Police: Independent Police Commission Report

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I, too, add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for introducing the debate. The report is incredibly useful. Although it is in a sense an academic exercise, it is also a valuable contribution to our discussion of policing today. It also contains some solutions. I pick out, for example, the concept of chartered police officers. That is a very good idea. I fear that the Government’s idea of a code of conduct does not go far enough. A code of ethics will not do as much as a system to charter officers to ensure that if they commit misconduct of any sort, they can be struck off.

The issue of databases is also interesting. There is a technological view of it, but there are much bigger problems with databases. For example, the Met itself has no idea how many databases it has and does not know what is in them. I recently paid £10 and got my police file. It was the most appalling mishmash of trivia that you have ever seen. I have a copy here, if anybody would like to read it. For example, it cites the Metro newspaper, which states:

“London Deputy Mayor Jenny Jones is also encouraging. ‘If you’ve never been’”—

to Critical Mass—

“‘then come along’”.

I will not bore you with the others, which are moderately amusing at times. Here is one which is from a tweet of mine:

“Open-source research indicates that Green Party Member Jenny Jones has tweeted that she a Green Party Mayor candidate is attending the Critical Mass vigil”.

If that is the sort of thing that the police are keeping on their database, we are wasting a lot of police resources. We ought to find out a little more about those databases and what is in them.

There is also the question: why are they keeping a database on an elected person? That is inappropriate, irrespective of the inappropriateness of the information that they are keeping.

I thought before it was introduced that the system of PCCs was badly flawed; I argued against it in many places, but it has happened. Unfortunately, it is too soon to call it a failed experiment. It is failing in many places, partly because of the model of a very strong executive and very weak scrutiny. That just does not work. The PCC is often failing to hold the police to account, and then we have panels that cannot hold the PCC to account. From a democratic and accountability point of view, this has been the most appalling mishmash. Honestly, it is too soon to say that it has failed completely, and it would be appropriate to find a better system before we scrap it altogether.

There is also the suggestion of melding the HMIC and the IPCC into an independent police standards commission. That is an interesting idea, but the fact is, of course, that the IPCC has done some valuable work. What it might be appropriate to do is perhaps to fund it properly for a couple of years and see what it can achieve. It has recently been given more funding, which means that it can employ more inspectors. It also perhaps ought to employ fewer ex-police officers. If it were funded properly, it could probably do its job properly. That is one recommendation that perhaps lacks a little sharpness.

Although this was, in a sense, an academic exercise, policing is not academic; it is a reality. As we debate today, there are real policing problems around SOAS and the University of London, where students are protesting, and where a lot of messages, tweets and e-mails are going out saying that the police are being brutal. This is happening here on our streets in London now, and we, I think, are failing the Met by not giving it very clear instructions about how to behave in circumstances like these. It is extremely worrying that this is happening at the moment. I would probably normally be up there and not here. I would be up there trying to talk to the Met and to students to find out what is going on, and if anything can be done to make the situation better.

The report is interesting to read. It has lots of valuable stuff in it, and one or two of the things, I think, could be done immediately. It might be a gesture of real solidarity across the Chamber if some of these suggestions were taken up.