Queen’s Speech

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD)]

My Lords, I remind your Lordships of my registered interests and, in particular, that I now chair the independent reference group for the Police Federation of England and Wales.

During the last general election, for the first time that I can remember, law and order was hardly on the agenda of the political parties. Indeed, this is the first time I can remember in the 16 years I have been in this House when the gracious Speech has not referred to specific policing changes in a police Bill, although the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, has spelt out some of the measures. So I felt it important to mention policing in general terms, and the Police Federation in particular, to ensure that this vital service is clearly recognised as crucial to how our country is governed.

Since 2010 the police service has lost 17,000 officers and 17,000 police staff. That is equivalent to nine entire police forces, or every single police officer in the south-east from Cornwall to Kent. Despite this, we are told that crime is down and more cuts to policing are envisaged. However pleased we should all be about the reduction in crime, it tells only part of the story. Child sexual exploitation is up; counterterrorism incidents are up; the management of sex offenders in the community is up; dealing with people with mental health issues is up; being used as the service of last resort, especially police cells having to be used as places of safety, is up; sickness levels are up; the number of officers owed days off in lieu is massively up; and incidences of violent crime, especially violence directed at police officers, are also up. I could go on.

It is therefore not quite the rosy picture painted for us by the Home Office. “Cuts have consequences” was the mantra at the recent Police Federation Conference, but that was roundly rejected by the Home Secretary, who accused the federation of “crying wolf”. But you simply cannot continue cutting a service that delivers 24/7, 365 days a year to our citizens without reducing its efficiency in so many ways. Neighbourhood policing will disappear as officers are pulled away to attend to serious crime incidents, and cuts in other community services, such as reducing lighting at night and the closure of youth centres, will only exacerbate the pressures on the police—who so often have to pick up where other services fail to deliver.

I have been involved in policing for almost 40 years and I truly do not believe that I have ever known morale in the service to be lower than it is at present. Police officers want to do a good job. They want to protect communities and ensure good order. But because their numbers are now at a critical tipping point, they fear that they will not be able to fulfil their roles for much longer.

I should say a word about the Police Federation as a whole. The organisation is undergoing massive restructuring and is in the process of implementing in full the recommendations of the independent review by Sir David Normington which the federation itself requested even before the Home Secretary berated it so fiercely last year. I want to tell your Lordships that an enormous amount of work is going on at federation headquarters, but it will take time to turn round an organisation that was more or less unchanged in its structure for almost 100 years. I therefore give the Government notice that I will be putting down a prayer to seek to overturn Statutory Instrument 2015 No. 630, which was made on 9 March this year and came into force on 2 April. I will use that debate to explain just why I feel so angry that there is an intention to interfere with internal federation matters which should not be subject to an order by the Home Secretary.

I understand but profoundly disagree with the Government’s eagerness to curtail the so-called powers of unions. However, police officers are subjected to a great many more strictures in their working lives and strictures on their industrial rights. To deprive the Police Federation of its funding by suggesting that officers do not need to be members of the organisation, but that the federation must represent them if an officer requests it, without having paid anything into the federation coffers, is utter madness. How can the Police Federation possibly function on that sort of calculation? Perhaps I am being naive. Perhaps that is just what the Government want: to take away the federation’s power of representation of its members and, hey presto, the police are fragmented into regions and branches. No, it is vital that the police have a strong and well-run organisation to represent them. I and my colleagues will do what we can to help them reform and renew so that they can again be represented with integrity and transparency.