Queen’s Speech
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, in bringing to an end this comprehensive debate. It will not surprise your Lordships that my brief contribution to the debate on the Address and the gracious Speech is in relation to home affairs—in particular, policing.
The House will be aware that when an arrest is made by a police officer for an offence, an important decision has to be made about whether, once the preliminaries of identification and evidence collection are completed, the suspect is further detained or released pending further inquiries. In my day the normal practice, if there was no requirement to detain the suspect, would be to grant police bail. This could, of course, be with or without conditions and could require the suspect to return to the police station at a future date to be charged or released. If inquiries were not complete, the bail could be extended. As workloads increased and police numbers fell, it became common for bail to be extended for weeks or months, thereby attracting the rightful criticism that justice delayed was justice denied for both the suspect and the victim. In an attempt to rectify this, the law was changed by the Policing and Crime Act 2017, limiting police bail to 28 days and introducing the concept of being released under investigation without any conditions.
Since then, the law of unintended consequences has kicked in and matters appear to have been made worse. It is clear that, since the changes, thousands of serious crime suspects are being released by police without any restrictions or conditions. Under the previous regime, a suspect could have had bail conditions preventing him contacting the complainant, making him attend regularly at a police station or subjecting him to a curfew under pain of arrest. Recent figures published in a Law Society briefing show that the number of suspects on bail has dropped dramatically across the country from 216,000 in 2016-17 to 44,000 in 2017-18 and that, in that year, some 193,000 suspects were released under investigation with no conditions or restrictions.
This has led to serious consequences. For example, Kay Richardson was murdered by her estranged husband, Alan Martin, in Sunderland last year after police released him under investigation. He had a history of domestic abuse, and she had reported him for rape. Under the previous legal position, Martin could have had bail conditions preventing him from contacting the complainant, making him report regularly to a police station or subjecting him to a curfew.
Why has this situation come about? Quite honestly, it is another consequence of the loss over recent years of 20,000 police officers from the streets of this country, and it cannot be allowed to continue. This from a Government who a few years ago accused police officers attending a Police Federation conference of crying wolf and said that increasing crime had little to do with the number of police officers on the streets. That was patent nonsense to any sensible streetwise person who felt the insecurity caused by a reduced police presence, a lack of response to calls and the ever-increasing delays in the justice system, which impact every victim in the land.
It is good that the present Government have now announced a programme of increasing the recruitment of officers by 20,000, but this should be done as quickly as possible and should not be hamstrung by insisting on introducing a graduate entry system at constable level for all recruits. That would cost an arm and a leg and reduce the pool of potential excellent police officers who simply want to do what I did half an century ago with no aspiration for promotion: to join the police, don a uniform and serve the public. I am not sure that the new system has worked in nursing. These are the men and women we see day in, day out, running towards danger when everyone else, quite rightly, is running towards safety.
In conclusion, I simply say to the Minister two things. First, recruit quickly and sensibly. Give the recruits good-quality, professional training and do not ask them to jump through some additional academic hoop. Stiffen the thin blue line in the communities of Britain which are crying out for a sense of reassurance, which has been lost. Secondly, address the recent bail changes, which at present leave victims uncertain of how long an investigation will take and living in fear of being confronted by the accused, with no conditions or restrictions on where they can live, whom they can visit or when they can be out on the streets. That is particularly pertinent to domestic and sexual abuse cases and seems to go totally against the grain of the Domestic Abuse Bill, which is currently before Parliament and to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, referred. In my view, these are matters of great importance, and I ask the Minister to confirm that the Government will address them with great urgency.
Metropolitan Police: Use of Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
On the final point, the noble Lord will know that it is an operational matter for the police to make that judgment call; that is what they have done. He said, “Extradition Rebellion” —I think he meant Extinction Rebellion. On whether the police could impose conditions not allowing these people on the roads, the condition was actually on assembling in Trafalgar Square. It has been very difficult to engage with these people. The MPS—the Metropolitan Police Service—still stands ready to engage but, to date, that engagement has been very difficult.
Public Spaces Protection Orders
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord will recognise that the reasons for rough sleeping are many and complex and the sole fact that someone is homeless is not, in itself, a reason to slap them with a PSPO. On housing, we are investing £9 billion in more affordable homes across the country and have delivered over 400,000 such homes since 2010.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, anti-social behaviour has taken many forms over the years. In my experience, dealing with it can also take several forms. One of the easiest is to have sufficient police officers on the street to nip it in the bud as it occurs. That always proved valuable in my time. The problem at present is that we do not have the front- line officers with time to deal with it courteously and compassionately.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Policing is only one aspect of dealing with rough sleeping and homelessness, which are different things. The noble Lord is absolutely right that we need police on the streets, hence my right honourable friend the Home Secretary’s ambition to have far more of them. The rough sleeping initiative has allocated £46 million this year to 246 areas. This has funded an estimated additional 750 staff and more than 2,600 bed spaces across England.
Metal Theft
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Earl raises the general issue of metal theft. In terms of an analysis of which sculptures are vulnerable, they are clearly protected from theft in varying degrees. I will take his point back to the department because I do not have any facts or figures on it in front of me. I do not suppose that sculpture is any less vulnerable to metal theft than other types of metal structures are.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
Bearing in mind that the theft of metal from railways, as referred to in the Question, can be very serious, is the Minister satisfied that co-operation between the British Transport Police and the local police forces which would probably check the scrapyards is as good and effective as it might be? I do not know whether it already does so, but is there a case for allowing the British Transport Police to check scrapyards in cases where there has been serious theft from railway premises?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, it is the job of the police and local authorities to enforce the lawfulness of scrap metal exchanges at scrapyards. As the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, said, the theft of metal from railway lines can be not only a treacherous undertaking but, in many cases, fatal. The deterrent must come from the point of view of protecting both the people who might take those risks and the scrapyards that might receive stolen goods.
Brexit: Border Controls
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
As I just said, we have strengthened both our field intelligence capabilities and our search capabilities for smaller ports. As the noble Lord said, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and, of course, as we strengthen some ports, people will try to find inroads into the smaller ones.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, tackling the smuggling of firearms and drugs clearly requires our services, whether the Border Force or the police, to co-operate with our European partners. Does the Minister think that this will be helped if we crash out of Europe without a deal?
Stalking
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
On the noble Baroness’s second question, she is absolutely right: the Government were challenged, and I was challenged, by Emma Watson on Friday about the fact that we had not yet ratified the Istanbul convention. She is also right to link it to domestic abuse, because it will be the domestic abuse Bill that will enable us, through the definition, to ratify the convention.
I think I have previously been clear that a series of separate registers could fragment the system that we have. Dangerous and violent stalkers should already be captured on ViSOR and managed through MAPPA if appropriate.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that stalking can be an obsessive crime and is quite often related to mental illness? Of course, it can lead to murder. I dealt with a case recently where the accused was a foreign national. Importantly, he was convicted of the crime and eventually deported. The police need to take the issue seriously and senior officers need to supervise those on the front line who deal with these incidents. Quite often, they deal with them as domestic disputes, which of course they are not.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is absolutely right to point out that stalking is, at its heart, an obsessive undertaking. Often these obsessions are linked to mental conditions and the police need to recognise what stalking looks like. We have, therefore, talked about training, which is the only way to catch perpetrators and, in many cases, to bring them to justice.
Identity Cards
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Earl is absolutely right, and that was at the heart of our reason, in the coalition years, for resisting the idea of ID cards. He will of course know that I do not remember the war.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the pass I am wearing is a very useful identity card in a sense but that we rely more on the skills of the doorkeepers and the people who know us, rather than this identity card? Would it not be better to have a card that identified the holder with the card? It would then be a biometric identity card and would clearly identify, at a minute’s notice, people coming into the country and people stopped by the police. It would be far better than what we have at the moment. Passports have biometric information on them and we use them, so how do identity cards differ? Clearly, they would help in the fight against terrorism and serious crime.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I disagree with the noble Lord that it would clearly help in the fight against terrorism. As we have seen in Europe, certainly over the last few years, identity cards are widespread but this has not helped in the fight against terrorism. The noble Lord talks about his pass and he is absolutely right: this pass is a specific thing for a specific purpose and, yes, the doormen are incredibly vigilant in the work they do, for which I have the greatest respect. But he describes why identity cards would probably not be a good thing.
Police: Recruitment Criteria
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the entry criteria for joining police forces in England and Wales; and what plans, if any, they have to reform such criteria.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, this Government’s reforms are designed to make the police workforce more capable, flexible and professional. We established the College of Policing as the first professional body for policing, charged with setting standards, including for police recruitment. The college has implemented a major reform of entry routes through its policing education qualification framework, which will ensure that policing can continue to attract the brightest and best recruits from a wide range of backgrounds.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
I thank the Minister for her reply. Is she aware of the four pilot schemes—taking place, I believe, at the instigation of the College of Policing—in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and south Wales, which require all recruits to undertake a three-year apprenticeship leading to a university degree? My information is that this training would incur an additional cost of £24,000 per recruit, with failure by the recruit leading presumably to dismissal. I understand that other forces are committed to this route for recruiting by 2020. Does the Minister think this is a wise use of taxpayers’ hard-earned money, when there is a clear public demand for thousands more front-line, well-trained police officers on the ground in communities, with or without degrees, reaping essential intelligence, responding to calls and reassuring the public at a time of unprecedented increase in serious, violent street crime?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
It is important to have a wide range of entry routes for people who wish to join the police, which all conform to very high standards. I cannot comment on the cost that the noble Lord outlined, but it is really important that people should not have to have a degree to enter the police. There is no requirement for that, but the standard is set for degree-level qualification at the end of the training process.
Deportation: Jamaica
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am afraid that I cannot answer the noble Baroness’s exact question, but I will find out what proportion of BAME staff work in the Home Office and let her know that.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, just for clarification, will the Minister explain that, when a foreign national is convicted of a criminal offence and receives a sentence of, I think, more than two years, they then qualify for deportation? It is probably a matter for the judge to make a recommendation and then the Home Office takes over to see whether there are any mitigating circumstances. Is that correct?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
It is actually a sentence of more than 12 months, but certainly Article 8 considerations are taken into consideration before someone is deported. The provision exists under the UK Borders Act to deport people who have been sentenced to 12 months’ or more imprisonment.
Shop Workers: Protection
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
As my noble friend said, the call for evidence is open; therefore, we must go through that process. I do not disagree with her about the behaviour that goes on in airports when people are intoxicated. I look forward to the results of the call for evidence.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I recall the outcry from certain parts of the community about the attack on civil liberties when street cameras were introduced a few years ago. Does this Question not prove the value of using modern technology in the prevention and detection of crime?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is absolutely right. As legislators, we must be consistent in protecting the public from the harms of crime and other things that take place on our streets. There is a balance to be struck between civil liberties, and protecting the public and keeping criminals off our streets.