Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Main Page: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Hunt of Kings Heath's debates with the Home Office
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I echo her tribute to the thousands of police officers who perform their duties in the metropolis, often in dangerous circumstances.
The noble Baroness rightly paid tribute to Sir Paul Stephenson and his work. He has done excellent work in London, backing neighbourhood policing and action to cut crime in the capital as well as vital work on counterterrorism. His is an honourable decision to protect the crucial operational work of the Met from continuing speculation. However, his departure raises serious questions for the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister. It is clear that the Met commissioner and the head of counterterrorism have now gone because of questions about this crisis and the appointment of the former deputy editor of the News of the World. Yet the Prime Minister is still refusing to answer questions, or apologise for his appointment of the former editor of the News of the World. The judgment of the Metropolitan police force has been called into question by appointing Neil Wallis, but so too has the judgment of the Prime Minister by appointing Neil Wallis’s boss, Andy Coulson. People will look at this and think that it is one rule for the police and another for the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister agreed to that this morning. He said:
“The situation at the Metropolitan Police is really quite different to the situation in Government, not least because the issues that the Met are looking at, the issues around them, have a direct bearing on public confidence into the police enquiry into the News of the World”.
But the Prime Minister runs the country, and the issues that he is looking at, and the judgments that he makes, have a direct bearing on public confidence in the Government’s ability to sort this crisis out. Sir Paul has very honourably accepted his ultimate responsibility for the position the Metropolitan police force finds itself in. Why does the Prime Minister not similarly accept his responsibility?
The Home Secretary is right to have concerns about the appointment of Neil Wallis, and she is right that she should have been told about the conflict of interest. This does raise serious questions for the police force. But the Met commissioner says that he could not tell her, or her boss, because of the Prime Minister’s relationship with Andy Coulson. How did it come to this? The most senior police officer in the country did not feel able to tell the Home Secretary about a potential conflict of interest for the Met because of the Prime Minister’s compromised relationship with Andy Coulson—an ongoing relationship, as they met at Chequers in March, months after the new police investigation began.
This morning the Home Secretary refused to defend the appointment of Andy Coulson, and today the London mayor refused to defend it. The Home Secretary has been remarkably silent during the crisis despite the serious allegations that phone hacking may have interfered with criminal investigations, the serious questions for policing, and the growing cloud over the national and international reputation of British policing as a result of the crisis. She has said very little in the last two weeks. The judicial inquiry that we have called for is important, but confidence in policing is too important to wait for its results.
Why has it taken the Home Secretary so long to ask Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to consider instances of undue influence, inappropriate contractual arrangements and other abuses of power in police relationships with the media and other parties? What are the implications of the Home Secretary’s proposals to bring in American-style elected police and crime commissioners? The nearest Britain has to an elected police chief—the London mayor—did not stop these problems at the Met. If anything, he made them worse. Boris Johnson described the phone hacking allegations as “codswallop”. He went on to say:
“It looks like a politically motivated put-up job by the Labour party”.
What backing does the Minister think that Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates could have expected from the mayor if they had decided to reopen an investigation that he described as politically motivated? The truth is that the elected mayor made it harder, not easier, for the Met to get to the heart of this issue. The Mayor of London is now looking forward to working with his third police commissioner in his current term. To lose one commissioner is a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. Above all, it shows the risks of the closeness of the relationship between politicians and operational policing.
I come to the implications of all of this on the police Bill, which we are told is based on experience in London. In light of what has happened, I would ask the Minister for a pause in consideration of the Bill, currently due for Third Reading in your Lordships’ House on Wednesday. Whatever the ups and downs of the British police force over the decades, its political impartiality has shone out to international acclaim. However, this Bill threatens a disaster. Party political commissioners to be elected in nine months’ time risk undermining the very impartiality of which we are so proud. The Bill threatens the politicisation of operational policing; and it threatens a huge loss of public confidence in the untrammelled power given to party political commissioners to appoint or to dismiss chief constables at will.
The London situation is particularly worrying. As Sir Paul said in his statement today, the Met faces extraordinary challenges: the phone hacking investigation, the public inquiries, the inquiries that the Home Secretary announced today; its responsibility in counterterrorism and national security issues; and the Olympics. There is now huge disruption in the senior ranks of the force with the resignation of the commissioner and Mr Yates. What are the Government doing to stabilise the situation? They are introducing legislation to scrap the Metropolitan Police Authority, threatening yet more disruption. That is the last thing that the Metropolitan Police force needs now. I believe that Third Reading of the police Bill should be postponed so that the consequences of the proposed legislation can be seen in the context of this week’s very disturbing events. Will the Minister agree to that?