Vagrancy Act 1824

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the history lesson.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister explain why the Government need to spend an inordinate amount of time looking at what to replace the Vagrancy Act with, having said that they will rescind it? Why will they not spend a similar amount of time on EU regulations?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

That is well beyond the scope of this Question, but I am sure that everyone will have heard the noble Lord’s point.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 10th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the few compensations of speaking so late is that it enables me to try to respond to some of the points made in this fascinating but, I think, worrying debate over the past few hours. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is not here, but I will come back to the challenge he raised right at the beginning when he asked whether those who oppose to the Bill were not concerned about the plight of these poor people coming over at perilous cost, often to their lives, in these small boats, having been exploited by these international criminal gangs. Of course we are concerned about those people, but on whether this Bill is the right way to deal with the issue I have very severe doubts. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, also challenged us to come up with a coherent alternative, which I think is somewhat disingenuous, given the scepticism that so many of us have about whether this Bill will actually achieve its stated intentions.

The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury really laid it out in the debate on 9 December. Why do we not hear more from the Government about having a rigorous approach to combating smugglers? Why do we not hear more about the provision of safe and legal ways for people to get here, receive assessment and, where appropriate, get protection? The most reverend Primate also argued for an update to the 1951 refugee convention to meet modern circumstances. It seems to me that international co-operation based on human rights is a much more effective way to develop a plan to deal with these issues.

Secondly, I want to come back to a point made right at the start of the debate by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton. He referred to the fact that, under the Immigration Rules, there is no asylum visa route for an individual refugee to enter the UK and claim asylum. This means that, unless the person falls within one of the four settlement schemes or asylum is sought by someone who is already legally present in the UK, a refugee’s arrival in and entry into the UK will inevitably be illegal. As the noble and learned Lord said, this is therefore not a “small boats” Bill. The provisions in it will affect all who seek refugee status in this country and are entitled to protection under the 1951 convention.

Thirdly, I want to refer to the Home Secretary’s extraordinary intervention this morning, in which she sought to tell this House what she considers to be our duty. I think that this House is well able to make up its own mind on that. For me, upholding the rule of law and our international law obligations, preventing unfettered power being given to the Home Secretary through this Bill, questioning the retrospective nature of some of the Bill’s provisions and seeking to retain the protections contained in the Modern Slavery Act are matters that should weigh rather more heavily on our deliberations than the Home Secretary’s crude attempt to distract from her own lamentable performance by indulging in dog-whistle politics of the worst kind.

Fourthly, I want to question the Minister on the Government’s assertion in relation to modern slavery that the Bill is needed to prevent people gaming the system. The leading modern slavery charity, Hestia, which supported more than 2,700 victims in London last year, says that it has seen no evidence to suggest that the Government’s modern slavery process is being exploited by individuals seeking asylum in the UK. This is backed up by a number of other modern slavery charities that have written to us over the past few days. Just look at what the University of Nottingham and the Human Trafficking Foundation said:

“Victims of modern slavery may not know they have entered the UK illegally; traffickers may deliberately withhold information and documentation as a means of control and may have offered to arrange travel on behalf of those they are planning to exploit. Potential victims therefore may be unaware of their status or need for entry documentation, believing traffickers have arranged this for them”.


Earlier, the Minister spoke of the generosity of the British people, to which a number of noble Lords have referred. I agree but I suspect that that generosity extends to wanting to retain the protections that we have in the Modern Slavery Act. Rightly, the Government took great credit internationally for the provisions in the 2015 legislation—I applaud them for it—but now, they are ruining that. They are throwing it away recklessly and, with it, the protections for some of the most vulnerable people.

I will end by commenting on the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, which he spoke to with such force. I must say, it is interesting that the Liberal Democrats have always questioned the legitimacy of this Chamber, yet they seem to have rather changed their minds and now feel that it is legitimate for us to reject a Bill. That is not what we do. We have the ability to scrutinise this wretched Bill thoroughly; I hope that we will do so.

Police Misconduct Cases

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, in the circumstances of the case raised by the noble Lord, is the Minister saying, in effect, that there are absolutely no circumstances under which the Home Office will intervene, even though this case is continuing not to be dealt with, month after month? He will know that under Section 40 of the Police Act 1996, the Home Secretary can intervene if a PCC is not being effective. Why will the Home Secretary not intervene?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, as I say, I am unable to comment on ongoing cases. I know that irritates the House and I apologise for doing so, but there are specific circumstances which make me unable to comment.

Asylum Seekers

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how many asylum seekers are awaiting a decision about their status; and in the last 12 months, (1) how many have been granted asylum, and (2) how many have been removed from the country.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Dubs, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Murray of Blidworth) (Con)]

My Lords, the latest immigration statistics published by the Home Office show that 143,377 people were waiting for an initial decision on their asylum claim as of September 2022, and that 15,987 people were granted asylum or other leave in the year ending September 2022. Of the 11,974 enforced or voluntary returns, there were 774 enforced or voluntary asylum-related returns in the year ending June 2022.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

In last month’s debate in the name of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, my noble friend Lord Dubs made a very moving speech, where he said:

“The refugee issue is testing our humanitarian principles to the ultimate. Our response will determine what sort of country … we want to be … but particularly how we value our fellow human beings who have suffered greatly from … wars and conflicts.”—[Official Report, 9/12/22; col. 378.]


Given the lamentable performance of the Minister’s department, as we have heard from those figures just now, and the intemperate language used by the Home Secretary when she described asylum seekers as invaders, does he think this Government meet my noble friend’s humanitarian test?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Yes, I do. The Prime Minister was clear in his remarks on 13 December that it is a key priority of the Government to address the unlawful crossings of the channel, to tackle illegal migration and to ease pressure on the asylum system. As the noble Lord knows, we will achieve that by doubling the number of caseworkers to help to clear the asylum backlog by the end of 2023, we will re-engineer the end-to-end process by reducing paperwork and interviews, and we will allocate dedicated resources to different nationalities in the asylum backlog.

Banks: Forged Customer Signatures

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I completely agree with my noble friend that we should look at the fraudsters. Regarding Action Fraud, we are providing £10 million to the City of London Police this year to support the upgrade in the Action Fraud service. A project is under way to transform the Action Fraud website, where the public can report fraud and cybercrime. That is part of the continuous improvements to the national service, which will be fully upgraded by 2024.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, why are the Government taking so long to produce the promised national fraud strategy? Also, why is less than 1% of police activity concentrated on dealing with financial fraud?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Regarding the national strategy, the noble Lord makes a very good point. I committed at the Dispatch Box that it would be out before the end of last year. However, I can confirm that it is being discussed cross-departmentally and is imminent. If noble Lords are interested, I am happy to set up a briefing so that we can discuss it in greater detail as soon as it is published.

Police and Crime Commissioners and Panels

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I made it clear that there is a transparency and accountability issue. I am grateful to my friend Katy Bourne, the Sussex police and crime commissioner. She tells me that PCCs are more visible and approachable than the police authorities that they replaced. Many hold monthly accountability meetings with their chief constable, often online, which the public can attend and contribute to.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, surely the ultimate test of the PCC system and the panels is whether policing has improved as a result of the legislation that the Government brought in. Surely the general concern about the overall performance of police forces is an indication that the system is not working.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am obviously aware of the noble Lord’s long engagement with this subject, but I do not agree; there are lots of reasons why things have happened.

Mr Mike Veale

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I think it is one and the same thing, in the sense that the Met Police will have to show obvious signs of improvement before the engage process, as the Home Secretary described it, is removed.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that police and crime commissioners were established as elected postholders to increase accountability of the police forces to the local community. In the light of experience, does she think that has worked out well? If not, is it not time to put them to bed?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I think there are some excellent examples of PCCs up and down the country, including the noble Lord, Lord Bach—Parliament’s only PCC and a very good one indeed. Should the PCC not perform well at his or her job, they can be removed at the ballot box.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord. On conversion therapy, it seems that, if ever a Bill needed to be published in draft form and subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, this is it. It is a great pity that the Government decided not to go down that route, not least on the issue of gender, which the Government say they will not be dealing with. One of the big issues will be the role of doctors and what will be legitimate as advice to be given to them. The report by Hilary Cass into GIDS lays out some of the issues that need to be considered, particularly in relation to the drugs given to young people. I believe this warrants careful attention. Even now, I say to the Minister that surely this ought to be subject to proper pre-legislative scrutiny.

I want to talk about the Online Safety Bill. I absolutely understand the reasons why it has been brought forward and that we have to do everything we can to protect the safety of users from some of the vile abuse that appears online every day, causing suffering for people. My noble friend Lady Merron was absolutely right to point out the urgent need for action. But there is a paradox at the heart of the problem which the Government have been attempting to solve, for while social media companies have been slow to act against much of this vile online abuse, particularly some of the material aimed at children, they have been keen to impose their own social values on users of their services. In clamping down on legal but harmful content online, the Bill carries a risk to freedom of expression, since the Government are essentially legitimising the major tech companies to impose their values on us even more.

As the British and Irish Law Education and Technology Association told the pre-legislative scrutiny committee on the Bill:

“In being asked to make determinations of legal speech, commercial platforms are being trusted with decisions on what is—or is not—permitted speech.”


Big Brother Watch points out that platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become de facto arbiters of speech online, making judgments about the permissibility of citizens’ speech without due process—and not only citizens but politicians of the highest office too.

The Government’s proposal to remove offensive material is of course reinforcing the companies’ powers and inclination to impose west coast norms on us and impede or ban perfectly legitimate debate. The risk here is that to meet the regulator’s requirements on the “legal but harmful” provisions, and under threat of looming penalties, those tech companies will be quicker than ever to enforce censorious policies, with freedom of expression the victim and algorithms the final arbiter.

The Government argue that protections have been built into the Bill to give greater clarity about what harmful content is covered. Specifically, platforms will have to explain why they have removed content, with duties to protect journalistic and democratically important content. They also claim to have removed any incentives or pressures for platforms to over-remove legal or controversial content.

I draw Ministers’ attention to analysis by Gavin Millar QC for Index on Censorship, which argues that, despite almost seven years of debate, there is still significant uncertainty about how the Bill will work in practice. As he said:

“The Government is still not able to define terms at the heart of the legislation such as ‘legal but harmful’ or give … technology companies … clear guidance on how this landmark legislation should operate.”


In summary, he found:

“Harmful speech has no legal basis and risks restrictions on speech that are too broad and therefore open to abuse through selective enforcement.”


The Minister’s department has rejected that analysis out of hand. Could the Minister explain why? What is his response to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, on the sweeping powers being taken by the Executive in recent legislation, of which this Bill is an example?

Can the Minister also comment on the advice of Professor Kathleen Stock, a former professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex? She has been subject to considerable abuse online because of her views about biology and the importance of women’s rights and might have been expected to be emphatically in favour of attempts to remove what the Online Safety Bill calls “harmful communications” from the internet. Referring to the power of the safety service providers, however, she warns:

“If their recent behaviour proves anything, it’s that these online giants don’t need another reason to crack down on content they think will distress certain groups of people. After all, they are already doing this, albeit in a way which reflects the priorities of Silicon Valley technocrats”.


One example of this is Twitter’s own policy, which does not accept that it is bound by the Equality Act in this country. Will that be put right in the Bill?

The Bill hands huge powers to the Secretary of State through statutory instruments and codes of practice. It is unacceptable that the House should be asked to pass the Bill without knowing many more facets of what is included, and I hope it is subject to the kind of scrutiny that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, requires.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My Lords, this amendment would improve enforcement against illegal eviction. It would provide for stronger partnership between the police and local authorities to combat this serious crime, requiring co-operation and the sharing of relevant information by police forces. In almost all cases, an eviction is legal only if it is performed by court-appointed bailiffs. Anything else is an unlawful eviction, and renters have been protected from these since 1977 under the Protection from Eviction Act. A landlord may seek to deprive a renter of their home through harassment, changing the locks, cutting off electricity or other utilities, and other tactics that circumvent the legal system. This is a criminal offence, with penalties including up to two years in prison. Although those protections have been in place for years, in reality tenants are far too often left unprotected. In effect, there is a failure to enforce the law. In 2019-20, local authorities across England reported 1,040 cases of homelessness caused by illegal eviction, yet there were only 30 prosecutions of offences under the Protection from Eviction Act.

We have to ask what is behind that exceptionally low prosecution rate. The impact of cuts to local authority budgets has meant that many local authorities do not have tenancy relations officers who are trained in this area of law. More crucially to today’s debate, this issue of training also applies to police forces, with significant problems arising because forces lack officers and call handlers who are fully trained to respond to such incidents. Where the police do not recognise the criminality of these tactics on the part of landlords, it leads to underreporting of incidents and to those reported being routinely classed not as a criminal offence but as civil matters or breaches of the peace.

Although London Councils reported 130 incidents of homelessness caused by illegal eviction in 2019-20, the Metropolitan Police recorded only a 10th of that number of offences. In addition, in recent evidence to a Senedd committee, Shelter Cymru explained that it had encountered police assisting illegal evictions of tenants from their homes.

Amendment 292H is a small step which builds on the principle of partnership between local authorities and the police, strengthening their ability to prevent illegal evictions, prosecute offenders and ultimately deter landlords from using such tactics. It would require the police to provide local authorities with the information they need to investigate suspected offences and, as part of that, to increase police forces’ awareness of the offence. As part of a much-needed package, these changes must also inform police training programmes to ensure that illegal evictions are recognised and responded to.

The key questions for the Minister are: what are the Government doing to improve the dismal prosecution rate of this offence and what is being done to find and replicate good practice by police forces on this issue? For example, South Yorkshire Police routinely provides Sheffield council with incident logs to help support eviction cases.

The process of being evicted is most likely to be a traumatic experience when done legally. Being evicted illegally, often with nowhere to go and with one’s belongings dumped on the street, can be devastating. Renters should know that, when they reach out for help, police and local authorities will both recognise and be able to provide support against illegal activity. Failure to do so erodes trust and paves the way for increasingly serious problems, including homelessness.

I look forward to hearing from my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lady Armstrong on their important amendment in this group, which addresses protecting children both from violence in their own home and from exploitation outside it. Since the delay from the other evening, there are two additional amendments in the group, Amendments 320 and 328. I look forward to hearing the contributions on those. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to speak to my Amendment 292J. This is a pretty heroic group of amendments in a bid to assist the Committee.

There is a connection between the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Blake and mine, because her amendment is about encouraging collaboration between the police and local authorities. I too want to see such collaboration. I want to add to that the NHS and other local bodies and, essentially, give a huge boost to support for services for vulnerable children. If we were able to do that, it would have a massive impact on the lives of those vulnerable young children but also ensure that far fewer of them went through our criminal justice system in later life, hence my justification for bringing this amendment to your Lordships today.

I am very much relying on the recently published report of the Public Services Select Committee. I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Armstrong, who excellently chairs the committee, is with me today, and I pay tribute to the members, some of whom will make a brief intervention in this debate, and the staff for their excellent work and the report.

The number of vulnerable children was increasing before Covid hit us, but, since March 2020, the crisis has accelerated. More than 1 million children are now growing up with reduced life chances, and too many end up in our criminal justice system. Despite this, the Government have not yet recognised the need for a child vulnerability strategy. Unfortunately, the results of not having one are readily evident. Our inquiry showed a lack of co-ordination on the part of central government and national regulators, which has undermined the ability of local services to work together to intervene early and share information to keep vulnerable children safe and improve their lives.

This poor national co-ordination means that many children fall through the gaps. In 2019, the Children’s Commissioner warned that more than 800,000 vulnerable children were completely invisible to services and receiving no support. We think this unmet need is likely to have grown during the pandemic. The Select Committee surveyed more than 200 professionals working with children and families and they reported increases of well over 50% during the past 18 months in the number of children and families requesting help with parental mental ill-health or reporting domestic violence and addiction problems in their home.

The problem is that public services are just too late to intervene before trouble comes. In our most deprived communities, too many children go into care and have poor health and employment outcomes. They are excluded from school or end up in prison.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, has very ably set out the reasons why this amendment has been tabled, so I will be brief. Let me put it politely: the House will know that a number of us remain concerned that stalking is still not taken seriously by the Home Office, the Government and some parts of the criminal justice system. We know that training remains patchy, and that victims are still told they should be grateful for the attention of their stalker. That is why we tabled this amendment to create a stalking strategy—not for the first time; I have been tabling amendments on a stalking strategy for a decade—for training in recognising, and working in a truly multidisciplinary way to recognise, possible stalking perpetrators, and to let MAPPA professionals become involved at an early stage as soon as the possibility of fixated and obsessive behaviour emerges.

The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, told your Lordships’ House during the passage of the Domestic Abuse Bill, on consideration of Commons’ amendments, that the Government were consulting with different key parties in the criminal justice system to amend the guidance on MAPPA and to recognise and manage stalking. I thank her for sharing the proposed revisions to the statutory guidance. She said:

“Once the revised guidance is settled, we will promulgate it through a Written Ministerial Statement, and this will provide an opportunity to update the House on the delivery of the other commitments I have set out. Noble Lords talked about having some sort of debate in this place, perhaps after the Summer Recess.”—[Official Report, 27/4/21; cols. 2180-81.]


When will this be brought back to your Lordships’ House for such a debate?

The noble Baroness also said:

“We are also legislating already in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to put beyond doubt the powers of duty to co-operate agencies to share information under MAPPA by clarifying existing information-sharing provisions. We are investing new resources to tackle perpetrators, with an additional £25 million committed this year.”—[Official Report, 27/4/21; col. 2182.]


I understand that that is not just stalking perpetrators but perpetrators of a range of serious crimes.

Despite her encouraging us to bring back stalking-specific matters to this Bill because they were not appropriate for the Domestic Abuse Bill, it is noticeable that there is still no sign of a stalking strategy. It is as if stalking protection orders, now passed, are the magic answer, when actually they are part of the toolkit for managing fixated and obsessive perpetrators who may not come under domestic abuse legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, demonstrated, the patchy application of SPOs is real evidence of the old problem continuing. The choice about how to apply the stalking laws remains with people inside the police and courts system.

In a case in Wales in the last two weeks, a man was charged with two incidents relating to stalking his ex-partner, but she had already moved home twice and it is evident from the case that this stalking had been going on for a considerable time. Can the Minister say what training is happening within all police forces and all the courts—family as well as criminal—and for social workers, among others involved in MAPPA?

It is 13 years since my stalker was convicted—after 100 incidents had happened—and close to 10 years since stalking was created as a separate offence from harassment, but people being stalked still have to face many issues in the system because there is no overarching strategy for dealing with stalking. It is time that there was.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has eloquently and bravely described on a number of occasions and brought home to us just how important it is to tackle stalking in an effective way. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, who has been an inspiration during our discussions on these issues.

I will make just two points to emphasise the excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Russell. First, he mentioned the huge number of women who are victims of stalking and the disgracefully low number of prosecutions. The problem is not just the inconsistencies to which he and HM Inspectorate have referred. It is also clear that in too many police forces stalking is seen as a low-level nuisance behaviour issue rather than the serious crime it often is.

We know that a number of stalking perpetrators who potentially pose the highest risk to victims would not meet the threshold for the assessment and management of risk for a relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrator, as proposed under the MAPPA model. This is a big problem. As the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which does so much fantastic work in this area, has identified, stalking is often not recognised as a crime. The level of risk to a victim is therefore inadequately identified and addressed, and this has the potential to put many lives in serious danger.

I refer the Minister to Dr Jane Monckton Smith’s 2017 study of 358 homicides, all of which involved a female victim and a male perpetrator. It revealed stalking behaviour as an antecedent to femicide in 94% of those cases. That demonstrates why it is so important to work on prevention and action in relation to stalking.

The noble Baroness responded at great length to our previous debate in Committee, setting out the proposals and the actions her department is taking. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, in the end they do not really amount to a cohesive strategy that will actually start to take this seriously. I hope the Minister will perhaps agree to reflect on this between now and Report to see whether we can take this any further.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Monday 1st November 2021 Lords Chamber

I and others, including all those who signed these amendments, are determined that there should be a new law that women facing lone male police officers should understand: well advertised, well publicised, ubiquitously known. Above all, it should be a new law that the police would regard as absolutely core learning—something they would be reminded of frequently. When I was chairman of the London Policing Ethics Panel, I used to go on night patrol with the police from Stoke Newington police station. I was present at the going on shift meetings they used to have. It is the sort of law that police officers should be reminded of at those meetings, when some of the junior officers were deployed to tell the more senior officers what they were doing on that shift. It should be second nature to the police. Only if we take measures like that will Sarah Everard’s memory truly be respected. Only then will our daughters be able to have confidence in the police, day and night.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 281 and 282, which concern police culture and police training. I say at once that I agree with my noble friend that the woeful police response, which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, emphasised, sums up a real issue about culture that I do not see being tackled cohesively.

I understand why my noble friend favours her amendment because she wants an all-embracing Lawrence-type inquiry. I can see the strength of that. The benefit of the amendment that my noble friend Lord Rosser and I have signed is that it focuses on the culture of the police, which is a very important facet.

I was very struck by HM Inspectorate’s report, Police Response to Violence Against Women and Girls, which showed woeful inconsistency between the way police forces conducted themselves. The inspectorate highlighted that, at the level of individual cases, victims reported hugely different responses depending on which call handler they spoke to. Some were very sympathetic, others made the victim feel that they were not being believed. At force level, there were hugely unexplained variations about how forces used their protective powers and orders at their disposal. At local partnership level, the roles and responsibilities for partners working together in a multiagency safeguarding arrangement varied considerably. At the national level, actions to improve police responses were split over multiple government strategies. This surely has to be addressed if we are to make real inroads into these deep-seated problems about violence against women and girls.

Behind this woeful inconsistency, lack of leadership and lack of priority lies a great cultural impediment in so many of our police forces. I know that the Minister has commented before on the performance of her own police force, Greater Manchester Police, but I was struck by the Manchester Evening News investigation into the force last December. She might not want to comment on it and she might think it is not accurate, but it looked into the primary reason why the force missed 80,000 crimes last year. As noble Lords know, this led to action being taken, new management and a new chief constable, but what the Manchester Evening News said is that it discovered a tendency for

“obfuscation, denial, secrecy and an instinct to defend the indefensible”,

taking

“misleading and inaccurate statements, denial of official criticism and legal stonewalling; police officers fearful to report failure and those attempting external scrutiny being brushed off.”

As the article says:

“Understanding and fixing the causes and solutions of what was dubbed a ‘rotten’ culture four years ago will … be central to that”.


I do not want to tar every police force with Greater Manchester’s brush, but lying behind that are major issues about how the police conduct themselves, which is very relevant to our debate.

I was interested in the interview with the former Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland, in the New Statesman on 27 October. Commenting on the Sarah Everard case, he said that instead of being “defensive”, senior officers must be “constantly vigilant” about weeding out dangerous officers and supporting those who need to improve. He said:

“Leadership is all about being honest and there will be times when the police have to own up.”


Where are the signs that most police forces and most police leaders understand that? I do not think there are many signs at all.

Then there are the comments of Sir Tom Winsor, Chief Inspector of Constabulary, to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee recently. He warned of a culture of colleague protection. He said that forces needed to be “much more assiduous” in throwing out probationary officers who had a fondness for violence or exercising power, exhibited misogyny, racism or homophobia, or showed a lack of maturity and judgment.

Why on earth did he have to make that comment in the first place? Why on earth do police forces not exercise a considerable degree of vetting over probationary officers at that crucial first stage? He went on to say—and this is controversial—that professional standards units, which countered corruption, were often not staffed with the best people, which meant that substandard officers, whom he referred to as

“cancerous growths within the force”,

were not identified or pushed out. He gave the example of a group of male officers in the locker room who did not challenge or report two colleagues who boasted of picking up a female assault victim and taking her home, where she was raped. The pair were ultimately prosecuted but nothing happened to the officers who did not report them.

I rest my case. There are so many examples of a really damaging culture. We can see this being played out in relation to this awful, horrendous number of crimes against women and girls. We can change the law. We can do all sorts of things like that but until we change police culture, I do not think we are not going to have the effect we need.

I like both amendments and clearly, on Report there will be an attempt to composite them—if I may use that word, which my noble friends here will well understand and not love. So far, we have heard weasel words from the chief police officers. There is little indication that they understand that the culture they lead has got to change. I very much hope that this House, through our debates on this Bill, will be able to influence a change of direction.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this issue of trust in the police is an interesting one. Trust has been eroding for many years now. Two cataclysmic events in the past couple of years have really made a difference. The first—not chronologically—is the murder of Sarah Everard and the way that the police policed the vigil and the ludicrous comments that solo women should hail a bus if they feel in danger and so on. Really, the whole police force needs some serious attention and serious guidance, and perhaps even a new police commissioner. That might be a very good idea.

The other thing was that during the pandemic we had law and we had guidance and then we had what the Ministers were saying at regular press conferences. That got very confusing for the police, to the point where they were trying to move people on for sitting and resting during a walk. That did not help the police and that was not the police’s fault. That was the Government’s fault for not being clear about instructions.

I support all the amendments in this group and agree that we need a statutory, judge-led inquiry. It cannot be allowed to drift past without real challenge by a judge. You have to remember that this was not somebody pretending to be a police officer: this was a real police officer abusing his position to abduct, rape and kill. The fact that he had a reputation already in the police is extremely damaging. This is a culture that we all know exists, and it should be fixed.

On Amendment 282, I have spoken many times here in your Lordships’ House about training for the police on domestic violence, because they have a reputation for assaulting quite a lot of the people they live with. We have to make sure that they get this sort of training. As far as I know, only about half the police forces in England and Wales have so far had domestic violence training. If they do not have that training, it really cannot be argued that they know what to look for and how to treat victims of abuse, so that is extremely valuable and important.