Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Hope of Craighead

Monday 20th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to raise a point on the wording of the amendment. Three definitions are set out in subsection (5), one of which is “relevant judicial authority”. I have no complaint about the definition itself, but I cannot find anywhere in the proposed new clause where that phrase is used and is in need of definition. I may be wrong. Obviously, this comes after a section where independent approval may be needed, but I would like to be persuaded that the definition in the subsection is relevant to the clause we are being invited to approve.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, although I have not been involved in these cases, I have been involved in the examination of these kinds of cases when I was a member of a police authority in London for 12 years and I still sit on the police committee at City Hall.

Something like the amendment is absolutely necessary because, putting aside the civil rights, human rights and civil liberties of the women and the people involved in the environmental movement whose lives have been trespassed upon for no information and without subsequent charges against them—these were innocent women who were trespassed against—you have to think about the civil liberties and human rights of the police officers involved. Again and again, officers were embedded within environmental groups for long periods of time. It was not like getting into a drug cartel or organised crime of some kind; this was a quite different kind of policing. The police officers have suffered quite deeply afterwards. It is very easy when you are embedded for three months or six months to get to like the people you are working with and to understand what their motivation is, and many officers have come out of this quite damaged and unable to work any further.

There is also an argument about the cost of the court cases in which some of these police officers were involved—they went to court and were charged as protestors and were either convicted or not convicted—because those cases are now being overturned. Two cases will be coming up in the next two weeks in London on this issue. It is costing us a fortune and justice is not being done. We need an independent way of judging and assessing whether or not this kind of action is necessary. It is time that the Metropolitan Police understood how important this is and I hope that the Government will approve the amendment.