Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the excellent amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. Firearms officers provide a valuable and necessary service, and are an important part of UK policing. They do a very difficult and dangerous job and deserve our thanks. The current climate is not conducive to good policing and does not support our officers. This amendment is a positive one which will help them.

This is a topical amendment. Several days ago, the Independent Office for Police Conduct ruled on the case of Sean Fitzgerald being shot during a raid by West Midlands Police. He was holding a black mobile phone, which the officer who shot him believed was a gun.

This ruling was the conclusion of a long, complex investigation that included experts whose reconstruction corroborated the officer’s testimony that the phone could have been mistaken for a gun. The director of the IOPC said:

“The determination over whether the officer should face disciplinary proceedings largely came down to a split-second decision in what was a dynamic, fast-moving, armed police operation”.


This was a tragic accident, but it highlights the fact that firearms officers have to make very difficult, instantaneous decisions that can result in life or death. They have to quickly make a call on what is the safest option for themselves, their fellow officers and the public. In order for them to make the best judgments for themselves and for the public, they need to be confident that they will be supported in making that endeavour.

It is striking that in a piece in the Daily Telegraph, former firearms officer Sergeant Harry Tangye said that his and his fellow officers’ main fear was not being shot themselves; it was facing the investigation that would happen after they discharged their weapon while doing their job. The case of the shooting of Chris Kaba demonstrates this. In response to how the officer was treated, up to 300 Metropolitan Police officers stepped back from firearms roles, and the Army had to be put on standby to support the Met.

Firearms officers go through intensive training, including in how to respond in high-pressure situations. These are dedicated people with a strong desire to protect the public and serve their communities. Tangye said:

“But each time an AFO attends a scene, they face an uncomfortable truth: if I get this wrong I could be jailed. In my 30-year career I never once met an officer who wanted to ‘bag’ a scalp; no-one who hoped for the chance to use their gun to bring down a criminal. Most of us weren’t even keen on firearms at all. If you were a weapons enthusiast, you would be viewed with great suspicion by your force and probably removed”.


Authorised firearms officers, or AFOs, he said,

“shouldn’t have to do their jobs in fear of being jailed, or in fear of their careers, their lives, being ruined”.

The Police Federation also shares these concerns: that firearm officers,

“even when they follow the tactics and training they have received, will face significant struggles and hardships over what are usually split-second decisions taken by them in dangerous and fast-moving situations”.

Firearms officers need to be protected in primary legislation to make sure it is certain that they will be treated fairly when they have to make a very difficult decision. This amendment from the noble Lord is not a “get out of jail free” card; it still holds them to account for their actions. It means that officers who do their job properly, who make a decision that would be impossible for most people in this Chamber to comprehend, are protected under the law, and on that basis, I strongly support the amendment.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 423A and will talk a little about the two other amendments.

In England and Wales, police firearms officers have intentionally discharged conventional weapons at people around 120 times over the last 20 years, between 2006 and 2026, so that is a discharge of a weapon at a person about six times a year. This figure represents less than 0.05% of all authorised firearms operations during that period.

In 2024-25—in just one year, the latest—there were 17,249 firearms operations. During that 20-year period, as the noble Lord, Lord Carter, said, the police shot dead on average around three people a year, each one a tragedy. There is no way that any officer should celebrate what happened, nor the families, of course, or all the people who are hurt by these terrible things. At the same time, the police injured a further two people a year.

This is not a trigger-happy group of people. They are the only people in this country who can go forward to deal with criminals or situations where a person is armed or similarly dangerous. They are a unique group of around 5,500 people in England and Wales who protect the population of 60 million of us and our visitors, and on our behalf they go forward.

They then expect, as I think we all do, that they will be held accountable. They do not expect immunity in the criminal or any court, but they do have a reasonable expectation that the system will understand the challenges they face, as the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, mentioned. In that fraction of a second, they have to make their decision on whether to shoot.

They suffer from the further challenge that they are only human beings with all our human strengths and frailties. Despite the fact that they are selected from still a reasonably large group of police officers who apply—not all who put themselves forward are selected—and then go through some rigorous training, at the end of the day they remain a human being, with all our frailties, fears and, at times, courage.

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[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

I did not talk about criminal prosecutions at all.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I did not say that the noble Baroness did. My point is that after a public inquiry, where it was found that W80 had lawfully killed Jermaine Baker in 2015, and a series of further hearings that led eventually to the Supreme Court, W80 appeared before a gross misconduct hearing by an independent body—nothing to do with the police; it was ordered by the IOPC—and was found to have no case to answer. It was not found that there was an arguable case, or that there was mitigation. There was no case to answer, 10 years later. It had been through the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, and nobody had noticed that there was no case to answer.

One of the central problems in these cases is that they are rare. Every time an officer waits years to be cleared, there is an outcry asking why they were charged in the first place or why it took so long to resolve. Every Government affected by this has said, “We will review it, and improve”. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, has just mentioned the latest example of that.

My broad point is that all the reviews in the world have produced absolutely nothing. Nothing has changed. I have given two examples but there are many more, where people have been waiting 10 years for something to be shown to be not a criminal offence. I am afraid that the reviews have not produced anything, which has led to me tabling this amendment.

The officers are under a triple jeopardy. First, the IOPC considers whether there is a criminal offence or an offence of misconduct. That can take around 18 months. If there is a claim of a criminal offence, that is considered by the CPS, which probably takes another year. In the event that there is a criminal charge, the officer will go to court. During this period, the inquest into the person’s death will have been suspended. If there has been no charge, the inquest, usually with a jury, will be resumed. Those juries can find, and have found, that there was an unlawful killing, which then must be reconsidered by the CPS, usually leading to a criminal charge to go through a criminal court and then back through the IOPC. It has been hard to establish the facts, but by my calculation there have been around five officers charged with murder following cases over the last 20 years, each leading to a finding of not guilty at a Crown Court. The people who seem to be able to appreciate this issue, and deal with it with some wisdom, are called jurors.

My amendment is designed to give some comfort to firearms officers that their case will have to reach a higher bar before a prosecution can be started. It is modelled, as the noble Lord, Lord Carter, has mentioned—he is the one who pointed this out to me—on the householder defence to murder that already exists in criminal law. If a householder is attacked in their home and, in the process of defending themselves, kills the intruder, there is a higher legal threshold to pass before a prosecution for murder can follow. All I am asking is for the same to apply to a firearms officer.

I have talked to the Attorney-General about this. He reminded me that lawyers generally have concerns about this because it creates a unique group, a group of people who are treated differently by the criminal law, but I have two points in response to that general principle. First, householders are already a unique group. The criminal law has decided that they are a unique group and that is okay, but that it would not be all right for police firearms officers, who—I argue—are also a unique group. Why can we not add one more group? This was decided by Parliament on the advice of lawyers. What is different about this group? More importantly, for the reasons that I have given, they are a unique group. They the only people in society who use a firearm to prevent a crime, save a life or make an arrest. We say that no one can carry a firearm for that purpose, even if they are a legal firearm owner.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I end with this. I know that it is late. All our firearms officers are volunteers. They cannot be ordered to carry a gun. Unlike in the USA, it is not a condition of service. We rely on their honour and willingness to come forward and take on these roles. There is evidence that this is not happening in the numbers we need. There are not many noble Lords in the Chamber, but I ask those who are here whether they would do it. Could they do it? Would they take that responsibility, facing the inevitable inquiries that would follow? It involves not only the officer but their family.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I know, but I have waited all day as well.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

If the noble Lord could conclude his remarks, that would be helpful for everyone.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

There are just too many times when officers are faced with the challenge, which is unfair. The solution I propose is that we should treat firearms officers fairly and differently. I am not a lawyer. The Government may be able to come up with a better proposal, but the position that we have at the moment is untenable and something that I am not prepared to let rest. I ask for support from the Government in some respect.

My final point is that I support, to some extent, the proposal of the noble Lords, Lord Carter and Lord Jackson. My concern is that it might lead to more people being charged more often, and I am arguing that they should be charged less often for doing their job.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, forgive me, if I can beg your indulgence. In order for there not to be any confusion, I neglected to advise the Committee that my brother is a serving Metropolitan Police officer. I should have mentioned that earlier.

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Lastly, I listened with sympathy to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, on his amendment—

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

This is one of my major objections to the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, proposes. Can the noble Lord explain to me why a firearms officer would feel more supported by a discretionary life sentence, which is what would be available for the charge of manslaughter, compared with a mandatory sentence of life for murder? I am not sure I would.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 26th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, if I might, I will make a brief comment. I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Baroness has just said. I share many of the reservations expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, but I wonder whether trying to identify a whole range of offences that fall outside the suspended sentence regime is helpful. It raises the question of what has not been included. My own feeling is that if we could get some generic language which encapsulates the thinking expressed by my noble and learned friend, we would be doing well, rather than to have a list of offences, which runs the risk of omitting others and perhaps including some that we should not.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I understand why we have all got a problem with the size of the prison population. Generally, we could be safer if there were fewer people in prison. Many of them have probably been there too long and not had an awful lot done to help them. But as I have tried to understand the Government’s proposals and public spending generally, I have a growing concern about how they might be improved.

The proposals rely on the fact that, as people are released early or do not go to prison, they are tagged. I generally agree with tagging and think that we could do far more with it. At the moment, we do not do much with geofencing, with which we can stop a person going where a victim of domestic violence might be. There is sobriety tagging—where alcohol is the cause of somebody’s offending, you can check whether they are abiding by a court order not to drink or not to take drugs. These are positive developments. I am told that about 30% of the people leaving prison who should be tagged are not getting tagged because of administrative issues. That is a significant number of those who are leaving prison who should have some form of restraint or monitoring. If that is not happening, it needs to be sorted before we start allowing people out at a quicker rate.

The other opportunity with tagging which we are not currently taking—Ministers have been kind enough to find some time to talk with me about this—is how we might proactively use it better in the future. The data that comes from the tags goes to the commercial operators of the tagging system. I am not sure whether it is G4S, but it is a commercial operator. I have no problem with that. The problem is that the data goes into its control room and the police do not see it. It tells us where the offenders are; we might be able to check, for example, whether there is a rapist nearby to a rape or a burglar nearby to a burglary—real-time data sharing. At the moment, that is not happening, but it is an opportunity that could be taken with this new experiment. It would not take an awful lot of investment or time to get this running.

Further, as one or two people have said already, we could probably have fewer short sentences on the whole but I am not sure that they should be removed, as it appears the assumption is here, from the armoury of the judge. The particular group I would consider are those repeat offenders who commit low-level offending, but if you live next door to them it is not very good. Such cases are perceived as minor cases, but they often impact on their neighbours and the community where they live—they do not impact on people who live 20 miles away. The opportunity for a judge to intervene in those cases ought to remain. I worry that, with the assumption based on the Government’s proposal, that group, for example, would not get caught.

I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, that the list offered by the Opposition is entirely the right one. It would force the Government to address what should be on the list, or, if not a list, what should be the principle to guide such action by a judge. I worry that, at the moment, judges may feel constrained not to give short sentences in circumstances where they are the only method. It is no good giving a fine to somebody who has repeatedly been given fines and does not pay them, as an example. I think we need to retain that in the armoury.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Is not the corollary of the noble Lord’s argument that, as it stands, if the Government were to reject these amendments, in cases of serious and egregious crime the judge may be fully cognisant of the fact that they cannot give a custodial sentence to someone who is deserving of one, and therefore will give a higher sentence than 12 months, with the result that prison overcrowding will be made worse? That is a risk if these amendments are not supported.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, is quite right. In fact, that is one thing I would mention to the Minister about the risk, because judges will try to do what is best. They are not trying to subvert the law, but they will try to do what is best in the case before them.

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[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

The noble Lord recalled what the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said about having a list of crimes to which this will apply, but the moment you do that you have fettered the discretion of a judge. It must be left open for the judge to determine. If it is not, and you list the crimes to which this applies, when he or she listens to the evidence, it will be absolutely clear that the person must be sent to prison. But you have fettered the judge’s authority and power. I would not go for a list. Certainly, I support the noble Lord’s suggestions around tagging and the last question he raised, but I am not so sure that the Government can say to the judge, “You’ve got discretion but, by the way, over this you don’t”.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

That is probably for the Minister. I say only that I fundamentally agree with the noble and right reverend Lord, but discretion for judges has of course been limited in some ways. For example, there are minimum sentences: of five years if you carry a firearm and of six months on second conviction if you carry a knife after the age of 18. There are occasions when their discretion is fettered, and the Sentencing Council does that anyway with a list of a type.

I am with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. The Government offer one broad principle, but I do not think it is sufficient to deal with some of my concerns. It may be improved. It may be that there should be a list—I would not argue that—but, personally, I am not reassured by the Government’s approach to what I take to be the broad assumption that people will not go to prison for a 12-month sentence. There could be some horrible cases and somebody might get hurt. That is what worries me.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I will briefly challenge some of what has been said. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, rather implied that it was his belief that the Bill intends to remove all short sentences. From the Minister’s opening remarks and those of others, that is clearly not the case. There is, however, very good reason for reducing the number.

The Minister pointed out that there is a significant reduction in the level of reoffending. He has not given the figures, so I will share them with the Committee, as a result of the work of your Lordships’ Justice and Home Affairs Committee, which I chair, in a report that was done during the chairmanship of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. It showed the figures then—they have been replicated by more recent research—that, of offenders who are put in prison for short sentences and are released, 60% reoffend, whereas the average reoffending rate for those on custodial sentences is only 24%. As that report said, and as we will discuss in future amendments, there are very good ways in which we can improve non-custodial sentences to reduce the rate of reoffending even more.

I am going to disagree during our deliberations over the three sessions that we will have on the Bill—maybe more—with a lot of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, says, but I entirely agree with him, and it has been reflected by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and my noble friend, that none of these measures we are talking about will succeed unless we have the resources to do the job. Again, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and others that there are amendments coming later where we can address the need for more probation officers and more people in our prisons. There is not currently, as far as I am aware, an amendment on police numbers, but there would be time to put one down.

The only other thing I want to say is how much I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, about getting rid of the list argument, which has also been picked up. I hope the Government will listen to his proposal about finding language that can be used about those people we know we would not want to put on short sentences, but not necessarily have the sentence inflation that has, sadly, caused a problem for us and is one reason we have so many prisoners in our prisons today.

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[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, as a judge who did not sit very often in crime but had to do it from time to time, I have been listening with increasing dismay to what has been discussed in these increasingly elaborate proposals. I hope that the Minister will listen to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, because that was the first bit of absolute good sense, whether we need to call it Victorian or just remind ourselves that the Victorians did a lot of things extremely well. At the end of this discussion and throughout this Bill, could we not do three things: simplify, trust the judges, and trust the Sentencing Council to do a lot of what is going to be, at the moment, in primary legislation?

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I want to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Foster, that I was not a co-author of this Bill; it is entirely the responsibility of the Government. I was merely saying I had a similar view: that prison numbers could come down and we could be safer. That was the discussion I had with the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, after the Bill was announced. If it had been my Bill, there would have been something in it about a 10% or 20% reduction in the Sentencing Council guideline targets for maximum or minimum sentences. In my view, there have been two causes of prison numbers going up: the lack of the ability to get parole, which has been addressed by the Bill, and the grade inflation in sentences, which has had nothing done to it. Unless someone would like to correct me, no political party has gone into any election promising lower sentences. Has anybody ever said that?

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

Without wishing to delay our deliberations, I point out to the noble Lord that if he feels passionately about it, there is still time for him to draft and put down amendments on the issues he raises. He may well find support from these Benches.

Independent Sentencing Review

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

To be clear, courts will retain discretion to impose short custodial sentences for offenders who have breached a court order. So 12 months or fewer is not banned; it is in exceptional circumstances, including the breach of any VAWG-related protective order—for example, restraining orders, non-molestation orders and stalking protection orders. But courts will also be able to impose a sentence of immediate custody when there are exceptional circumstances that would not justify passing a suspended sentence. A large amount of evidence suggests that reoffending levels are higher for people who go to prison on short sentences than for those who serve tough community sentences instead.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I broadly support the Gauke review, which tries to address two major problems that have caused our prison population to get out of control. One of those is increased sentencing. I cannot remember a political party represented here today that has promised in any election that it would reduce sentences. They have all competed to give high sentences, and I am not sure that it has had the effect desired—of course, with some offences. The second is obviously the decrease in the amount of parole available. This review attempts to do something about the latter, and I broadly support it.

I wonder whether the Minister will agree with me on three points about which I am concerned. I agree partly with the noble Lord, Lord Howard. I know that the Government have proposed to entirely remove the shorter sentences, but they should be really careful which ones they entirely remove. More important is the phasing of this: how would those people come out, in what groups and in what numbers?

That links to the second point, about policing and probation resources. I agree with the Government increasing probation spending, but it will not all be spent at once and people will not all arrive experienced and able. How do we match those two things so that the police and probation are prepared effectively for that mass release?

Finally, there is a real opportunity here. I agree with tagging. To those who say that people commit offences with tagging, I would say that, in general, they commit fewer offences. If the tagging is linked to their offending behaviour, such as with sobriety, and if it can limit where they go and do not go, it can have an effect. At the moment, those tags go to a commercial company and not directly to the police service. Surely the time has come to create a separate body to monitor those tags and react immediately when there are breaches. I am not convinced that that happens at the moment.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I appreciate the noble Lord’s support for the general direction of travel of the sentencing review. We will continue to work with the police and others on any impacts on the wider justice system—that is very important. However, the alternative is that we run out of prison places, and the last thing that our police want or need is to have no prison places. It is very important that we make sure that we have enough prison places to rely on, so that, in future, the police have confidence that they can go about their job.

As for the short custodial sentences, MoJ research found that custodial sentences of less than 12 months were associated with higher reoffending rates compared to court orders of any length. That is why we need to make sure that we get the balance right. Tagging has recently been shown to cut reoffending rates by 20%, but what is also interesting is the future of tagging. With the way in which technology is developing, I envisage that the role of tagging and wrist-worn technology will mean that the role of probation becomes far easier and we can do far more, not just to track offenders in the community but to check whether they are consuming alcohol or drugs or whether they are in the wrong place, and so on. With electronic tagging, we need to make sure that we support our probation staff, but I am very interested in the future of the technology too.

Uncollected Financial Penalties

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that supplementary question. Of the £4.4 billion that she referred to, £2.7 billion is from confiscation orders. Of the £2.7 billion, £1.2 billion is purely interest—interest is paid at 8% on the confiscation order amount. There are legislative changes in the Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently in the other place, but I think it is worth pointing out to my noble friend that, in existing legislation, there are only very limited circumstances where a Crown Court can judicially cancel an order, and it contains no powers to administratively cancel a confiscation order. That means that the confiscation order amount accrues over the years, including the interest. With respect to financial penalties, by which I mean fines, the picture is very different. Over a five-year period, 80% of all fines are collected, and that figure has remained flat over the last few years. While I accept that the overall number is increasing, that gives an unfair picture of the current situation, and the Government are addressing the reasons why that is an unfair reflection of the position.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, it has always been a challenge to collect fines, because they are often imposed on people who cannot pay them. One of the areas in which progress can be made is criminal assets. This is usually around organised crime, which is motivated by profit. What I think the enforcement agencies have not invested in—and I invite the Minister to inquire—is having forensic accountants, who are people who can trace assets in often complex financial arrangements. At one stage, the NCA had one, as did Police Scotland. Can the Minister find out, or tell us, how many forensic accountants there are? People may not know, but the police can keep half of the cash they seize and 15% of other assets that are confiscated—not for themselves—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

This is not for themselves but for the purpose for which they were formed.

Rape: Prosecutions

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for this well-timed opportunity to debate this issue. I did not disagree with anything that the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld, just said. The problems of rape investigations, prosecutions and convictions are well known and understood; they have been there too long. What is less well developed are the solutions, and I will try to address that today.

Only one in six rapes is reported and of those reported, only one in 50 leads to a charge. Of those charged, only one in two leads to a conviction. That is a terrible pyramid, I am afraid, of failure, and a quite pathetic outcome. When we consider that crimes of violence—which these are—are crimes where the victim was present, is able to provide a description of the offender and perhaps even the name, and can say where evidence may be found, it is even more bizarre that we are not getting better outcomes from our system. The investigation is less likely to identify the suspect in a stranger attack, but less likely to see a prosecution where there is an existing relationship. The issue becomes one of proving consent, unless, of course, the victim is too young to provide that consent in law.

The whole process is hindered, in my view, by three things. First, this offence involves the most intimate and private of events: sexual activity. That makes it difficult to recount in public, to talk about to anyone else and to talk about exactly what happened. That is a challenge for anybody. Secondly, it takes a long time for an investigation to get to court, which causes obvious problems for the victim in recounting the evidence and persuading a jury that something happened. Finally, proving lack of consent requires careful collection and presentation of evidence. I believe that we must deal with these three issues in a radical way if we are to overhaul the system.

My suggested improvements are these. First, the police are most efficient and effective when they deploy in teams. We see that in counterterrorist investigations, murder investigations and complex fraud cases. However, with rape offences, single officers are often deployed. There are some great officers who can make progress, despite the challenges, which we all know about, but I am afraid that, increasingly, we need a team approach. This is a resourcing issue: you must either move them from what they are doing or give them more, but it needs to be addressed. The time for a team approach has come. We could get the same sort of outcomes that we see with murder cases. During my time and now, murder investigations in London had a detection rate of around 95%. It is entirely possible to have good detection rates—if you apply the right resources and the right skills to make sure that you have the right person and can convince a jury.

Also, rape has become a more complex crime to investigate. Far more digital evidence is now available, which is great, but you have to find it and share it with the defence. It has to be sifted, and presented in a way that a jury will understand. These are new and significant skills that the police are going to have to learn.

The police also need to investigate the history of the suspect’s prior relationships. We have a history of investigating the victim’s prior relationships. That has stopped—in a good way—but we do not do enough to check whether the suspect’s previous behaviour and relationships indicate that this incident was likely to happen. Often, obviously, we do not know who these people are, but we could investigate and discover who they might be.

As has been said, rape reporting and charging have been inhibited by the victim’s experience of reporting. Police attitudes have improved drastically over the past 20 years, but they are clearly still not good enough. People are trying to make progress, but one of the challenges for prosecutors and investigators is that they anticipate the victim’s experience in court. We have, I am afraid, an adversarial system that tries to destroy the victim and their evidence, albeit not as directly as it used to. Why cannot the adversarial system become more of a search for the truth in these cases? It is entirely possible. Iceland has a good method of dealing with child victims of crime: it carries out a search for the truth, not an attack on the person who claims they were attacked.

Sadly, juries tend to make moral judgments, even if the law says that they should not. Investigators and prosecutors overly anticipate the jury’s conclusions and therefore do not even get to the charging stage. That also infects the whole investigation process. I would argue that the adversarial legal system does not provide a good context in which these cases can go forward.

Of course, 70% of victims are vulnerable at the time of the attack. They are vulnerable because they experienced an attack, but they might also have had alcohol. They might be very young, very old, or mentally ill. That is often the reason why they are picked—because they are vulnerable. However, this does not make them a consistent witness later, I am afraid. Consistency is a test of truth. Any of us might ask, “You didn’t say that then, so why did you change your mind?” Unfortunately, some victims just do not have sufficient recollection to make them a powerful witness. The system has to acknowledge that and make sure that, if they are particularly vulnerable, the balance of the defence is put on to the suspect, so that we ask, “Was consent present or not?” We do that with children. A child below the age of 16 cannot legally consent to sex. What about somebody who is mentally ill? What about someone who is very old? What about somebody who was intoxicated because the suspect made them intoxicated? Should we look at shifting the balance of proof in those cases?

Does the CPS have the right charging threshold in these cases? At the moment, it is broadly 51%—the case is more likely to succeed than fail. Secondly, there is a public interest test: even if that is true, should we charge in this case? Perhaps we should consider whether there is a prima facie case and whether it is in the public interest to prosecute; or is there somewhere between prima facie and a reasonable chance of success? We have to look at making it easier to get these cases, which we know involve complex legal issues, to court. We should experiment with prosecutor-led investigations. People have said that that means the prosecutor is therefore less independent, but Scotland seems to manage with a procurator fiscal system. Why can we not do that here in England and Wales?

The Government are talking about dedicated rape courts. Perhaps we could arrange to have such courts, which would work quicker. In Scotland, murder cases get to court within 100 days for committal, so why can we not do that for rapes? Why can we not say that they have to be in court within 90 calendar days? It could be a different time limit, but the Committee knows the point I am making about a timely deadline. The courts could sit more often; they sit for only 220 days out of 365. Perhaps the judges could take shorter holidays, or we could have more judges. By getting more court days in these cases, we could make a real difference.

Finally, these cases might benefit from the researching of jurors. At the moment in this country, it is illegal to research jurors. Why can we not do that in these cases, in order to find out what evidence persuades a juror and what evidence does not? America can do it but for some reason, we deny the possibility of investigating jurors’ decision-making processes. Particularly in these cases, where privacy and intimacy are such big issues, perhaps we ought to consider more how a jury reaches its decision.

Drones: High-security Prisons

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for the question. Having run a business for many years and tried to find fantastic superstars to work with, I am well aware that we always want to find the best colleagues to work in our prisons. I am very engaged with the POA team as well. Noble Lords may be interested to know that we are currently at 99.5% staffing levels. That does not mean that everybody is trained and in the right place, but MoJ colleagues have made good progress on that. As regards the way recruitment works in our prisons, professionally trained assessors always take part in the interviews.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, our prisons are very good at keeping people in; I am afraid they are not as good at keeping things out. There are two symptoms of that: the large number of mobile phones and, as has been said already, the amount of drugs in prisons. Some 40% of the people who enter have a drug problem, but 60% of those who leave have one; they get their problem in prison. Drones are clearly an issue, but I am afraid that corruption is a bigger one. One of the biggest challenges is, I am afraid, that nobody is really concentrating on this issue in terms of investigation: the NCA is too diffuse, local forces are too busy, and the Prison Service has no investigative capacity. Would the Minister be interested in attending a short meeting on two distinct proposals to see how they might be able to do something about this? There would be some cost, but I promise him not too much.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for the question; I would be delighted to meet up and to learn more. The problem we have with serious organised crime in our prisons is that these people are in there to make money. They do that by selling phones and drugs, which creates debt and violence, so it is essential that we tackle this. We are giving more focus to our dedicated serious and organised crime unit and we are working across government, but the noble Lord is right that this is vital.

Criminal Justice System: Capacity

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend Lady Mallalieu for her question. I very much remember the noble Lord regularly asking for a royal commission. The reality is that we feel that we have a big job of work to do on reviewing sentencing and then managing the whole prison population and estate, so that it stops increasing. That is where our focus is right now. I will take back the question of a royal commission to my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor, but, to be frank, I have not heard it spoken about in the time I have been in government.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support a smaller prison population, not just because there are not enough places for the people who have been sentenced but because there are too many people in prison. However, one of the consequences of releasing people early, at a quicker pace than one might have planned for, is that it will put more pressure on the police service. This Government made a manifesto pledge to increase the size of the police by around 4,000 officers, but we have not heard an awful lot about that since the Government took office.

Secondly, as has been mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and by the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, in passing, one of the measures for mitigating the recidivism of those who are released is tagging—normal tagging to determine where the person is and sobriety tagging, where alcohol is an aggravating factor, and now there is also drug tagging. Finally, the response to those tags when they are breached should go straight to the police, not to a private company to be emailed to the police to be dealt with some time later. Is the Minister able to respond to those points about resourcing?

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I have just consulted with my noble friend Lord Timpson and I can reassure the noble Lord that we do have enough tags for the process which we are embarking on. I should also mention that both my noble friend Lord Timpson and I were fitted with a sobriety tag for a while to see whether it worked, and I can assure the noble Lord that it does work.

The noble Lord’s opening point was about more pressure on the police. That is right; there will be some more pressure on the police and also on the Probation Service and some social services such as housing. The philosophy underlying the Government’s SDS40 approach rather than the previous approach is planning down the whole pipeline, including people who will regrettably reoffend and how to deal with them. By managing this with a more planned approach, we hope and expect that we will reduce the chances of reoffending.