Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part one): House of Lords
Wednesday 26th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand absolutely the objective of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and I have a lot of sympathy with what he is trying to get at. However, perhaps there is also need to look at the extent to which the public who have been victims of crime are also kept informed of the progress of investigations into those crimes. In exactly the same principles that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has outlined in terms of complaints against police officers, ought they perhaps also be applied to people who have been victims of crime?

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

I am slightly concerned about the phrase “provisional findings”, because it does not define when that is in an investigation. I should declare an interest that I was head of the complaints investigation branch of the Metropolitan Police Service, the subtitle for whom was the “Prince of Darkness”. One knew the provisional findings, but one had that word “provisional” in front. It slightly worries me that we are pushing a process forward where the complainant is given information that new information then changes. It feels an odd thing to be doing. I would like to know why it has been withdrawn in this Bill, as it may have been withdrawn on quite sensible grounds.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, the current process for keeping complainants and other interested persons updated on the handling of their complaint is overly complicated, with Sections 20 and 21 of the Police Reform Act 2002 heavily prescriptive on what exactly a force, or as the case may be the local policing body or IPCC, must do and when. This often results in a box-ticking process and perverse outcomes rather than any genuine consideration of what is best for the complainant.

The Bill simplifies this process. Clause 14 amends Sections 20 and 21 of the 2002 Act to create a broad statutory duty on forces to ensure that they keep relevant parties updated on the progress of the handling of the complaint, the outcome of the complaint, and any right of review. This allows for many of the various notification duties on appropriate authorities currently scattered throughout Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act to be consolidated into one place, and for Sections 20 and 21 of that Act to be extended beyond just complaints where there was an investigation.

This broad requirement is in line with the wider changes to the complaints system where the various routes for resolving a complaint—for example, disapplication, discontinuance and local resolution—have been replaced with a general duty to consider the reasonable and proportionate response to a complaint. Greater discretion for forces in deciding how to keep the relevant parties updated on progress reflects the wider intention to trigger a culture change in forces in the handling of complaints. We want a system that encourages proper consideration to be given to the needs of the complainant, rather than officers simply following a very set procedure regardless of the nuances of the case.

I want to reassure the noble Lord that the Government fully expect that where there has been an investigation into a complaint, updating complainants on the progress of the handling of the complaint will include forces informing them of any provisional findings of that investigation. In keeping with the overall intention to simplify the complaints system and to empower forces in how they deal with complaints, this is not something we consider is necessary to prescribe in primary legislation. Instead, it is for the IPCC to consider whether what is meant by updating on the progress of the complaint is better explored in IPCC statutory guidance. Guidance may be able to better reflect best practice and the principle that all cases need to be treated slightly differently.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris, asked about keeping victims of crime informed on progress. He makes a valid point about victims of crime, but this is not a matter for these clauses. We have a later amendment about the rights of victims of crime.

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[Lord Blair of Boughton]

Perhaps I may intervene again—and again I declare my interest as a former commissioner. The mailbox of the Metropolitan Police is pretty large and contains lots of complaints about the fact that the commissioner has failed to do something. The commissioner is probably blissfully unaware of thousands of complaints. Is it being suggested that, every time somebody says, “I wish to complain about the Commissioner of Police of the metropolis because Constable Such and Such did not put a ticket on a car outside my house”, that is a complaint against the commissioner? It would be the same for chief constables.

There is a sense here that we are losing sight of the scale of the mailbox. There is a famous story of one of my predecessors who came from outside the force finding out that not all letters that were addressed to the commissioner came to his office. A week later, he realised why—when the mailbags fell in through the door. There has to be a level of reasonableness and, at the moment, I am not hearing that reasonableness. I am hearing the idea that everything will be sent to the IPCC or investigated by another chief constable. We could block the entire system unless we get a degree of reasonableness—and I am not sure where that is going to appear. I put that surmise to the Minister.

[Lord Swinfen (Con)]

Will my noble friend look at the practicality of the matter, which has been so well explained?

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[Lord Condon (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here at the start of this grouping; I intended to speak but I was slightly delayed. I want to add my support to the Government, to the Opposition and to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for moving these amendments. It is vital for public confidence that there should be no sense that police officers, once retired, can somehow escape the consequences of actions that, in other circumstances, would have been dealt with by discipline. Certainly, as a former commissioner, I accept that until I draw my last breath I should be accountable for everything that I did during my time as a police officer. I say that with a clear conscience but, if there were any aspect that could have led to a criminal case or disciplinary case, I would of course want that to be tested and examined with the full rigour of the law or disciplinary process, and I would want the same to apply to other people who had retired.

My only reservation—it is not even really a reservation—is that, for more junior officers in particular, a line can never be drawn under their service and what they did as police officers, and they should be held accountable. I think that they and their relatives would take comfort—when looking at an incident that was, perhaps, 20 or 30 years old, where the law, public morality around an issue, or cultural issues may have changed—that there is some test that prevents vexatious or frivolous complaints from that earlier time being put into a process. I take enormous comfort that in, for example, Amendment 142 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Paddick, there is a pretty high bar that the Secretary of State has to determine that investigating and, if appropriate, hearing a case is both necessary and proportionate. Those words will be of enormous comfort to the vast majority of retired police officers—men and women who have sometimes put their lives at risk serving the public. They would want to feel that their honourable service has been recognised. I wholeheartedly support the Bill, what is behind these amendments and the spirit of the amendments moved by the Opposition.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I also apologise for not joining this particular part of the debate earlier. I absolutely agree with and amplify what my noble friend Lord Condon has said. Part of the difficulty for some of the most senior officers in the system, which my noble friend and I and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, obviously are—we therefore have to declare interests to your Lordships—is that you end up during your period of service, particularly the period of top command, with cases that are headlines for years and which are investigated and investigated. It would mislead the House to say that my noble friend Lord Condon and I have not spoken about it—we have, although not in the Chamber. I urge those putting forward Amendment 142, the Government and the Opposition, to keep the words “necessary and proportionate” in mind, otherwise there is no end to some of these cases. This is a matter that our legislature needs to think about as it brings forward this kind of amendment. I agree absolutely with my noble friend, and I am sure that I speak for other noble Lords who have been senior police officers, that this is the right way forward.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have responded to both the government amendments and the other amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, talked about the ultimate sanction for someone who had retired. The ultimate sanction is that the officer is found to have committed gross misconduct at a public misconduct hearing, with the panel finding that the officer would have been dismissed, and, therefore, as a consequence, should be added to the police barred list. Inclusion on the police barred list would see the officer banned from any future service in policing and added to the published list for a period of five years. Perhaps the noble Lord was referring to a police officer in this situation who had retired anyway and had no intention of going back into the police. However, if I had served 40 years in an organisation, such a judgment would be a pretty awful outcome for my career. Therefore, although there would be no actual effect on the person’s life, the ultimate judgment of misconduct in public office would fulfil that purpose.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Wednesday 26th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Henig (Lab)]

I support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, in the strongest possible terms. In doing so, I declare my interests as recorded in the Register of Lords’ Interests.

In my long police experience, both in Lancashire and nationally, superintendents and chief superintendents have been the indispensable filling in the police sandwich. Powers from the chief constable and his or her team are delegated down to them, and in turn they take command of and lead the ranks below them. They are the ones who head up important basic command units. They sit on council community safety panels and a range of other local bodies. They establish important relationships with borough council clerks and with council leaders. They were during my time as a police authority chair, and I am sure they still are, the most essential of all the ranks—the indefatigable heads of department, the middle managers just below senior rank, the leaders of the future and the officers with years of constructive practical experience. They are the ones who authorise a range of practical policing strategies in districts, who largely deal with the queries of local Members of Parliament and of councillors, and whose experience is essential to the force. Policing could not be delivered effectively without them.

So why should the rank not be prescribed in legislation, given the centrality of their role? A force would struggle without superintendents—they would have to be reinvented. Indeed, I seem to remember that in the early 1990s the Sheehy report recommendations included the abolition of the rank of chief superintendent. That abolition did not last very long—the rank was reinstated a decade or so later, and I was not in the least surprised. In the light of that experience, I support the amendment that the rank of superintendent should be listed alongside that of constable.

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I have not read the speeches of the two noble Baronesses. I am about to make a speech on an amendment that I am about to move. I can only say that it completely dovetails with what has just been said. I am not entirely certain that the superintendent is the most important rank in the police service, but I probably have a special interest in some of that. However, I absolutely subscribe to the point of view that superintendents are the workhorses of governance and practice and I support this amendment.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I support to an extent the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond and the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. Clearly, superintendents, as my noble friend articulated at length, play an essential role, which is recognised extensively in legislation.

Also in this group, I and my noble friend Lady Hamwee intend to oppose the proposition that Clause 46 stand part of the Bill. Clause 46 allows the Secretary of State by regulations to specify the ranks that may be held by members of police forces other than chief officers of police. A great deal of concern has been expressed in the public domain recently about the cost of, and the perks given to, chief officers of police. One would have thought that if the Government were going to legislate, that is an area that they might have turned their attention to. As the noble Lord, Lord Blair of Boughton, mentioned, we have been here before with the Sheehy report the last time that the Conservative Party was alone in government.

From memory, it was a decision of the Sheehy report and the Government to abolish the rank of chief inspector. At some stage before that was fully implemented, the decision was rescinded. The police service paid off a lot of chief inspectors to get them to retire because it had been told that the rank was going to be abolished, but it never was. That led to the mass recruitment of chief inspectors to fill the gap that had been left because the police service had pensioned off early a lot of the chief inspectors that it then needed.

My point, which the Minister has made continually over the issue of volunteers, is that it should be left to individual chief officers to decide. In the case of police volunteers, the flexibility should be available to chief officers to use them however they want and to give them whatever powers they wish. Surely exactly the same argument applies here: it should be left to individual chief constables to promote officers to particular ranks—or not—depending on local need.

While I accept that, especially in legislation, the superintendent has a particular and pivotal role, similar arguments could be made for police sergeants as custody officers and so forth, or for police inspectors who are often operational team leaders. One could go through and make a case—perhaps not as compelling as that put forward on behalf of the superintendent—for each and every particular rank to continue to exist, given different scenarios in different police forces.

I appreciate that the legislation simply gives the power to the Secretary of State through regulations to specify the ranks but I would argue, for the reasons I set out, both that that is unnecessary and that it limits the flexibility of chief officers in designing a police rank structure that suits their local needs.

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I hope I have said enough to underpin what the noble Earl said in his introduction of those three amendments. A severe problem is beginning to develop that we are not selecting the right people, training them and posting them in the right way. I would advocate—I hate to say this—that we could well go back to where we were a few years ago with some advantage. As we are, we are standing on the brink of what I would call a steady drift towards mediocracy. That bothers me as an ex-police officer. I wish I did not have to say that. The amendments are integral and I support them.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and to the noble Lord, Lord Dear. My response to the situation is quite close to that of the noble Lord, Lord Dear—to be honest, I am quite surprised at how close it is. It is complete dismay. My dismay is that these amendments have been tabled by four Back-Benchers when they should be the responsibility of the Home Office. Police leadership is in crisis not because of the men and women who are doing it now but because the structures and processes just outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Dear, have just been let go.

I will deal first with my response to the noble Earl’s amendments. I do not think that the international policing aspect works. It does not work, first, for the reason mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dear, that officers tend to go when they have already retired. The second reason is that many police officials across the world are effectively judicial officials and Governments absolutely hold tight to themselves that their nationals should perform those jobs. There is no embedding. The third reason, which is about United Nations or other peacekeeping arrangements, is that the UN, or whatever body, insists that officers should be armed. In our time only the RUC—now the PSNI—would release those officers. In the Metropolitan Police only 7% or 8% of its officers are armed. It will not send those away to police somewhere else under any circumstances. With the greatest respect to the noble Earl, I do not support that position.

On Amendment 177, about experience in different police forces, I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dear, who was an inspector of constabulary. At the time, I was the staff officer to the Chief Inspector of Constabulary and he, on behalf of the Home Secretary, controlled who was appointed to where in this sense: you had to have passed the strategic command course, you were then recommended on the decisions of the inspectors as to what calibre of officer you were, and sometimes you were specifically told by the Home Office that you were not to apply for a job because it was too small for you.

The best people were being sent to the best jobs. I really have expertise in this particular point because I administered that system for two years, as the noble Lord, Lord Dear will know. It was very brutal but it was very accurate. We have lost the rule that you could not do the top three jobs in any police force. You were not allowed to do that; you could not be an assistant, a deputy and a chief constable in the same force; you could not be the parish pump. You just would not get on to the list. Somehow, somewhere during the coalition, that disappeared.

The noble Earl’s amendment is about leadership. Somehow, we managed to sell the Police Staff College at Bramshill without replacing it. It is not a royal yacht, it is not just a generally good idea to have one; it was the absolute essential of what made the United Kingdom police service the envy of the world in the selection of its chief officers. We have lost it. Nobody knows where it has gone. Bramshill is sold. Why is the Home Office not bringing this matter forward rather than two, three or four Back-Benchers at 10 pm?

I now move to Amendment 178A, which is tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Condon, who will speak in a moment. I had the pleasure of talking to the Minister this afternoon about this amendment, and I am very grateful to her. I really hope that the Official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats will look at this amendment and perhaps by the time we get to Report we will have some coalescence around this position.

I am sorry to bring the Committee back to this, but I need to return to my speech at Second Reading, which went back to a debate during the passage of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill when it was suddenly discovered in this House that there was no longer a requirement for any senior police officer to have policing experience. It had disappeared somewhere in a lacuna in the different legal processes. The four noble Lords who had been commissioners of police were sitting and standing open-mouthed at the discovery that this had happened behind their backs without anybody noticing.

As the noble Lord, Lord Dear, said earlier, we are returning to the pre-Second World War situation. Most of us have seen “The Mousetrap”, where the chap reaches for the telephone and says, “I’ll ring the chief constable. He was in my regiment”. We stopped that after 1945 and said that it would be a good idea if senior police officers had police experience. I accept the ideas of deregulation and devolution, but somehow this Government, and, to be fair, particularly this political party, seem to be of the view that policing is unlike anything else and that it is not important for senior police officers to have had experience of doing middle-ranking work as the superintendents whom the noble Baronesses, Lady Henig and Lady Harris, reported on. I do not understand that. You would not do that in the armed services, law, medicine or accountancy.

This amendment would put back into statute that it would be a good idea—just a simple, good idea—if the beginning point was that it was likely to be useful if somebody had served in a senior police rank before they applied for a higher one. The amendment makes two separate provisions. It allows the exception that the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act put together which allows a foreign officer to do it if he or she has the right experience, and it certainly allows for the kind of transfer, if this is to be the case, in which fire officers become involved via the PCC, but it states that the Secretary of State on the advice of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary should agree that. The opening position is that you cannot be promoted to the senior ranks of the police service without having been at a middle or more senior rank beforehand unless the Secretary of State says so.

If something like this is not enshrined in law, I have to agree that the rather dismal predictions of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, will come true. This Government and their predecessor have created a thing called Police First, which is about bringing bright young men and women into the police service at the rank of superintendent. What is the point of coming in at the rank of superintendent if you can come in at the rank of chief constable? Why would you bother? What is this about? Why is it not the position of the Government, the Opposition and the Liberal Democrats that it is simply a good idea that policing should be like any other profession and that experience is a useful thing to have? That is the simple part of my amendment, to which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Condon, will speak in a moment.

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Moved by

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

178A: After Clause 47, insert the following new Clause—
“Eligibility for senior police posts
(1) The Police Act 1996 is amended as follows.(2) After section 50B (inserted by section 46) insert—“50C Eligibility for senior police postsSubject to section 140 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (appointment of chief officers of police)—(a) an application may not be considered from any individual applying for the post of—(i) Assistant or Deputy Chief Constable in any police service;(ii) Commander or Deputy Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan Police Service; or(iii) Commander or Assistant Commissioner in the City of London Police;without previous experience in the police service in the United Kingdom at the rank of Superintendent or above, unless prior approval has been given by the Secretary of State, following advice from Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary;(b) an application may not be considered from any individual applying for the post of—(i) Chief Constable in any police service;(ii) Assistant Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner or Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service;(iii) Commissioner of the City of London Police; or(iv) Director or Deputy Director of the National Crime Agency;without experience in the United Kingdom’s police service in a rank no lower than two ranks below that to which the application is being made unless prior approval has been given by the Secretary of State, following advice from Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary.””

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I should say to the noble Lords, Lord Paddick and Lord Rosser, that the reason I did not consult either of them was that I never expected that we would reach this clause on this day. It was only on Friday that I discovered, through the excellent Bill team, that we were going to reach this point. I would like the opportunity to talk through with Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Government whether we can move forward.

Peel said something very interesting—that,

“this should not be an occupation for gentlemen”.

It took me 30 years to understand what that remark meant. It meant an extraordinary Victorian experiment, because that was the period in which you bought commissions, you bought livings and you bought places in the Civil Service. Peel was saying that the police service should be a meritocracy.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord wish to withdraw his amendment?

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 178A withdrawn.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 30th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve. I should declare three interests. First, I was a police officer for more than 30 years, retiring with an exemplary record in 2007 as a deputy assistant commissioner, the equivalent of a deputy chief constable outside London. Secondly, I was a victim of phone hacking. Thirdly, I was party to a judicial review of the Metropolitan Police Service in 2011. This review concluded that the police had failed in their duty to protect my and others’ Article 8 rights to a private and family life under the Human Rights Act, because they had failed to tell us that we were the targets of phone hacking by the press. I was a senior police officer in the Metropolitan Police at the time of the phone hacking. The noble Lord, Lord Prescott, another party to the judicial review, was the Deputy Prime Minister at the time his phone was hacked.

To take up the point of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, I accept the question of proportionality but the difference here is that the Government promised the victims of phone hacking that Leveson 2 would take place. The former Prime Minister promised that this inquiry would take place and that, I am afraid, rather trumps the noble Viscount’s arguments around proportionality. The inquiry was set up to explore and resolve a number of areas but, in the interests of brevity, as no doubt these points will be covered by other noble Lords, I will focus on just one element.

I discovered that I had been the subject of interest to the private detective employed by News International to carry out phone hacking, Glen Mulcaire, when I was told through my solicitors by the Guardian in 2011. My solicitors contacted the Metropolitan Police, who said that there was no record of my having been the victim of phone hacking. The Guardian sources insisted that I was and the Metropolitan Police eventually admitted that I had been involved as a target. They subsequently disclosed pages from Mulcaire’s notebook which had my name, details of my then partner, our home address and phone numbers and other personal details and that these documents were in their possession and had been in their possession since before 2006. The police also subsequently disclosed an internal memo which indicated that “Commander Paddick” was a target of phone hacking. I was a commander from 2000 to 2003, when I was promoted.

My point is that the Metropolitan Police knew that there was widespread phone hacking and did nothing to investigate it or to warn the victims that their phones were being hacked, even when one of those victims was the Deputy Prime Minister and another was one of its own senior police officers, who was working in the same building as the detectives who had uncovered the scandal. At around the same time, it appears that members of the press whose phones were being hacked by rival newspapers were warned that their phones were being hacked.

There has been no satisfactory explanation of why the police behaved in this way—we need to know why. Leveson 2 should be initiated to find that out. I say that there has been no satisfactory explanation of the police conduct because it has been suggested that the initial investigation, where the Royal Family had been among the victims and which had been carried out by the Counter Terrorism Command as a result, had other priorities. We can imagine that the counterterrorism branch did have other priorities. If that was the reason for not taking the matter further, there was no reason why the police could not have informed other victims to take precautions against using their mobile phones and that no further action would be taken. Indeed, that was the conclusion reached by the judge who heard the judicial review.

Once the royal connection had been dealt with, the case could, and should, have been transferred to the Specialist Crime Directorate of the Metropolitan Police, the most appropriate department at Scotland Yard to investigate such matters, where a scandal of such proportions could have been given the resources required to investigate matters properly. Instead, it was only after the Guardian discovered the extent of the scandal that the Metropolitan Police acknowledged that an investigation was needed and applied the resources required. We have not got to the bottom of the relationship between the Metropolitan Police and the media at that time. That is why we need the inquiry proposed by this amendment.

If a public inquiry is needed and the Government have promised one, it should take place. The sudden deployment of a wholly unnecessary consultation is, or appears to be, a device to give cover to the Government reneging yet again on a promise made regarding the phone hacking issue. If I am wrong and the Government decide after all to recommit to Leveson 2, I am sure this House will simply agree to the later removal of the amendment. In the meantime, it is our insurance policy against the Government letting us down again, and we on these Benches will support it if the noble Baroness divides the House.

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lords who tabled this amendment. I listened to the explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, the chronology of which I understand, but which may be difficult for others to understand. I totally accept the passion with which he spoke on that issue. I support the amendment but make it clear that I am one of the few Members of the House who gave evidence to Leveson in person and on oath. I support the amendment precisely because it fulfils the previous government commitment. As I was the commissioner at the time the first phone hacking case appeared to arise, which concerned the royal household and to which the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, referred, it would not be appropriate for me to say in this House that I do not accept any further scrutiny of the Metropolitan Police or other police forces over this matter. Therefore, I very much support the idea that Leveson 2, in whatever form, or whether it is through this amendment, should be introduced.

However, given that I gave evidence to the inquiry, I need to make it clear that I shall be very surprised—at this point, I move towards the position adopted by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham—if a new inquiry uncovers anything involving major corruption in recent years. To that end, I ask the House’s indulgence to allow me to read one paragraph—paragraph 49—of my statement to Leveson, which I made in 2012, which set out my position on the question. It refers to the Met and only to events post-2000. Therefore, it does not refer to Morgan or Hillsborough as that was the question I was being asked: what had I done since I had been the deputy commissioner and the commissioner? It was submitted in spring 2012 and says:

“Whilst I therefore accept that current enquiries may reveal that a small number of relatively junior officers took bribes from the press, I do not believe that corruption in monetary terms lies at the heart of any major problem in the relationship between the”,

Metropolitan Police Service and the press. We can now say that a number of junior police officers were convicted, and rightly so. I continued:

“I believe that where that problem may have become significant is that a very small number of relatively senior officers … became too close to journalists, not I believe for financial gain but for the enhancement of their reputation and for the sheer enjoyment of being in a position to share and divulge confidences. It is a siren song. I also believe that they based this behaviour on how they saw politicians”,

behaving with the press,

“and that they lost sight of their professional obligations. The MPS did not have adequate defences against this behaviour and in previous decades would probably not have needed it”.

In short, what will be revealed by such an inquiry, which I still say is necessary, is behaviour that was wrong, reprehensible and unprofessional, but largely not criminal.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, many of us wish that we were not having this debate at all. I will ask three questions of the noble Baroness who will reply. The first is: will she not agree that there is a promise, and that it is a serious thing not to carry that promise through? That is particularly true given the circumstances in which we live, where large numbers of people have ceased to believe in the integrity, the impartiality and, if I may use a non-word, the upstandingness of those in authority. Therefore when a promise has been made, to renege on it is always harmful but particularly harmful at this time, when not only in this country but elsewhere there is clearly a fundamental feeling among large numbers of people that they have not been dealt with properly by those who are in power, have authority and are able to change the lives of others. Therefore, first, there is the promise.

Secondly, there is the need. Will my noble friend explain why it is not necessary to clear the reputation of the police, and particularly the Metropolitan Police, given that so much has been said about them and so much is thought about them? As somebody who lives much of the time in London, I have to say that the Metropolitan Police’s reputation is not good, has not been good for some time, and needs to be improved. Therefore one has to ask why this would not be a valuable way to ensure that that happened. The noble Lord, Lord Blair, said precisely that—there is a need for that.

There is also a need for the press to face up to the fact that it, too, has perhaps the worst reputation in this country that it has had, certainly in my lifetime, which is getting embarrassingly long. This is a very unhappy time, when we think of the purveying of hate that has been on the front pages of so many newspapers, and the attacks on our institutions and their independence, which we have seen latterly. We therefore have to say to ourselves that this is an opportunity for the press, too, to clear that part of its name which is clearable. For my noble friend Lord Hailsham to stand up today and say that he expects the press kindly to arrange in future that it will sign up to not doing bad things suggests that he has not followed the news over the past months. This is not the mood of a press that is largely owned outside this country, by people who have little commitment to this country, and now has standards wholly different from those which perhaps we might have expected.

My third question to my noble friend Lady Williams is as follows. If the noble Baroness’s amendment is not agreed—or, more importantly, if it is not accepted—and if there is no alternative that we see as satisfactorily meeting the very powerful statement that she made, does my noble friend not agree that the public will think that we have not taken these steps due to the power of the press and our closeness to the constabulary, which leads me back to my first point? That is extremely dangerous at any time and particularly dangerous at the moment. The amendment attacks neither the press nor the police; it suggests that perhaps this is the moment to clear both of unfair allegations and to reveal real allegations, which seems to me a not unreasonable position to take. I hope that my noble friend will enable me to support her in the Lobbies by giving me an alternative to this amendment that meets those obligations.

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[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I am sorry that I missed the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, opening this discussion, but I was somewhere else and I came here as soon as I could. My concern over this is with the concept of volunteers. As the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, says, there is a range of defensive systems here, including the truncheon itself, but I am concerned about giving volunteers Tasers. If you give a volunteer a Taser, all the volunteer has to do once it has gone off is to say that they do not want to be a volunteer anymore and disappear into the distance. Then you have nothing unless you have a criminal inquiry into what happened. My sense is that this set of clauses needs a lot more specificity.

My view is that the police could bring in some designated persons as firearms officers: they could recruit people from the Army and deploy them only to be firearms officers, which would be a logical and a budget-saving thing to do. The idea that we have to have fully trained constables standing outside embassies has always struck me as odd when we could recruit them much more cheaply. But with all those cases, you have a financial arrangement between the chief constable and that person, and they can therefore be disciplined and so on. Obviously if you shoot somebody, you have a criminal inquiry, but that is not the point here. We need to take this piece of the Bill and look at it again, to make sure we have the different types of defensive and offensive weapons, and the people who can use them, categorised. At the moment it feels that we will be opening a door we might find very difficult to close subsequently.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I start by agreeing wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Blair, that this seems too broad in what it could allow. As the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, says, it could result in volunteers being equipped with revolvers. I also have the same concerns that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, has about a self-defence weapon being used in an aggressive as opposed to a defensive way.

We support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. My noble friend Lady Hamwee and I have Amendment 107 in the group, which says that Clause 38 should not stand part of the Bill and seeks to achieve the same end as Amendment 106, which is to prevent police community support officer volunteers from being provided with CS spray or any other firearm that the Secretary of State might authorise by regulation in the future. My understanding, contrary to that of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, is that special constables can be equipped with CS spray at the moment, and will continue to be, so I do not think that the changes in the Bill will have the effect he suggests.

The only remarks that I would add to those already made by noble Lords are that police volunteers carry out excellent work and are a valuable addition to the police family. However, with reservations already being expressed about whether paid police community support officers should be using force, and in the absence of any paid PCSO having been authorised to use CS spray by any chief constable anywhere in the United Kingdom—if I remember the debate in Committee correctly—changing the law to allow chief constables to give CS spray to volunteer PCSOs seems both unnecessary and unreasonable.

Secondly, as alluded to by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, if chief constables need additional volunteers who can exercise the use of force, including with CS spray, because they do not have the resources any more to pay full-time police officers, whatever the rights and wrongs of that, there is a route open to them, which is to recruit more special constables, who have all the powers of a regular police officer and who are paid only expenses. We on these Benches will support the Labour amendment on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

At this point I must apologise to your Lordships for missing another reference in the Bill to 28 days, which should have been included in my later amendments. It appears on page 78, line 35. It is highly likely that I may have missed other crucial references to the same time period, which comes from not reading the Bill as thoroughly as I ought to have done. I hope that noble Lords will accept my apologies; it is a rather large Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group from the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond—including the one that she did not put forward. My name is attached to some of them but they came in quite a hurry in the last 24 hours and I think I missed some of them as they went through. I am sure that neither the noble Baroness nor I will press an amendment at this stage of the evening. However, I hope that I may be able to persuade the Minister to table an amendment at Third Reading.

I accept that the use of police bail has hitherto been seriously underregulated. I further accept that it has been used far too frequently and without the supervision of more senior officers. I agree with the tenor of this set of proposals. I also accept that in a number of cases police bail has been used in a sloppy, unthinking and unfortunate way. However, it is a well-known dictum that hard cases make bad law—and what is being proposed here is simply bad law. The argument put forward by those supporting this proposal is that the number of police bail cases will reduce. I absolutely agree; they will reduce. But police bail will be used in the most difficult cases because, without it, you cannot impose conditions on the suspect you are releasing. There are times when you need to require that the defendant does not approach the alleged victim—including children. There are times when you will want to impose residential or reporting requirements or the surrender of passports. These are the cases in which police bail will be used.

A drop in the overall number of police bail cases will not reduce this number of serious cases. As the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, suggested, these serious cases are the very cases that require, for example, forensic examination or the interrogation of computer databases. This will be done by third parties outside the police service. When all that has been done, these cases will require detailed consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, which is also outside the police service. These bodies will handle only these sorts of cases, so they will already have a heavy workload to set against limited resources.

These cases will be investigated specifically by experienced detectives, who will deal only with these kinds of cases and will themselves have a high case load, in which each case will have a police bail clock ticking. We are talking about putting a huge amount of pressure on a system without the resources that would be necessary to complete these cases in 28 days. These cases—79% of the total—just will not be completed in 28 days, which will necessitate a return to the police station for a review by a superintendent, which will be a bureaucratic and unnecessary procedure for a suspect and his or her legal advisers. Furthermore, the 28-day limit will set up false hopes for victims—who will be told about it—that their case will be resolved within 28 days. Those hopes will be dashed.

It is fair to say that the noble Baroness and I have scarcely had time to confer over this matter, although I used the same joke in my speech about the fact that some people do not like experts. However, I know from my own correspondence and from a letter I have seen from the Minister to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, which has already been discussed, that the Minister herself knows that all the police professional bodies— the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the Police Superintendents’ Association and the Police Federation—have advised in the strongest terms that the provisions may simply be unworkable. So has the College of Policing, which the Minister praised for its work during the debate on the last amendment. If the College of Policing is saying that this is unworkable, why are we proceeding with it? I just suggest that, if possible, the Minister might listen to this and table a government amendment at Third Reading to raise the provision to 56 days. Even if that does not happen—that is the main thing we want to happen—the idea that the inspector’s police bail can only be 28 days, not 27 or seven, is simply absurd. It is simple: what if the 28th day is Christmas Day? The Government should bring forward that amendment: in the inspector’s bail there should be the same phrase of “up to 28 days”, not “28 days”, as that will cause major mayhem.

My first point is: why not listen to the people who really know how the system will work in serious cases? There are many serious cases where it is simply impossible to persuade the forensic companies and the people who understand the nature of digital records to provide this information in time for 28 days, and for it to have been discussed by the Crown Prosecution Service. This is bad legislation, and I urge that it be reconsidered at Third Reading.

[Lord Paddick]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Blair, and my noble friend have said on this subject. My noble friend Lady Hamwee and I have Amendment 115 in this group; I will not say that it is a compromise, but it is another option.

As my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond said today and as I raised in Committee, academics, practitioners and the College of Policing all claim that an initial 28-day limit on police bail is impractical, and a government impact assessment, which allegedly takes into account the academic research, says that a 28-day initial limit is workable. I say “allegedly” because, as the noble Lord, Lord Blair, just said, the academic research and the impact assessment come to different conclusions about the workability of an initial 28-day limit. Our amendment effectively suggests that the Government give the new 28-day limit a trial period of two years and then allow Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to assess whether the new provision is working effectively or not; that is, whether the academics, the practitioners and the College of Policing are right, or the Home Office civil servants are right. Of course, we support much stricter limits on police bail, but they must not impede police effectiveness.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

I point out that Amendment 115 would work if it was 56 days as well. In other words, you could have a two-year experiment with 56 days as well as a two-year experiment with 28 days.

[Lord Paddick]

Of course.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

I would not have brought this amendment back at this stage if the Government had given a reasonable explanation for not agreeing with my Committee stage amendment.

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, it is an unusual pleasure for me to agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has again argued for the maritime enforcement powers in the Bill to be restricted to the enforcement of serious offences. As I indicated in Committee, we do not believe it is necessary to limit these powers in this way. The Government believe that we should trust the operational judgment of the police to determine when it is appropriate and proportionate to exercise their powers at sea. For example, we do not believe that the police would commit resources to interdict a vessel in international waters where there had been a theft of an item of, say, confectionery from a gift shop—which, incidentally, would be an indictable offence.

However, a police officer on, let us say, a UK-registered ferry should be able to act when the vessel is in international waters where a person commits a common assault on another person, or where a person exhibits threatening or abusive behaviour. In both cases, we are talking about summary-only offences and in both cases the noble Lord’s amendment would prevent the police acting, even though the law of the land applied and the actions of those individuals might none the less be triable in the courts of England and Wales. We do not impose restrictions on the categories of offences the police can investigate where they take place on other modes of transportation, so, again, I am unclear why we should treat maritime vessels any differently.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I think that I will have to get back to the noble Lord on that point.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

This is about the difference between a bus, a train and a ship. The ability to stop a ship and push it into harbour is a completely different level of activity from saying, “We’re going to stop the train at Reading because somebody has been assaulted”. I have listened to the argument made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and I completely agree with him. It cannot be right that a single police officer can decide to turn around a cargo ship or a cruise ship in the Irish Sea for a summary offence. I accept that, as the Minister said, there are complications around theft, with the theft of some sweets from a shop being an indictable offence in some circumstances, but we have to make a definition somewhere. This is about being utterly reasonable, and I do not think that the Government are being reasonable here.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

The police are professionals and they must have operational discretion as to when to exercise their powers. I know that a ship at sea is not a bus, which can just move into the side of the road, but a serious offence could have been committed. The police should be able to know when they need to exercise their powers. In answer to the noble Lord’s question, there are currently no powers to take effective enforcement action in such circumstances, other than in relation to modern slavery and drug offences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I regret to say that I cannot support this proposed new clause, although I have a great deal of sympathy with the thinking behind it. I am quite sure that we should move to a situation where, in appropriate cases, there could be parity of funding. Where I differ from the noble Lord is in the suggestion in the proposed new clause that it should be the police commissioner who makes the recommendation. In my view, it should be the coroner. The truth is that we are dealing with a judicial process, and clearly some people will want to be represented, but whether or not what they have to contribute is relevant is something that only the person in charge of the judicial process can really determine, and that is the coroner. He alone can have a clear view of the issues and the relevance of the participation of the relevant parties. Also, we are really in the process of people making applications for funding that may themselves be resisted. There has to be a process whereby those submissions can be determined. It seems to me that that has to be the coroner.

I point out just two other considerations. I can conceive of circumstances in inquests where the police commissioner has a conflict of interest—either that he or she may be the subject of criticism in the course of the inquest, or that he or she might seek to take regulatory action against chief officers as a result of the inquest. That is a potential conflict of interest that we need to reflect upon.

Lastly, we need to entrust this process to an independent figure. The elected police commissioner is not an independent judicial figure; indeed, as he or she comes to the end of their elected term they may have every sort of personal reason to bump large wads of cash to people coming along to apply for it. It is not a happy situation. If the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, were to come forward with a proposal to the effect that the coroner should be in a position to make these recommendations, I would be happy to support it subject to any contrary argument. But as to the proposal that the police commissioner should trigger the recommendation, I absolutely cannot support it.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

I support the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, on that point. However, given that this is Report, I ask the Minister to bring back a government amendment that says that it is the coroner. We should not lose this opportunity. I support the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, in saying that we ought to have a process in which there is an equality of arms between the two sides. As I understand it, however—I stand to be corrected—the House can do that only if the Government bring forward an amendment on Third Reading which says what the noble Lord’s amendment does, but that it is not the police and crime commissioner; it is the coroner. I completely agree.

[Lord Dear]

My Lords, I can be very brief and agree entirely with the last two speakers. The sentiment behind the amendment is admirable, but the way it plays out needs regulation. I too strongly support the Government taking this away and bringing it back with the coroner in pride of place.