Policing and Prevention of Violence against Women

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Tuesday 16th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]]

I would first like to express our heartfelt condolences and sympathy to the family and friends of Sarah Everard. Her tragic and appalling death has shocked and shaken us all, as the reaction to it has shown. We know that, much as we might want to think we can fully understand the turmoil and unbridled grief her family and friends are going through, in reality there is no way we can.

The pictures and media reports of what happened on Saturday during the policing of the vigil at Clapham Common have rightly led to many expressions of concern. The Inspectorate of Constabulary is undertaking a lessons-learned investigation and we await its findings. I would appreciate the Minister indicating first when those findings are expected and, secondly, that they will be made public. It also seems that the Home Secretary had discussions with the Metropolitan Police about the vigil and that she subsequently asked for a report on what happened from the commissioner. Will that report be made public?



Can the Government say what the purpose was of the discussions that the Home Secretary had with the Metropolitan Police prior to and about the vigil? The Home Secretary has said that operational issues are a matter for the police, so can we have an assurance that the Home Secretary did not seek to influence the commissioner on what the operational decisions on the policing of the vigil should be? Is there a record of those discussions, and will it be made public?

The tragic death of Sarah Everard and the apparent circumstances surrounding it have highlighted the fears felt extensively by women and girls over their personal safety, and the extent of the harassment, abuse and violence, including fatal violence, that they face on an all too regular basis from men. To say that a solution is for women to stay indoors and be more careful is completely unacceptable. The solution lies in men changing cultures and attitudes towards women and leading that change. It is not women who should change their behaviour. It is men and wider society that must change.

It is clear that the Government have failed in their role of creating an environment in which women and girls do not walk around in fear outside and live in fear inside. The Statement by the Home Secretary goes to some lengths to set out what the Government believe that they have done, and what they propose to do, to ensure that women and girls can feel safe. It is a very defensive part of the Statement. That the Government felt it necessary to put it in the Statement at such length says it all.

Interestingly, the Statement makes no reference to the reduction in the number of front-line police officers over the last decade, which the Government are now trying to reverse, no reference to the failed and damaging reorganisation of the probation service, which has had to be reversed, and no reference to the impact of the cuts made in our criminal justice system as far as our courts are concerned.

The Statement does make reference to the Domestic Abuse Bill. It is a good Bill, but the Government know that there is more that they could and should be doing to ensure that all women can safely leave abuse and access refuge services, that women feel safe to report abuse to the police, that disabled women have protection when intimate caring relationships turn abusive, and plenty more that this House has asked for. In particular, yesterday this House voted to ensure the registering, monitoring and supervision of serial abusers and stalkers—in essence, dangerous and predatory men—and to require a strategy on perpetrators. What will the Government now do about delivering that? They have come forward with plans to increase CCTV and street lighting, and to put more police in bars. That will make hardly a dent in the real problems. The real issue —as we are told by women who are shouted at while they are out running, who are followed on public transport, who are unsafe as they walk home—is not the lighting on the street but the perpetrators and harassers on the street.

We have put forward a 10-point plan on what now must happen. We must particularly address the low level of rape charges and convictions, and the need for new laws to stop harassment. Will the Government use the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to tackle these issues? At the moment, the Bill seems more concerned with statues than with women. Are the Government now prepared to work with us and others in a collaborative way, to put forward and promote measures that will fully address the concerns that so many women and girls feel about their personal safety in this country today?

[Lord Paddick (LD) [V]]

My Lords, my heart goes out to the friends and family of Sarah Everard. I cannot imagine the pain and grief that they feel at this time. It also goes out to all women and girls whose fear of being attacked has, understandably, increased as a result of these terrible events. I also say to each and every decent and honest police officer—some of whom have contacted me, shocked and concerned about how recent events have made their job of protecting and reassuring the public more difficult, not just because of the allegations made against someone in their own ranks but because of the serious mishandling of the vigil on Clapham Common by their own senior officers—that I understand how they feel.

I was an advanced public-order-trained police officer—a senior officer trained to the highest level to deal with situations such as that faced by the police on Saturday—and I have been in charge of policing numerous high-profile events. What went wrong? I say first to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner that I make no criticism of the officers on the ground carrying out the orders of their senior officers. I am not an armchair critic of operational police officers making difficult decisions in real time on the ground. However, I am a critic of the senior police officers who set and devised such a disastrous strategy and then implemented it from the calm of the control room.

One of the first lessons that you are taught as a senior public order officer is not to ban gatherings. Organisers can work with you to implement restrictions; they can provide stewards to marshal those attending, and they can make public appeals that this should be a peaceful, socially distanced, candlelit vigil. Instead, the organisers were forced to withdraw, local authority Covid marshals could not be deployed, and the police were set against the public. Those seeking confrontation with the police, and who have nothing to do with women’s safety, potentially saw an opportunity, and the chances of being able to safely and peacefully police this vigil faded into the distance.

The appalling scenes that we saw on Clapham Common on Saturday were the inevitable result of decisions made by the police long before they forcibly broke up those who had gathered, albeit irresponsibly close together in large numbers. The decisions that the police made were even more unbelievable when you consider the circumstances that gave rise to the vigil in the first place.

The Home Secretary has said that she discussed the policing of the vigil with the commissioner on Friday. What advice did she give to the police about the way that it should be handled? I can understand someone with no training and no experience suggesting a zero-tolerance approach to the vigil, but not highly trained and experienced senior police officers. I appreciate that the Minister cannot account for the actions of the Mayor of London, but he should be asked the same question. That is why the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, has written to them both asking exactly this question.

What about the response? No, Home Secretary, the scenes at Clapham Common were not “upsetting”; they were totally unacceptable. A so-called independent review has been commissioned from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, which has just published a report that concludes that the police must find the correct balance between the rights of protestors and the rights of others, and that:

“The balance may tip too readily in favour of protestors”.

Does the Minister seriously think that HMICFRS is the right body to conduct this review, in the light of its report, published only five days ago? I know that the Minister agrees with me that knee-jerk reactions are not the best way to find lasting solutions to serious problems.

We have seen too many media reports showing perfectly lit CCTV footage of women being attacked to believe that more lighting and CCTV are the answer. Because of government cuts to local authority budgets, many councils have had to switch off their cameras or have given up live monitoring because they can no longer afford to maintain an effective CCTV system. Putting plain-clothed police officers in the pubs and clubs to identify vulnerable women and potential perpetrators would not have saved Sarah Everard. Asking a group of people who are themselves the focus of criticism what immediate action should be taken is unlikely to come up with the right answer.

What should we do? We need not just to record offences motivated by sex or gender but to make misogyny a real hate crime, where victims are given enhanced support and courts treat misogyny as an aggravating factor. We must teach young people how to treat each other with dignity and respect. We need a culture change that rejects the authoritarian populism that leads to misogyny, xenophobia and intolerance of diversity. And we need an investigation into whether a Metropolitan Police officer being accused of the kidnap and murder of a woman, another Metropolitan Police officer being accused of sharing sick graphics and jokes at the scene of her murder, and other Metropolitan Police officers being accused of taking selfies with the body of a murdered woman, are signs of serious problems with the culture in the Metropolitan Police. One serving Metropolitan Police officer I know and trust told me in a message on Friday that he is “counting down the years until I can retire and get out of this poisonous organisation.”