Police: Restoring Public Confidence

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for bringing forward this important debate and all participants for their thoughtful contributions.

Some 20 years ago, when I was chair of my police authority, I made it a rule to take us around north Yorkshire in order to let its residents have the opportunity to see us in action, so to speak, and let them ask whatever questions they wanted during the meeting. I do not recall at any time, over all the years I chaired it, anyone saying to us that they had lost confidence in the police.

Contrast that with today’s findings. In the past five years, 4.3 million anti-social behaviour reports have gone unattended. More than 2,000 such incidents went unattended by police each day last year, and some forces attended fewer than one in five incidents. The Crime Survey for England and Wales found that from 2017-18 to 2021-22 the number of people who thought the police were doing a good job fell from 62% to 52% and that overall confidence in local police fell from 78% to 69%. I am indebted to Richard Brown and Abbi Hobbs for these statistics in their excellent POSTnote 693. For clarity, POST is the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

Analysing Home Office statistics released just this week, we find that, on average, 574 burglaries went unsolved every day in 2022, making a total of 209,424 unsolved burglaries across England and Wales—a 10% rise compared with 2021. So great is the fear of local crime that a poll commissioned by my party found that 40% of UK adults had installed new home security systems in the past year, 1.5 million crimes went unsolved across England and Wales in the first three quarters of 2022 and 25% of adults do not go out after dark because of the fear of crime. Is it any wonder that trust in the police has fallen so much?

In November 2022, a YouGov poll of more than 5,000 UK adults found that 49% of them had confidence in the police, compared with 58% in January 2019. That was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, and the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, who mentioned other examples, notably the BBC poll. There was also a 10% drop in trust in a survey from More in Common—probably not surprisingly, as it was conducted shortly after the sentencing of the former MPS officer, Wayne Couzens, after he abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard. The End Violence Against Women Coalition found that 47% of women reported that they now have less trust in the police following that and other high-profile assault cases.

Cases of police misconduct and evidence of a culture of misogyny have demonstrated why women and girls’ confidence in policing is at an all-time low. The National Police Chiefs’ Council’s first violence against women and girls benchmark found that between 1 October 2021 and 31 March 2022 there were 1,177 recorded cases of police-perpetrated VAWG allegations. These included domestic as well as sexual abuse, and Refuge, which works on behalf of women and girls who are victims of such violence, reports that those victims are finding it difficult to trust the police when they are constantly hearing about police-perpetrated VAWG.

The excoriating review into Sarah Everard’s murder undertaken by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey of Blackstock, which we have heard referred to a number of times this afternoon, highlighted a large number of areas where the police had failed to deal with the criminals in their midst and her report makes very difficult reading. She reported on how the Metropolitan Police Service had to change and gave her advice on how to achieve that. It should be the blueprint for all forces to look internally and make those cultural changes that are now so necessary.

His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services has called for all forces to prioritise reports of violence against women and girls. Operation Soteria Bluestone, the Government’s own rape review, is aimed at developing a new national model for investigating rape and serious sexual assault. Was this intended simply as an annual report, or is it ongoing? Can the Minister give the House an update on its findings?

We must now address why all this has happened. Your Lordships will not be surprised that I believe there to be a direct correlation between loss of trust in the police and the numbers of officers, including community support officers, whose numbers have dropped by an average of 33% in England and Wales since 2015. We will be told, I am sure, that the Government have provided, or are about to provide, an extra 20,000 police officers, but can the Minister tell us how many police officers have been lost or have retired from the service in that time? I do not expect him to answer that today but if he could write to me, I would be grateful. Losing experienced officers and recruiting new ones might go a long way towards explaining loss of trust in the service.

Police managers have a huge responsibility here. Where is their continuing professional training and what is being done to support them? Sergeants, inspectors, superintendents and chief constables are all responsible for ensuring good conduct and rooting out the so-called bad apples. Basically, it is the overall culture and behaviour of police officers that needs addressing. A number of noble Lords have mentioned this, notably the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who gave us vivid examples of police overreaction. I will not go into past painful recollections of my own dealings with badly behaving officers, but suffice it to say that I do not believe that much has changed within police culture. That is a shame, because it takes only a handful of rogue officers in each force to shape the public’s image of policing as a whole.

Police managers must grapple with ridding themselves of these abhorrent officers, who should never have been recruited in the first place. The vetting procedures need urgent attention. When an officer is found to have behaved badly, the chief constable must be able to dismiss that officer quickly and easily. This was always a huge bone of contention when I was chair. The frankly ridiculous amount of time that it took to get to the point of dismissal was utterly depressing. It seems that nothing much has changed, so can the Minister update us on any proposals that the Government may have about that?

How do we restore that lost trust? The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, mentioned a number of things that might be done. I too suggest a number of measures. It starts as soon as we appraise new recruits. Vetting them is crucial, as the noble Lord, Lord Browne, referred to. We must find a process that will weed out those unsuitable for the office of police constable. We must ensure that training is carried out properly and is continuous. Forces now do their own training, mainly. In my day, recruits went to training schools. At least then they were all learning the same basics.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, rightly highlighted the importance of human rights obligations for the police. I agree with her. They should quickly weed out unsuitable people, urgently revise the misconduct procedures and make accountability more transparent. At the moment, this is vested in police and crime commissioners—your Lordships know my antipathy towards them. I will not dwell on it, but six police forces are now in special measures; just one was when I was vice-chair of the Association of Police Authorities. PCC costs have rocketed to over £100 million as officer numbers have fallen. Those outrageous costs could have funded an additional 3,830 community officers on an average salary of £26,634.

We must ensure procedural justice, to make people feel that they are treated in a fair and just way. Perhaps treating people with fairness, respect, trustworthiness and neutrality would also help. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, helpfully mentioned a statutory duty of candour, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, suggested that we consider having a police ombudsman—a very interesting thought. Most importantly, however, we must get back to community policing, with a police officer who knows their beat and their locals and is visible to them. Community engagement is the golden thread that brings the police and public together to deal with crime. It is the way we do policing in this country.

We were once proud to say that we had the best police service in the world, but we have lost our way. I hope that we can say again that we are proud of that service as soon as possible, but I fear that it will take rather a long time.