Violent Crime, Gang Activity and Burglaries

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Snape for initiating this debate. I have lived in Peckham in south London for over 40 years. I am afraid that it has had its fair share of knife crime. One claim to fame is that we have one of the world’s expert consultant surgeons on knife injuries. His name is TJ Lasoye, and he ought to get a knighthood or something. He spends his time going round schools telling children what the real effects of injuries are. Some children did not believe that stabbing somebody in the temple hurt or caused any problems. He devotes his time to the seriousness of knife crime.

I witnessed an invasion by a gang at King’s College Hospital, where he works. They came to look for the knife victim to finish the job. It was a terrifying experience which affects the local community every day. Having said that, it is a warm, wonderful community. It has more churches per square inch than probably anywhere else in the United Kingdom and so deserves better from the government policy on law and order.

One of the worst aspects of a failing Government treating deadly serious subjects as if they are a game in a children’s sandpit is that it drags all of us and the work we try to do down, and ignores the misery and stress of people waiting for justice, walking the streets in fear or working in a failing service and longing for early retirement. The only way to improve things is to have a general election, but we know that that is the one issue that unites the Conservative Party—not to go to the country until they absolutely have to. I understand that 5 January 2024 is the absolutely final date, so that is 442 days to go.

Although the resignation of the Prime Minister would not improve a single statistic in the sorry state of law and order, as outlined by my noble friend Lord Snape, it would be one of the only other options to achieve some stability. I checked the rules on the pensions of Prime Ministers and senior officeholders—moved, incidentally, in the House of Commons by a former Member of this House, Lord MacGregor. We were on the Committee on Standards in Public Life at the same time in the early 1990s, and I can only imagine what Lord MacGregor’s view of the current situation would be.

Anyway, back to the Prime Minister’s pension. If I understand the rules correctly, she is entitled to a Prime Minister’s pension when she leaves office. I would not like to see her go into poverty like the WASPI women who have been deprived of state pension money because they were not given sufficient notice. The WASPI women did nothing wrong, such as taking the “Great” out of Great Britain. If I have misread the rules on the PM’s pension and she is not so entitled if she goes, say, tomorrow, for the sake of argument, I would be happy to contribute to some crowd-funding venture, if that would persuade her to go.

I was distraught when I heard that Suella Braverman was sacked as Home Secretary yesterday, because the other half of my speech was devoted to why she was unfit for high office. She was Attorney-General in 2020—a government law officer. Not only did she not resign when the Government announced that they intended to override the Northern Ireland protocol, she publicly defended the situation. When Mr Brandon Lewis, as Northern Ireland Secretary, said that the new Bill in 2020 to amend the UK’s Brexit deal with the EU

“does break international law in a very specific and limited way”,—[Official Report, Commons, 8/9/2020; col. 509]

Sir Jonathan Jones, the Permanent Secretary of the Government Legal Department, the most senior lawyer advising the Government, resigned over this statement. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, resigned as a Government Minister in this House—a careful and thoughtful man who took 48 hours to do so.

This was a serious issue leading to serious resignations. Mr Brandon Lewis’s statement was not contradicted by No. 10 Downing Street. Clearly, we would not wish to put Mr Brandon Lewis anywhere near the law and order brief. Oh, wait a minute, he is Justice Secretary. I always have this image of a young urchin in Peckham, where I live, being held by a security officer for stealing juice and a bar of chocolate from the local supermarket saying, “I did break the law, but in a very specific and limited way.”

I turn to one of the aspects of the Government’s strategy to tackle crime and gang activity. I do not have time to deal with the virtual collapse of the probation and social work services, which is a stain on our country. A lot more could be said, if I had the time. But I do want to say something about our police and prison officers. Ms Braverman, when she was still in office, promised the Conservative Party conference that there would be 20,000 more police officers by March 2023. Is that still the Government’s policy? Does it simply make up for the 20,000 reduction when the Conservatives came to power? Is it sufficient when we have 4 million more people in the country? Nothing was said about prison officers. Will the Minister indicate the Government’s plan for recruiting more prison officers?

As chair of ACAS, 20 years ago I participated in a two-day residential seminar on how to improve working conditions in the Prison Service. The issues identified have worsened tenfold since that time. If prison officers are not valued for the important work they do, how will we achieve better safety, security and skills training in our prisons?

The noble Lord, Lord Snape, has already referred to Ché Donald, the national vice-chair of the Police Federation, who said that the increase in the number of police officers is desperately needed, but also pointed to other issues of stress and disillusion, pay and the impact of unfair discriminatory pension changes. These are such basic HR issues that only a Cabinet of millionaires could fail to see their importance. The pensions issue alone, capping the pension contributions of public service pensions, has had the consequences that I predicted when it was first imposed—a 10% cut. Ask any HR officer if he would like to hang on to 10% of his staff and not lose those skills, training and experience—

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I remind the noble Baroness of the eight-minute speaking time.