Police Uplift Programme

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The picture that the noble Lord paints is obviously concerning. I will say that this is not a marginal uplift but a substantial uplift. As regards specific circumstances in Northern Ireland, I am afraid I cannot answer his question on the numbers, but I will investigate and come back to him.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I think there is general agreement that trust has declined since 2010. We need to restore that as best we can. Knowing the Minister, I was rather surprised by his throwaway line in response to some of the questions about trust. When he said that there will be “a few bad apples”, I found that rather complacent. The police inspectorate has said that, of the people being recruited into the police force, some hundreds have come in within the past three years who should not be there. We know the plan that has been set in place to try to avoid a repetition of this in the future, but what is happening to try to root out the 300 or so that are around?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am sorry if I sounded complacent to the noble Lord. It was really just a reflection on the statistics of this, as with any normal distribution—the noble Lord will know how normal distributions of population cohorts and so on work out. That is all that that comment was meant to reflect. As regards the numbers of police that have been recruited, I have commented extensively on the vetting processes. The dismissals review, which I referred to earlier, is concluding this month. I hope that we will have a lot more to say very soon on how that process will be strengthened.