Independent Police Complaints Commission

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I totally agree with my right hon. Friend. I was surprised when I found out that that important role in our country had been vacant for so long. I hope that when he comes to the Dispatch Box to reply to the debate, the Minister will explain that.

The IPCC has two roles, police scrutiny and public guardianship. It is charged with investigating complaints independently, and with the fullest scrutiny, but its role does not stop there. Given that it investigates on behalf of all of us, it must communicate and work with the public.

In the case of the death of Mark Duggan, it remains to be seen whether the IPCC fulfilled its primary duty to scrutinise the actions of the police on 4 August, but it is vital that the commission does all within its power to convince the Duggan family and the wider Tottenham community that its investigation is thorough, impartial and independent. Without that, we will be back to the bad old days of the Kent report and the police investigating police, and I hope that the IPCC do not take us there.

We wait to see whether the IPCC will fulfil its primary duty, but even in the days immediately after Mark Duggan’s death it was clear that it had failed completely and utterly in its secondary duty—that of guardianship. Mark Duggan’s family were forced to learn of the death of their son and father from watching television. That is beyond unacceptable. Why did nobody from the IPCC contact the family on the day of his death, when it had opened its investigation? Despite warnings from people throughout the community, the IPCC failed to communicate with the family until two days after the shooting, and even then it was unable to communicate anything of substance to them. That is not good enough.

Despite employing 15 media officers, the IPCC failed to make an appearance in the media to reassure a sceptical public—certainly in my community—that it would investigate Mark Duggan’s death thoroughly, impartially and independently. Its inability to fulfil that responsibility is difficult to explain. There was no direct communication by the IPCC to the affected communities in Tottenham in the hours and days after Mark Duggan’s death. Would it have been too difficult to hand-deliver a letter to residents of the affected areas, reassuring them of the investigation, explaining the known facts and appealing for calm and co-operation? No, it would not—but yet again, that did not happen.

In the absence of any word from the IPPC, a dangerous vacuum was allowed to open up, and rumours were allowed to take hold in the place of hard facts. That is not good enough. When the supposed facts were released to the media, they were quickly retracted. It was put out that there had been an exchange of fire in the incident that led to Mark Duggan’s death, but that turned out not to be true. Why did that happen? Again, that is far from what we would expect of an organisation with the role of public guardianship.

To this day, communication between the IPCC and Tottenham residents, as well as with the wider black community, appears sparse at best and unthinking at worst. That has to change. The magnitude of the IPCC’s task is immense, and some of the signs leave little hope in the strained community that I represent. Two thirds of people have heard of the IPCC, a number that has barely budged since the body was founded seven years ago, but one third of those think that it is part of the police—again, a figure that has barely budged. Ethnic minorities are even less likely to have heard of the IPCC, and they are more likely to believe that it is part of the police. That is the scale of the challenge awaiting us.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of any police investigations in other regions of the United Kingdom, such as Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales, that could be a catalyst for, and an example of, an improvement on what he has described?

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful for any suggestions, and I suspect that the Government will be, too. I know that communities beyond the black community have had concerns about how the police investigate the police, and I am sure that in Northern Ireland there are lessons that need to be carefully reflected on, developed and learned.

The IPCC has to do more to convince a sceptical public that it is truly independent and has learned the lessons of Scarman and Macpherson. I hope that the Duggan inquiry will go some way towards doing that, but the IPCC, given the way in which it handled those initial days, has made things hard and has not lived up to those expectations. What assurances can the Minister give the people of Tottenham that the Duggan inquiry will be thorough and independent? A good start would be to address the shocking statistic that 30% of IPCC investigators are former police officers, and far fewer are from an ethnic minority background. Investigators such as police officers must look like the communities they are working in, and the IPCC must never allow itself to appear simply as a replica of the old Police Complaints Authority. What assurances can the Minister give that those figures will change?

The IPCC can work only under its current powers, and it is time for those powers to change. At the moment the IPCC cannot compel a police officer to speak to it unless that officer is a named suspect in a criminal investigation. The IPCC needs the power to speak to everyone, including the police, right up to the top. Will the Minister assure me that the IPCC will be given the powers to compel police officers to co-operate with its inquiries?

At the moment the IPCC does not have the power to suspend a police officer pending an investigation. The officer involved in the Mark Duggan case has not been suspended and is still working. The Minister will understand that members of the community that I represent find that quite incredible. Will he assure me that the IPCC will be given the power to suspend police officers who have been involved in a death due to police contact?

At the moment the IPCC does not have the power to initiate its own prosecutions following an investigation. In the Roger Sylvester case, as in others, power is often handed to the Crown Prosecution Service, which then does not prosecute. There is an inquest that brings in an unlawful killing verdict, and the families feel very let down indeed. The initial inquiry should have that prosecution power in the first place. Will the Minister explain why the IPCC finds itself caught between the coroner, the CPS and the police in relation to its powers, and say whether he will review what powers are needed following the concerns that have been raised not only in the cases I have mentioned, but in successive cases over many years?

At the moment, the IPCC does not own the scene of an investigation until some time after an incident has taken place. The scene of the Duggan death was not owned by the IPCC until hours after the shooting. That has to change. Will the Minister assure me that the IPCC will own the crime scene right from the beginning in recognition that there can be tremendous concern and anxiety about the fact that the initial officers caught in the incident can effectively own the scene for hours before any degree of independence takes over? The IPCC budget is tiny. It is £35 million a year, which is less than that of every single force in the country.