Criminal Justice Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Alex Norris Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 25th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your benevolent and wise chairmanship, Dame Angela.

The clause confers a new power on police and crime commissioners and other local policing bodies to make recommendations on the activity of community safety partnerships and, in turn, places a duty on community safety partnerships to consider those recommendations. Community safety partnerships will be duty-bound to consider recommendations, but they are not under a duty to implement them. However, if a partnership does not implement the recommendations, it must share its reasons for not doing so with the relevant local policing body, most likely the PCC.

The feedback from part 2 of the police and crime commissioner review, conducted by the Home Office in 2021, was that while the importance of local partnerships such as CSPs was widely acknowledged, they were not being used as effectively as they could be. Every public service should be accountable to the public, and to the local communities they serve. This provision will strengthen the accountability and visibility of CSPs and improve how they work with the relevant policing body to tackle crime, disorder and antisocial behaviour.

No one single agency can address all drivers of crime and antisocial behaviour, so partnership working between policing, local authorities, local education providers, the prisons, probation service, mental health trusts and so on are all very important. This measure will take a step towards formalising more that kind of collaboration.

I take the view, as I am sure other Members here do, that police and crime commissioners as directly elected representatives of the local people are particularly well placed to convene groups. More often than not, they chair the local criminal justice board. They have a lot of public visibility, convening power and influence, and provide visible public local leadership. The provision helps build on and strengthen the work that PCCs up and down the country are doing together. I commend the clause to the Committee.

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Angela.

I am a community safety partnership enthusiast. The partnerships, which were established under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, are a crucial forum for leadership, partnership working around crime prevention and reduction, and problem solving. I chaired my partnership in Nottingham a decade or so ago, and saw at first hand the impact of all those partners coming together, with shared priorities and mutual accountability, in a partnership built on trusted, close relationships and focused on solving problems.

It is with a degree of sadness that I say that partnerships have fallen in prominence and impact in recent years. One of the major challenges these bodies have found, and one of the limiting factors to the proposals in the Bill, is that austerity has bitten the partners that formed CSPs, certainly as regards funding, and partners have pulled away. In many cases, we have lost the shared data and insight function, and some of the things that brought partners to the table. Some of the extras done by CSPs are seen as nice-to-haves, rather than crucial functions.

As a result, there is a danger, certainly in some parts of the country, of the partnerships becoming meetings, rather than problem-solving bodies. Of course, whatever saving is made is lost later, through the impact on the criminal justice process. Certainly, if I ever get the chance to sit where the Minister sits, I will seek to reallocate those bodies and use them to their fullest extent, because we know the impact they can have.

In the meantime, we have what the Government have offered us. I probed the issue a little in our evidence session with the police and crime commissioners, and the real impact of this measure is that we are setting the police and crime commissioner or the relevant deputy Mayor as first among equals, and giving them higher status in CSPs. They are clearly to be given primacy. I thought about voting against this clause, but I talked to PCCs and local authorities, and they have fewer concerns than I do. The requirement is relatively light, in the sense that the power is to make recommendations, rather than to direct. That is probably right, so I have not chosen to vote against.

I have some degree of enthusiasm for what the Minister said about public transparency on decisions and recommendations. If recommendations are rejected, at least there will be an explanation why; that is probably enough. We should make it clear—I hope that the Minister will—that circumstances in which this power was necessary would generally reflect a failure. If a PCC needs to direct their CSP, there is no doubt a bigger problem in play.

What we want—I am sure that the Minister does as well—is a family of organisations across sectors in a community. We are talking about principally public sector organisations, but also bodies in the community and voluntary sector and, to some degree, the private sector, coming together on a basis of mutual trust to identify the common challenges for crime prevention and community safety in an area. They should have agreed priorities and plans based on good-quality data, insight and understanding of what each organisation is doing. Those are all parts of the puzzle. They should work to common goals in the interests of their community. That is easy to say, but it can be a difficult alchemy to achieve sometimes. However, that is what makes change, and that is what we need to see from CSPs. It will drive us away from what we have sadly seen in recent years.

There has been a move to counting crimes, and a move away from problem solving and problem-oriented policing. I have to say, there is minimal value to having one partner able to trump the rest. However, in cases of dysfunction, it will be a valuable asset for a police and crime commissioner or a deputy Mayor for policing to be able to say, “Hang on a minute. We have the ultimate mandate in this area. We don’t think things are working. This is how they ought to work.” Every time this provision is used, it will be a sign of failure, rather than success, but nevertheless it probably does add some value, so we will not oppose it.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 72 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 73

Ethical policing (including duty of candour)

[Alex Norris]

I beg to move amendment 63, in clause 73, page 64, line 36, at end insert—

“(2A) The Code must set out the actions and behaviours which will be considered to constitute ‘acting ethically.’”

This amendment would require the College of Policing’s code to state how police officers are to embody and demonstrate the requirement to act ethically.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 135, in clause 73, page 64, line 36, at end insert—

“(2A) In subsection (2) the reference to acting ethically includes a prohibition on a police officer engaging in—

(a) sexual relationships with members of the public whilst acting in their capacity as a police officer; and

(b) abusive conduct, including domestic abuse or sexual violence, towards any person whether in their role as a police officer or otherwise.”

Clause 73 is amended to make explicit that ethical policing also entails zero tolerance for violence and other forms of abuse against women and girls by police officers and staff.

Amendment 149, in clause 73, page 64, line 36, at end insert—

“(2A) The Code must set out how persons under the chief officer’s direction and control are to act ethically and with candour when discharging their duties in relation to a major incident, including—

(a) their duty to assist with any court proceeding, official inquiry or investigation resulting from a major incident fully, transparently and with proper expedition;

(b) their duty to disclose relevant information related to the discharge of their duties in relation to a major incident which would not otherwise be disclosed under the terms of reference or parameters of the relevant proceedings, inquiry or investigation.

(2B) The duties under (2A) may arise from—

(a) an application by any person affected by the major incident to the relevant court or inquiry chairperson;

(b) an instruction from the relevant court or inquiry chairperson; or

(c) where there are no extant court or inquiry proceedings, a requirement of any judicial review proceedings in the High Court.”

Amendment 136, in clause 73, page 65, line 17, at end insert—

“(h) the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales;

(i) the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses;

(j) the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner.”

This amendment aims to ensure that there is independent external oversight to the Code of Practice from bodies which represent the interests of victims and survivors whom this Code seeks to protect.

New clause 48—Duty to investigate suspects diligently—

“(1) The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020 are amended as follows.

(2) In Schedule 2 (standards of professional behaviour), under the heading ‘Duties and Responsibilities’, after ‘Police officers are diligent in the exercise of their duties and responsibilities.’ insert ‘This includes undertaking diligent searching for, and consideration of, all relevant intelligence related to a suspect.’”

This new clause is a change to Police Regulations. It is designed to ensure that officers diligently consider all intelligence on a suspect, including previous convictions or reports related to that person.

[Alex Norris]

Clause 73 is a significant clause that many outside this Committee are likely to be paying close attention to. I will resist the urge to pile into the clause stand part debate, but the clause relates to ethical policing, including the duty of candour. The duty of candour is the subject of a very live public conversation, following the brave campaign by the Hillsborough families for many years on this issue. Amendments 63 and 149 are in the service of that debate.

Clause 73 makes real the Government’s response to the report by Bishop James Jones, which details the long and agonising quest for justice by those families. The report, “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power”, is characterised by Bishop Jones as

“A report to ensure the pain and suffering of the Hillsborough families is not repeated”.

It includes 25 recommendations by the noble Bishop, and its title alone should focus colleagues’ minds on the need for legislative change, and what we in this place have a responsibility to do. It includes a recommendation for the establishment of a duty of candour for police officers—that is, a duty for police officers to be open and transparent when liaising with inquiries. As we know, that has not always been the case; in Hillsborough, it absolutely was not the case. The report was published in 2017, and it has taken us a long time just to get to where we are. It has been deeply upsetting for families that things have moved slowly; they have fought for so long, and they deserve the vindication of action in this place. That is why there is a degree of sadness that what is in the Bill certainly falls short of the recommendations in the report and the expectations of the families.

The Bill places a narrow requirement on chief officers; I am keen to understand why that path was chosen. Amendments 63 and 149 seek to improve that, and I am glad to have the support of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. There is a limit to what we can do today. The need is for a proper duty of candour that would apply to all public bodies, but an amendment that achieved that would be outside the scope of the Bill, but I seek to introduce that duty at least in the field of policing. Nevertheless, our commitment remains to a wider duty of candour.

First, through amendment 63, I seek an explicit definition of actions and behaviours that constitute “acting ethically”. We are asking the College of Policing to develop a code; it has to be made clear that guidance on acting ethically should explicitly be part of it. I hope that the Minister will say that it will be; I would like that clarity from him in the debate, if not in the Bill. I do not want to prejudge the clause stand part debate, but I hope that he will explain why the code of practice route has been chosen, rather than a straightforward legal duty, which is what we suggested during the passage of the Victims and Prisoners Bill through the Commons; it is now in the Lords. This seems a bit of an indirect way of proceeding, but I am not sure. The amendment at least gives us the opportunity to set out that point.

Amendment 149 sets out what a duty of candour might look like in our eyes. It mirrors a provision that we have pushed in various Bills, and it comes from reflection on the Bishop Jones report, and conversations that my colleagues have had with the families. It gives us much greater detail and clarity on what we mean by a duty of candour with regard to policing, and the subsections relate to different aspects of that duty. It would be a significant improvement on what is in the Bill, because at the moment we are at risk of a double failure. There is a clear failure in that the Government’s plans for a duty of candour are too narrow. Sadly, we cannot rectify that today. However, we are at risk of sending a signal to the public that, although we recognise that the situation is wrong and ought to change, and that there ought at least to be a duty on chief officers, we still feel that we can subcontract responsibility for that to the College of Policing, rather than thinking that we, the democratic body, ought to make our judgment on that duty. The Government have fallen short here. My amendments add that requirement back in.

I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, has lots of amendments in the group as well, but in the spirit of the Minister, I will not prejudge them until I have heard my hon. Friend speak about them. I may pop up again, if need be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

There is obviously a duty to consult various bodies in preparing the code of practice. I know that the College of Policing and its chief executive, Chief Constable Andy Marsh, engages extensively with a number of people. The hon. Lady lists in amendment 136 the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses, and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner. I do not know whether the College of Policing expressly consulted those people in preparing the codes of practice, but I can undertake to ask its chief executive and find out.

I appreciate that the hon. Lady has probably not had a chance to read the documents, because two of them got published only earlier this week. Once she has had a chance to look at them, if, based on her experience and work in this area, which I know is extensive and long-standing, she thinks that some things have not been properly addressed, I am happy to commit to raising them directly with the College and ask that they be addressed in the next iteration of the documents. I am definitely happy to do that whenever the hon. Lady is ready; if she can set down what she thinks is missing, I will raise those issues.

I am told that the three organisations that I just read out, which appear in the hon. Lady’s amendment, actually were consulted routinely on the documents. However, as I said, if, once she has had the chance to read the documents, she finds in them things that are not properly constructed, I will definitely raise them with the chief executive of the College on her behalf. She can obviously do so directly, but I will certainly do so reflecting her advice as well.

I essentially agree with the spirit of all the amendments. However, because of the detail published relatively recently, on 6 December and in just the last few days, my view is that what is being asked for has been essentially incorporated into the documents. As I said to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, if she especially or any members of the Committee feel that things are missing, I will absolutely take them up with the chief executive, should a view be formed that changes would be useful and appropriate.

[Alex Norris]

This has been a really important debate, and I am grateful for the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley. The Minister’s very full answer was much appreciated by us all. Interestingly, my hon. Friend and I focused on two different issues, but they have the same principle at root: the public must be able to expect that public organisations—in this case, the police—are candid, transparent and making their best efforts to do the best job in all circumstances. That should be obvious, but we know that too often that has not been the case, and Hillsborough brought that into sharp relief. Alongside that, in the cases mentioned by my hon. Friend there is a more numerous although less high-profile drumbeat of mundane failure, which has been almost baked into the system. Those will never be the subject of a high-level inquiry; instead, there are people dying in doorways, unaccounted for, unknown and unseen. We should believe that we can do better than that.

I am grateful for what the Minister introduced in relation to the work of the College. I was going to say this in the next debate when we talk about vetting, but we have full confidence in and we believe in Chief Constable Andy Marsh. He is excellent; he has engaged with us on the Opposition Benches and he is always very good, so no point that I make is against either him or the College. The question, for us, is about the degree to which we are comfortable with subcontracting important judgments about how one of the most crucial public services operates to other organisations that we cannot scrutinise in the same way as the Minister and the Home Office. There are times when that is very much the right thing to do, and when we cannot and should not seek to operate those things remotely from here; we would not have the time and it would not be appropriate.

[Chris Philp]

We both have confidence in the College and Chief Constable Andy Marsh—in fact, now is a good time to thank him for the work that he and his colleagues at the College have done. On the subcontracting of important things to the College of Policing, I should say that the statutory code must be approved by the Home Secretary prior to its coming into force. That gives not parliamentary approval, but at least some level of democratic oversight on what goes into it.

[Alex Norris]

If I am honest, that level of oversight might not give much comfort to us in the Opposition, but never- theless that at least gives the code a statutory footing, which is in itself very much valued. We must make the judgment of when we are happy for others to make those decisions and when we believe that it is our responsibility to set a tone. That remains the case, particularly around candour; I will come on to amendment 149 in a second.

I turn to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley. One of the most important things we can say—and I hope that the Minister will say this at some point; I do not think that he has said it yet and it is really important for the amendment—is that we believe that off-duty conduct is relevant to establishing the character and suitability of officers. My hon. Friend’s amendment mentions a couple of cases where standards that we would routinely expect to be met have not been, whether that is in a domestic abuse or sexual violence situation or related to the point around spy cops. We ought to send a stronger signal on that.

I confess that I have not yet had the chance to see the documents that have been published in recent days. I hope that they pass the test that the Government’s own documents often fail around gender. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley said, the Government managed a whole Domestic Abuse Act without mentioning women. We cannot lose sight of what is happening here—it is not exclusively male perpetrators and women victims, but that is largely the case. This is a gendered crime, and we ought to treat our regulation in that way.

I heard the Minister’s point about amendment 136. While we have to admire the College of Policing’s diligence in publishing the code prior to its becoming a statutory requirement, if the consultation has not happened yet there will be a period of time when that work could take place, prior to the Secretary of State signing it off, and for it to be understood that the commissioners mentioned in the amendment would be routinely consulted during the development of the process. The insight that those individuals have on those cases, as we saw in the evidence sessions, is hugely valuable.

I turn to new clause 48. As my hon. Friend said, the public should be able to expect that relevant intelligence is always considered; it is not. The Gaia Pope-Sutherland case is absolutely devastating. If the Bill is not the place for this detail, we need to hear a strong signal that it is what we expect of policing—what the public expect and should be able to expect.

On amendment 63, I think the Minister is right. I am happy to withdraw it as it is covered by the document he mentioned. I cannot quite share his view on amendment 149. We should not misconstrue that what is in the Bill now means that police officers are obliged to act with a duty of candour. What is in the Bill is that chief officers have a duty; what is in the College of Policing’s guidance, at paragraph 4.5, is that that duty to act with openness and—I forget the other word—is then pushed to other officers.

[Chris Philp]

“Openness and candour”.

[Alex Norris]

Openness and candour. But that does not have a statutory underpinning. There is carrot but no stick—that is the point I am trying to make. The code covers chief officers. It will not really cover their staff—not so that we can have confidence that the job has been done with regard to the duty of candour. There is still a gap.

As I have said, I have doubts about whether the Bill is the right vehicle for the change that the Opposition seek on duty of candour, so I will not press that point to a Division yet. But the issue will come back at later stages and in other legislation as well. We certainly do not think that the job has been finished.

[Jess Phillips]

On amendment 135, the Minister offered to sit down and talk to me about what needs to be in the document. On reflection, I will not press the amendment, in the expectation that that will happen before the Bill goes to the other place. We shall see how we feel about the matter then.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I am happy to be the temporary diary secretary on this issue.

[Alex Norris]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Nevertheless, everyone should be very careful that any of the examples they use do not fall into the sub judice category. I accept the hon. Lady’s assurance.

[Alex Norris]

I rise to speak to new clauses 35 and 36 in my name, which concern vetting arrangements for the police, particularly in cases involving violence against women and girls.

New clause 35 proposes that all police officers must be re-vetted every five years—it is currently every 10—and that vetting clearance must not be granted to those who have received a caution or a conviction for serious violent or sexual offences including domestic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking, harassment, sexual assault or abuse, rape and female genital mutilation. Under my new clause, those who fail vetting for such offences would be dismissed.

After so many horrific high-profile cases in recent years, many outside this place would be shocked and appalled to learn that such measures are not in place and that the vetting procedures are poor enough to allow potential threats to the public to wear a uniform that should be a symbol of safety and security. We must tackle this issue head on. We know the police recognise that; chiefs do not want individuals in their forces who have shown through their behaviour that they do not meet that standard. Giving them the tools is important in rebuilding confidence in the police, which is a priority for all of us. The new clause would give chiefs tools to dismiss those people if necessary.

I will make a slight case against subsection (2)(b) of my own new clause on the five years provision. During the evidence sessions, I asked Andy Marsh from the College of Policing what the right period for vetting should be, and he said then, as he has said to me previously, that, if we are not there already, we are on the way towards being able to move beyond timed sweeps of vetting and instead use lifetime interrogation through new technologies. There is often a risk of saying things are AI when they are not AI, but they probably are in this case. Machine techniques can be used to interrogate databases of all sorts, including those that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned, such as the ones in the family courts.

That would make the vetting period moot, because vetting would be up to date. Any time that there is a breach, whether it relates to conduct towards women and girls or broader matters, that would be flagged to a chief straightaway and the vetting could be re-evaluated. That is very exciting, and if the Minister stands up and says that that is where we are going, that would be enough for me, but I want us to be in that place as soon as possible, so I would be interested in his views on that.

New clause 36 is on a similar theme, although there is no high tech involved in it. It would introduce a more straightforward requirement for warrant cards to be removed from officers under investigation for crimes relating to violence against women and girls. To be clear, this is not about prejudging an individual before a full and proper investigation has taken place. They would presumably still be at work doing other duties, or if they were suspended they would still be receiving pay. It is about ensuring high standards and the safety of others. My hon. Friend mentioned life in Parliament. It is rare that we hold better standards than others, but in this place we act differently if a serious allegation has been made, with no presumption of guilt, and I think the public would expect something similar from the police.

The warrant card is both a totem of an officer’s service and a huge factor in how they do their job, but in serious cases—the Sarah Everard case is the most obvious—they can be misused. Individuals at points of stress may act in such ways, so the removal of the warrant card is one way of putting in a restriction. This proposal has the support of Dame Vera Baird and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, who has pushed for the removal of the warrant card in cases of police-initiated domestic abuse.

On amendment 134, in the name of my hon. Friend, I think the public would find it astonishing that that measure is not already in place. Clearly, when it comes to vetting and being secure about who is serving in such important roles, we need full evidence of their character and behaviour. To leave out that proposed measure would be to leave out a huge bit of the fence, so I certainly support it.

On new clauses 33 and 34, I support my hon. Friend’s points about making police-perpetrated domestic abuse a recordable complaint. If new clause 33 is not the best way to do that, I will be interested to hear the Minister’s challenge. New clause 34, which would grant equal rights to make a complaint, makes a lot of sense.

On the new clauses tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), I hope the Minister will talk about how he feels Casey is being implemented. Some of the new clauses, such as new clause 8, overlap with my own. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and I look forward to hearing my right hon. and learned Friend’s case for them on Report.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Scott Mann.)