Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Wednesday 27th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 58 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, but I think all of the amendments in this group are extremely worthwhile. The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, gave a thoroughly well-argued pitch for her amendment, to which the Government have to listen. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, also argued very comprehensively for the inclusion of stalking, and I agree with that very strongly.

I wanted to sign every single amendment to this Bill, so I have ended up signing a sort of weird collection, and I apologise for that; I care about it all because I am so distressed about the Bill in general.

On Amendment 58, we need to know exactly what the Government intend with their duty to reduce serious violence. We talked earlier about intrusions, particularly relating to confidentiality, so it is quite important to have a redefined definition of serious violence. Because we have identified those intrusions, without safeguards, we must be sure that Parliament is clear and precise about the situations to which we intend this duty to apply; otherwise, we are left with a vague duty that interferes with people’s right to privacy in arbitrary and unfair ways. I very much hope that the Minister is listening and agreeing.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 55 and 56, principally because, apart from their justice, it is naturally the right thing to do. As importantly, the amendments move the police into the preventive area more than they are now. I keep urging the Government and the Home Office in particular to make statutory the preventive duties. I am afraid that that is not yet taking shape, and this is a way in which it could do so.

There is a consequence of this. People have talked about the inconsistent approach around the country. That will generally tend to happen: with 43 organisations, we will always end up with an inconsistent approach. For me, 43 is at least 42 too many. That is my view; others will have different views but having so many organisations will lead to inconsistency.

More importantly, we are asking for officers to be more specialist in their investigative capacity. If it is left to the front-line officers, often they do not always have the time, or, frankly, the skills, to investigate these serious types of crime. The natural consequence of that is that more people will be moved out of uniform and into specialist areas. We all need to keep in mind that although part of the public will urge being able to see officers more often, officers are more effective when they are more specialist. How we get that balance right is difficult. This is not a plea for another 20,000 cops; it is about getting the balance right between the specialist who can be more effective and the uniformed officer who is more visible. That debate continues, and the amendments support that.

I rose to talk in particular about Amendments 57 and 58, which I support. Professor Shepherd has achieved some incredible things from his base in Cardiff. There are two big reasons why I support those amendments. The first is the constant bid for consistency. They provide a further test on the definition of serious violence, such as the requirement for hospital attendance, particularly at A&E. There is a danger, of course, that some people will attend A&E who do not really deserve to go there—they believe that they are seriously ill, when in fact they are not—but that risk is fairly low. Most importantly, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said, the amendments will urge the health service to share the data it has to better inform the police and the Home Office on the strategies for the future. I am afraid that if the police can be inconsistent, so can the health service in sharing data that is vital to understanding the nature of serous violence around the country. Without that information, neither the Government nor the police, nor others, can take action.

For those reasons, I support these amendments, which are sensible conclusions.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I have already made a comment about serious sexual offences but there is something else that I want to raise, into which I have been provoked by my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe. The point I want to make is about consistency. I do not agree with my noble friend that we should have a single national police force, but I do believe that 43 territorial police forces is a real recipe for inconsistency. I regret very much that successive Home Secretaries, from all political parties, have failed to take on this issue. What actually happens—Charles Clarke did it when he was Home Secretary—is this: when a Home Secretary has the courage to say they are going to reorganise police forces to bring policy consistency on issues such as this, immediately that Home Secretary is told by Members of another place that the world will fall apart if the Loamshire police force is abolished, because how could the world continue without it?

I was a Welsh MP for 14 years. There are still four police forces in Wales; there should not be. The Dyfed-Powys Police, the force in my constituency, operated generally well, but I could not possibly argue that more than one police force is needed, in Wales, at any rate. I therefore ask the Government to take consistency as a major theme in this matter and reflect—

Sexual Misconduct in the Police

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I have the utmost sympathy with the second part of the noble Baroness’s question, because, were I to have been stopped by that killer, I would have complied. Something that is at the forefront of the Home Secretary’s mind, and must be on the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s mind, is trust in the police. Such events are, mercifully, rare—in fact, I do not know of one that is the same in my lifetime—but the noble Baroness absolutely hits on the point: had the same thing been repeated under what the Metropolitan Police has suggested, would it have happened again? That gives both the Metropolitan Police and the Home Secretary something that they need to—and will—reflect on.

On culture, again, I totally concur with the noble Baroness’s point, and the second part of the inquiry will look at a range of relevant issues, from policing culture to whether enough is being done to join up, identify and report patterns of behaviour of those individuals who could go on to abuse their policing powers.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, the police are in the middle of a recruiting drive which will recruit about 45,000 officers in the next two years. One of the issues raised by the terrible murder of Sarah Everard was whether the appropriate vetting was carried out on Wayne Couzens, both in his transfer and, obviously, for new officers. First, can the Minister say something about how vetting standards have changed since 4 March this year—since when I would hope that things have moved on? Secondly, what action is being taken about information coming from within the forces—such as the comment that this officer had been known as “the rapist”? If that intelligence is around, what has changed to do something about it?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

On the noble Lord’s latter question about “the rapist”, it is pretty disgusting, if indeed it is true. On what the Home Office is doing now about vetting, new recruits are subject to a rigorous vetting and assessment process to assess suitability for the role of police officer, and, although decisions about police recruitment are made within a national framework, they are locally managed by the police. On the inquiry, the first part will of course examine the recruitment and employment of Sarah’s killer and whether there had been opportunities to intercept him along the way.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, with some trepidation, I rise to speak in the gap after such a long day. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for his understanding. I only want to speak briefly to three points.

First, I support a comment made earlier by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. I support the Government’s attempts in the Bill to withdraw digital evidence from mobile phones for sexual offence victims, but the problem is wider than that. There will have to be a radical reform of the criminal justice process because of the volume of digital evidence, the ability of the police to withdraw and analyse it and, finally, the ability of the disclosure Act to cope with the challenges that it faces. I support further action on that point by the Government.

My second, main point is about the right to protest. I know that people are concerned about this, and sometimes the police are too, but it is reasonable to ask for an incremental response to changing protester tactics. Many of the points raised in both the submissions by the police and the Government’s response are a reasonable response to some of the challenges that the police and the public have faced. The police are often challenged for not taking action if the law does not allow them to, and then of course they are challenged if they take too quick action. We have seen the two extremes in the Oxford Circus protests a couple of years ago and in the recent actions on London Bridge, where completely different actions led to protests and complaints about the police. However, I think it is important to make sure that the police can respond.

We have talked about whether noise is a nuisance factor sufficient to break the standard of whether or not criminal law should get involved. This is not merely about simple nuisance; it is about whether noise becomes an intrusive feature of people’s lives. It can be to do with its volume, its persistence or its content. It can be different if it is your home or your place of business, or if you are the leader of a business that is being protested about. It is important that we consider these important matters.

There is also the point that we have a right to balance the needs of the protester with our right to expect that an ambulance can get through traffic to give us help when we require it. I am afraid there have been times when that has not been the case. Only this week at Heathrow, some people needed to travel for very good reasons but could not. Of course it was right for the protesters to make their point, but are they to be the only arbiters of whether what they do is okay or should the people disrupted by their actions have a right of remedy and the police intervene on their behalf, to be tested eventually in the courts? I argue that in these cases it is important that there is an opportunity to intervene. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox: there have been times when I have wondered whether the police could have taken more action with the existing laws but, frankly, sometimes case law has developed in ad hoc ways that have left them with dilemmas about particular circumstances that have arisen later.

My final point is about three amendments that will be tabled which have been proposed mainly by the Police Federation, and I happen to agree with them. The first is about the defence available to police drivers when they break the law on our behalf, either to attend an incident or to pursue other cars. If we do not want that to happen then we should say so, but if we do then we have to support them when it gets difficult. I am afraid that officers have been under investigation for long periods of time. That leads to the second amendment, which is about how long that process takes. Often the reason why it takes so long is the sequential nature of the consideration of the investigation of the officer, first by the force, then by the CPS and then by the Independent Office for Police Conduct—and lastly it goes back through that process again. I do not understand why that cannot happen in parallel rather than in sequence. It cannot be right for either the victim or the officer to be under sustained investigation for so long.

I thank noble Lords for their indulgence. Those were the points that I wished to make.