Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, and to congratulate him on a maiden speech that was every bit as insightful and thought-provoking as one would expect from someone with his extraordinary background of experience and achievement. The noble Lord is, as he reminded us, a former British diplomat who served with great distinction in a number of key posts around the world, including as our ambassador in Syria and in Saudi Arabia. Between those postings abroad, the noble Lord was the director for the Middle East at the Foreign Office. He is probably best known to the general public as the founding chairman of Migration Watch UK, an organisation concerned with immigration to the United Kingdom. As an immigrant to this country myself I was delighted to read, on the organisation’s website, that it believes that,

“sustainable levels of properly managed immigration are of distinct benefit to our society”.

The website then states:

“Many migrants make a valuable contribution to our society in terms of both their skills and experience”.

I was grateful to see that.

The noble Lord, Lord Green, was created a life Peer in October, on the Prime Minister’s personal recommendation to Her Majesty the Queen, for his proven record of public service. This is a very rare honour and one which mere political appointees like me look upon with awe and admiration. As I am sure noble Lords will agree, the noble Lords, Lord Green of Deddington and Lord Evans of Weardale, have set a very high standard with their contributions this afternoon, and I for one look forward very much to hearing much more from them both in the coming months and years.

I welcome this Bill because it will make us safer. I have no illusions about the extent to which it will improve the safety of our country because there are no easy answers in this area of human activity—whether we are thinking about the kind of murderous outrages we saw in Paris last week, or the many other forms of serious crime that our local police forces, our National Crime Agency and our intelligence and security organisations are having to fight every day of the year. Keeping a large, multicultural and free society safe is an expensive and very complex business. It is, however, doable provided that those in charge do not rely on spectacular public gestures like the marches in Paris last Sunday but concentrate on making slow but steady progress, one step at a time. The Bill represents this step-by-step approach, particularly in Parts 1 to 4, and that is why I commend it to the House. Of course, the Bill is by no means the end of the story. There is still much more that can and needs to be done to make it more difficult for would-be terrorists to operate in this country and easier for our law enforcement and security services to keep us safe. I have no doubt, however, that the Bill will make a difference, which is why we need to get it on to the statute book as quickly as possible.

Terrorist outrages of the kind that we saw in Paris last week attract worldwide attention, and the images of police activity transmitted from such crime scenes make it appear that fighting terrorism requires a completely different kind of policing from that required to fight the serious and organised criminality with which we are much more familiar. The truth is that what the media choose to call terrorist acts are for the most part simply another form of serious criminality, and preventing them requires the very same tools and methods that our law enforcement agencies use to tackle the wide range of other serious crimes with which they have to deal every day.

I am talking here of collecting information about what is going on in our communities, a task for which we must rely mainly on the instincts and observational powers of the bobby on the beat. It involves: the careful analysis of this raw information and its conversion into useful intelligence; the deployment of effective tactics based on this intelligence; the rapid deployment of adequate human and other resources; and, finally, the relentless follow-up to ensure that the job is really done and all the lessons that can be learnt are learnt. Parts 1 to 3 will strengthen the capabilities of our law enforcement agencies in each of these areas, particularly in the key area of information and intelligence collection—which, at the end of the day, is what effective crime prevention is all about.

Many will argue that the measures I have highlighted deal only with the symptoms of terrorism: that we need to be paying more attention to its underlying causes. For such people Part 5 is what really matters, because it is aimed at reducing the risk of individuals being drawn into terrorism in the first place. I appreciate the strength of these arguments. I do not for a moment underestimate the need to devote resources to combating the odious ideology that underlies the murderous events of last week. However, these arguments remind me too much of those that we heard in the late 1980s and early 1990s in America, when crime in American cities was going through the roof. New York City alone suffered more than 2,000 homicides in a single year. The argument we heard then was that what was required was not more and better policing but social policies directed at the underlying causes of these crimes, such as dysfunctional families, poor education, bad housing, racial discrimination, unemployment and low incomes.

All these good things were tried in New York and elsewhere, and can all be justified in the name of producing a fair society. They could not, however, be justified on the grounds that they made the communities safe. What drove down the crime rates in New York and elsewhere so dramatically was not higher incomes, better houses or less discrimination: it was much more effective policing, which incorporated the collection and analysis of timely and accurate information, effective tactics, rapid deployment and relentless follow-up. So, while I welcome the Government’s proposals to devote more effort and resources to reducing the risk of people being drawn into terrorism, I hope that these resources will not be at the expense of more conventional policing.

Talking of resources, I do not think that only government resources are needed if we are to strengthen our guard against terrorist attacks. Each of us can play a part in increasing our collective security. In the same way that target-hardening activities such as better household security equipment and more effective vehicle-locking systems have reduced burglaries and car thefts, so they can protect us from terrorist attacks. For example, had the entrance to the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris been controlled by a lock mechanism that could be operated only by someone inside the office seeing on video the person requesting entry, rather than a keypad operated by someone on the street, the events of last week might never have occurred.

In the Second Reading debate in another place, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and her shadow agreed that the first and most important duty of government is the protection and security of its citizens. I very much hope this means that no matter what happens on 7 May, the Government of the day will not decide to fund the fight against terrorism from resources that would otherwise be devoted to more conventional policing. As I said, terrorism is simply another form of serious criminality and protecting our communities against it is simply another responsibility of our law enforcement and security agencies. A safer Britain is a Britain safe against all forms of criminality, from one-off attacks by deranged individuals who see themselves as part of an international terrorist army to cybercrime, burglaries, thefts and anti-social behaviour that make up the everyday work of our local police forces. We cannot pick and choose. Public safety requires us to address all those threats and to treat each of them with equal determination and concern.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, for that brilliant explanation of the judgments of the European Court of Justice and related matters. I find it intimidating to continue now with some rather tedious political points after his brilliant exposition.

I will not detain your Lordships very long this evening. I simply want to record my strong support for this essential Bill and to urge your Lordships to give it a speedy passage on to the statute book. However, before I say anything more, I declare an interest as a strategic adviser to the head of public sector business of Telefónica UK. As an international company, it provides communications services to customers in the UK and therefore will be directly affected by the Bill when it becomes the law of the land. I have never discussed any aspect of the proposed legislation with anyone at Telefónica, and my connection with the company is declared in the register of members’ interests. Nevertheless, I thought it wise to mention that to avoid any possible misunderstandings at a later date.

On 16 June, at Second Reading of the Serious Crime Bill, which your Lordships have been considering in Committee, I said that although I welcomed that Bill, I was disappointed that it did not deal with the situation caused by the 8 April decision of the European Court of Justice, which struck down the European Union’s data retention directive, thus raising serious legal concerns about our own national mandatory communications data retention framework. I am pleased that those concerns have been confirmed by the report of the Constitution Committee published today. I went on to say that the court’s decision had very damaging consequences—perhaps I should have said potentially catastrophic consequences—for our fight against terrorism and serious and organised crime.

As was pointed out by the Minister and many other noble Lords who have spoken, communications data of the kind affected by the court’s decision are critical to the success of almost all investigations of serious and organised crime, including rape, child sexual exploitation and murder. Of course, they are also critical to the prevention of terrorist activity at home and abroad. That material is also vital to securing convictions and, as one or two noble Lords have mentioned, to protecting the vulnerable who are at risk of serious harm. That is why we cannot afford for there to be doubts surrounding the legality of our communications retention and investigatory arrangements. In the speech of a month ago which I referred to, I also urged the Government, in putting things right by removing those doubts, to “act boldly and courageously” so that our law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies were able to use the full range of available technological systems and equipment to assist them in their mission of keeping us safe.

In saying that, I had in mind the communications data Bill, which, sadly, we will not consider in this Parliament. I very much hope that we as a nation will not have cause to regret the decision of the coalition Government not to proceed with that Bill at this time. I say that not only because I believe that a Bill of that kind is essential if our policing, security and intelligence services are to have even half a chance of keeping up with the ever-expanding capabilities of the information processing and communications industries. I say it also because that draft Bill was described in this House last Thursday by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, and again today, as,

“a good Bill which balanced the essential needs of civil liberty and privacy against the Government’s first duty to protect the security and safety of the citizen”.—[Official Report, 10/7/14; col. 288.]

That Bill has been ready for introduction for some time now, and has been sidelined for purely party-political reasons, despite a large amount of work having already been done on it by both the Government and the Joint Select Committee under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Blencathra. How sad that we should play politics with an issue that is so central to our national security and to the safety of our communities.

Be that as it may, I must admit that it would be difficult to characterise the provisions of this Bill as either bold or courageous. We have heard on a number of occasions from my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and from the Minister that this is a narrow and limited Bill, which does nothing more than maintain the status quo and ensure that police investigations do not suddenly go dark and criminals escape justice. I am sorry about that—it all sounds a bit too cautious for me. However, perhaps it is just as well that the Bill is not more courageous and bold. As we all know, courageous and bold Bills have a tendency to excite a good deal of political controversy, and therefore take up a good deal of parliamentary time. In the present instance, time is something we do not have very much of.

It is essential that we get these provisions on the statute book as quickly as possible. I see no justification for wasting precious parliamentary hours and days arguing about whether the Government should have brought the Bill forward more quickly, made it shorter or more comprehensive, or anything else. There will be plenty of time to argue about the Government’s management of the Bill and about their general approach to public safety and fighting crime in the run-up to the general election, which is about to begin, if indeed it has not already done so. The fact is that the Bill does the job that needs doing now. It does it efficiently and effectively. Those who want to have these issues discussed at much greater length can take heart from the fact that the Bill contains a sunset clause, which ensures that it will be repealed on 31 December 2016 unless Parliament acts to continue it, with or without amendment. That is why I endorse the Bill without reservation and urge other noble Lords to do the same.

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill. It is the latest instalment of an ambitious programme of work which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary set herself in the summer of 2010, shortly after taking office. Her goal was clear and unequivocal—to make this country a safer place in which to work, bring up children, grow old, study and visit. Much of that programme has already been delivered. Local policing is no longer the responsibility of the so-called tripartite cabal of ACPO, the Home Office and the Association of Police Authorities. In its place there are now directly elected local police and crime commissioners, who oversee the local police force as part of their wider responsibilities for community safety. The College of Policing has brought together the Police Federation, the Police Superintendents’ Association and ACPO into a single body, under an independent chairman of integrity, to professionalise policing across the whole of England and Wales. The inspectorate has been strengthened and modernised, so that its work is seen to be serving the public rather than Home Office Ministers and officials.

The Bill is largely the product of another of my right honourable friend’s innovations, the National Crime Agency. The significance of the NCA as a crime-fighting organisation, headed by a professional crime fighter and reporting directly to the Home Secretary, is not often appreciated by the general public. Indeed, most home affairs commentators in the media do not appreciate the fact that before this Government the police department of the Home Office, in which I am proud to have served for many years, devoted most of its efforts to dealing with local crime and anti-social behaviour, although we did not use that term in those days. Serious and organised crime was something that Home Office Ministers were happy to leave to individual chief constables to tackle, working independently or through ACPO. For a short period between April 2006 and October last year, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency also played an important role in this field, but it reported to a board that was largely independent of government and headed by the chairman without any professional policing experience. As my right honourable friend said recently in an important speech delivered to the Royal United Services Institute,

“when I became Home Secretary four years ago the lack of a response”,

to the threat of serious and organised crime,

“both in policy terms and operational terms—was glaring. While the centre was bossy, clumsy and interfering when it came to local policing, it was weak, timid and sometimes entirely absent when it came to serious and organised crime”.

How different things are now. A few weeks ago, on 28 May, I attended a reception at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at which the heads of the national law enforcement agencies of the UK, the USA, New Zealand, Canada and Australia—known collectively as the “Five Eyes” law enforcement group—were guests of the NCA. Keith Bristow, the NCA director, chairs this group of top crime fighters. I used the opportunity to chat to the director of the FBI and the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Both these top law enforcement officials were fulsome in their praise for the work that the NCA was doing internationally, particularly the way that it was bringing law enforcement partners together to help to pursue serious and organised criminals and frustrate their activities around the globe.

The Bill gives the NCA and other UK law enforcement agencies some of the tools that they need to meet their objectives of keeping us safe. Most of its provisions, as many noble Lords have already mentioned, are entirely uncontroversial, and I very much hope that your Lordships will welcome them, as I do. Many provisions are years overdue, some by decades. For example, take the provisions concerning the misuse of computers. The Act that we are being asked to amend in Part 2 of the Bill received Royal Assent in 1990, which is equivalent in IT years to the Dark Ages. The owners of many of the largest and most profitable IT businesses in the world were still in nappies in the 1990s; a fair proportion had probably not yet been conceived. Similarly overdue are the provisions to update the definition of a gang, to deal with the cutting agents that are used to increase the profitability of the illicit drug trade, or to amend the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 to recognise that child abuse may be psychological as well as physical. All these provisions should have been on our statute book years ago, and I very much hope that your Lordships will ensure that they get there urgently.

While I warmly welcome those provisions that are in the Bill, I want to mention two matters that are not included but have already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey. The first relates to the data retention directive of the European Union. On 8 April this year, a few months ago, at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg there was a decision that will have very damaging consequences for our fight against serious and organised crime. The court struck down the data retention directive of the European Union.

As your Lordships will know, the UK’s domestic data retention regulations are based on the EU directive and are the legal basis for the obligations we place on communications service providers to retain communications data for 12 months. Without these regulations, providers have no reason to retain the data and, given the current concern post-Snowden, do not very much want to retain it unless they are compelled to do so. I am aware that the Government are trying hard to find a way forward on this issue but I urge them to act boldly and courageously in tackling it. Communications data are now used in more than 90% of serious and organised crime investigations and are vital in bringing serious criminals to justice and protecting the most vulnerable among us.

There is one other matter relating to serious and organised crime that does not need legislation but which I hope will be tackled as a result of our interest in this subject. It is the question of the responsibility for counterterrorism. In that speech by the Home Secretary to which I referred earlier, she said,

“in 2010, I made sure serious and organised crime was included in the National Security Strategy … I am aware that it is a relatively new way of thinking to consider organised crime a national security threat, and I know that some people … may argue that individually none of these crimes represents a national security threat. But when you consider their collective effect, when you add up the total cost to society, when you realise the huge numbers of victims who suffer from organised crime, there is no doubt in my mind that it is a very real threat to our national security”.

It is obvious from many of the provisions in this Bill, particularly in Part 2 dealing with computer misuse, that when we talk about the threat of serious and organised crime we are talking about a threat that extends to serious damage to critical national infrastructure and therefore to our national security.

Given that the Home Secretary herself recognises that serious and organised crime encompasses terrorism and national security, is it not time to bring together in one organisation responsibility for both counterterrorism and serious and organised crime? In particular, responsibility for counterterrorism should be brought more directly under the Home Secretary rather than leaving it as it is today under the Metropolitan Police, which is accountable to the Mayor of London, and ACPO, which is accountable to itself. Given that the NCA has made a great start in the few months in which it has been fully operational and the respect it is accorded by the FBI, the RCMP and other leading law enforcement agencies around the world, I urge the Government to act on this matter and to transfer responsibility from the Mayor of London to the NCA—in effect to the Home Secretary—before the end of this Parliament so that the new arrangements are in place before the next mayoral elections in May 2016. It seems to me that the last thing we want is for the security of this nation to become a party-political issue in a local election. With this plea I commend this Bill to the House.

Police: Public Trust

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Paddick on securing this debate. I was going to add, “on this critically important and very timely subject”, but of course this debate is really about two critically important and very timely subjects—namely, public trust in the police and its role in effective policing; and the system for investigating complaints into police conduct. Although these are different subjects, they are closely related. It is because public trust in the police is at such a low ebb today that there is so much public concern about how complaints against individual police officers are investigated. As we all know, however, public opinion is notoriously fickle, and we must guard against making fundamental changes to our institutions simply to keep up with it.

I well remember, as a young official in the Home Office many years ago, that it was generally believed by the public—and reflected in the policies of Ministers of both major parties—that the best way of dealing with complaints against police officers was to allow chief constables to deal with them. This was based on the equally firm belief that those who had got themselves into trouble—that is, those who had complaints filed against them—were a tiny minority of police officers: the rotten apples at or near the bottom of the pile. That is why we thought that their elders and betters—those of ACPO rank—could be relied upon to sort them out in one way or another.

However, this belief that most police officers were fundamentally honest and that chief constables were the best people to deal with their own “rotten apples” was undermined towards the end of the last century by both the Scarman inquiry into the Brixton riots and the Stephen Lawrence inquiry in 1999. As a result of what the public learned from these inquiries, they were no longer prepared to trust ordinary police officers to behave properly or to trust chief officers to investigate complaints against their colleagues honestly and fairly. This in turn led to the demand for an independent element in the police complaints procedure; it was in response to this demand that an Independent Police Complaints Commission was established by the Police Reform Act 2002.

However, as I have already said, public opinion is something of a fashion industry. As recently as two years ago, when your Lordships were debating the then Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, the public’s main concern about policing was not how to improve the integrity of officers but how to improve their value for money. As a result, local chief constables were once again given the main responsibility for handling complaints, including appeals, against their officers. The IPCC would now consider only complaints and appeals which were thought to be, or classified as, “serious”. This change was justified as,

“streamlining and removing unnecessary bureaucracy from the system”,

and ensuring that,

“complaints were handled at the lowest appropriate level”.

In other words, this was justified as a way of improving value for money.

Sadly, however, although perhaps not surprisingly, public opinion has changed again in the last year or two. This is because so many of the police officers who have managed to get themselves into trouble in the last few years—or, more accurately, whose inappropriate behaviour has been exposed in the last two years—were not at the bottom of the barrel, but at the very top. The public once again turned against chief constables and decided that they could not, after all, be trusted to deal with complaints against their own officers.

This led to a fresh demand to remove responsibility for complaints from chief constables and move it to the centre: hence the plans to “beef up” the IPCC by transferring to it staff presently employed in the professional standards departments of local forces. Indeed, as recently as Monday of this week, the commission set up by the Labour Party under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, which we will be discussing in this Chamber next Thursday, recommended the creation of a new national body to handle police complaints. Why? It was because, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens:

“The spate of organisational failures and scandals over recent years has badly damaged public confidence in the integrity of the police”.

As I said a few minutes ago, I am very worried about making changes to institutions as fundamental to our society as our police complaints system simply as a response to public opinion polls. If the problem he is concerned to tackle really is, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, believes, a loss of public confidence in police integrity, the answer must be to take steps to improve police integrity. The response cannot be to accept the present level of police integrity as a given and try to work round it by transferring responsibility for police complaints away from chief constables to a team of civilians in a national body. This will simply reinforce the public’s loss of confidence in the police. It will also damage the confidence of those chief officers—the vast majority of whom, I hasten to add, are public servants of the highest professional standard and men and women of unimpeachable integrity. It cannot be right to tar them all with the same brush. As a PCC said to me in an e-mail the other day:

“The more external checking the Government advocates, the less it is seen to trust the police to do the right thing in the first place”.

I do not accept that nothing can be done about police integrity, or what some people call police culture, or that, for this reason, we must not let chief constables anywhere near the arrangements for handling police complaints. Police integrity is no doubt in a bad place at the moment but something is being done about it. The Government’s College of Policing has already begun to tackle the issue with determination. I am optimistic about what the college will achieve, particularly if its board is expanded to include a larger number of truly independent individuals whose careers to date have not been linked to the police in any way.

In short, making major changes to the way police complaints are handled is not an appropriate or sensible response to the public’s concerns about police integrity. That is not to say that I am entirely satisfied with the present arrangements for handling police complaints: I most certainly am not. These arrangements were described to me recently by one PCC as, “labyrinthine, slow and bureaucratic”. They are seen by the public as unfair and stacked against them, as my noble friend Lord Paddick said. Even the police are unhappy with them. As another PCC wrote to me last week, “in my force, PSD”—the standards department—

“has almost a terror factor over officers and I don’t think this is healthy. Officers need to feel supported to make difficult decisions rather than afraid to do so”.

There are plenty of reasons for changing the present arrangements, but the changes must deliver a system which is much more user-friendly, quicker, more transparent and more responsive to local needs. All this points to keeping the complaints system as local as possible. Policing is primarily a local service whose principal aim is to make people safe in their own communities. The best way of achieving that objective is by retaining responsibility for local policing locally. As noble Lords will know, that is why I argued so forcefully for police and crime commissioners, directly elected by the people and accountable to them.

That is also why I believe that complaints against local officers should be dealt with within the local community. If the local community is not prepared to trust its chief constables to deal with complaints, the answer is not to transfer responsibility to the centre. The way forward is to make the complaints procedure part of the overall governance arrangements of the force and hold the PCC accountable for the way complaints are handled in the same way as the PCC is accountable to the local electorate for the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the force.

There is nothing radical in this. Most complaints can be handled by people without police powers or operational experience. In fact, many are not even complaints but expressions of dissatisfaction which should be used to improve the service. They are easily resolved with common sense, tact and a willingness to apologise. However, under the present rules, they are forced into a legalistic, bureaucratic process which puts officers on edge and complainants into deep despair.

There are several ideas for changing the way that the police complaints procedure works. The APCC—the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners—is working on this and will be coming up with proposals. Winston Churchill is reported to have said, among other things, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. There is clearly a crisis in confidence in the police and, more particularly, in police integrity. Let us not waste this opportunity to improve our system of police complaints, a problem which has bedevilled policing in England and Wales for a very long time.

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Paddick on his maiden speech and welcome him to this House.

We have devoted a good deal of time in this Session to discussing crime and disorder. Earlier in the year we debated the Bill establishing a new National Crime Agency, and more recently we debated the Government’s decision to opt out of all the police and criminal justice measures agreed to prior to the Lisbon treaty—and, incidentally, to opt back into a number of them. However, these debates focused on only one aspect of our crime problem—namely, serious and organised crime.

For most people, what matters most is not the fight against international drug and human trafficking but the quality of their everyday lives. For those who do not live in houses as grand and isolated as Downton Abbey, the quality of their lives depends largely on the behaviour of their neighbours. When those neighbours engage in vandalism, graffiti, street drug dealing, drinking in public or worse, the lives of everyone in those communities become almost unbearable. Parts 1 to 6 of the Bill aim to deal with this kind of anti-social behaviour. It is clear from tonight’s speeches that we are to have some very lively debates about these proposals, but I am not going to anticipate them now—I merely commend the Government for addressing this subject and for making time for it in their legislative programme.

I also commend the Government for giving our police and crime commissioners a key role in their strategy for tackling anti-social behaviour. It is less than a year since the 41 PCCs took office, but already we are seeing signs of a more holistic approach to crime prevention and public safety at the local level. Giving PCCs power to provide or commission services, particularly support services for victims and witnesses of crime and anti-social behaviour, as the Bill proposes in Clause 129, is very much to be welcomed. I hope that in due course the Government will go much further along this road of giving PCCs more responsibility for local criminal justice and emergency service systems. For further reading on this subject, I recommend that the Minister get hold of the recent Policy Exchange pamphlet entitled Power Down: A Plan for a Cheaper, More Effective Justice System; there are plenty of ideas in that.

I am also delighted to see that the British Transport Police has found a place in the Bill. It is a first-class force which does a great job in keeping us safe and secure on our rail and underground networks. Putting that force on the same footing as the 43 Home Office forces in respect of firearms is long overdue, and recognises that the BTP supplies the same standards as those forces when it comes to selection, training and assessment. I have long thought that it would be sensible to make more use of the specialist skills and unique national coverage of this force by extending its responsibilities beyond our rail system to our airports and motorways, thus freeing up local forces to concentrate on neighbourhood policing, including tackling anti-social behaviour.

Noble Lords may not be surprised to hear that I welcome the provision in Clause 126, which makes it possible for someone who has not served as a constable in a UK force to be appointed to lead a Home Office force. I also welcome the support for this clause from the noble Lords, Lord Condon and Lord Dear, both of whom have held very senior posts in our local policing system with great distinction. Therefore, both may be assumed to know a thing or two about the role of the chief constable and what it takes to be good at it. However, I wonder why this clause specifies appointment as a chief constable rather than as a chief officer. Might it not sometimes be useful to be able to appoint someone from abroad as a deputy chief constable or an assistant? Perhaps I have missed something here; if I have, I would be grateful if the Minister would put me right when he winds up this debate.

Finally, I want to say a few words about the new College of Policing, which features prominently in Part 11. Among its other responsibilities, the college is responsible for identifying, developing and promoting ethics, values and standards of integrity for the police service. It is in this context that the college is preparing the code of ethics for police officers which attracted so much media attention last week. In answer to a question about this code on “The Andrew Marr Show” last Sunday, noble Lords may have heard the president of ACPO describe the college as follows:

“We have a new College of Policing, led by a very senior chief constable, Alex Marshall, who’s driving this agenda forward on behalf of a leadership which I have the privilege to represent this morning”.

I understand why Sir Hugh described the college in these terms. As one of the members of the college’s board of directors, he is used to sitting around a table with 13 others, four of whom are either serving or retired chief constables; two are serving police officers of other ranks; and another two, both appointed as independent members, have worked closely with police forces for many years. Of the remaining five members, three are PCCs and one is Millie Banerjee, the chair of the British Transport Police Authority. Only one member of that board, the distinguished academic who chairs it, is truly independent in the sense that she had no professional dealings with the police before her appointment.

If the college is to be given statutory backing as proposed in Part 11, it cannot be, nor be seen to be, a subsidiary of ACPO. It cannot be led by a senior chief constable on behalf of other chief constables. The college has to be led by its independent chair on behalf of the public. It is the public, after all, whom the police are employed to serve. If there is a principal customer for the work of the college, it must surely be our police and crime commissioners and their equivalents in London. It is they who have statutory responsibility for keeping us safe by maintaining efficient and effective police forces. It is they, therefore, who have the most direct interest in the success of the college as an institution devoted to improving the professional and ethical skills of our police officers and ensuring that these higher standards are maintained.

It seems clear on the basis of what the president of ACPO has said, what I have read in the media and what I have heard, that if the college wants to establish public confidence in its role of,

“identifying, developing and promoting ethics, values and standards of integrity”,

it needs to expand its board of directors to include many more truly independent members. I am sure that there is no shortage of individuals of outstanding character from the worlds of business, the church, the military, the Civil Service and the voluntary sector, who would be willing to serve. With these few suggestions, I commend this Bill to the House.

EU: Police and Criminal Justice Measures

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman]

My Lords, I hesitate to prolong this debate at this late hour, particularly as I am very much a novice in matters European. I felt moved to intervene, however, because although my experience in European issues is limited, I have had long and varied experience of policing, fighting crime and keeping communities safe on both sides of the Atlantic. This debate is at least as much about ensuring public safety as it is about the Government’s attitude to the European Union and its institutions.

The Government’s decision to opt out of all the police and criminal justice measures agreed to prior to the coming into force of the Lisbon treaty, and to opt back into only the 35 which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary believes will help us tackle crime and keep our country safe, has been characterised by several noble Lords on the Benches opposite as putting the security of the nation at risk for purely party political reasons; that is, to mollify—I believe that the word used is appease—the Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party. I will make two short points about this claim, which I find unfair and without foundation.

On the basis of my long experience as a civil servant serving Home Office Ministers of both parties in this country, and my experience as a consultant advising public officials on policing in the United States, I assure your Lordships that I have not dealt with a single Minister or public official on either side of the Atlantic—including the legendary Rudy Giuliani—who is more committed to reducing crime and making communities safe than my right honourable friend the present Home Secretary, with whom I have had the great pleasure of working closely for almost two years following the general election.

As for the claim that my right honourable friend is frightened of upsetting the Eurosceptics in her party, frankly, I find that ludicrous. As everyone in British policing knows, my right honourable friend is not frightened of anyone. Her courage and determination are legendary, particularly when she believes that what she is doing will make ordinary families safer.

Finally, I will make a brief point—and it will be brief—about what European professionals in your Lordships’ House call proportionality. I have no doubt that the 35 measures which the Home Secretary intends to seek to rejoin will be useful and will make it easier for our policing agencies to prevent some major crime and even terrorist activities. However, here is where proportionality, or a sense of proportion, comes in. There is no way in which these 35 measures—or, dare I say it, all 130 pre-Lisbon measures—can be described as critical to the overall public safety of our society.

As noble Lords will recall, the official Crime Survey for England and Wales was published only last week. It reported that a total of 8.6 million offences had been committed last year. These numbers do not include the much larger number of incidents of anti-social behaviour which plague our most vulnerable communities on a daily basis. Does anyone really believe that the European arrest warrant, Europol or any of the other 35 measures which the Government wish to retain will make a significant difference to these numbers or to the feeling of security which our friends and neighbours across the country experience as they go about their daily lives?

I do not for a moment minimise the importance of international collaboration or of any of the other measures that the Government want to rejoin. They will certainly help our local police forces and also help our new National Crime Agency to do its job more effectively. However, it is both misleading and irresponsible to argue that the Government are risking the safety of our communities by opting out of the whole package of pre-Lisbon proposals with a view to being able to opt back into those they believe will be most useful. I strongly commend the Government’s Motion to the House.

Police (Complaints and Conduct) Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman]

My Lords, had I known a few days ago that I would be speaking directly after the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool, I might not have spent any time writing a speech of my own. I probably would simply have congratulated him on the magnificent way in which he led his team in a very difficult and painful task and suggested that we all remain silent for a few moments and think about what he said in his illuminating, thoughtful and very moving speech. However, I did not know until noon today that I would be speaking directly after him, and because I feel very strongly about these issues, I prepared some remarks of my own. I beg the indulgence of your Lordships’ House if I deliver them now.

A distinguished Member of your Lordships’ House—alas, no longer with us—is reported to have said, “A week is a long time in politics”. I was reminded of that comment when, over the weekend, I read the Hansard report of the consideration of this short Bill in another place last Wednesday afternoon. Reading those proceedings, I was struck not by the discussion of those horrendous events of 15 April 1989; these are seared in the memories of all of us old enough to have been around at that time. I was not even shocked by the references to how police officers on duty at the ground that day had mismanaged the tragedy once it had begun to unfold and thus unwittingly contributed to the toll of deaths and injuries. The pressure on those officers at that time is impossible for us, sitting in this place at this time, to comprehend fully. I, for one, am not prepared to pass judgment on their actions on this basis.

No, what shocked me about the debate in another place last Wednesday was the way in which one speaker after another, on both sides of the House, referred to how police officers had behaved in the subsequent investigation of the tragedy. There were endless references to officers as having lied, covered up the truth and obstructed the course of justice. Several Members referred—as did several noble Lords today—to the fact that 164 witness statements had been amended, 116 of which were changed in some way as to remove or lessen the culpability of police officers and others. As one Member described it, this was,

“deceit on a huge scale”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/12/12; col. 935.]

It was this which shocked me. Here were Members of another place describing ordinary, English police officers as guilty of lying, obstructing justice and covering up the truth, and doing so without interruption, without apology and without shame.

Contrast that debate with the debate in your Lordships’ House on the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill on 27 April 2011. In our debate, less than 20 months ago, noble Lords were falling over each other to extol the international reputation of the British police service, particularly its reputation for integrity and professionalism. We were told that our police leaders are the envy of the world and the introduction of police and crime commissioners would put that reputation at risk, precisely because PCCs, directly elected by the people, were unlikely to adhere to the same high standards of personal and professional integrity that were the hallmarks of the British police officer. Indeed, we were warned that PCCs would facilitate, if not encourage, the growth of the culture of cover-up and corruption that would undermine the cherished integrity of our police service.

I have to admit that I, too, enthusiastically participated in that chorus of praise for the British chief officer of police. I went so far as to say that I believed that it was their,

“outstanding ability, unquestioned integrity, a high level of professionalism and a deep commitment to public service”,

which would keep us,

“safe from the sort of corruption dangers which other countries have faced and which some noble Lords have mentioned as one of the problems inherent in the Bill”.—[Official Report, 27/4/11; col. 209.]

How sentiments have changed since those words were spoken. I am not sure about a week being a long time in politics but to judge from this context 19 months certainly is long enough to effect a fundamental change in public opinion and, hence, in the political narrative.

Why has that happened? Why has the reputation of the British police service for integrity and professionalism taken such a knock in the past year or so? Why has our policing brand—undoubtedly the most respected in the world until so recently—become so tarnished so quickly, not only in this country but, thanks to the internet, all over the world? I fear that the explanation lies, sadly, with the behaviour of some of our police leaders themselves. No one who has ever even had the slightest interest in the work of the independent panel on the Hillsborough tragedy, which the right reverend Prelate led, can fail to be shocked by the behaviour of our police leaders in the aftermath of that event. One hundred and sixty-four witness statements were altered, 116 of them significantly, as part of a massive cover-up. What does that say about integrity and professional standards?

But the Hillsborough report, as shocking as it is, would not have produced the kind of reaction we heard in another place last week if it had been a one-off, isolated event, describing something that had occurred more than 20 years ago. No, I fear the truth is that the right reverend Prelate’s report triggered the kind of debate that took place last week in another place because it was not an isolated event. It triggered that reaction because it was simply the latest, if the most shocking, in a series of reports to have emerged in the past two years about corruption, cover-ups and collusion in our police service.

For most members of the public, the biggest shock came some 18 months earlier on Sunday 17 July 2011 when the media reported in screaming headlines that Britain’s top police officer, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had accepted a free five-week stay at a top health spa and that this had been justified by a Metropolitan Police spokesman by the fact that the managing director of the spa had been a friend of the commissioner. The very next day, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, in an Oral Statement related only tangentially to the health spa story, added to the sense of public shock about police leadership by saying that allegations about phone hacking were,

“not, unfortunately, the only recent example of alleged corruption … in the police”.—[Official Report, 18/7/2011; col. 623.]

A few days later, the public learnt that both the Chief Constable and Deputy Chief Constable of Cleveland had been arrested in a dawn raid on suspicion of corruption. Four months later, on 13 December 2011, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary published a report following up the Home Secretary’s comments on phone hacking. Entitled Without Fear or Favour, the inspectorate’s own press notice described its findings as follows:

“Corruption not endemic in the police service—but police need more robust systems”.

If noble Lords can think of a better example of damning with faint praise, I would love to hear it.

And it does not end there. A story in the Guardian on 14 September 2012 began as follows:

“A crisis is brewing at the top of English policing after another chief constable was suspended on suspicion of serious misconduct”.

The report went on to say that this brought,

“the number of the country’s most senior officers who have faced or are facing disciplinary action or investigation by the police watchdog to nine. It is unprecedented for so many senior serving officers to be the focus of investigations at the same time”.

A month later, in October, we learnt that the chief constable who had been arrested in that dawn raid had been sacked for gross misconduct after a disciplinary panel found that he had lied to the IPCC and ordered a member of his own staff to lie to the IPCC. The IPCC described his actions as “shameful.”

Is it any wonder that Members of another place reacted so strongly when discussing this Bill and were so anxious to give the IPCC the powers that it needs to get to the truth about the Hillsborough tragedy? I am inclined to think that their reaction would have been very different two years ago. They probably would simply have suggested that this matter be followed up by ACPO. We must take the same robust stance. We owe it to the police service to save it from itself by helping it to restore its reputation for integrity and professionalism. We can help the police service best by sending it a clear message that we are prepared to provide the IPCC with whatever support it needs to do its work effectively. More importantly, we can help the police service best by sending a clear and unequivocal message to police officers at all levels that we expect them to put their own house in order as a matter of the greatest urgency and, to this end, we expect every serving police officer and other police staff to co-operate fully with the IPCC’s investigation. This does not mean simply showing up when summoned to do so; it means answering all questions put to them fully and truthfully.

As for retired police officers and staff who know something which could help the IPCC’s investigation, we should send a clear and simple message to them as well. Although the IPCC itself has not asked for legislation to compel you to attend interviews as witnesses, the reputation of the police service in which you served so proudly, and which served you so well, has been badly damaged. You can help to repair that damage and restore the reputation of the uniform you wore by coming forward voluntarily with any information which might help the IPCC to get to the truth.

The last thing the police service of this country needs at this time are headlines announcing that retired officers and staff have declined to help to get at the truth of the Hillsborough tragedy. This must not happen. I very much hope it will not.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman]

My Lords, I very much welcome this Bill, particularly Part 1 establishing a national crime agency, and I shall confine my remarks to this part. I take very seriously the threats that this new agency is being established to tackle: serious and organised crime, economic crime, child exploitation and cybercrime. I also believe that the policing of our borders could do with some strengthening. These threats cannot be tackled effectively by local forces on their own, by ad hoc arrangements between forces set up by groups of chief constables acting collectively, or by ACPO in response to particular events or pieces of intelligence. For this reason, I regard this new agency not as a desirable feature of our policing landscape but as a necessary one. I believe that there is degree of urgency to get the NCA established. So, while I recognise the need for careful scrutiny of this Bill, I hope that it will not be long delayed in this House or in another place and that the NCA can open for business relatively quickly.

When I returned to this country in 2008, having spent the best part of 12 years working on policing matters in the United States, I was amazed to discover that, during this period, our policing arrangements had taken a very odd turn. I found that local policing—that is, policing aimed at tackling local crime and anti-social behaviour—was being directed mainly by officials and Ministers in Whitehall, and occasionally by the Prime Minister himself.

National policing, on the other hand—that is, policing aimed at serious and organised crime and other threats that transcend force boundaries—was being directed not by the Home Office but on an arm's-length basis by an independent agency. This agency was responsible to a board chaired by a former civil servant, who had no crime-fighting experience, and included a number of distinguished and, no doubt, very able members, none of whom had ever walked a beat or felt a collar. To me, this made no sense at all either in terms of effectiveness or democratic accountability. That is why I welcomed the changes to our local policing arrangements introduced by the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 and why I welcome the Bill that we are debating today. The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act transferred responsibility for local policing from the Home Office in Whitehall to local communities, where it belongs. It did this by making local chief constables and their forces directly accountable to individuals who live locally—local chief constables who have been chosen democratically by their fellow residents through the ballot box.

This Bill tackles the other aspect of the mismatch in our policing arrangements that I mentioned a moment ago. It puts responsibility for national policing where it belongs, with a Secretary of State accountable to Parliament. It is he or she, not an independent board, who will appoint the director-general as the operational head of the NCA and who will decide on the agency's functions and strategic priorities. This Bill provides for these priorities to be set in consultation with “strategic partners”, but they will ultimately be the responsibility of the Home Secretary. For me, this is the heart of Part I of this Bill and is why I welcome it. While I recognise that there are details to be considered, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, has already put us on notice that we will debate them in detail, I still think that there is a fundamental principle there, and I welcome that principle.

Fighting serious and organised crime, economic crime and other national threats that face us is not a job for enthusiastic amateurs. It requires a specialist organisation established, equipped, staffed and managed for this purpose. It also calls for leadership of a high order, leadership that can command the respect of the whole policing community because it is based on a record of successful crime fighting. Keith Bristow has demonstrated such leadership, having served as a chief constable and as chair of the APCO crime business area. Like the noble Lord, Lord Condon, I welcome his appointment as the first head of the agency, and I particularly welcome the fact that he is already at work in the Home Office playing a major role in setting it up.

I would, however, like to put on record one concern I have about the role of the head of the NCA. While I strongly endorse the view of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary that the head of the agency should be a successful crime fighter and that he or she should be given operational independence to get on with the job, I believe it is essential that this operational independence should not—I repeat, not—be interpreted by the head of the agency as the freedom to spend taxpayers’ money as he or she thinks fit, regardless of any consideration for value for money. That is why I very much welcome the provision in the Bill for the agency to be subject to inspection by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary with a view to reporting on its effectiveness and efficiency.

Finally, I return to what I said earlier about our local, as opposed to our national, policing arrangements. In less than six months, on 15 November, the electorate across England and Wales—except, of course, in London—will have the opportunity to choose their police and crime commissioners. These elections represent the very first time that the electorate will be able to express their views, through the ballot box, about the kind of policing they want for their communities. These elections represent an enormously important extension of democratic accountability, and I very much hope that members of your Lordships’ House will play an active role in encouraging the electorate to take advantage of this historic opportunity.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Henig]

My Lords, Amendment 10 is a very modest amendment, like some of the amendments we have had this morning, but I believe it is a very important amendment in the light of current events. Its purpose is to afford some protection under the proposed protocol to senior officers if they resign prematurely by ensuring that HMIC must conduct a review in these circumstances. The amendment would also ensure that the regulations setting out the protocol would need to follow positive resolution procedures. Given the significant impact regulations could have on the practice and the governance of policing nationally, I believe that this is essential.

I would like to say a few words on why I think this improvement to the Government’s amendment is necessary. I, along with many noble friends and colleagues in the House, have consistently raised concerns about the Bill in a number of key areas. We have already heard about these concerns earlier this morning; concerns about whether these reforms will politicise policing and place too much power in the hands of one person; that we need a more corporate approach with more emphasis on good governance and internal regulation; a desperate need to strengthen checks and balances across the whole Bill; inadequate provisions for conduct and complaints, particularly in relation to commissioners, but also in relation to senior officers. Once chief officers become responsible for appointing and disciplining their own senior team, in my view and in the light of the events of recent days, this is a very serious concern. Things have actually been changed by what has been going on.

I acknowledge that the Government have improved some of the checks and balances while the Bill has been in this House—for instance, around lowering the veto majority required by the panel—and we welcome the progress that has been made. In particular, I welcome the government amendment in relation to the protocol which seeks to provide some rigour around protecting the operational responsibility of chief police officers, although my amendment suggests an improvement to these proposals, prompted by recent events. In any event, the devil will be in the detail of the regulations at the end of the day, but my amendment will ensure that they must at least address situations where the chief officer resigns prematurely. Because the devil will be in the detail, I suggest that the regulations need to be subject to positive resolution procedures in both Houses because this is fundamental to ensuring that operational responsibility is adequately protected.

I echo the comments of many noble Lords and Members of the other place about the long and dedicated service of both Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates. I mentioned at earlier stages of the Bill that I did not always agree with Sir Paul, but I have always respected and admired his great abilities and his tremendous commitment to policing. He will be a great loss to London and to the service.

The events of the past week have fuelled my great concern about the future of policing and the impact this could have on reducing public confidence in policing as well as creating instability and uncertainty in the police themselves, particularly among senior ranks. Recent events have dramatically illustrated the vulnerability of senior police officers when subject to the control of a single individual elected on a party political ticket, an individual who is used to operating in a very political environment. The fact is that all senior officers at some time or another need support in difficult situations. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, referred to this earlier this morning and it is absolutely the case. Every now and again they need the opportunity to talk things through on a confidential basis. I know for a fact that that has often happened up and down the country with police authority chairs and deputies and, indeed, with independent members of police authorities. The governance structure has given senior police officers the opportunity to talk to and confide in members and that has helped them in doing their job.

It is quite clear from recent events that individuals elected directly to oversee policing will operate completely differently from police authorities under the present governance arrangements. I am not arguing that that may not have many advantages. The Government have argued that they want a new governance structure and I understand what their reasons are. But I want to point out the huge downsides of this new governance structure, because the individuals so elected, the commissioners, will put their own political career prospects and their own survival ahead of any other factor when problems arise. They will ramp up the pressure on senior police officers rather than work with them supportively behind the scenes. It does not matter what protocol you put in place or whether you say, “This is operational but this is not, and you must not cross this line”, ramping up pressure is of a different order entirely. That is what I am so concerned about. It is for that reason that two Metropolitan Police commissioners have gone in the past two and a half years.

My concern is that once this system is extended to the rest of the country without any safeguards, we can predict fairly certainly that the same problems will arise up and down the country. Chief constables will be driven to resign and police and crime commissioners will boast about how tough they are being and play to the media for effect. That will happen; anyone who is a politician knows that.

Another of my worries is that the effect on the public’s trust and confidence in the police will be enormous. I think that their trust and confidence in the police will go down but their trust and confidence in politicians will not go up. That will mean a poisonous outcome of these new governance arrangements that a statutory protocol will not alleviate. Hence my amendment to have resignations thoroughly investigated by the inspectorate and, if necessary, the IPCC so that at least the public can get a clear and dispassionate picture of what the issues and problems are, free from the distortions of the media or of the commissioner’s account. That is what is motivating me in the amendment.

I remind noble Lords, although I am sure that they need no reminding, that the government Benches have consistently claimed that the London pilot model is a pilot of the proposals for the rest of the country. I do not happen to agree with the Government that it is a very good pilot, but the Government have consistently claimed that the proposals are close enough to act as a test bed and that no other pilots are needed because the London model is such a success. After the previous few days, that rings very hollow and worries me enormously. If London is the model for the rest of the country, then what we are seeing now is what we will see writ large over the next few years.

We are seeing the direct consequence of politicising the police. The senior ranks of the Metropolitan Service have felt the need to employ PR and media advisers, for example, in order to do their job in a political environment and to try to cope with political pressures. Do we really want that sort of scenario to be repeated up to 43 times across the rest of the country as the reforms are rolled out? I am sure the Government will tell me that my fears are misplaced, but I am sorry, that is what I am concerned about.

We live in a complex world. The media play an essential role in enhancing the accountability of the police. The police need to have a balanced relationship with the press, to answer their questions and disseminate information. Obviously, they cannot cut ties with the press and still be seen to be accessible and accountable, but we need to spend time getting the relationship right.

I warmly welcome the recent announcement by the Minister, when she repeated the Home Secretary’s Statement to the other place, that a review of this relationship is to be conducted, but surely we must await the outcome of that review before pressing ahead with the reforms in the Bill. Surely it is madness to do otherwise.

I fear that we are heading for a perfect storm of colliding events in the police world. The first of these, as I have just mentioned, will be a combination of the erosion of public confidence in policing as a result of the phone-hacking scandal together with instability and increased uncertainty among senior ranks of the police. This will be combined with unprecedented demand and pressures on the police with the upcoming Olympics; the Jubilee; the implementation of budget cuts that will affect the police directly but also increase demands on them; the changes predicated by the Winsor and Neyroud reviews on leadership; and more changes thorough the demise of the NPIA and the creation of the national crime agency. Is this really the time to be going ahead with all this along with the new governance structure, which, as we all acknowledge, has serious concerns attached to it?

My noble friend Lord Hunt has warned time and again as the Bill has progressed through the House that the Bill is badly thought through and will require the Government to bring in changes within a year or two to correct its errors if it goes ahead. I agree with him. Recent events have shown the cracks and dangers in the Government’s proposed model. Even if some noble Lords do not accept my view that these dangers are pressing, surely we have to take on board the lessons of the reviews and inquiries into the recent scandals—otherwise why have them? Surely we are going to wait to see what they say. Surely we must ensure that these problems that the reviews will bring up are fixed before any new model of policing is considered, because if we do not, the consequences will be severe and disastrous when combined with all the other demands which are coalescing on police resources. Senior police officers deserve a sense of stability and some certainty that they are not going to be asked to fall on their swords to protect their political masters.

I accept that there are some safeguards in the Bill, although in my view they are inadequate if the chief officer is formally required to resign. As the noble Lord, Lord Blair, has pointed out to us many times, there are ways of persuading a chief officer that he should resign voluntarily if a directly elected individual deems that his or her face no longer fits. Chief police officers deserve some certainty about this scenario too. In fact, it is fundamental to a healthy relationship between the commissioner and the chief officer.

My amendment cannot undo all the dangers and inadequacies of the Bill, particularly those around corporate governance and the woefully inadequate standards regime, but it tries to provide some safeguards for chief officers against losing their job on spurious grounds by ensuring that the HMIC must review all premature resignations. A question arises about whether checks and balances are strong enough and whether we need more of them. I urge the Government to consider this again, particularly regarding the powers of the panel and the ability—or lack of it—of the inspectorate to inspect commissioners.

Although I do not for a minute suggest that either Sir Paul Stephenson or John Yates would come into this category, the uncertainty about tenure prompts questions about whether we need again to consider banning disgruntled former police officers from standing as commissioners straightaway, because of course the Bill does not rule that out. In fact, recent events have prompted so many queries about the inadequacies of the Bill that I feel we must make sure that a strong message goes to the other place about this: a very strong warning about all the problems inherent in the Bill that may result in complete disaster.

With all due respect to the Minister, who is innocent of formulating these proposals in the first place, she has done a sterling job in trying to defend them. I know she has tried to bring about changes. She keeps telling the House that she will go away and seek changes and then she comes back and says that she is terribly sorry but the changes are not possible. We can only speculate about what goes on behind the scenes, but I know that she has battled hard. Surely there is now only one course of action: to pause and think again. We need time to reflect on the impact of recent events and to consider how the reviews being undertaken by the inspectorate and the IPCC need to be reflected in any reform proposals. At the very least, people will surely accept that this is the wrong time for reform. While I hope that over the summer the Government will pause to reflect again, in the mean time I seek to put forward this minimum safeguard to mitigate some of the more extreme possible outcomes. My amendment is really directed to safeguard chief officers’ operational responsibility and to protect their positions from the capricious, media-seeking, and politicised antics of some—not necessary all—directly elected commissioners. I beg to move.

[Lord Wasserman]

Does the noble Baroness really mean that if a chief officer resigns for domestic, private or health reasons, there has to be a published report from the HMIC?

[Baroness Henig]

I say to the noble Lord that what may appear as a private matter may have been caused by months of stress because of wrangles between the commissioner and the chief constable. There are all sorts of things that may not meet the eye. I really believe that we have to think of the public in all this. What is the public going to make of this system, of the new governance structures and of the police? It is important that they see chief constables and their forces as operating above party politics. In a lot of amendments that I have put forward I am trying to help the public to maintain respect for the police and not to feel that party politics will undermine the integrity of the police force. That has been in the back of my mind in all my amendments.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I am sure that if the noble Lord were to move to Lancashire, that could be arranged. Although I think that that would be an interesting and enticing prospect, and no doubt incredibly scary for the chief constable of Kent, I wonder whether the damascene conversion that the noble Lord, Lord Howard, has described to us several times would not have been made easier had his original proposals for police authorities been subjected to a series of pilots. He could then perhaps have discovered at an earlier point that the model he initially favoured was flawed.

[Lord Wasserman]

My Lords, as a former professional social scientist I welcome the enthusiasm in this House for pilot studies. However, like so much else in life, there is a right place for pilots and a wrong place. I am afraid that the circumstances we are discussing are very much the wrong place for pilots. I hope that your Lordships will allow me to explain why I say this and to do so by reference to the findings of academic experts.

The use of pilots in political or social research is discussed at some length in a book which I commend to your Lordships which can be found in the Library entitled, Research Methods in Politics. The book begins by pointing out that,

“there are times when … a trial run or pilot has considerable advantages. In particular, to test the data collection instruments such as the questionnaire and the sample design”.

Indeed, the Home Secretary herself is a great believer in the use of pilots in the appropriate context. In a speech that she gave about two months ago—I am sure that some noble Lords will have seen it—she announced not one but two new pilots. The first was related to her wish to allow the police to charge more offences themselves. She said:

“We will pilot doubling the number of charges transferred to police officers”.

She added that if the pilot was successful and the scheme was rolled out fully, it could save up to,

“40,000 hours of police officer time”.

In the same speech she announced that the Home Office was working with ACPO to ensure that best practice on domestic abuse processes was effectively shared by all forces. She said that the next step was to pilot these new proposals, and that if the pilots were successful they would be rolled out across the country.

However, the circumstances we are discussing are nothing like those mentioned by the Home Secretary or the academic experts. They are classic examples of circumstances where pilots are not appropriate and lead only to a waste of time and money. According to the experts, the classic example of the inappropriate use of pilots in a political or social context—that is what we are talking about—is to compare jurisdictions over time and/or space, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Howard. The experts state:

“There are a number of reasons why comparisons can turn out to be meaningless. Most famously, the condition known as ‘too many variables, not enough cases’. This is a reason why experimental control is rarely an option in political science. Additionally, comparative research is affected by two manifestations of the so-called travelling problem: that is, neither theoretical concepts nor empirical measurements are consistent across temporal and/or spatial settings. In other words, they do not ‘travel’. This diminishes the possibility of controlling for the effect of variables other than those of primary interest”.

Translating the jargon, what these experts are trying to say is that it is impossible to make meaningful comparisons between different times and places because there are simply too many factors in play. However, your Lordships do not need academic experts to tell you that the sort of governance arrangements such as those that we are discussing cannot be subject to scientific evaluation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, to what does the noble Lord attribute the huge reduction in crime in this country during the previous Government’s administration?

[Lord Wasserman]

There were many factors, including effective policing. I do not deny that, but the limit in the reduction in crime has not been reached. Many larger reductions—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, all the indications from preliminary figures are that police authorities are reporting that crime is starting to increase.

[Lord Wasserman]

I have seen that, and I am sure that we will discuss it on another occasion. However, there is plenty of evidence for the changes that individual elected mayors in crime-ridden cities in America have been able to make when they put their mind to it, and when they provided their police chiefs with the political cover and resources to do the job.

[Lord Beecham]

How does the noble Lord distinguish the examples that he has given from those that he said would not be appropriate in the varying conditions in this country? He has just told us that there are too many variables to allow pilots to take place, yet he is citing New York and America as exemplars, and therefore effectively as pilots, for the system that he wishes to introduce to this country. Is that not correct?

[Lord Wasserman]

This is not about using a particular bit of legislation in particular areas and comparing them in an academic research environment. The examples that I am giving noble Lords are of real change achieved by real chiefs with real mayors in real cities.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The core of the noble Lord’s argument against pilots is that he is cautioning us against the spatial differences between different parts of this country and the temporal differences—because this is a different time. Now he is saying that you can draw from experience 3,000-plus miles away, which is quite a big spatial difference, under a different legal system and so on. The temporal difference is that the improvement under Mayor Giuliani happened a number of years ago. I am not quite sure where this argument is taking your Lordships.

[Lord Soley]

In a circle.

[Lord Wasserman]

This is not taking us in a circle. There are lessons that can be learnt from experience everywhere. We know this. We are talking now about piloting, as a series of limited experiments, a particular bit of legislation that is to be reviewed by an inspector of constabulary under research circumstances. That is quite different from learning lessons on general principles from experience around the world, rather than from particular bits of legislation.

The main point that I want to make about the proposed pilots is that any change—even change 3,000 miles away—takes time to take effect. It very much depends on relationships between individual PCCs—a point that has already been made—and individual chief constables. These changes and these relationships will take time to develop. One of our issues is with the time it will take to put these pilots into effect. Your Lordships will remember that, some time ago, in a debate in this House about fixed-term Parliaments, many noble Lords made the point that four years was far too short a time to judge the success or failure of the Government. Now we are saying that four years will be sufficient to judge the effect of these new governance arrangements on the level of crime and anti-social behaviour in this country. I am sure that at the end of the four years, people will say that there has not been enough time to judge the changes. Also, some people will talk about the Hawthorne effect: the fact that the pilots have been successful simply because others have studied them. That is another example of how pilot studies can reach misleading conclusions.

For all those reasons, I do not think that, at this stage, a pilot is an appropriate way to judge the effectiveness of the changes. I suspect that what some noble Lords really want is not a programme of pilots but a staged roll-out programme. That is quite different. Although I have serious practical concerns about that, it is not the same as pilots, which are bits of political or social science research. We are now talking about pilots which must be evaluated before rollout begins, which might, as my noble friend, Lord Howard, pointed out, be as long as six years. We are discussing pilots. That would lead to a waste of time and money. It will prove nothing but will lead to dangerous uncertainty in an area of our national life—policing and public safety—where there is a well recognised and overdue need for change.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Browning)]

My Lords, as the Bill no longer contains the Government’s model for directly elected police and crime commissioners, the effect of accepting the amendments would be to delay implementation of that policy until after long and unnecessary pilots and the completion of a review by HMIC. As we do not support the new model, and will seek to overturn it when the Bill returns to another place, we cannot support the amendments. I have always been very clear with the House during Committee that the Government intend to overturn the deletion of the publicly elected police and crime commissioner from the Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Henig, referred to the number of speakers from the government Benches. I have had many conversations with colleagues on the government Benches. Having now been in the House for nearly a year, I appreciate that on both the Benches behind me and those in front of me there is an independence of spirit, regardless of party affiliation. I am convinced that if Members on the government Benches felt strongly opposed to what the Government are doing, they would certainly be standing up to speak. One cannot judge the number of speakers as a reflection of support or otherwise for the Bill. When a Division has been called to date on the Bill, government Members have turned out through the Lobby, as they did earlier tonight, expressing their support for the Bill.

I shall spend some time explaining why we do not support the amendments on directly elected police and crime commissioners. We have heard many speeches throughout the course of the Bill so far saying that this is a radical change; that we should pilot it before rolling it out; and that we need to ensure that we all understand how it would work in practice before we roll it out nationally. We still are not clear what happens if some forces go ahead as pilots, leaving the remainder behind. Put another way, on what basis will we decide who will be denied democratic control of their policing—in other words, on whom do we experiment? What about issues that arise across forces? Serious crime does not only occur within the force boundary. Interoperability across forces is key to tackling those issues, but with pilots, there would be two different forms of police governance running alongside each other, likely to cause confusion and delay in working across force boundaries. This would be confusing for police officers and for the public. It would also be unnecessarily costly.

For many changes in policy or process a pilot can be a good thing, as we have heard from some of the contributions tonight. However, it is clear that a pilot cannot work effectively when we are talking about policing governance and democratic accountability, as my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne pointed out. Equally, we know that senior police officers share our concerns about pilots. We heard from the noble Lords, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington and Lord Dear, who described this as a risky business. It is a risky business, and I believe that it would create an unequal situation that could potentially be quite damaging. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, also spoke for the noble Lord, Lord Condon, in setting out his concerns to the House. I recall that in Committee the noble Lord, Lord Condon, said that this change needed to be,

“resolved in the quickest and best way possible”.—[Official Report, 24/5/11; col. 1698.]

Also, when evidence was given to the Public Bill Committee in the other place, the Assistant Commissioner, Lynne Owens, said:

“My nervousness about pilots is on how you would choose what those pilots are. One of the concerns of the chief police officers at the moment is how it aggregates to the whole. If you were to choose all large forces or all small forces, you might not fully understand the impact”.—[Official Report, Commons, Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill Committee, 20/1/11; col. 106.]

Questions have been raised about the whole philosophy behind the Bill and about the concept of democratically elected police and crime commissioners. I shall not rehearse the strong evidence base for these reforms, having spoken to them at earlier stages of the Bill. They are based largely on HMIC findings, and I set out in Committee that HMIC has already provided more than enough information to justify them. Therefore, I believe that we should not delay these urgent reforms and distract HMIC from its already difficult and important task of inspecting the police by asking it to use valuable and finite resources to evaluate government policy.

To my noble friends who have spoken on this issue—and I understand that people hold very strong views about it—I point out that it was made perfectly clear in the coalition agreement that we would have PCCs during this Parliament. A pilot goes against both the spirit and the letter of the coalition agreement.

However, it is not just Conservatives and Liberal Democrats who have identified the need for reforms to policing governance; I believe that the Opposition support this concept. Only two years ago, when the shadow policing Minister in the other place was the policing Minister, he said that,

“only direct election, based on geographic constituencies, will deliver the strong connection to the public which is critical”.

He went on to say that,

“under the current system, 93 per cent of the country has no direct, elected representation. This is why we have proposed the Green Paper model; so that people know who to go to and are able to influence their policing through the ballot box”.

I fully accept that the former Labour Government, in presenting this Green Paper, were thinking of a different form of direct accountability from the one that we are considering in this Bill. However, the principle of direct accountability was there. In fact, the previous Government twice proposed a form of direct accountability for policing but they did not proceed with it. They encountered opposition, so I am sure they will understand that we have taken this policy forward with the knowledge that this matter has for a very long time been considered to be necessary by Governments of different political hues. This Government have brought it forward and now intend it to proceed.

The coalition Government share the view that police authority governance needs to be changed and that our democratic form of accountability is important. Change is needed and it is needed now. That is why we do not intend to be derailed by the suggestion of a pilot. I have to put it to the House that the real reason for these amendments is opposition to our preferred model.

The bottom line is that pilots would not be a helpful way to road-test the policy. My noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne used the words “wrecking amendments”, although he was cautious in suggesting that that was the motivation behind them. I do not suggest that these are wrecking amendments, but the outcome of such amendments if passed would have the same effect. You cannot have two systems of police governance running side by side. You cannot say to one area that they have a voice in democratically electing a PCC but say to another that they do not. It cannot be said that there is no mandate for these changes; it is set out quite clearly in the coalition agreement.