Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Condon Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Lords Chamber

I believe that this significant gesture—not just in terms of preventing good officers appearing in the Old Bailey on ridiculous charges—of removing the legal framework while keeping a practical working framework of health and safety would do a tremendous amount to reverse the health and safety culture which is perceived to be in the police service. I beg to move.

[Lord Condon]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for moving this amendment. In his typically generous way, he has been unnecessarily harsh on himself; certainly he owes no apology to me or, I dare say, my noble friend Lord Stevens. At the time that Act was introduced, none of us had any idea it would subsequently be used in the way that it was.

It was an interesting experience to stand as a defendant in the Old Bailey, gripping the rail that murderers, rapists and terrorists had gripped in previous years, and knowing that if the jury found me and my noble friend Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington guilty, I would certainly have resigned from this House and he would have been under pressure to resign as commissioner. It was a very interesting experience.

Had the prosecution succeeded, it would have effectively paralysed operational policing. It would have required probably emergency legislation to rectify matters. In essence, the prosecution was saying that police officers operating above ground or below ground or in any environment apart from flat, ground-level operations, would need to be involved in risk assessments, contractors and a whole range of issues which would have emasculated operational policing. Fortunately, the jury in the trial applied the common sense so sadly lacking in the HSE at the time. To my disappointment, there must have been law officers who were also involved in allowing that prosecution to go forward, but that is by the by.

I realised that the jury was applying the common sense that the HSE had not applied when the expert witness for the HSE, when asked what a police officer should do when pursuing a violent criminal who was a danger to the public and had gone on to a roof to escape, said, with a straight face and with all the gravitas of his office, that at that point the police officer should contact the police station, stop the pursuit, contractors should be called out who should effect and erect scaffolding around the building and put safety rails on the roof before any further action was taken. The jury did what some of your Lordships have done—they started to giggle and laugh. I realised at that point that we probably were not going to have to resign.

The trial judge, Mr Justice Crane, was scrupulously fair throughout the trial, as you would expect, and never expressed an opinion on the merits of the case until it was complete. But once it was over, he said that the prosecution was a waste of time and money and that the HSE had failed to understand the nature of policing in any way. We calculated that it cost at least £3 million in real and opportunity costs—at the time that would have paid for 70 neighbourhood police officers for a year.

However, despite what I have just said, events have moved on and I do not think it is appropriate for the police service, or parts of it, to be exempted from the legislation en bloc. The world has changed; events have changed; the climate has changed. But I congratulate the noble Lord on moving this amendment, which I am sure is a probing amendment. Time has moved on, and to try to go back would bring the Government and this country in conflict with Europe. Complying with European legislation was the genesis of this Act in 1997, so we would be back in that loop of challenge and dispute.

I do not think that this is an opportunity for us to consider seriously taking the police service outwith the jurisdiction of health and safety, but it is a real opportunity for the Minister—either today, subsequently in writing, or at some stage—to reaffirm the need for a sensible balance to be maintained regarding the safety of police officers, which we all value. As the noble Lord said, it so happened that at the time of the prosecution, we had had seven years of an officer safety programme that had brought injuries and deaths to their lowest level for decades. There was a certain irony in being prosecuted as a commissioner and former commissioner just at the point when death and injuries had been reduced to the lowest level almost on record.

There needs to be a sensible balance with regard to the safety of police officers. I can think now of every one of the police officers seriously injured or killed on my watch. I will never forget the anxiety and distress felt by their families and friends. But there has to be a balance between that and allowing police officers to follow their courageous instincts to put themselves in harm’s way to protect the public. I would expect nothing less from them. That is what the legacy of policing is about.

Although the spectre of prosecution remains, I hope that the Minister will feel able to say something reassuring about the balance that needs to be maintained. As we sit here today, a policeman or woman could be doing something today which would lead to them receiving a gallantry medal from Her Majesty the Queen. At the same time, that would provide prima facie evidence that another chief officer should be prosecuted for health and safety offences because, by definition, if they have acted so bravely, they have put themselves at risk beyond the call of duty and beyond what a risk assessment would allow them to do.

I am delighted and grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for raising this issue today. His generous comments in our direction were very warmly appreciated, but no apology is necessary. It is an opportunity for your Lordships' House not to take the police service outwith health and safety requirements but to reassert the need for a sensible balance.