Operation Conifer

Lord Bishop of Salisbury Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for his doggedness in persisting with this, and the other Members of the House who have also done so.

I come at this from something of a different angle. We are dealing with an extremely difficult issue as a society. The Church of England knows something about it—but so do we all. This is really difficult stuff. It would not be enough to have an inquiry into the seven unresolved and said to be unsubstantiated allegations. It is about what we have learned from our experience, about good practice, about what has gone wrong and about how we develop things for the future.

The persistence in asking for a review has much more in it, because it is not right to elide from one operation to another in the way that has happened in this debate, where I think some untruths have been spoken—I am sure unintentionally. We are collecting this stuff together and we need forensically to analyse what is going on in these different cases.

There is an opportunity to learn from Operation Conifer for the good of the country—for the good of all of us. Some important principles are at stake. Salisbury has the best of the earliest copies of Magna Carta. No one is above the law. That is a really important principle for us. Victims must have the confidence in every circumstance to make complaints which are then properly investigated by the police.

We do not know the evidence in relation to the 42 allegations, of which seven remain allegations that would have been investigated under caution, because they have not been published. They were viewed by an independent scrutiny panel. That gives us some assurance that there must be something there—but we do not know.

What is to be made of this? There is clearly a problem about the reputation of Sir Edward Heath. That point has been made repeatedly in the House and elsewhere and put well tonight. I am grateful to those who, in the latter stages of the debate, spoke about the reputation of the Wiltshire Police. That matters to me a great deal. It does not help, without evidence, simply to make allegations which do not or will not necessarily stand up. Wiltshire Police’s reputation also needs reviewing to get this on to a basis where we can have confidence in one another.

Had Sir Edward still been alive, he would have been interviewed. He is not. The matter would have had to have been decided in a court of law. It cannot be. Would that the Church of England had learned from that. When the Operation Conifer report was published, I felt that that was a helpful principle to establish. But there will be more lessons to learn from it—for both Sir Edward’s reputation and for Wiltshire Police, but also for the country at large. In the very difficult process that we are going through, an independent, probably judicial, review would be very helpful to establish what lessons can be learned from this. This is not a matter to be financed just from Wiltshire: the police and crime commissioner has made that clear. This investigation was conducted on behalf of 14 forces. Therefore, it is appropriate to put this as a problem to the Government and to say that a review needs to be undertaken for the good of all.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for securing today’s debate. I also welcome the Minister to her place on the Front Bench—and I accompany that with a note of sympathy. One or two noble Lords have asked the Minister to deviate from her brief tonight. I hope they realise that that can be a seriously career-limiting activity.

I will be brief. Your Lordships’ House is familiar with the context and details of this issue, as it has been raised a number of times in Oral Questions and debates over recent months. It is a complex area of huge significance to the operation of our criminal justice system, and to our efforts to ensure justice and to prevent and protect against serious crimes of sexual abuse. Victims who come forward—those accused, and the public—must be able to have confidence in our police forces to run just and professional investigations into allegations of this nature. It must be stated that it is right and proper for allegations against a prominent public figure to be investigated, as they would be for a person without such standing. With those investigations, though, comes an increased obligation to be responsible about what information is put into the public domain.

This debate has provided many questions for the Minister regarding noble Lords’ concerns over how the operation was managed, the role of the local PCC, and what consideration was given to the establishment and funding of an independent inquiry into Operation Conifer. I look forward to the Minister’s reply on these issues.

Following Operation Midland, Sir Richard Henriques published his findings on police handling of that investigation, including analysis of some serious failures. At the time we said that the details of the report should be used to strengthen police procedures for both the investigation and the treatment of suspects—but, crucially, that changes must not be used to downgrade the seriousness of allegations or to make it harder for victims to report a crime. With that in mind, I have two questions for the Minister.

First, can she tell the House whether she is aware of any work to spread best practice between police forces on their operational handling of investigations of this nature, and to prevent the repetition of mistakes such as those that occurred in Operation Midland? Secondly, even while we debate the important issue of access to justice for a person who is accused, we must also keep in our sights the injustices that are faced daily by victims of these crimes. Rape and abuse are woefully underreported and have low conviction rates. The most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that 83% of people who had been the victim of a sexual offence did not report their experience to the police. Will the Minister update the House on what work is being done to encourage the reporting of these offences, and to ensure that police officers are adequately trained to respond to a victim who discloses this kind of crime?