incremental way; I would argue that, in legislative terms, the UK has responded incrementally. We have not seen the mistakes that, sadly, those with more experience of terrorism in Northern Ireland saw, when general internment caused more problems than it solved. We should approach the problem incrementally and see whether we can adapt; then, if we need to legislate, let us legislate to the problem, not use generic legislation. We need always to keep a majority in our society—and our minority communities in particular—on side.

The question is: if the threat has evolved in a way that requires new legislation, what is it that we are trying to address? The simplicity and volatility of the threat require us to intervene earlier to protect the public, individuals and groups. We need to make sure that a process that goes from planning to attack in a matter of hours is interrupted quickly. Also, offences previously considered peripheral and minor are now seen as indicative of a volatile, unpredictable actor. We do not want to wait for high-level offences before taking action, given how rapidly that threat can escalate; we need lasting disruptive impact and control of offenders, which is where lengthier prison sentences can have an impact.

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, is not in his place, but I agreed with a lot of what he said; the tests he applied were sensible. I agreed with an awful lot, but one of the reasons he gave for not extending sentences, if I understood him correctly, was that our prisons are already full and therefore we cannot get more prisoners in. If that is the case, we none the less ought always to find room for terrorists, even if that means excluding other people. In fact, the prison population is starting to drop now—albeit, I would argue, not enough, but we must always find space for terrorists if we consider that they are committing serious offences.

We must also think about technological changes; a significant amount of our coverage of people involved in terrorism concerns their online persona and methods of communication. As we have heard, it is 20 years since legislation set out the various ways in which we can monitor that technology. Particularly in the streaming area, this is a good time to make sure that we can monitor in the way that we need to, and prove offences. We know that radicalisation is happening in a very powerful and influential way by streaming video. It seems to be an incredibly useful way for people to get over quickly some very dangerous methods of implementing terrorist attacks.

There have been some criticisms of the Bill already and we have heard more of them today; I do not necessarily support them all. In the debates to come, I am sure that improvements will be made forensically to the eventual Act when it is concluded. There is a concern that the Bill will capture innocent or accidental online activity, but none of the proposed offences is absolute, as they are in child sexual exploitation offences. Intent has to be proved. In any event, all cases must pass three tests, including sufficiency of evidence and public interest. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was not convinced by the public interest test, but I am; I think it is a thorough test, supplied by an independent prosecutor, with good lawyers in the CPS, and my experience is that they are quite hard to persuade of something I might find blindingly obvious.

[Baroness Hamwee]

Perhaps I could explain that my concern about the public interest test is that we should not be forced to rely on it; we should get the legislation certain and reliable rather than look to public interest as the mechanism to catch what we have not been able to solve in the legislation.

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

The noble Baroness did make that point, and I accept it. My third point is that the prosecution has to overcome any reasonable excuse defence. That is the third measure which I think is helpful in reassuring those who might not be persuaded by the first two tests. Only rarely will a single action or statement be a basis for a charge, as we have seen on many occasions. We heard of the Choudary case, which I shall come back to. In that case, it took an awfully long time to prove a criminal offence, and I think that this strikes the right balance between protecting society and protecting the rights of the suspect.

I will mention a couple of clauses which I particularly support. The first is Clause 4. I argued for this measure about two or three years ago and it relates to the concerns of the investigators. I argued that having a designated area is particularly helpful. Investigating an offence that has occurred within a failed state, such as Syria or Iraq, can be particularly difficult. There is no one at the border keeping a clear register of people who have travelled across it, and there is no easy state mechanism for gathering evidence, particularly from number plate recognition, CCTV, hotel records or anything else that you might want to access. That is particularly difficult in a failed state. So saying “Please give me all the evidence to prove that offence” when people return is a particular challenge for investigators.

I accept that we have intelligence, but the distinction between intelligence and evidence is that we can use intelligence to gain evidence but only evidence can be put before a court. So this is an important change. I understand that some amendment might be needed in relation to humanitarian cases, which I do not think anyone is seeking to stop in any way, but I think that it is a particularly helpful development, and certainly I support it. In my view, it should have happened quite some time ago. Of course, it will not capture the people who are presently in Syria or Iraq, but that is not the intention here, and there is a cooling-off period of, I think, one month for future offences.

The second thing is that putting a responsibility on the traveller to explain why they went to a certain place would not be unreasonable. The Foreign Office will usually have issued a travel advice warning and a designated area warning—and finally there is the reasonable excuse defence. Given the threat that we face, these are not unreasonable things to ask of someone who chooses to travel to a war zone and is acting in a potentially treasonable way, as has been suggested in the past.

I also support Clause 1. I will not say a lot more about it, as others have covered it better, but I think that we have to capture the Choudary-type offence. Clever interlocutors or demagogues will adapt to the latest movement of the law and we have to adapt with them. They will always be clever and try to find a new way round it, so that we have to adapt. Although not the only one, Choudary was an example of where, no matter how hard the security services tried, they could not persuade the prosecutor that they had a case. I do not think that there was a lack of evidence; the law was not helpful and did not allow something that we all agreed was wrong to be prosecuted.

My final points are small ones. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, mentioned the legislation relating to flags and the fact that removing a flag could cause tension. That is a fair point, but most police officers use discretion when making an arrest or an intervention. The display of a flag can cause tension too. People might remember an incident about four years ago in Parliament Square. When I was in charge of it, the Met was criticised for not taking from someone what appeared to be an ISIS flag. The officers were quite right to decide not to do so. First, the person involved was a seven year-old child and, secondly, the officers could not be absolutely sure that the flag they saw with Arabic writing on it was in fact a proscribed flag. They made a perfectly reasonable decision based on discretion. We expect that of officers and I do not see this as a particular problem.

I hesitate to make my final point because it concerns resources—although the noble Lord, Lord West, raises these points, so I do not see any reason why I cannot. I entirely accept that the Government have supported the police and the security services by maintaining resourcing for counterterrorism policing. That is a fair point and there is no argument about it. However, when you lose 20,000 police officers and probably 10,000 police community support officers, it is a real challenge. There are other things as well, but two-thirds of Security Service leads come from community contacts. That comes through neighbourhood policing, and that is the first thing to go when you lose 20,000 cops. So it is an important point and it needs to be considered.

Finally, I remind the House that the threat remains severe and is evolving. The society that we live in has progressed since the Terrorism Act 2000 and this Bill is a reasonable response. It should command the support of the majority and minority communities and, I argue, of this House.

Police: Firearms

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what was the outcome of the review of police officers’ use of firearms announced in November 2015 after the terrorist attacks in France.

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

My Lords, armed police officers do a vital and uniquely challenging job on behalf of the public. It is right that they are supported to take difficult decisions to protect the public without fearing that the justified use of force will damage their careers. The work looking into the legal and procedural framework governing police use of firearms and post-incident investigation is ongoing, taking into account learning from recent events.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, in this country there are 120,000 police officers, only 6,500 of whom are armed. They deal with 15,700 firearms operations a year, yet discharge their weapons on only 10 occasions. Yet when they do discharge their weapons they can expect a lengthy and prolonged inquiry—more than 10 years on the worst occasion. Something needs to happen about this. That was agreed in the review that this Question relates to by the then Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron. Here we are two and half years later and that review has yet to conclude. The Government and the law need to change to accommodate the needs of the firearms officer to ensure these things are carried forward well in the future. The very least that should happen is that the review should conclude.

Refugees: Teaching of English

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords—

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches.

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

My Lords, in 2016, Dame Louise Casey conducted a review on extremism. She stressed the importance of integration, which reduced the chances of extremism, and of course speaking English increases the chances of integration. The £10 million that the Minister referred to has certainly helped to assist resettled Syrians, but could that same commitment to provide eight hours of English training be provided to all other refugees as well? That might enhance the strategy mentioned by the Opposition.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, as I explained to my noble friend Lady Warsi, English language tuition is also available to refugees under the adult learners scheme. But the noble Lord is absolutely right: integration is the key to tackling extremism and the English language is the key to enabling that integration.