Criminal Justice Bill (Third sitting)

Alex Norris Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 14th December 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Okay. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Nick Smart: Good morning, everybody. I am Nick Smart, acting president of the Police Superintendents’ Association. We represent superintendents and chief superintendents in England and Wales; we have approximately 1,500 members nationally.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q Thank you for your time and expertise this morning. They are much appreciated.

The nuisance rough sleeping provisions in clauses 51 to 62 are likely to have an impact on police officers and the work that they have to do. Does the association have a view on that, and on its resourcing implications?

Nick Smart: Yes. With the repeal of the Vagrancy Act 1824, the new measures are welcome. The powers give officers the ability to move people on in certain circumstances, be it rough sleeping or begging. As Mr Stephens from the National Police Chiefs’ Council said, this is a wider societal issue, not necessarily just a police matter. We would encourage the use of these powers in line with our community safety partners to address the issues. We would look at this as a positive step for police officers.

[Alex Norris]

Q Do you have concerns that this will be one of those multifactorial societal problems that ends up with an enforcement-type approach, where we ask you to police our way out of what are deeper social challenges?

Nick Smart: A lot of the individuals who end up in this situation are vulnerable; I am sure you have heard evidence of that. Will it address the root causes of rough sleeping and begging? That remains to be seen. We note that with the one-month imprisonment, there is a potential risk of people being arrested subject to notices and then yo-yoing in and out of the criminal justice system, prisons and so on. If they are in prison for a short time, they are not able to access all the help that they may need. Where sleeping and begging also has that harassment or nuisance element, however, that is an appropriate power.

[Alex Norris]

Q Do you have a view on the desirability of the provisions relating to the police, particularly clauses 73 and 74 on ethical policing and appeals to police appeals tribunals? Would you add anything to them?

Nick Smart: On the police appeals tribunals, it makes perfect sense to us as an association that where officers need to be dismissed, or it is believed that officers should be dismissed, chief constables have the right to appeal to the tribunal rather than going through the rather litigious and expensive route of judicial review.

We are supportive of the duty of candour and code of ethics. Nobody in policing wants bad cops within the organisation. We are overtly cognisant of the trust and confidence issues in policing and of the legitimacy that we all—the public—seek and desire. We believe that the College of Policing needs to come up with some clear and unambiguous guidance for all police officers. If you were to ask a PC, at 2 am, what “duty of candour” means, I think they might struggle to answer, but if the College of Policing is clear with that guidance and rolls it out in an unambiguous manner that everybody can understand, which I believe it will, we do not have an issue. We support that 100%.

[Alex Norris]

Q Finally, you may have seen from the evidence we took on Tuesday that there is quite a lot of interest in vetting. I think we came out with more solutions, in different ways, than we had perhaps anticipated. Where do you sit on what is an appropriate vetting regime that is practical and that gives confidence to the public about the people who are protecting us?

Nick Smart: The purpose of vetting is to make sure that the right people get into the organisation. There is certainly a reputational risk in having the wrong officers in the organisation; we have seen the damage it can do to trust and confidence in the police service. I believe that the measures that the College of Policing will instigate for licence and vetting units are a positive step to make sure that they adhere to a certain standard.

Having His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary review vetting units as part of its inspections is a sensible way of safeguarding and making sure that they are working effectively. As with any issue, if you want to enhance the vetting it will mean more staff, which will cost more. The current budgets are set, so if you put more people and resources into more robust vetting, which is a sensible idea, something at the other end will have to give, because there is no endless money pit for the police budget.

Yes, we welcome it and we believe that it is the right thing to do. As an observation, an officer is vetted at the time of joining, but you could have repeat vetting at some point during their service, to make sure that they still have the appropriate vetting. Also, when you get promoted to superintendent level, for example, you go to management-level vetting, which is slightly more intrusive. If you are a counter-terrorism officer, you may get some even more enhanced and developed vetting that takes more time and resources. We would welcome more robust vetting, and I think most chief constables would welcome it, but it is a question of resourcing and staffing to make sure that the process is fit for purpose.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Laura Farris)]

Q Can I pick up on the issues around police conduct? Clauses 73 and 74 create both a right and a duty on chief constables: a duty to oversee the duty of candour and the relevant code that will ensure it, and a right to submit an appeal of their own device. Is that consistent with feedback that you have heard from chief constables about how they could better manage their subordinates?

Nick Smart: In terms of the appeals process?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We welcome the three witnesses: Councillor Sue Woolley, Conservative lead at the Local Government Association and Safer and Stronger Communities; Emily Spurrell, a Police and Crime Commissioner and justice portfolio lead; and David Lloyd, a PCC and criminal justice portfolio lead. Can you start by introducing yourselves, please? We will start with David.

David Lloyd: Thanks very much, Sir Robert. Thank you for the courtesy of extending invitations to the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners to attend. You realise that PCCs have a strategic role in setting plans and budgets and holding their chief constable to account. We are not operational, and therefore any remarks we will make will be more about strategy—I suppose budgets, specifically—but we are also proudly victims champions. I suppose that is what we have brought to the criminal justice system—there is bias in favour of criminals. I am David Lloyd, and I am the PCC in Hertfordshire.

Emily Spurrell: I am the PCC in Merseyside. To echo what David said, scrutiny and partnership working in particular are some of the areas that we are keen to look at.

Councillor Sue Woolley: I am Councillor Sue Woolley. Today I am representing the Local Government Association. As you have already said, I am a member of the Safer and Stronger Communities Board. As a representative of local government, you will know, and I would suggest, that we are probably the bit of the jam that brings everything together, so that we have the opportunity to work with all those wider partners, including the PCCs, local government and the police force.

[Alex Norris]

Q Thank you for your time and the distances that you have come to be with us today; it is really valuable to us in our consideration. I will start where you finished, Commissioner Spurrell, on partnership. Can you give me your reflections on community safety partnerships and your experience of them? We can go from left to right as I look at the panel.

Councillor Sue Woolley: The community safety partnerships are absolutely important for partnership working at that local level—I must impress that on you—and provide the opportunity to bring together those other agencies that work particularly in the wider scheme of things. For example, under local government you will have public health, which sits with upper tier authorities; of course, they are responsible for things such as drug and alcohol services. While you may have the sharp end, if you like—the police force and the PCC—working with those who have broken the law, it is then the turn of local government and its wider partners to pick it up and put some restoration into the process.

Emily Spurrell: As I said, I think partnership is a key part of the work we are trying to do. As police and crime commissioners, it is certainly very much in our job description that we bring partners together, and community safety partnerships are a good tool to do that.

They have probably had some challenges since they were first introduced many years ago, particularly around capacity in some areas—partly because of funding and because they do not sit on a statutory footing. In Merseyside, I fund the five CSPs that sit within the five local authorities. I give them funding to try to help them drive some of the really local issues that we see. It is also important that, as PCCs, we try to bring them together at the Merseyside force footprint level, so we can try to join that up. We want to try to get the balance of giving the local CSPs the powers and funding to do some really local issues while ensuring that we do not lose sight of how we get consistency and a joined-up approach at the force level.

In terms of some of the issues that the Criminal Justice Bill talks about—antisocial behaviour, nuisance begging and those kinds of issues—we absolutely need to use the powers of partners. We cannot rely on the police to do that job, for many reasons. The CSPs are the place where we can try to bring those people together and say, “It does not meet a police threshold, but we have other powers that we can use.” That is the value of the CSPs all coming together to do that work.

David Lloyd: Emily is quite right: they are very good idea. I think they are variable. In Hertfordshire I have 10, based on the borough council footprint. Some very much want to work alongside policing. They are a very good idea, because community safety is clearly not just a policing issue; that is the most extreme end of it, but most of it is further upstream. But they are variable, and a lot of it is to do with the funding that they choose to put in or not. It is very easy to spend other people’s money on something; it is far more difficult to spend one’s own money on something. Frankly, that can be an issue, so we need to think about that funding and how it happens.

We also have to think about how they can influence the police and crime plan and how we can influence what they are doing. Even though they are fairly mature organisations, things still do not always join up as much as you might expect, especially if there are different political beliefs and different political leaderships.

[Alex Norris]

Q Thank you for all those answers. I want to pick up on that final point. Clause 72 gives PCCs the ability to essentially say to the CSP, “This is what you should be prioritising,” and the CSP has to take that on board and, if it is not acceptable, come back in a formal process to say why not. I am not sure whether that is needed. You have talked about culture, mutual trust and realising that local government tackles the same problems as policing. Is the power necessary? As PCCs, is it one that you would expect to exercise? From a local government point of view, Councillor Woolley, would you be impressed if your PCC or Mayor was to exercise it with you?

Councillor Sue Woolley: I couldn’t possibly comment!

David Lloyd: When they were originally brought in under the Labour Government in the ’90s, I think they were missing teeth, if you like. Perhaps there was more accessible funding in those days, but to an extent I think that they do not have the teeth. Clearly, there is now a democratically elected corporation sole: a person who has that very direct role around community—a direct mandate from the public. So being able to sweep up into what the local council is doing would be very helpful, because we need some way of ensuring that, where common persuasion does not work enough, there are some teeth within it.

[Alex Norris]

Q Should that perhaps cut both ways? As you say, the PCC has a democratic mandate. The local authority does as well. It is elected differently, but it is still drawn from the people—of the people. Are you not concerned that it creates a power imbalance, where the PCC can make that mandate, but the other partners cannot?

Emily Spurrell: From my point of view, if the system was working as it should—again, I am reflecting on my own experience in Merseyside—you should all be talking about the same things anyway. When I look at my CSPs in Merseyside, if they are not all talking about serious organised crime, something has gone wrong. They are all talking about it, because it is an issue in all their areas. There will be some really specific issues that I think CSPs need to be able to look at but, generally speaking, if they are not talking about those issues, something else has gone wrong further upstream. It could be helpful to put this in because then, as David says, there is a reminder that you need that connection. The reality is that if they are not really talking about those things, there are bigger issues at play, in terms of why those same priorities are not being picked up.

Councillor Sue Woolley: I think that if at all possible, when you have partners around a table and they are equal partners, that is a conducive way to good practice and working. I am quite sure that works really well in some places. In my own area, that works particularly well. All partners are equal around the table; everybody works together. I am quite sure that in other areas, that bond may not be as strong. Rather than just legislating for something, I would suggest that, if at all possible, there could be something around a duty to work together. You will know the language better than me.

Emily Spurrell: That actually already exists for PCCs. It is within our duty to work in partnership as well.

[Laura Farris]

Q Mr Lloyd, I want to go back to what you were saying at the beginning about your role in relation to the police—in standing up for victims. With the new powers that are extended to chief constables, and particularly the new duty of candour, how do you see the role of PCCs in ensuring that is effective?

David Lloyd: We of course hold the chief constable to account in a variety of ways and in different places. Realising that there is a duty of candour is another part of the armoury, because it is something that we can push back. I know that this was very much part of the post-Hillsborough legacy. Clearly, that whole lack of candour was one of the things that went wrong. We are good at holding the chiefs to account, and it should happen locally. With this extra duty there, it is something that we will need to be reminded about—it is helpful for us to be reminded that there is a duty of candour—but we can then ask those questions as well.