Police: Vetting, Training and Discipline

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for drawing attention to the conviction last week. Quite simply, it is unacceptable that individuals are involved in that type of behaviour while serving as police officers, undercover or not. She will be aware that there is a long-standing undercover policing inquiry, which is examining issues and will report to the Government as soon as practicable. I am expecting to be able to respond to those recommendations once they are produced.

In the meantime, and this is the important point for the House as a whole, the Government have improved vetting and are committed to strengthening police vetting. The measures that we have brought forward this year and also in the Crime and Policing Bill, which coincidentally is before the House today, are ones which will strengthen to ensure that we root out individuals who are not suitable to hold the badge of honour of a police officer in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, is it not possible to accept that what we have got is a situation, which nobody seems to want to address, where we have a class divide in the police force? We have a situation where people from the working classes join the police force and, unless we move around and start bringing in more middle-class people, we are always going to be running into problems caused by the class division of the police force. I have noticed this over many years.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As somebody from proud working-class stock, I do not accept that individuals who are from working-class stock are more substantially susceptible to committing offences and not being good police officers. I do not know whether that was what the noble Lord intended in his comments, but I will robustly defend police recruiting from all sides of the community, and social mobility, so that people who join the force as working-class officers can one day end up as chief constable. We will ensure that we have proper vetting in place to ensure that people are tested and supported. Ultimately, we have to have a police force that reflects the whole community. That means one that holds proper standards and I commit that to the House.