Knife Crime

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for seeking a debate on this very timely subject and for his wide-ranging and comprehensive introduction to it. I also commend him for the piece he wrote on this subject for the latest issue of the House magazine. In his article, which I am sure many noble Lords have read, he describes the complexity of the knife-crime phenomenon and discusses its underlying causes and its potential solutions. The solutions he mentions in his article, and has just mentioned in his speech, are not the kind of things one would normally associate with someone who spent most of his professional life as a police officer on the streets of London. But they are the kind of things required to solve complex social problems such as violent youth crime, which results from an amalgam of, among other things, poverty, inequality, poor schooling, unemployment, social alienation and racial prejudice. There are no quick fixes in this world and I commend the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for making this abundantly clear.

I also commend the Government for taking a similarly broad and longer-term approach to this problem. As my noble friend Lady Barran said in answer to an Oral Question about youth violence last Thursday morning:

“'The Government are taking steps to address all aspects of youth violence, from prevention to enforcement. Diverting young people away from crime is at the heart of our approach, which is why we are investing more than £220 million in early intervention schemes to steer children and young people away from serious violence”.—[Official Report, 20/6/19; col. 842.]


How refreshing to hear a Minister discuss a complex social problem without either minimising its significance or promising to deal with it almost instantaneously, without giving any indication of how this is to be achieved.

Having said this, I do not believe that we are condemned to live with blood-stained streets for decades until these longer-term solutions finally work. Although tackling the underlying causes of social violence will take time and money, on the basis of my own experience of working in the New York and Philadelphia police departments from 1996 to 2004, I would say that the level of violent crime on our streets can be significantly reduced in the short term by proactive policing based on good intelligence, adequate resources, a well-developed strategy and effective tactics and leadership.

We do not have to look overseas for examples of successful policing operations. The recent success of our own Metropolitan Police in tackling moped crime is an excellent example of how effective policing can eliminate, within weeks, problems that have reduced whole communities to an abject fear of public spaces. That is why what is required to tackle our present knife crisis is a two-pronged approach: a longer-term strategy focused on underlying social problems of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, mentioned, as well as short-term tactical action based on high-quality, proactive and innovative local policing using good information and good technology.

I say “local” policing because I believe that violent crime on our streets is most effectively tackled by local police forces acting with the support of their local communities. There are two main reasons for this. First, street crime is basically a local problem. Although it is now widespread, it does not affect every city or town to the same extent. Even within a single county, there are major differences between one part and another. As Matthew Ellis, PCC of Staffordshire, said in a press release only yesterday—announcing new measures against knife crime—although some places in Staffordshire have an issue with knife crime, most places in the county do not.

Secondly, effective policing depends critically on community co-operation. Even American police chiefs, whose approach to policing is often derided in this country as overly aggressive, recognise that community support is the foundation of community safety. For example, Bill Bratton, who dramatically reduced crime as chief of police in both New York and Los Angeles, writing in a national UK newspaper about knife crime in London, said that it is not a matter of simply putting more cops on the streets—although he called for more cops on the streets—it is a question of what they are doing on the streets. I quote:

“You don’t want them just being seen, enforcing all the rules and regulations, you want them interacting with the community. [They] need to be developing a relationship with the community that allows … an intimacy of understanding”.


It is only when such an understanding with the community has been established that police operations such as stop and search can be effective. Without this understanding and rapport, police officers carrying out this basic policing operation are often seen as an occupying army. That is why I urge the Government to adopt this two-pronged approach to knife crime: a combination of national policies, programmes, resources and leadership aimed at tackling the underlying complex social issues that lie at the heart of the problem; and local policies, programmes, resources and leadership aimed at tackling the immediate problems on our streets.

The good news is that our local police and crime commissioners and their forces are more than able to rise to this challenge, not only in tactical policing operations but with imaginative social programmes involving local schools and doctors. I wish I had time to tell noble Lords about some of these programmes, such as those developed in Norfolk by PCC Lorne Green, in Bedfordshire by PCC Kathryn Holloway and in Staffordshire by PCC Matthew Ellis.

I believe that knife crime is best tackled by our national and local institutions working together. I feel strongly about this, because I fear that a new Prime Minister, whoever he may be, will wish to demonstrate the smack of firm government by taking personal control of the fight against knife crime and directing it from No. 10—which I call the Tony Blair approach to fighting crime. I do not for a moment oppose all interest in this issue from the centre. Indeed, more funding from Whitehall is always welcome and useful, provided of course it is distributed to those programmes and forces that have most need for it. What I fear is operational direction from Whitehall, which is almost always counterproductive. It is aimed primarily at attracting national headlines rather than solving local problems. Our present arrangements for ensuring local community safety are more than fit for the purpose of tackling the problems of knife crime effectively and sensitively. There is no need to develop new arrangements for this job. Let us simply provide those who are doing the job with the support they need to do it.

Victims of Domestic Violence and Abuse

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by drawing attention to my interests as set out in the register. I do this because some of what I want to say today, particularly about technology, reflects things that I learned while I was serving as an adviser to a firm operating in this field. I want to make it clear, however, that I no longer have any commercial interests in this area.

Having got that matter out of the way, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lady Newlove on securing this debate. Like my noble friend Lady Jenkin, I pay tribute to the outstanding job that she has done both as this country’s first Champion for Active, Safer Communities and, more recently, as the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, a position from which she retired at the end of last month.

I am sure that my noble friend would agree that neither of those jobs was easy, but I can tell noble Lords that, on the basis of reports I have had from police and crime commissioners around the country, my noble friend has carried out both jobs with great distinction and that she leaves her most recent post, that of Victims’ Commissioner, with the heartfelt thanks and deep respect of all those who care about victims and are trying to help them.

In two previous speeches that I made on domestic violence in your Lordships’ House, I talked about the availability of technology which would improve both the safety and happiness of victims of domestic abuse but which could not yet be used effectively in this country because the courts did not have the power to make it mandatory. On both occasions, I urged the Government to introduce legislation to allow this to happen before more innocent victims lost their lives in attacks that could have been prevented had this technology been in use. I therefore make no apology for returning to this subject again today. We really are talking about matters of life and death.

The technology that I have in mind is a form of electronic monitoring or tagging developed specifically for domestic abuse cases and known as proximity monitoring and notification systems. These systems provide victims with early alerts that their potential attacker is in the vicinity, whether the victims are at home, at work, with friends or on the move. They do this by fitting the potential attacker—sometimes called the offender or perpetrator—with a securely attached radio frequency, or RF, ankle tag and by giving him a GPS tracking unit, which he must carry with him whenever he leaves his home base.

If the offender tries to tamper with the ankle tag or leave home without the tracking device, an alert is generated at the monitoring centre associated with the scheme, 24/7. In this way, his location is continuously tracked by the monitoring centre. Whenever an offender fitted with this equipment attempts to enter a predefined restricted zone—for example, within 500 metres of the victim’s home or workplace or wherever the victim happens to be at the time—the technology generates an alert. The alert is transmitted to the victim, who has been given a GPS alarm unit to carry with her at all times. The portable unit alerts her that the offender is nearby and that it would be sensible to leave the area. The offender is also alerted by those monitoring the system that he is entering a restricted zone and should leave it. At the same time, the police are alerted that the offender is heading into a restricted zone and can notify local units that they need to respond to a potential attack.

As I have said, I have referred to this technology in at least two speeches in your Lordships’ House. In both, I pointed out that, while proximity tagging does not deal with the underlying social and psychological causes of domestic abuse, it can save lives. To give your Lordships some idea of just how many lives I was talking about, I pointed out that between my first speech in November 2014 and my second in March 2018, 300 women had been the victims of domestic homicide.

However, this technology can save lives only if the courts have the power to make it mandatory. We have another opportunity to make this happen as part of the new domestic abuse protection orders to be included in the forthcoming domestic abuse Bill. I urge the Government to bring this Bill and these orders into law as expeditiously as possible so that this new technology can be trialled and introduced across the country. I know that several PCCs are simply waiting to be able to mount such trials as soon as the law permits them to do so.

I understand that this technology by itself is not a panacea for domestic abuse—indeed, it is not even a cast-iron guarantee that the victims of determined perpetrators will always be safe from harm. The use of tagging depends on adequate police resources to make it effective. There is no point in the police knowing that an attack is about to take place unless they have the resources available to prevent it. That is why technology by itself is only part of the answer. It must be complemented by adequate police resources and the appropriate legal powers.

I very much regret that I do not have the time to mention any of the many innovative, non-technological domestic abuse prevention and support programmes which police and crime commissioners up and down the country have developed and are funding, often out of their own resources. I have had emails from at least 10 PCCs giving terrific examples of what they are doing. I am sorry that I have not been able to include them, but I suspect that my noble friend Lady Seccombe will tell us something about what at least one PCC is doing in this area.

I do not want to sit down without mentioning the brilliant appointment of Dame Vera Baird, the PCC for Northumbria, as my noble friend Lady Newlove’s successor as Victims’ Commissioner. I congratulate Dame Vera on her appointment. I can think of no other PCC who has done more to highlight the importance of domestic abuse as a police priority. With her experience, both as a PCC and a Minister in Whitehall, victims of crime—and especially of domestic abuse—could have no better champion. Her task is immense and urgent. It is also critical to the safety of our communities. I wish her well.

Stalking Protection Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I commend my noble friend Lady Bertin for agreeing to steer this short but extraordinarily important Bill through your Lordships’ House. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, in particular, my interest in police technology.

One of the reasons I am such an enthusiastic supporter of the Bill and the new stalking protection orders it introduces is because I believe that these orders could provide the basis for permitting the police, with the permission of the courts, to use the latest technology to tackle the scourge of stalking. I will say more about this later. I want to begin, however, by expressing my disappointment about how long it has taken to get this important Bill to this stage on its route to the statute book. The process of developing legislation to tackle stalking began a long time ago. In December 2015, the Government launched a public consultation exercise with a view to understanding better the nature and scope of stalking, particularly stranger stalking, and whether a new civil stalking protection order would be useful in dealing with this problem.

The Government’s response to this consultation appeared in December 2016. At that time the Government stated clearly that a gap had been identified in the protections available to the victims of stalking and that there was strong support for a new stalking protection order. They promised to legislate,

“as soon as Parliamentary time allows … The order will address the legislative gap and allow the police and the courts to intervene early”.

However, sadly, the Bill was not introduced in another place until 19 July 2017 and did not have a Second Reading until January 2018. Its Third Reading did not take place, as noble Lords know, until last November. During this time tens of thousands of innocent people have become the new victims of stalkers. Their lives have been made a misery on an almost daily basis. I have direct personal knowledge of cases where individuals have had to move away from their jobs, their families and their homes in an attempt to get away from a stalker who had become obsessed with them, despite the fact that they had had no previous relationship whatever with their stalker. Every day that the passage and implementation of the Bill is delayed is another day on which the police are deprived of this tool to help them deal with such offences. I very much hope, therefore, that the Bill can be dealt with expeditiously and can be fully operational before the summer, at the very latest.

While preparing for this debate, I read a fascinating article in the October-November 2018 issue of Magistrate magazine by Katy Bourne, who has already been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. She is the police and crime commissioner for Sussex. I am very sorry that this short but important piece is not mentioned in the excellent briefing produced by our Library. Katy Bourne has a passionate commitment to keeping her community safe and she has been doing a great job since becoming Sussex’s first PCC in November 2012. When it comes to stalking, particularly stranger stalking, her passion and determination are most clearly demonstrated. She probably has a greater understanding of the scourge of stranger stalking than anyone else in authority and a stronger commitment to tackling it. This is because she was herself the victim of such stalking for six long years. As she says in the article to which I referred, her stalker waged,

“a 6-year relentless and fixated campaign against me that has been truly awful. At first I was prepared to ignore the false, offensive postings of a local man who set himself up to hold me to account. Perhaps because I didn’t respond or complain, his postings became more extreme, including accusations that I was responsible for murder and child abuse. He began a concerted campaign to ‘bring me down’ that also involved a group of like-minded individuals. After five years of relentless online and social media harassment and two incidents of being followed and filmed, I was granted an injunction against him. I had also made a criminal complaint but, despite hundreds of pages of evidence showing a sustained five-year campaign, the Crown Prosecution Service said there was insufficient evidence. Some of the material has now been taken down from online platforms but enough remains to appear in search engines as a damaging, distressing presence. The Committee on Standards in Public Life said that online and social media platforms had a responsibility to act more quickly and I would urge them to do so. It seems wrong that, despite an injunction, I still have to prove to the online providers that my stalker’s postings breached their guidelines”.

Incidentally, her stalker breached the injunction which PCC Bourne had been granted against him and in October last year received a four-month custodial sentence, suspended for two years. As a result of this horrible experience, Katy Bourne really understands the psychological and physical costs of stalking. As she goes on to say in the same article:

“Many people think stalking is confined to spurned lovers or obsessed fans: sad, slightly pathetic but relatively harmless. Although reports of stalking have rocketed, it is still regarded as a nuisance rather than a crime. Too often, victims are told ‘don’t look at the online abuse’ or ‘just ignore it, they will get bored and go away’ or ‘somebody keeps leaving you flowers and chocolates? What’s not to like?’ But if you were subject to a cumulative pattern of unwanted attention, as I was, relentlessly repeated by an obsessive, fixated individual, you wouldn’t appreciate the attention and would probably be fearful”.


At the beginning of this speech, I said that I believed that technology could play an important role in tackling stalking. What I have in mind is GPS proximity tagging, of the kind that is in widespread use around the world in the context of domestic abuse. Such tags, worn by perpetrators, coupled with a piece of kit carried by the victim, notify the victim, the police or any other monitoring agency when the perpetrator is about to breach the conditions of his or her order in relation to entering certain locations or areas where the victim resides, works or frequents. This equipment is well tested and, as I said, is in widespread use abroad. A large number of companies can supply it, and experience has shown that it saves lives.

I very much hope that the use of such tags will be permitted as part of the stalking protection orders provided for in the Bill. I say this because Clause 1 states that the SPO could prohibit the defendant from doing something, as far as is necessary, to protect the other person—the victim—from the risk of stalking. According to the Explanatory Notes, among the things the order can prohibit is,

“entering certain locations or … areas where the victim resides or frequently visits”.

The Explanatory Notes also state that the SPO could require the defendant to do something,

“to protect the other person from risk of stalking”.

Examples of such requirements are attendance at an intervention programme or a mental health assessment. But surely it is not unreasonable for the Bill to permit the SPO to require the defendant to wear a GPS proximity tag to ensure that he or she does not enter locations or areas where the victim resides or frequently visits. Without such technology to enforce it, the requirement to keep out of the way of the victim is a hollow threat.

I very much hope that once the Bill is on the statute book, the Government will encourage the police to learn how to use proximity tagging and will ask the courts to include such tagging as a requirement imposed on the defendant as part of their stalking protection order. But first, we must get the Bill on to the statute book. To that end, I urge the House to give it a Second Reading.

Violent Crime

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, on securing this debate. I can think of few subjects that are more deserving of public debate than the violence on our streets and the tragic loss of young lives that this violence has caused in London and elsewhere.

Day after day, we hear harrowing stories of young men being knifed to death in public places yet our national media remains obsessed with other things: alternative approaches to Brexit, the political implications of the latest round of ministerial resignations or the fate of individual football clubs and their managers. Surely that cannot be right. What kind of society have we become when stories about the loss of young human lives are relegated to the inside pages, when we appear to accept these deaths as simply among the more unpleasant features of urban living? I believe that the attitude of acceptance of violence in our streets as regrettable but more or less unavoidable is not only morally reprehensible but is one of the main reasons why such violence persists and why we find it so difficult to reduce if not eliminate it.

I shall explain briefly what I mean. I am afraid that most people, including our political leaders and opinion formers, tend to accept violence on the streets as inevitable because in their heart of hearts they do not believe that it is possible to prevent it, at least not in the short term and certainly not by relying on the police to do so. That reflects what I sense to be a widespread belief that our local police forces simply are not capable of preventing crime and therefore cannot be relied upon to make any significant difference to the level of street violence or community safety more generally.

That belief is not often articulated so starkly but most people, if pressed, think of police officers as “PC Plods” who are there primarily to pick up the pieces: to find missing persons, clear the drug addicts off our streets, try to cope with those who are mentally ill or simply walk the beat and make themselves useful if asked to do so. When it comes to dealing with crime, whether serious crime or so-called volume crime, most people tend to think of the police as concerned primarily with what happens after the event, whether that means writing reports or trying, usually unsuccessfully, to identify the perpetrator. For most people, expecting the police to prevent crime before it happens is totally unrealistic.

That is why, when it comes to tackling violence, the popular view is that the only truly effective approach is through programmes aimed at strengthening families, improving schools, building new and better houses, tackling racism or providing better health services, youth provision and job opportunities for young people, but we all understand that such changes take years to implement and even longer to make a difference to people’s lives, even if Governments could be persuaded to fund them. That is why, even though we talk about the need for urgent action to reduce violence on our streets, most of us do not really believe that there is a quick fix and have come to accept that we are probably stuck with it for a long time yet—10 years or maybe more.

I believe that is a counsel of despair that is both immoral and needlessly pessimistic. I believe the violence that is killing and maiming our young people can be significantly reduced much more quickly and effectively. I believe it can be done now without having to wait for the development of the kinds of longer-term programmes that I mentioned earlier and about which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, spoke, although I do not for a minute want to minimise the importance of such programmes or the need to expedite their implementation. I believe the violence in our cities can be reduced in months rather than years because I saw it done in New York, Philadelphia and other American cities where I worked in policing from 1996 to 2008.

Before any noble Lords jump to the conclusion that I believe American police officers are more effective than ours, I make it clear that I have worked closely with policing professionals on both sides of the Atlantic and assure your Lordships that our police officers are every bit as good at their jobs as their American colleagues, and in many respects they are better. They are certainly better trained, have higher professional standards and have very much better central support and co-ordination arrangements.

However, American police officers have one great advantage: they work in a society where their political masters believe that they, the local police, can make a real difference to reducing crime and keeping communities safe. In each of the cities in which I worked—New York, Philadelphia, Miami and even tiny Hartford, Connecticut—the police reported to mayors who regarded community safety as their highest priority and were prepared to commit themselves publicly to achieving safer communities by reducing crime and to being held accountable for doing so by their electorates. These mayors in turn set prioritised strategic crime reduction objectives for their police chiefs and held those chiefs accountable for achieving those objectives. The chiefs in turn set clear operational objectives for their senior officers and held these officers accountable for achieving their objectives.

In that way, the whole of the police organisation knew exactly what was expected of it. Everyone knew what they were expected to do and, at least as important, not expected to do. They knew, for example, that if the local newspaper published a leader attacking them for not investigating minor crimes, as the Times did this morning, the mayor would make it clear that this had been his decision and had been taken in order to free scarce police resources—resources were very scarce in each of the cities where I worked—to enable the force to prevent more serious crimes such as violence on the streets. This setting of clear priorities for the police enabled the force to focus on the problems that the community regarded as most important, and this led the community to feel that the police department understood their needs and was committed to meeting them.

I believe that is the approach that we should be taking to tackling violence on our streets. The first step is to believe that the police can make a difference and to act on that belief. That means setting chief constables the clear strategic objective of reducing violence on our streets and expecting them to give priority to that objective. It also means giving chief constables the resources that they need to do achieve that central objective and holding them personally accountable for achieving it.

I am confident that our police leaders, like their American counterparts, would welcome the challenge. Indeed, I believe they would see it as a vote of confidence in their professional capabilities and would deliver the safer communities that we want. The question is whether our political leaders at national and local levels—the Home Secretary, the Mayor of London and local PCCs—are prepared to accept this challenge and take personal responsibility for keeping us safe, or will they continue to blame others, such as the police, the Treasury, the Home Office, the education and health systems and immigrants, for the present violence on our streets?

Police and Crime Commissioners

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, on securing time for this debate on the role and responsibilities of police and crime commissioners. I am very sorry, however, that the subject has proved so popular that Back-Benchers have been limited to four minutes. To judge by some previous speeches, I appear to be very much in a minority in your Lordships’ House when I say that I believe that, on the whole, PCCs have made an important, positive contribution to public life in this country. There are a number of reasons why I believe this. One of the more important is the increased attention that PCCs have given, and continue to give, to the needs of victims, particularly the victims of domestic abuse. But, in the very limited time available today and in the light of the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, I want to argue that, on the whole, PCCs have increased and improved the democratic accountability of local policing.

Despite some of the arguments that have been made this morning, I believe that PCCs of both parties and none have made it one of their key objectives to strengthen the links between their communities and the police forces that serve them. As a result, police operational priorities now correspond more directly, more completely, more transparently and more accountably to local policing needs. This is done in a variety of ways: through local surgeries, public meetings and old-fashioned newsletters, but also in new ways, through the use of social media and webcasts. In Essex, for example, PCC Roger Hirst held over 120 public meetings last year. In Sussex, PCC Katy Bourne uses monthly publicly accessible webcasts—known as performance and accountability meetings—to hold her chief constable to account for the performance of the force. Of course, the Sussex Police Authority also held the chief constable to account at regular meetings, but those sessions were held only quarterly and behind closed doors.

When there are public concerns, the default reaction of PCCs is to expose them, rather than hide them. In North Yorkshire, for example, PCC Julia Mulligan—who is also the lead on transparency for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners—on hearing the public concerns about illegitimate payments to senior officers in the force, instigated a review. It revealed that the former chief constable and deputy chief constable both received £100,000 of payments from the police authority that had no legal basis. Against the advice of both the force and her chief executive, Julia Mulligan published the full report of the inquiry, as she believed that the public had the right to know how their money had been spent.

I accept it is not all good news and there may be problems in relation to particular officeholders. While PCCs have been good at holdings their forces to account, there may be weaknesses in the arrangements in place to hold PCCs themselves to account. My suggestion for dealing with these weaknesses is simple: I refer to the power of recall whereby, if a sufficiently large percentage of the electorate were unhappy with their PCC, they could vote to require him or her to resign and force an election for a new PCC. This is not a new or radical idea at all; it was considered very carefully by the coalition Government in 2010, when they were developing the legislation referred to by the noble Lord. It was rejected as unlikely to commend itself in another place. This provision would certainly meet some of the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, and I, for one, would support it as a further step in strengthening local democracy, devolution and community safety.

Domestic Abuse

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on securing time for this important debate. I draw attention to my entry in the register of Members’ interests. I do so because for a number of years I was employed as an adviser to a multinational company which pioneered some technology which I want to discuss today. I am no longer associated with this company, but I thought it sensible to mention my former relationship and put it on the record.

There are few subjects more worthy of public debate and more in need of urgent government attention than domestic abuse. Domestic abuse threatens the very fabric of our society. It is literally a matter of life and death. According to the Government’s consultation document, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Jenkin, 243 women and 72 men were the victims of domestic homicides between March 2014 and March 2016. That is more than three deaths a week. If the first responsibility of government is to keep us safe, as everyone says, then dealing with domestic abuse, particularly domestic violence, should be among the Government’s top priorities. Sadly, I regret to say that this does not always appear to be the case.

I say this because almost three and a half years ago, on 6 November 2014, I spoke in this House in a debate on “Women: Homelessness, Domestic Violence and Social Exclusion”. In that debate, in which several noble Lords speaking this afternoon also took part, I urged the Government, as a matter of urgency, to commission trials or pilots of a piece of technology known as proximity notification tagging, which I knew from experience in other countries was effective in reducing domestic homicides. Yet, despite the fact that I had useful discussions with several police forces which had purchased this technology and were prepared to trial it, the Government did nothing to get these pilots off the ground, and, in fact, none was launched. But between the date of that speech in this House and today, nearly 300 women have been the victims of domestic homicide. How many more people have to die before we at least trial this technology?

I say straightaway that I do not believe that this technology, or any other piece of technology, is the silver bullet which will eliminate the age-old, and far too common, problem of domestic abuse—of course not. I understand that we need to change the culture surrounding domestic abuse and improve and expand the whole range of non-technological support services for victims, particularly those with special needs. However, changing culture, providing more safe accommodation and recruiting and training more independent domestic violence advisers takes time. In the meantime, there are lives in danger.

For this reason, I particularly welcome the proposals in the Government’s consultation paper for a much more flexible domestic abuse protection order aimed at dealing with weaknesses of the present domestic violence protection orders. I am delighted to see that this new order will be far more flexible both in terms of the conditions that could be attached to it—such as prohibitions against coming into contact with or coming within a certain distance of the victim—and the positive requirements that could be placed on perpetrators such as attendance at alcohol and drug treatment programmes. I am even more pleased that the new order could require perpetrators to wear electronic monitoring tags which would tell us where they were at all times and how much alcohol they have consumed.

There is nothing new in the use of such GPS-based electronic monitoring tags to keep victims of domestic violence safe. In Spain, this technology has been in use in the domestic violence context since 2009. There are currently 2,000 couples in the scheme. Since its introduction, there has not been a single homicide related directly to domestic violence. Similar systems are currently in use in Portugal, Uruguay and Argentina and are now being piloted in New Zealand. These are the tags that I urged the Government to trial three and a half years ago. That is why I was so pleased to see electronic monitoring receive a mention in the consultation paper. But a mention in a consultation paper, welcome as it is, is a long way from implementation across the country.

Rolling out new technology to tackle social problems—like keeping victims safe—is especially complex, even with a technology as tried and tested as proximity tagging. This is because the problems concern people rather than things and because, as in this case, tackling them effectively requires a number of agencies to work together to develop effective operational specifications about who does what, when, to whom and how. For this reason, rolling out this technology will require careful planning and carefully monitored trials or pilots. Because we are dealing here with situations of life and death, however, we cannot wait until the new domestic abuse orders come into force before we begin these trials. I therefore urge the Government to begin now to organise trials of proximity notification tags so that they are able to roll out this technology across the country as soon as the new domestic abuse orders come into force.

As I have already said, electronic monitoring will not deal with the root causes of domestic abuse or the serious harms which domestic abuse inflicts on individuals and their families, but by providing victims with early alerts that their potential attacker is in the vicinity—whether these victims are at home, at work, with friends or on the move—this technology can significantly alleviate the intolerable stress of knowing that one is always at risk of attack. It can save lives, and there is nothing more important than that.

Security and Policing: Facial Recognition Technology

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, on securing this debate, although I wish we had more time to discuss this important subject. In addition to drawing your Lordships’ attention to my interests in police technology as set out in the register, I should mention that, from 1983 to 1996, I was responsible as a Home Office official for the provision of scientific and technological support to the police forces of England and Wales. My remit extended to biometric technologies such as automatic fingerprint identification systems and the forensic application of DNA technology.

It is worth noting in the context of today’s debate that the original and most important work on the application to the criminal justice system of both these technologies, fingerprints and DNA, was done in this country, more particularly in the laboratories of the Home Office, which, sadly, have since almost disappeared.

The role that both these technologies play in the criminal justice system is not simply to support the prosecution. Of course, they help the police to identify suspects and secure convictions, but they also prevent miscarriages of justice by identifying the innocent and thus eliminating them from further investigation—that was the certainly the case with the first use of DNA in Leicester, when someone who had confessed to a double murder was shown to be innocent and released. In the United States, DNA testing has saved the lives of hundreds of wrongly convicted people sitting on death row—this is thanks to the Innocence Project, started in 1972 by two young New York lawyers when they heard about the use of DNA technology in this country.

The same will be true, of course, for facial recognition technology. Although it is still at a very early stage of development as far as its use in the criminal justice system is concerned, I have no doubt that it will eventually be accepted by the police and the courts as a quick and reliable method for eliminating the innocent from suspicion as much as for identifying and convicting the guilty. We are still a long way from that position.

Unlike both fingerprint technology and DNA, there are no international or even national standards for the application of facial recognition technology to the criminal justice system. These standards for international co-operation, which took years to develop for both fingerprints and DNA, allow data relating to these technologies to be transmitted across national borders easily and without loss of integrity, so that someone arrested in California can be identified as wanted in Catalonia immediately—police would know immediately in California without any great effort. In addition to these technical standards, a whole set of other standards has been developed in order to enable the courts to feel confident about accepting an identification based on the use of fingerprints or DNA.

None of this infrastructure of standards is yet in place in relation to facial recognition. This does not mean that facial recognition technology is not yet useful in fighting crime and preventing terrorism today. It simply means that much more work needs to be done urgently to enable it to realise its full potential in the criminal justice system—for example, so that the courts accept facial recognition evidence as confirming identity. One of the tasks which has to be tackled urgently is to improve the quality of the main source of raw material for facial recognition; namely, the millions of private CCTV cameras all over this country. Too many of these cameras are poorly maintained, if maintained at all, badly sited and capture images at a very low resolution. This work should be taken forward with determination and speed. One way of doing this might be by building on the important work done by the Surveillance Camera Commissioner, established under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.

This is a matter for the Government. The simple message I would like my noble friend the Minister to take away from today’s debate is that, without national and eventually international standards and guidelines, the use of facial recognition technology will fail to realise its full potential in the criminal justice system. More significantly, without such standards, this technology could lead to miscarriages of justice, which in turn could lead to a loss of confidence in the technology and a loss of trust in the criminal justice system as a whole.