Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support this legislation, which commemorates the lives of terrorist victims from the past and obviously intends to reduce the chances of more deaths and injury in the future. Therefore, for all the reasons that have been described, it has my full support. It is the latest manifestation of the UK counterterror strategy Contest, which is there to Prevent, ideally stopping people becoming terrorists; to Pursue, so that, if they do become terrorists, they are locked up and put before the courts; to Prepare, so that, in the event that terrorists get through, we make sure that we recover as quickly as possible; and to Protect—that is this strand—the targets that terrorists may find the most attractive.

For a long time, where people have gathered in large numbers, venues have tried to reduce either the likelihood of an attack getting through or, if one did get through, the damage caused. But I am afraid this has been inconsistent and has lacked an evidence base on which to operate. In my view, this is the ideal opportunity to make sure that does not happen.

I will make only five points. I will first briefly respond to some of the points raised. There is clearly a debate about where we should draw the line: it could be 200 or 100, and some people prefer 300. I would be careful about altering it from 200. In 2018, at the request of the royal commission in New Zealand, I visited to look at the terrorist attacks on the Christchurch mosques, when 51 Muslims were murdered and 84 other people were injured. They were two small mosques—small in the numbers of people who gathered but terrible in the outcome of what happened when one man with an automatic weapon swept through them. So I would be really careful. Of course, they were places of worship. Although there is an exclusion in this legislation for places of worship, the fact that they are places of worship can actually amplify the target. Thousands of people can gather at—and do visit every day—some of our national venues such as Westminster Abbey. We have to be really careful before, in trying to accommodate their difference, we leave people who visit more vulnerable.

Secondly, I raise something that is not directly relevant, although it is relevant to the issue of communication in emergencies. The Minister may want to reassure himself about the latest level of the Airwave project, which is now eight years late, running at £12.5 billion and has no procurement in place to deliver the new system. It is indirectly impacting on the ability of the emergency services to respond to these terrible events together. We all ought to take this seriously, and it is worth at least contemplating when considering this legislation.

The noble Baroness, Lady May, raised a good point about who is in charge when emergency services attend. Is it the people who are already running the venue? There is some good experience there post the Hillsborough event, and the Green Guide makes some clear recommendations about how this happens at football grounds. Rather than reinvent this, it may well be worth at least considering the advice there.

On CTSAs, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, got it right: there are very few of these people across the country, and they will need enhancing. There are tens of them throughout England and Wales, and I suspect that, given the number of premises involved here, there will have to be a significant investment to make sure that can go forward in the future.

The first of my five points is to support the point from the noble Baroness, Lady May, on design. This is about the design of new buildings, of course, but also the retrofitting of existing buildings. Design can help to reduce the number of attackers, can help to reduce the impact of attacks and can allow people who can escape to do so—or keep them safe where they choose to be. But this needs some clear thinking. Our shopping malls are open plan—they are not compartmentalised—but it is possible to design them so that they could become compartmentalised in the event of an attack. But it is not straightforward, as this place found out when PC Palmer was murdered. Do you lock down or do you open up? If you open up, where do you go and how do you communicate with people? Of course, people are in a panic and are not always able to hear you clearly. What advice will you give them when you at the time are not sure exactly what is happening? These are very difficult problems, but design can play a major part in making sure that we give the people who are operating these places a good opportunity to respond as well as they can.

Secondly, on technology, many of the venues that we are talking about—not the smaller ones, perhaps, but even some of them—have CCTV. We often have debates in this place about the horrors of AI and the terrible things that facial recognition can do, but actually it can do some pretty remarkable good things as well. If CCTV is available at some of our bigger venues—think about ExCeL and some of our big shopping malls such as Westfield in London, of which there are two—it can play an important part in spotting unusual patterns of behaviour in individuals. AI can assist with that, but I argue that the Bill is silent about how it might help. I will come back to why I think it is particularly important that it says something about this.

Facial recognition is another great opportunity. I am not necessarily talking about randomly checking people’s faces and whether they should be there or are terrorists. I am talking about checking them against lists of people who we know are dangerous: terrorists on control orders, people who have been released on parole from a terrorist sentence, or people on bail who have not yet been charged. These are significant characters, and I guess that any operator of a significant venue would like to know whether they have bought a ticket to some of these events, are strolling around their car parks or are carrying out reconnaissance in the days preceding their attacks, as we saw in New Orleans, to make sure that they are as effective as they can be.

How do we enable our CCTV to be as effective as it can be? If we cannot get this right for counterterrorist legislation, we will struggle to get it right for volume crime and general surveillance of public areas. This is a live debate, and we should not go to one end of the spectrum and say that AI and facial recognition are always bad. They can be, but they can also be incredibly effective, and we should not dismiss technology just because we occasionally have some concerns about privacy.

The third thing that I urge the Bill to say something about is different regulatory bodies. As we have heard, the venues are covered by different regulatory bodies: the Health and Safety Executive, local authorities looking after football grounds and some of the venues for alcohol licensing, and fire brigades, which inspect these places too. So there is a chance that they approach the same problem inconsistently—not intentionally, of course. We need to make sure that all our regulatory bodies approach these issues consistently and do not end up giving inconsistent advice—not least given that we have many local authorities but intend to give this to one national body, the SIA.

Of course, the methods of security are regulated by other people, too. The SIA already regulates the security operatives who work at these places. The Biometric Commissioner has interests in how data is collected, and the Data Protection Commissioner has an interest in privacy, while the Surveillance Commissioner has an interest in how all those systems come together. I would argue that we need them to consider the terrorist threat in a wide, not a narrow, way and that, when we come to things such as facial recognition or AI application, we need them to give consideration in a generous, not a narrow, way.

At the very least, we need the venue operators to know that, when they are trying to get agreement on how they operate their systems, they will get an open hearing and they do not have to approach the same problem in 172,000 ways—because there are 172,000 venues out there that will have to resolve some of these problems. Of course, the smaller ones are larger in volume, but some of the bigger ones are pretty high in numbers, too. So we need to consider at this stage how the various regulators are going to work with this legislation and make sure that it works effectively.

My fourth point is about research. We have already heard concerns about whether the SIA will be well equipped by the time this Act comes into force, and I can understand why those concerns are there. It is a relatively small organisation and there have been mistakes in the past: security operatives have had convictions for manslaughter and we have seen various things that have not gone well. But that could be said of many public organisations—so it can learn and it can improve. But the Bill is silent on where it is going to get its advice. It will of course need good research and academic support to work out how to deal with a crowd that is panicking. There is a science in this. We have had to see it through football matches and learn how to deal with large crowds, and how crowds respond. So I should like to hear a little more about how it is anticipated that the SIA will get its advice and develop research over time, because it seems to me that it should be able to develop commissions of research so that it can respond to new problems—because new terrorist attacks will come up and it will be vital that the SIA is dynamic and responds to the new threats.

My final point is about powers of search. At the meeting earlier, I said that you might think, “Well, that’s just what policemen say, isn’t it? That they need a power of search”. But my point is that all these venues often have security operatives. Sadly, in the Manchester attack we saw that the terrorist who attacked entered at the end of the event into an area that was not protected and was not being excluded, and was carrying the device that murdered so many people. But of course, if some of the security operatives had tried to approach and deal with him, they had no power of search. It is expected that security operatives are able to search as a condition of entry to the premises—you either get searched or you do not come in. But of course some of these people are trespassers—not all are terrorists—and with some people you cannot be sure whether they have a right to enter. So I wonder whether it is worth thinking about whether security operatives should have some kind of right, because the alternative is that you have to call the police, which will be inefficient; it will be slow and might be too late. So we should give some consideration to security operatives’ powers, used properly and reasonably, in a way that enhances security.

Finally, I realise that, on some of my points, the Minister might say, “Well, actually, there’s going to be advice issued and there will be secondary legislation”, so I am quite content that some of those points might have to be covered there. But I would argue that some of the regulatory issues need to be considered in the Bill because, if the regulator is faced with controlling legislation that gives it very clear direction and is then faced by secondary legislation that gives advice, it may have to go with its first statutory, primary legislation. So it is worth saying something about this in the Bill to help the other regulators. Things such as stop and search would certainly need primary legislation: in my view, it should not be the subject of secondary legislation, if it is considered applicable.

My final point is that I wish this Bill speedy progress, as the Minister said, so that we can implement it quickly. Although I agree that two years is a good period in which to implement it, in that we want to build the credibility of the SIA and make sure that the businesses are ready, I would keep an open mind that, if the businesses and the SIA achieve that more quickly, we should implement more quickly, too. Two years is quite a long time and we are already saying that the terrorist threat is high. Those two years could be a time in which we have some awful attacks that could have been prevented had we all got our act together a little earlier. So I would keep an open mind about the implementation date, should the evidence show that in fact the systems are ready and we are able to implement more quickly.

Anti-social Behaviour and Shoplifting

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The 2014 Act that changed the threshold and put a £200 threshold on shop theft did not change the law, but it changed the approach that law enforcement officers took: thefts under £200 were seen as thefts that we did not need to respond to or go out to. I regard that as unacceptable, which is why we are changing the law to abolish that £200 threshold to allow police to focus on the issue. Neighbourhood policing will help that. The shop workers’ defence and the aggravated offence of attacks on a shop worker are there to protect shop workers who are upholding the law in shops as the first form of defence. I have been a member of the shop workers’ union for 44 years. This is an important issue to the union—it has campaigned on it for 20 years—and it is an important issue for both Houses to recognise. I look forward to taking legislation through this House in due course.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, the original question was entirely right: the repeat victim/offender location theory applies to both these offences. A small percentage of offenders account for a very high majority of offences. Would the Minister agree with me that there are three things police can do to bear down on this? One, as already indicated, is to attend the scene of an event and see what has happened, whether it is shoplifting or anti-social behaviour, rather than make a phone call. The second is that a linking offence or a linking event is the supply of alcohol to underage people through pubs and off-licences. The third is the uncontrolled street-level dealing of drugs. These are susceptible to some simple tactics. It is not an issue of resources: it is about uniformity of application and method. Perhaps the Government have an opportunity to make sure the police apply all three of those.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord; he makes three valuable points which we will certainly take on board. My right honourable friend Diana Johnson, the Policing Minister in the House of Commons, has recently chaired a round table which I attended with the chief constable of north Wales, who is the lead on shop theft, to look at how we can co-ordinate police forces better across county lines, how we can follow up on the points the noble Lord mentioned in terms of onward use of criminal activity such as alcohol and/or drugs, and how we can, through Operation Pegasus, resource and examine those serious shop thefts that are involving not just shoplifters on an individual basis, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and others, but those criminal gangs that are organising very strong shoplifting hits. Operation Pegasus has just received additional resources from this Government to support its work.

Police Officers: Recruitment

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, people might expect me to automatically assume that the Met is right in this argument; I do not. Having taken over in 2011, when we lost around £600 million, and when 20,000 police were reduced nationally, we had to maintain our 32,000 by making sensible savings. I am always a bit sceptical, as many of us are, when public services make that argument. But will the Government consider two things when making their announcement next week? First, a disproportionate amount of the Met’s budget is spent on national duties, for example, counter- terrorism, protection of the Government, diplomatic and royal protection, and other things on behalf of the country. Secondly, the amount of population growth we have seen in this country has disproportionately affected London. The population is now well over 9 million and around 2 million people visit this city each day. Where they need policing, of course, the Met has to provide it. Those two arguments need to be considered carefully when the Government are making their decisions on where to allocate resources.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord has far more experience than even I could bring to this issue. His words carry a very strong resonance. I am pleased that he reminded the Opposition of the challenges they put into policing in 2011-12, with funding reductions and real challenge in that system. He is right that the population of London faces not just its own challenges but the challenges of tourism and major events, and it has national responsibilities. Those are matters that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is reflecting on as part of the £100 million settlement for next year, and the £500 million she has announced for wider policing issues next year. She is cognisant of that fact. I hope the noble Lord will understand that I cannot go further, because I would be pre-empting statements that will be made before Christmas on the settlement not just for London but the whole of the England and Wales policing family.

Guns Manufactured by 3D Printers

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I can tell my noble friend that it is an offence to manufacture and distribute a prohibited weapon, such as a handgun or semi-automatic rifle, however it is manufactured. That carries a sentence of life imprisonment. The maximum penalty for possessing such a prohibited weapon, including any 3D-printed prohibited weapon, is 10 years’ imprisonment with a minimum penalty of five years. We will keep legislation under review and there will be opportunities during the course of this Session to review that legislation in relation to any issues that might need to be brought forward.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, raises a serious point. Although, as the Minister said, there have not been too many instances, there have been quite a few where guns have been produced. One big thing that has changed over the past few years is that, apart from producing plastic-based guns, people are now able to produce metallic guns, which means they have more than one use. Of course, we do our best to control that production. We have very strict gun controls in this country. You cannot own a prohibited weapon—a handgun or an automatic weapon—so we are left with rifles and shotguns. If we lose this control point, which 3D printers allow, we will be in a serious situation. Would it be wise to consider banning the software, and the importing of the software, for these 3D printers? Finally, should there be some follow-up investigations on the list of people who have had these 3D printers delivered to find out what they are using them for and whether any of these guns have been produced on those particular printers?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his helpful intervention. I say quite simply again that 3D-printed firearms are captured by existing firearms legislation. If a 3D-printed firearm is made, it is treated in exactly the same way as any other type of illegal firearm. So they are covered by the legislation, but the suggestions he made are worthy of consideration. We keep those matters under review. Again, there will be opportunities in this Session to look at those issues as a potential police and crime Bill goes through this House.

Tackling Stalking

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for raising that issue. I can assure him, which I hope will help, that the Government intend to review the legislation on stalking. There are two pieces of legislation relating to stalking offences, and we want to have a deep dive into whether they are fit for the 21st century and for current offences. Are they appropriate not only for today, but for the future and the fast-moving pace of things such as cyber stalking, deepfakes, the internet, AI and other such mechanisms?

The legislation being debated on Friday will be responded to by the appropriate Minister, which is not me. I hope my noble friend will recognise that this a serious issue, and that the deep dive into reviewing such legislation will take into account all these matters.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I want to follow up on the last question, about online issues. I support today’s announcement of an extra 3,000 police officers, which is excellent. There will be 13,000 people working in neighbourhoods, which is fantastic. I also support this extra work for all the reasons that have been outlined, particularly the right to know who your online stalker is.

My question goes back to resources, and it is typical in one way, but I hope the Minister will understand exactly what I am talking about. Online investigations are difficult. Often, the attacker is abroad; you have to establish the digital profile and, once it is known that they are abroad, the investigation may go no further. The neighbourhood officer will not be able to do that; specialists will be needed. If we are to mimic the Cheshire example, which follows the Met example of individuals fixated on members of the monarchy—it is a good example, and it works—that will take resources. My plea is not a general one for the police to have loads more; it is about the specialism of the resources, and it will not all be cops. It is about how you get the balance right to make sure that these things happen.

Often, the cultural response, which has been rightly identified, is that they do not know how to approach this issue and have not got the resources to do it, so it ends up getting parked. That is not a good outcome, but I am afraid it is what happens when the expertise and resources are not always available to follow things up. If the Government can address that issue, without using tens of thousands of people, it will really help going forward.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his broad welcome for the Statement on stalking made by my honourable friend Jess Phillips in the House of Commons yesterday. It is important that we get former senior police officers such as him endorsing that approach, so I welcome his endorsement and thank him for it. He will know that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have today reconfirmed the provision of an additional 13,000 neighbourhood police officers. That will help at a local level with a range of issues, but I take his point about the need for specialist support.

As I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, I cannot give a commitment on resources today because December’s police settlement, next year’s settlement and the spending review have not yet been announced. However, the specialism to which the noble Lord refers will form part of the needs and assessment review. The Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing need to look at those issues, and again, that will be part of the mix going forward. I assure the noble Lord and the House as a whole that the Government wish to address this serious issue. They have taken steps to do so in this Statement, and welcome contributions on how that can be built upon.

Ultimately, we will be judged by the test of whether we reduce the number of reported incidents, increase the number of incidents that are followed up and increase the number of prosecutions, as well as, in the longer term, taking steps to ensure that young boys, as they grow into young men and adults, have respect and understand their role in society. That is a longer-term issue that we need to be working on. I take the noble Lord’s points and I hope I have answered them as best I can, but they are issues we will return to.

Non-crime Hate Incidents

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

One of the key elements of the Labour manifesto which will be brought forward this year by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is establishing work to improve neighbourhood policing. Potentially, 13,000 officers will be put on to neighbourhood policing in order to build community strength and, in accordance with my noble friend’s wishes, to look at low-level crime, which is nevertheless an extremely important issue to the people who are victims of it.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support nearly everything that the noble Lord, Lord Austin, said. The recording of hate crime was a well-intended change, for the reasons he gave, but the definition of a crime is objective and the definition of hate crime is subjective. During the time this has been in place, online crime and online hate crime have grown massively, and the application of the hate crime definition has been inconsistent. I agree that it is time to review how this has been applied, which may therefore allow time for the police to visit crime scenes. That would not be a bad idea, because that is the best chance of detecting it.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Non-crime hate incidents are not treated as crime, and they are not a big part of daily police work. The College of Policing—which the noble Lord will know well—and the inspectorate are making it clear that there needs to be a common-sense and consistent approach to the way in which they are recorded. But I hope I can assure the noble Lord that this Government are about securing additional police support to tackle the policing of neighbourhood crime and to give local support to the big issues of shoplifting and burglary, as well as domestic violence and violence against women and girls. That is a core part of the mission, and he can hold the Government to account and rest assured that we will do that over the course of the next four and a half years.

Police: Junior Cadet Schemes

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As I just mentioned, police cadet funding is the responsibility of the police and crime commissioner and chief constable in each local area. There is no direct funding from this Government, nor was there from the previous Government over the last 14 years. However, we take very seriously the need to support police cadets; we have a safer streets mission proposing a Young Futures programme to help establish local prevention partnerships, with local interventions to help young people who might be brought into violence get involved in preventive activity. The noble Lord raises an extremely important point.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, about the strength and benefit of volunteer cadets. I appreciate the Minister’s point that these are down to local decisions, but would it be worth the Home Office considering some kind of target for the number of cadets, as sometimes this can get lost when there are other priorities? About one in five goes on to become a police officer or member of police staff, and about one in three in London is from a minority community. They get contact with a lot of people and families who might otherwise not have contact with the Met police. They are worth supporting, but a target may help.

Police Accountability

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

It is important that there are grounds for the police to recommend to the CPS and for the CPS to take action on prosecution. That could happen in any number of circumstances. In the circumstances that generated this Statement, the decision to take forward the prosecution was taken by the CPS and others. The court considered it and agreed that the police officer should be acquitted. That is a perfectly legitimate decision.

We have tried to put in a mechanism whereby there is a higher threshold for prosecution of police officers than there is currently, in line with what would happen to ordinary citizens involved in that type of activity elsewhere. That is right and proper, but we have also commissioned the wider review led by Tim Godwin and Sir Adrian Fulford, who will look at the legal test for the use of force and the threshold for determining the short-form conclusion of an unlawful killing in inquests. It is important that we rebalance slightly because, on reflection, that rebalancing is needed.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I broadly support the Government’s response to this review, but I will make a few comments about the case of Chris Kaba, Sergeant Blake and firearms officers. I am not sure that the review goes far enough in two clear areas.

I repeat that it is a tragedy that Chris Kaba lost his life—and for his family. It has also been a terrible time for the officer and his family over the last two years. But the review says nothing about reviewing what happened in Sergeant Blake’s case—the decision-making by the IOPC and the CPS in the court. We hear that the jury wrote a note; it was not published, but someone might want to review what it said. That is probably not best done in public, but the whole process may leave everybody a little confused about why Sergeant Blake was prosecuted when the jury took so short a time to reach its unanimous verdict.

Secondly, there is a more general issue about whether firearms officers, who, as we have heard, are few in number and deal with these very difficult cases on our behalf, have any comfort in law at all. When the criminal and the officer—who is only doing their job—arrive at the same location, why are they treated in exactly the same way? The criminal knew what they were doing when they arrived; the officer responded to society’s request—demand, almost—that they stand up for us and challenge this person, but the law gives them no comfort at all. This case highlights that, but it is not the only one.

So there are two questions for the Minister: a review, perhaps, of this case and the more general requirement in criminal law to treat firearms officers in a better way than they are treated now.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, obviously brings great experience to this question and this discussion, and I appreciate the discussions I have had with him—not just in the Chamber of this House but also outside the Chamber.

The noble Lord will know, and understand, why I cannot comment in too much detail on what happened in relation to this case. He will also know, however, that the decision to charge was made within the Code for Crown Prosecutors and the DPP guidance to prosecutors, particularly in relation to death in custody guidance, which covers any deaths following contact with the police. That was the procedure; I am not the CPS and nor should I be. It made the determination to prosecute in this case and the result was a very speedy acquittal by the jury. There was a two-year hangover, which caused great distress to the family of both the victim and the police officer. I understand that, and we are trying to speed up as part of the response to that case.

The important thing, which I hope I can guide the noble Lord to focus on, is the issue of the future, because we are trying to rebalance the prosecution threshold, which is key for the future. I fully accept the noble Lord’s point that we ask a lot of officers to, on our behalf, arrive at a scene, make split-second judgments and put their lives at risk. One of the things we are trying to do in the review’s response is to more effectively balance that balance between the response of an officer and the individual they may face. That is part of the working through of the code of practice that will be developed by the DPP, the review by the Attorney-General of guidance on charging police officers and the review by his former colleague Tim Godwin and Sir Adrian Fulford.

We can revisit this again in a few months’ time, but I hope, when we finalise the reviews, that will refocus how we best support officers dealing with extremely difficult situations.

Police: Firearms Officers

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the acquittal of a police officer charged with murder in the case of Chris Kaba, what steps they plan to take to review the legal position of firearms officers.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for his question. As my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said in her response to yesterday’s verdict, this case has caused deep concern for communities and police officers—and, of course, for both families involved. It is important that those families are given space to process the verdict. The Home Secretary confirmed to Parliament in September that work begun under the previous Government on the police accountability system was important and would continue. She intends to set out further steps on that work in the Commons in the coming days. Of course, I will update this House when she does.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I thank the Minister for that reply, and I apologise to the House for not reading out the Question, as I believe I should have.

Obviously, this is a tragedy. It is a tragedy that a man died, and it is a tragedy for the family, for their son, perhaps for the brothers and the rest of the family. I realise that. But despite the fact that the jury in this case was unaware—as we all were until today—that Mr Kaba was to be charged and indicted for a shooting only days before he was shot dead, that he was linked to a person being shot in May of the same year, and that the vehicle in which he was traveling had been linked to a further shooting, it took a jury only three hours to find the officer in the case not guilty.

Police officers who carry firearms are very few. There are 67 million people in this country, but only around 3,000 who, on our behalf, are volunteers who must go forward to face someone who is armed or otherwise dangerous. They are paid no more for taking that awful responsibility. They do not go to work each day to kill anyone. It seems that the system does not give them the benefit of doubt that was given by the jury in this case.

Perhaps the Minister will consider in his reply today, or, if necessary, tomorrow, how the legal system can give the benefit of the doubt to these brave men and women, who on our behalf, in a fraction of a second, have to make the most awful decision they will make—perhaps never, but usually only once in a career.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord will know that it is for the Crown Prosecution Service to determine what charges are processed. In this case, under current regulations, it determined to make those charges at this time. It is also for the jury to consider the evidence put before it, which it did in this case, and reached a verdict of acquittal within a short space of time. It is also for the Home Office to ensure that we support our police officers in doing a dangerous job upholding the law and protecting our society. All those aspects and the outcome of this trial will be assessed by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. As I have indicated to the House, and to the noble Lord, I will report back when we make the Home Office Statement in the House of Commons and, in due course, this noble House also.

Rural Crime: NFU Mutual Report

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There are a number of aspects to rural crime. What we do count, and what the National Farmers’ Union counted in its report, are things such as the cost of GPS theft, vehicle theft, equipment theft, the number of farm animals killed each year and the number of respondents who thought rural crime was increasing. We have statistics on that. We also have statistics on a range of matters such as the number of instances of badger baiting, hare coursing and other types of wildlife crime, such as dog fighting, that occurs in rural areas. There are obviously continual problems with shoplifting, burglary and theft in rural area, just as there is in towns and cities, but there are specific areas that we can measure and examine. Through the National Rural Crime Unit, we can begin to co-ordinate activity to reduce the instances of that and ensure that people are arrested, put before the courts, sentenced and ultimately jailed.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, given—as we have already heard from the Minister—the very special challenges and additional costs faced by councils and police forces in rural areas, does the Minister believe that it is fair that, currently, they get less funding per head than urban areas? What plans do the Government have to introduce a funding formula that is fair to rural communities.