Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Baroness Doocey

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

Before my noble friend responds, perhaps I may add to the list of things that she might want to mention. As I understand it—I would be interested to know whether I read this correctly—my noble friend seeks a spread of experience. Points can be made about the date and the percentage, but what is important, apart from independence and the perception of independence, is that good practice—there is a lot of it among the police, but it is not confined to the police—could be spread to the non-police investigators and, conversely, that experience from elsewhere might be shared with those who have that professional background.

The last time that I took even the slightest issue with the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, somebody said to me, “Watch it, they’ll all have your car registration number”. However, I drive so slowly as perhaps to be a problem in that way.

We are trying to get to a good mix. Nobody exclusively has the right experience or the right way to approach these matters.

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I thank the Minister—my noble friend the listening Minister—for his positive response. I confirm that I was referring to serious cases —he was right about that—not the cases that should rightly be dealt with at a lower level. I apologise to the House if I did not make that entirely clear.

I am delighted that the Minister has confirmed that, in future, all serious cases will be investigated independently by the IPCC. That is very important. Everyone who has made comments agrees that it is important that the IPCC is not just independent but seen by the public to be to be independent. We can all agree on that.

However, I am concerned about the issue of a date. To me, the words “direction of travel” mean, “Kick it into the long grass”. It would be sad if that happened. I understand the experience of noble Lords who have spoken, and it may well be that the date that I chose is too soon, but there must be a date as a cut-off point. If there is not, it could go on and on; that would be very wrong. We must deal with this issue of the perception of the police investigating the police. That will continue as long as the vast majority of investigators are former or seconded police officers.

Having said that, I have no desire for the IPCC to lose very good officers who are doing a very good job and who have experience. The issue is not to throw the baby out with the bath water. There is time for us to modify my proposal, which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, has agreed that we should do. With that in mind, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Baroness Doocey

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Doocey and I have Amendment 58A in this group. I shall leave it to her to speak to the substance of the regulations referred to. The amendment would simply make the regulations to be introduced under new Section 26C of the Police Reform Act 2002 subject to affirmative resolution.

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, my concern is about the type of investigation that the Independent Police Complaints Commission might carry out in relation to the National Crime Agency. The Government want the NCA to be,

“a transparent and accountable organization open to the public it protects”.

To satisfy those criteria, formal scrutiny and investigations must be thorough and above suspicion. I am concerned that the provisions for scrutiny and transparency in the Bill are inadequate.

I am concerned particularly about how the IPCC might carry out its functions. The Bill gives the IPCC the power to undertake investigations into complaints about misconduct, serious injury, death or other matters at the discretion of the Secretary of State, the object being to give the IPCC oversight of the NCA in broadly the same way as it oversees the police. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, the NCA will have considerable powers—far greater than any police force—so it requires much more rigorous scrutiny on the part of the IPCC.

The situation now is that, if a complaint or allegation is made to the IPCC, it makes a decision as to what it will do to investigate it. It has four choices. The highest level of investigation is an independent investigation, carried out by IPCC investigators and overseen by an IPCC commissioner. The second level is a managed investigation, carried out by a police force’s professional standards department but under the direction of the IPCC. The third level is a supervised investigation, also carried out by a police professional standards department but under its own direction and control. The IPCC merely sets the terms of reference and receives the investigation report when it is complete. The lowest level is a local investigation which is carried out entirely by police.

Despite there being four different options open to the IPCC, the evidence shows that in the vast majority of cases it opts for a supervised investigation, which in practice means that it leaves the police to investigate themselves. This policy is at best questionable when applied to police forces, but is completely unacceptable when applied to the NCA, given the enormous powers that that body will have. It is essential that all investigations into the NCA are independent, carried out by the IPCC and overseen by an IPCC commissioner.

Everyone accepts that the NCA will be handling sensitive and confidential information, but that just increases the need for independent scrutiny. I would welcome an assurance from the Minister that serious complaints and allegations of misconduct in the NCA will be independently investigated so that the public can have full confidence in the processes and procedures.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Baroness Doocey

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, Amendments 31 and 46A are also in this group. I will speak to Amendment 31 and my noble friend Lady Doocey will speak to Amendment 46A.

I need to credit Amendment 27A to my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford who, I think at Second Reading, asked the Minister—I am not sure that the idea did not come to him during Second Reading—whether there should be some sort of protocol to govern the relationships between the various agencies—I use that term in the widest sense—that will be affected by the NCA. We had a similar notion that was pursued during the passage of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act.

Clause 5 deals with relationships between the NCA and other agencies. The NCA can request or require them to undertake a task or indeed can itself be tasked, and there are those with which it has a duty to co-operate, to exchange information and to give or be given voluntary or directed assistance. All of that is easy to say and probably less easy always to implement. These relationships can be tricky. The different organisations will have different, inevitably competing, priorities. They will all have different governance structures. You cannot require people to co-operate with one another. Having said that, I think that the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act did require that and I never quite understood how you could insist on co-operation. There will be different views, not just as to what is to be done but also how it is to be done. All of this suggests that there will need to be protocols—I have referred in the amendment to matters which I know my noble friend will take up, in particular training and the interoperability of equipment—and a mechanism to bring the different agencies together.

Amendment 31 deals with consultation in the preparation of a framework document including the protocol. I thought it was appropriate to bring it in at that point as well. I am not wedded to the arrangements being as I have spelled them out but we need to understand how the Government envisage these things being put into practice rather than just being, as I say, fairly easy words on paper. I beg to move.

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I would like to say a few words about three issues. The first is training. Most of the training that is currently done with police forces tends to be computer-based training. There is a place for computer-based training but mainly to deliver knowledge or awareness. The NCA is going to be a very major body with huge responsibility, and most of the training the officers are going to require will impact on attitudes and behaviour. Therefore, I believe it needs to be done on a one-to-one basis. I urge the Government to consider putting some money into this aspect of the training. I know that one-to-one training is much more expensive than computer-based training but I believe, first, that it is absolutely essential and, secondly, that it will pay dividends because just doing computer-based training will not provide the sort of officers that will be needed for this role.

The second issue is IT. There is no doubt about the IT requirements of the NCA. The intelligence hub that will be at its centre will require major IT and the functioning of the hub will be vital to the functioning of the NCA. There have been many interoperability problems, not just within local police forces but between national police forces. I remember the fiasco when the Metropolitan Police tried to upgrade its mobile data terminal with in-car automatic number plate recognition, which resulted in huge problems. Systems collapsed and had to be rebooted every time the police got into a car. The problem was eventually resolved, but there were basically no systems for several months and there were great costs. I believe that the lessons learnt from that ought to be required reading for anyone who is going to have anything to do with IT for the NCA.

Airwave, the system whereby police radios should speak to each other, is another issue. After many upgrades and after many millions of pounds have been thrown at it—I was very involved in this—there are still problems. There are particular problems with, for example, the Met talking to forces next door. For example, where I live in Hampton, the problems with Met Police radios trying to talk to Surrey Police radios have not yet been resolved. There are going to be teething problems at the very least.

Multiple keying bothers me particularly. Most police systems are antiquated and require the input and reinput of data time and time again. I am not convinced by anything that I have read so far that the Government have looked at this in sufficient detail and given it the priority that it really deserves and needs to resolve these problems. I urge the Government to set up a small specialist group to look specifically at IT interoperability systems before they go much further and certainly before the passage of the Bill through both Houses.

Finally, I turn to Schedule 4 and the regulations about equipment. I would be very interested to understand what this means because it seems to suggest that the Secretary of State is going to determine what equipment the NCA should use. It seems at odds with the idea of setting up a very large organisation under a director-general then to prescribe and insist that it uses particular equipment. That seems to be totally against the spirit of everything else in the Bill. I would welcome some additional information on that.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Baroness Doocey

Thursday 14th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

I hope that I can reassure the House. In discussions with my noble friend, neither of us realised that we would reach this group quite so soon. My noble friend should be able to be here until well after we have got through this group—unless she is going to take an hour and a half, in which case there will be other problems.

[Baroness Doocey]

I apologise to the House if I have got it wrong yet again and I thank my noble friend Lady Hamwee. My amendment relates to the handling of complaints against senior police officers in London. The Bill proposes that responsibility for complaints against senior ACPO officers—that is, officers below the rank of deputy commissioner—should be moved from the Metropolitan Police Authority to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. My concern is not that this would make the commissioner responsible for employing, promoting and disciplining officers—I do not have a major problem with that—but that it would also make him responsible for sackings and, crucially, for hearing appeals against his own rulings. It would remove all the elements of independence and transparency that the Metropolitan Police Authority currently provides and would in effect make the commissioner judge, jury and executioner.

The proposals are deeply flawed because they concentrate too much power in the hands of the commissioner without any proper checks and balances. There is also no effective framework to safeguard impartiality. I am aware of the Government's response to the argument. They argue that it is commonplace for complaints to be decided within an organisation rather than by an external arbiter. However, this fails to appreciate that police officers are in a unique position. They are officers of the Crown who have the power to detain members of the public and to take away their freedom through arrest. Consequently, there is no valid analogy with how other organisations—even the Armed Forces—deal with complaints, conduct, dismissals and appeals. It is in the interest of the police that they should be able to demonstrate an independent element in the assessment of the seriousness and reputational risks of allegations made against their most senior ranks. The Bill envisages allowing appeals to the IPCC, but only at the end of the process. That is no substitute for an independent review of whether standards of conduct may have fallen below those that the outside world would recognise as proper.

Lack of independence also creates another problem. A very likely consequence of the new system is an increase in the number of complaints against the commissioner for failing properly to investigate complaints against ACPO officers under his command. If those making complaints against a senior officer feel that the issue has not been properly or sufficiently well dealt with in the first instance, they will almost certainly lodge a complaint against the chief officer. The whole rigmarole in turn creates an increased possibility of legal challenge.

I believe there is a more fundamental problem. In any closed institution, such as the police, it is common for custom and practice to become entrenched. An independent element is vital to provide a counterbalance and to ensure due process. It is worth considering the virtues of the current system for handling complaints. At present the Metropolitan Police Authority hears complaints through its professional standards cases sub-committee and there is a right of appeal to the Police Appeals Tribunal. This current system is not an accident of history. It evolved to address concerns about the perceived lack of independence and accountability in how complaints and conduct matters had been handled previously. Are we really confident that policing has matured sufficiently to deal with these concerns? The Government seem to be ignoring the lessons of the past and are therefore likely to repeat the errors of the past.

Since the Bill abolishes the Metropolitan Police Authority, the purpose of my amendment is to restore equivalent safeguards to the new arrangements. The amendment would, within London, make the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime the relevant appeals body. It is also essential that the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime has statutory access to all information and systems where complaints are recorded. Without this, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime will be totally reliant on the commissioner advising it of complaint or conduct matters. It would also be unable to discharge the functions proposed in the Bill to ensure that chief constables have fulfilled their duty in the handling of such complaints. The Government’s proposals do no favours to the PCC. They expose him or her to accusations—unjustified, one would hope—of conflict of interest, bias and favouritism. This amendment would avoid these pitfalls without in any way affecting the proper authority of the PCC and the correct limits to his or her discretion. I therefore commend this amendment as a means of preserving the necessary elements of independence, transparency and impartiality. I beg to move.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Baroness Doocey

Monday 4th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I shall speak also to my other amendments in this group. The purpose of Amendments 39, 168, 173, 175, 176, 177 and 178 is to make the provisions of the Bill consistent with those proposed in the Localism Bill. The Localism Bill gives the London Assembly a new power to reject the Mayor’s draft statutory strategies by a two-thirds majority vote. The Bill makes no equivalent provision. As it stands, it would not have the effect of applying the Assembly’s new power to the Mayor’s draft police and crime plan. Once these two Bills become law the London Assembly would have the power to reject any mayoral strategy with the sole exception of the draft police and crime plan. This discrepancy makes no sense. There is no substantive difference between the draft police and crime plan and other mayoral strategies, so there is no justification for the police and crime plan, which is probably the most important of the mayoral strategies, being excluded from the new arrangements. This is perhaps why the Mayor of London and every political party on the London Assembly are in favour and fully support this amendment.

Amendment 171 is designed to clarify whether the London Assembly could appoint independent members of the police and crime panel and whether the Assembly could enable independent members to vote. This has now been clarified by a government amendment, so I will not say any more about this at this stage.

My final amendment in this group, Amendment 180, is designed to give the London Assembly’s police and crime panel the power to require senior Met officers and civilian staff to attend meetings and to provide information. The Government have said that the Assembly’s police and crime panel can request senior police officers to attend. This is completely meaningless since there is no way of enforcing a request. The Government have argued that allowing the Assembly to summon senior police officers would blur the lines of responsibility. I simply cannot accept this. I believe that it is perfectly legitimate for the Assembly to be able to question the Commissioner of Police. The Government have not responded so far to the second half of my request—the part about allowing the Assembly to require senior staff to attend and produce documents. Surely their argument about blurring lines of accountability cannot possibly apply to senior police staff. Requiring either attendance or papers would allow the Assembly to have information on which to inform its assessment of the mayor’s policies, actions and decisions. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I have Amendments 166, 167 and 179 in this group. The first two would allow the London Assembly to determine whether to discharge its functions under the Bill either through a committee or through the full Assembly. At the moment the Bill prescribes. In responding to a similar amendment at the previous stage, the Minister said:

“The first question to address here is why there should be a bespoke committee of the London Assembly called the police and crime panel rather than, as proposed by noble Lords, the functions being conferred on the London Assembly as a whole. The reason is one of practicality. Having a dedicated committee, representative of the wider London Assembly, will ensure that sufficient attention and scrutiny can be paid to delivering its policing responsibilities and would also allow for independent members to be brought on to the panel … This smaller group will be able to focus its attentions on the important business of scrutinising, in detail, the actions and decisions of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime”.—[Official Report, 24/5/11; col. 1800.]

I am not sure whether I can say this of the noble Baroness, but I thought, reading that, it was really rather paternalistic. The London Assembly is a grown-up body, with its current and past members and, I am sure, its future members, and ought to be able to take its own decisions as to the best way of organising itself.

I remember when we were debating the GLA Bill, which became the GLA Act 1999, it originally provided for the Government to deal with, I think, the standing orders of the Assembly. I remember the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, saying from the Government Front Bench, “This is ridiculous. It can sort itself out”. She was quite right then and I make the same point now. There seems to have been some confusion, in any event, on the Government side, because earlier the same day the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said:

“We argue that it is for the London Assembly as a democratically elected body to decide for itself how the membership of the panel should be chosen”.—[Official Report, 24/5/11; col. 1751.]

I accept that this was a slightly different context and a slightly different point, but I argue that the London Assembly as a democratically elected body should be able to decide for itself how it carries out its functions.

Amendment 179 would provide for the Assembly to approve or reject the draft police and crime plan, or a variation, with the veto of a two-thirds majority—unco-ordinated, but the same point as that made by my noble friend. I feel that it is appropriate for the Assembly to be able to treat the plan in the same way as it does mayoral strategies. On this point, the Minister said at the previous stage that it would not be appropriate for the panel to have a power of veto because of the plan being statutory in nature. My short point here is that the strategies to which my noble friend has referred—she managed to say statutory strategies without tripping over the words—are statutory in nature. I do not see that there is any qualitative difference between the two.

Finally, I have two questions about government Amendment 172. I welcome the clarification of the position regarding co-options, but if the Assembly is to be able to fix the number of members of the panel—reverting to my earlier point—can the Assembly create a committee which consists of all 25 members as a result of this amendment?

The third subsection of the amendment states that the,

“panel functions must be exercised with a view to supporting the effective exercise of the functions of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime”.

That picks up today’s theme of the constructive, collaborative and supportive nature of the relationship. I am not quite sure whether the Government might have gone too far on that because, in exercising the functions, the panel or the Assembly might support the best outcome but oppose the way in which the mayor’s office chooses to exercise them.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Baroness Doocey

Thursday 16th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey]

In view of the lateness of the hour, I will be brief. The purpose of Amendment 251 is to move the implementation of the changes to policing in London from October this year to October next year. The Mayor of London and the Government are keen to introduce the new system from 1 October this year and the Bill would allow that to happen. There are two important reasons why that should be delayed.

First, the Olympic and Paralympic Games will take place between July and September next year. There will also be many preparatory events which require large policing operations. For example, the torch relay will start in May and continue until July. That will be a major security challenge. Police officers will be drafted in from all parts of the country to police the Games. The Olympics will affect every police force in Britain, not just the Metropolitan Police. There is absolute agreement that the Olympics present the biggest security challenge that British police have ever faced in peacetime. They will require a policing operation on an unprecedented scale. The Metropolitan Police have spent years planning for every eventuality. As circumstances develop, these plans will need to be updated and revised to take account of issues as they arise. For any Government to allow the police to divert their efforts from this huge security operation in order to take part in a reorganisation is deeply worrying.

Secondly, the mayoral election in London next May could result in a change of mayor. It is entirely possible that a new policing system could be put in place on 1 October this year, designed to reflect the current mayor’s priorities, only to be dismantled again next year if another party wins the election. It is a real possibility that the police in London could face not one but two major reorganisations in the period leading up to the Olympic Games. Reorganisations are disruptive in any organisation. This one will require the police to change all their reporting structures and to brief a completely new set of stakeholders and board members. This is no easy task, as anyone who has ever been involved with policing will say. It will take huge effort and time on both sides. The reorganisation will be work-intensive, expensive and time-consuming. It should happen only once and at a time when it does not conflict with the planning of the Olympic Games. The police must not get involved in a major reorganisation at this time. They must be free to concentrate their efforts and energies on the greatest security threat this country has ever faced.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I support my noble friend in her amendment. She has been absolutely consistent and spoken powerfully on a number of occasions, both in public and in private, about this issue. She has certainly convinced me. I have not told her, but I thought at the start of the conversation some months ago that she was perhaps overegging the case. I do not believe that now. In view of the time, I do not want to detain noble Lords any longer but wanted to put that on record. Similarly, though I do not want to enter into much of the discussion that surrounded Amendment 252, I said during the debate on pilots that I thought it a good idea for HMIC to report on the operation of pilots. That was many hours of debate ago but it is only consistent of me to support a different arrangement but one also involving HMIC and a report to Parliament, as contained in Amendment 252.