Chilcot Committee: Intercept Evidence

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Tuesday 24th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, the supposition seems to be that a large number of cases do not proceed to court because intercept evidence is not admissible. Could the Minister give us the Government’s estimate of how many such cases there are that would have proceeded to court had this evidence been available?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord that, but I remind him of the remarks made by his noble friend Lord West about the number of cases that possibly would never have been pursued at all because of lack of intelligence. He must differentiate between intelligence and evidence. That is what we are trying to do—to make sure we still have the intelligence and do not lose it as a result of making use of it as evidence.

Police and Crime Panels (Modification of Functions) Regulations 2012

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Thursday 12th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, a number of questions have been put to me. First, I shall deal with those asked by my noble friend Lord Shipley. I can assure him that, yes, the Secretary of State will take note of views from other local authorities and will want to take account of political and geographical differences. That is the point behind what we are trying to set up in these authorities. The noble Lord will know as well as I do how police areas vary very much from authority to authority.

My part of the world, Cumbria, has a county council and six regional councils. Thames Valley Police has something rather complicated with, I think, 18 authorities, which are all single tier. I cannot remember whether I am right on that. However, it is very different from the traditional county district. In areas such as the noble Lord’s in the north-east, there are other set-ups. Obviously, we will want to take account of political and geographical differences. My noble friend’s second question was about what was meant by the words “must agree”. As regards the second part, obviously it is only with the agreement of all the local authorities, as he said.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked whether the LGA had any concerns. I can assure him that, as always, it has been closely involved in the development of the policy and regulations, and is working with us very much on the transition programme. As regards any monitoring of the effectiveness of the panels, I do not believe that that is a role for central government. I believe that local authorities will be key to ensuring the success of panels. If those panels turn out to be toothless, or whatever, it will be for local authorities to challenge that. I think that the noble Lord and others will be the first to raise their concerns should that be the case.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, perhaps the Minister can clarify his answer to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about political balance. Is he talking about the political balance of the entire police force area or of the defaulting authority? As I understand the construction of the police and crime panels, there is one representative from each authority and the purpose of this order is to deal with a situation in which one local authority has failed to put forward a suitable nomination. Is the intention under those circumstances that the Secretary of State will appoint someone to achieve some form of political balance across the whole area or simply to reflect whatever is regarded as the political majority within that particular local authority area? They are very different things.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we are trying to achieve some sort of balance across the whole area of panels covering a police force. I can think of some areas where every local authority is Labour or every local authority is Conservative. That does not mean that one would want every member of the panel to be Labour or Conservative—to take those two extremes—as obviously a vast number of voters would not be represented. We hope that there will be negotiations between local authorities, even if—dare I say?—some Tory authorities want to push forward a Labour candidate for the panel to make sure that overall, throughout the entire area, there is a proper balance that represents the views of the electors of that area. That might be despite the authorities being red in one case or blue in another. Does the noble Lord follow what I am getting at? We are trying to achieve genuine cross-party representation with a balance that represents the constabulary in a proper manner.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that clarification. I am not sure it completely helps me. In a two-tier area, with which he is familiar, you will have a county council that will be elected on a specific date. You will then have district councils either elected in thirds or possibly on specific dates but not the same date as the county council. Are we talking about a political balance that relates to the county or to the districts? They will not necessarily be the same thing—they might be by chance, but not necessarily.

The Local Government Association spent many happy years devising a system that is supposed to balance elections held at different times and the different status of counties, districts, unitary authorities and so on. That sort of formula might be the approach that is taken. But I had understood that this legislation did not necessarily prescribe for political balance but simply for area balance.

[Lord Henley]

I do not want to be overprescriptive on these matters, particularly as every authority varies quite dramatically. I will use my own county, Cumbria, as an example because I happen to know it well. Cumbria County Council coincides with the police authority and so it is quite an easy one to do. There is a county council that has elections every four years. There are six district councils, one or possibly two of which have an election every four years while the other four have elections in the three years when there are not county elections. So everyone is electing at different times in different ways. All we are trying to do is ensure that local authorities act together to try to produce something that is reasonably practical. Possibly the model that the noble Lord is suggesting is not a bad one. He was taking it from the Local Government Association. We are not demanding anything absolutely precise; we are just trying to make sure that, as far as is reasonably practical, all views can be taken into account.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I am sorry at the reluctance that comes into the noble Lord’s voice every time I stand up. I am grateful to him for the courtesy with which he gives way on every occasion. If it was the view of Government that for the new IT company to function effectively it had to have in its leadership a chief executive who was paid at a commercial rate to attract the degree of expertise necessary, which might be of the order of £500,000 a year, to negotiate those contracts better than existing police services do and presumably better than the NPIA is thought to do at the moment, how will that not be the same argument that applies for these infrastructure contracts which will go to the Home Office? I am assuming that the Home Office will not be able to pay those sorts of sums to attract the technical expertise which is thought necessary for the other contracts.

[Lord Henley]

The two matters are not related; the Home Office has the appropriate expertise to deal with these matters. I was regretting the tone of voice that the noble Lord carefully used to make it clear that he did not think that there was the appropriate expertise in the Home Office to deal with these matters. We believe that that expertise does exist.

I was about to deal with the issue of the new information communications technology company which will be owned and controlled by police and crime commissioners. It will be led and funded by its customers, who will determine the services it provides. It will be responsive to local operational needs, offering forces a route to better value for money and innovation in the delivery of police information technology services. The company will ensure a more efficient approach to police information and communications technology provision and aggregate demand to exploit the purchasing power of the police service to get a good deal for the taxpayer.

The police professional body will directly support police officers at all ranks and police staff to equip the service with the skills it needs to deliver effective crime-fighting in a challenging and what must be a leaner and more accountable environment. The body will ultimately be independent of the Home Office. It will have a powerful mandate to enable the service to implement the standards that it sets for training, development, skills and qualifications. Its core mission will be to support the fight against crime and safeguard the public by ensuring professionalism in policing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, was also keen to discuss timing and allegations that we had not met our targets. I appreciate that this frequently happens and that there can be slippage. I have known this throughout my career. There have been a number of times when one has announced that something will come out later in the spring and “later in the spring” has turned out to be July. However, we are on track to transfer the functions of the NPIA by the end of 2012. We began a phased transition of functions last year, with the non-ICT procurement moving to the Home Office. In April 2012, the following functions moved to SOCA: the Central Witness Bureau, the National Missing Persons Bureau, serious crime analysis, the Specialist Operations Centre and crime operational support. Obviously, more needs to be done and there are challenges, but I am more than happy that we will reach the target and do that by the end of the year. If we have any further problems, no doubt we will be the first to let the House know.

The noble Baroness was worried that the transition from the NPIA risked a loss of expertise. Giving staff certainty about their future is key to retaining their expertise, of which we are very proud. That is why we have been making announcements about this for some time and will continue to do so. Again, we are on track to complete those functions by the end of 2012. As a result, the majority of the NPIA’s staff will transfer to its various successor bodies by December 2012. Any reduction in staffing levels will arise from the already agreed budget reductions, which were part of the 2010 spending review.

Having looked at timing, rationale and other matters, I hope I have answered most of the questions that the noble Baroness and others asked. Obviously, we will have to say more later, particularly about the future of Bramshill and Harperley and the police professional body. Announcements will be made at the appropriate time. I hope that the noble Baroness will now accept that the abolition of the NPIA is a necessary part of the changes that we are making and of the Bill. Now is not necessarily the time to revisit what has, in effect, been a long-standing commitment, ever since the first announcement by my right honourable friend. Given the advanced state of wind-down of the agency and the transfer of its functions, now is the time to press on with our reforms, instead of looking back. Therefore, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, it is not very often that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford; in fact, I try to make it a general principle to disagree with him. However, on this occasion he has put his finger on an extraordinary gap in the Bill, and I can only assume that Home Office Ministers do not have the courage of their convictions.

We spent many happy months debating the principle of electing police and crime commissioners and we were told what significant individuals they were going to be. They were going to hold to account the chief constable and police service for all that went on in their area. Now, under the arrangements in this Bill the director-general of the National Crime Agency can say to any chief constable, “I would like the following resource from you dedicated to a particular operation”, but there is no requirement at all to inform the elected police and crime commissioner about that. Surely at the very least there should be a recognition that the police and crime commissioner might consider this matter important.

I am not a candidate to be a police and crime commissioner, but if I were in some remote part of the country outside London and had run on an election campaign saying that I wanted to see the police of my county devoted to the rural villages, the town centres or whatever, and I then discovered that behind my back the director-general of the National Crime Agency had said to my chief constable, “We’ve got to have this chunk of your resources and use them for a particular operation”, I would find it extraordinary that I had not even been told that that was happening and that my position as the directly elected police and crime commissioner, with a remit from the people of my area, was being undermined. I assume that this is an error in the drafting of the Bill.

I thought that my noble friend Lord Rosser was extraordinarily generous to the government Front Bench in offering two or three arguments as to why these amendments might not be necessary. However, unless the Minister is prepared to stand up and say, “Yes, of course, this was a drafting error. We did intend that police and crime commissioners would be informed”, the Government will be undermining what was apparently a flagship policy for this Administration.

Why might such a provision not be included in the Bill? The suggestion that this is a potentially trivial and merely operational matter that should not worry the police and crime commissioner is, frankly, nonsense. These are precisely the sorts of issues that will exercise local communities. Some of your Lordships may remember that at the time of the riots and disturbances last August one chief constable, quite properly, responded to a request to send a substantial number of police officers to London in support of ensuring that the streets were under control only to find that there were then disturbances in his own patch. He was then subject to all sorts of criticisms for having agreed to release those officers. What would the position be in very similar circumstances, although perhaps not a visible riot, in which the director-general of the National Crime Agency requested the movement of police officers for a particular operation and that then left the force concerned short? The police and crime commissioner would have to justify that this had been allowed to happen, even though he had not been informed in advance that such a request had been made. What would happen if the police and crime commissioner took a different view from that of the chief constable about whether this request was reasonable or justifiable? This is not an ordinary operational decision by the chief constable. The chief constable is not deciding within the framework of what is going on in that area how to deploy his or her resources; it is a decision to deploy them and to take them out of that area. That is precisely the area where the police and crime commissioner may say, “I want all the resources of my force kept in this area”.

So what is the justification for not having these provisions in the Bill? I hope that the Minister will tell us that he will adopt the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and incorporate them in the Bill, if not today, on Report. If he is not prepared to say that, I hope that he will give us a real explanation and reaffirm that, as far as the Home Office is concerned, the police and crime commissioners really matter, otherwise we spent three or four months in this Chamber debating the police and crime commissioners for no purpose whatever. They will be elected officials with no significant function.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I wish to say how sad I am that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, will not be a candidate for a PCC. We understand that there is already a PCC for London and the noble Lord would have to move out of his own city in order to stand as a candidate. He might want to consider that in due course and I am sure that he would make a very fine PCC, should he wish to do so.

Sadly, I was not involved in what the noble Lord referred to as those happy months debating the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act. I was then involved with another department but I was very grateful to my noble friends for the way in which they took that Bill through and discussed those matters.

The points put forward by the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Harris, and my noble friend Lord Thomas seem to imply a misunderstanding of the role of the PCCs and seem to suggest that PCCs should be involved in operational matters. I hope that I can explain why that will not be the case.

First, I shall speak about the policing protocol which was mentioned and which, I stress, has already been laid before Parliament. It outlines how the new policing governance arrangements established in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act will work and it clarifies the roles and responsibilities of police and crime commissioners, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime in London, chief constables, police and crime panels and the London Assembly Police and Crime Panel. It outlines what those bodies are expected to do and how they are expected to work together to fight crime and to improve policing. It also underlines the Home Secretary’s role as being ultimately accountable to Parliament and charged with ensuring the maintenance of the Queen’s peace with all force areas, safeguarding the public and protecting our national borders and security.

I do not think that directed tasking by the director-general in anyway undermines the police and crime commissioners in fighting serious and organised crime. It is a shared concern for the NCA and the PCCs. The tasking to the NCA from a police force in England and Wales would be used to fight cross-boundary serious and organised crime which police forces and PCCs must already have regard to in strategic policing requirements.

I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, was right to draw attention to those voluntary tasking arrangements between the NCA, all United Kingdom police forces and other enforcement bodies. Those two-way tasking provisions closely reflect the operational reality of how police forces and law enforcement agencies already work together and are the central, but co-ordinating, efforts against serious and organised crime.

Amendment 34 places a duty on the director-general of the NCA to consult the relevant PCC, prior to requesting its chief constable to perform a task under the voluntary tasking arrangements.

I want to emphasise to the noble Lord that the NCA will have a key relationship with the PCC in the fight against serious and organised crime. For example, police and crime commissioners will be consulted when the agency determines its strategic priorities and an annual plan respectively.

However, the tasking—I emphasise that word—of police forces by the agency and the tasking of the agency by chief constables are operational matters, where command and control of an operation is transferred to the organisation being tasked. Given the operational nature of tasking, I am certainly not persuaded of the case for the consultation and notification requirements set out in Amendments 34 and 35 tabled by the noble Lord for debate today.

Placing a duty on the director-general of the National Crime Agency to consult the relevant PCC before entering into a voluntary tasking arrangement risks blurring the line between operational independence and political accountability.

Moreover, imposing such a duty could disrupt a time-critical operation. For example, the director-general of the agency may need to task a specific police force to take the lead on a time-sensitive interdiction, such as a stop, arrest or search, in a long-running operation. Although a duty to notify, as provided for in Amendment 35, is less objectionable, again I remain to be persuaded of the case for including this in the Bill for the same reasons. As I have previously outlined, tasking arrangements ought properly to be left to an operational determination rather than imposing a uniform obligation of notification in England and Wales, irrespective of the nature of the tasking request.

Tasking of the National Crime Agency may also need to take place in time-critical situations. For example, a chief constable may request the director-general of the agency urgently to take the lead on activity where a resident in their police area has been kidnapped and their location is unknown in the United Kingdom. Under such circumstances, there may be operational consequences if executive action were to be delayed because the relevant PCC could not be contacted or notified in time—the individual may not have been available, had their mobile turned off, or whatever. A whole host of reasons might have made that difficult.

That is not to say that a PCC would not be notified of a tasking request by their chief constable. I would expect that a chief constable would notify their PCC as soon as it was feasible, practical and sensible to do so, if not beforehand. But formal, statutory notification prior to every tasking request would not be appropriate.

I trust that the party opposite is as committed as are the Government to protecting the operational independence of the director-general of the agency and chief constables, and to ensuring that swift action can be taken during time-critical operations. On that basis, I hope that those explanations deal with the points that the noble Lord raised, and having listened to what I had to say, he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I am slightly confused by the response from the noble Lord, Lord Henley. He implied that this group of amendments is designed to undermine the operational independence of the chief constable. But this is not about an operational decision. This is not saying that the police and crime commissioner must approve. It is simply saying that before making a request to use the resources that are properly the responsibility of that police and crime commissioner —the resources for which that police and crime commissioner is answerable to the public and the police and crime panel and so forth—as a minimum, the police and crime commissioner should be informed. This is not saying that the police and crime commissioner will then interfere in the operational judgment of the chief constable as to whether those resources can be released and what the implications of that are. Let us not pretend that this is not potentially hugely significant. As my noble friend Lord Rosser pointed out, there is nothing that prescribes the size or scale of these requests, so they could be enormously significant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

The noble Lord protests too much. I will not go back to the various remarks he made about the police and crime commissioners. That is an argument that we had in another place—dare I say it, in another country—a long time ago. It has been dealt with. That is what Parliament has agreed.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords—

[Lord Henley]

No, no, the noble Lord can intervene after I have dealt with the points about his amendment. The noble Lord objects to what is happening, and apparently supports Amendments 34 and 35. Interestingly, he did not put his name down to them, but that is possibly why he made a speech of that sort—because he knows that the amendments go too far. He knows perfectly well that the amendments say “must”, which is why I talked about time-sensitive problems and said that it was not appropriate that the director-general “must” always consult the police and crime commissioner or, in Amendment 35, that,

“a chief officer of a UK police force must notify the Police and Crime Commissioner”,

because these things are not practical in those circumstances. That is what I dealt with in the amendment and in my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, who will respond in due course.

We all welcome the chance to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, yet again making one of the speeches that he no doubt made during the passage of the Bill, which sadly I was not able to take part in but which my noble friend dealt with so well. I hope that my explanation of why the word “must” is not appropriate in Amendments 34 and 35 is satisfactory and that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, will feel able to withdraw his amendment, as I suggested earlier.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I hesitate to correct the Minister, but if he checks back on the speeches I made during the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill when it was being considered in your Lordships’ House, he will see that I was not a particular supporter of the concept of police and crime commissioners. What I am doing today is fighting on their behalf for them to be given the information to enable them to do their job. They should be allowed to be the police and crime commissioners that the Conservative Party envisaged when it put this measure before Parliament.

If we are now being told that the only reason for rejecting this amendment is the word “must” because of the implications of urgency, as I said in my previous intervention, that is very easily remedied. If the noble Lord is saying that he is happy to table these amendments on Report with an urgency exclusion, obviously I cannot speak for the opposition Front Bench but I am sure we would think that progress had been made.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am always happy to look at further amendments to amendments. Similarly, I am happy to think that one of the things I could do in the long summer months when the Olympics are on is read some of the noble Lord’s speeches on police and crime commissioners. Those will no doubt provide me with a great deal of pleasure and possibly put me to sleep. They will be great speeches and I will read them just as I will listen to the noble Lord.

What the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, does with his amendments is a matter for him. I was responding to the specific amendments that were put before me. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, can add his name, if he wishes, to the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, might bring forward in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I seek clarity from the Minister. This is a genuine attempt to secure information. Clause 7(1) states:

“A person may disclose information to the NCA if the disclosure is made for the purposes of the exercise of any NCA function”.

I seek to clarify whether this is as broad a statement as I think it may be. Does it mean that any person may choose out of sheer devilment to ignore any other requirements to which they may be subject under the Data Protection Act or anything else to disclose information to the NCA because they think that it may be useful for the purposes of the exercise of its work? I am trying to get at who determines whether the disclosure is for the exercise of the NCA’s functions. Could I as a private individual who holds some privileged information decide that I think the NCA ought to be interested in the information because I think it relates to serious crime, and therefore I may decide to ignore the legal obligations on me not to disclose that information and pass it to the NCA? I could understand it if the wording was, “The NCA may require me to disclose the information because it is investigating something and gets the necessary permissions to override it”. I may be completely misinterpreting Clause 7(1) but I would be grateful for clarity on that point.

[Lord Henley]

I am sorry but I am slightly confused by the procedure that we are adopting. My understanding was that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, was going to oppose the Question that Clause 7 stand part of the Bill. The noble Lord has intervened at this stage to ask a question about Clause 7. Does he want to wait for the general debate that we are going to have? However, the noble Baroness seems to be implying that there will not be a—

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

This is the debate. That is all you are getting.

[Lord Henley]

I am distraught. There I was expecting a major debate and the noble Lord asked me only about Clause 7(1), who the relevant person may be and whether it was any person. I would have thought the simplest way of dealing with this matter is the way that I was taught many years ago—the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, will remember this from when he first trained as a lawyer—namely, that you look at what the words on the face of the Bill say. We hope that the Bill will become an Act when we have finished dealing with it and it has gone through all its stages. The Bill states:

“A person may disclose information to the NCA if the disclosure is made for the purposes of the exercise of any NCA function”.

I would have thought that that is fairly straightforward. That is what the Bill says. My advice suggests that one need not go beyond that. The words “A person” imply that any person can disclose information to the NCA,

“if the disclosure is made for the purposes of the exercise of any NCA function”.

The noble Lord will now come back to me, because he always does, and I enjoy our debates. This statute is relatively simple to interpret. We know that that is not always the case and that great complications can arise in the interpretation of statutes. However, I should have thought that the words we are discussing are as simple as you can get.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, perhaps I did not make myself as clear as I should have done. If I am a data controller in an organisation and I have certain obligations placed on me not to disclose information, does Clause 7(1) override my normal duties as a data controller under the Data Protection Act and allow me to decide whether certain information looks as though it ought to fall within the remit of the NCA, and therefore enable me to disclose it to that body? That is my simple question and, even though I am trying to behave as though the words on the paper mean what they seem to mean, I am simply trying to understand whether this is as broad a “may” for the persons concerned as I think it is.

[Lord Henley]

I was probably not as clear as I ought to have been. Obviously, the persons would be subject to any other enactment, which would include, as the noble Lord said, the Data Protection Act. One could also mention the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. They would be covered by the provisions of those Acts. The situation is as it states on the package, but subject to other statutory provisions.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I really do not wish to prolong this, unless the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is about to explain what the words mean. What is the purpose of having this provision at all? If all that it is saying is that I, as an individual person, may do something that I am not prohibited from doing, what is the point of even putting it in the legislation in the first place? If the subsection is merely saying, “I have a bit of information that I am not prohibited from passing on, and I may decide to pass it to the NCA”, it seems to be completely unnecessary. It clearly means something, and I think that it means rather more than, “I can provide information without being constrained by, say, the Data Protection Act”. Unless the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is going to provide some insight on this point, it may be something that the noble Lord can write to us about.

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[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, when my noble friend Lady Smith introduced the amendment, she made it clear that there was not necessarily a desire to stick to the wording before us: rather, that what we are having at this stage is very much a probing discussion. All your Lordships in this Committee support the work done by CEOP and we all want to see it succeed. Given that the Government intend to put CEOP within the National Crime Agency—for which there are some very strong arguments in favour but also some arguments against—the question is how one preserves the integrity of CEOP’s work and makes sure that the work continues and is seen to continue.

The amendment is partly about safeguarding the funding streams, as well as the external funding, and it is partly about ensuring that the existing partnership structures with CEOP, which are reflected in the current board structure of CEOP, are continued. Although the wording of my noble friend’s amendment does not necessarily resolve all these issues, it gives us an opportunity to highlight the concerns.

The principles are clear: we want to see CEOP’s work continue; we want to see it protected; and we want to see the retention of the partnership structure, which involves not only bringing in resources from outside but ensuring that those who provide the resources have confidence that the public contribution is retained and remains transparent. We want to ensure that in the operation of the agency there is a genuine partnership that involves different parties working together to achieve a common end.

We look to the Minister for some account of how the benefits of that separate entity, which is currently CEOP, can be preserved within a new structure. This is not a new concept. The presence on the government Bench reminds me that we had a very similar debate about the creation of Healthwatch within the Care Quality Commission; and there, completely erroneously of course, the Government’s objective was to create something that was independent and that had its own income flow and governance structure that was different from the rest of the Care Quality Commission. Although I do not think that the solution that the Government adopted in that particular model was perfect, it demonstrates that a number of models are available that try to achieve the objective of preserving this continuing area of activity, preserving the partnership structure and preserving the funding and independence of that funding for the future. I hope that the Minister can respond in those terms.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, again, I regret that I missed the debates on the Care Quality Commission. I shall spend the summer reading those as well as the other ones. In response to the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, I make it clear that I fully understand that his noble friend’s amendment is probing and seeks reassurances about what CEOP does and how it works. I shall not dismiss it purely on the grounds of its wording, nor shall I say that it is merely a fantasy amendment because we do not yet have the NCA board that she was looking for, as that was dealt with at an earlier stage. I accept that this as a probing amendment and that there is a need for reassurances from me and the Government about the future of CEOP and what will happen under the new arrangements.

I pay tribute to the work of CEOP, which I saw when I visited it, as I am sure other noble Lords have done. We should all be very grateful that that child protection work will continue through the work of the agency. Since its creation, it has been a significant success story. It is important that I remind noble Lords that it has not previously had a statutory basis that is distinct from that of SOCA, and that has had no detrimental impact on its operational independence. It has worked perfectly well, and the six principles, to which I shall turn later, that underpin CEOP will continue to underpin it on the transition to the NCA.

Before I go through what I want to get on the record as an assurance, perhaps I may respond to my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay on the funding of CEOP and the fact that it can receive funds from outside sources. At the moment its existing funding model allows it to charge, for example, for training services that are provided mainly to the police, teachers and child protection workers and to raise income or support in kind through sponsorship and corporate arrangements. We certainly want those arrangements to continue with the NCA; there will be no change to that.

I assure the Committee that child protection will run throughout the National Crime Agency. CEOP will still exist as a part of that as a separate command within it, but we would not want to see it silo-ised—an inelegant word—within the department. It is important that its work runs throughout the agency. As well as building on CEOP’s existing role as the national centre dedicated to working with others to protect children from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, the NCA will also be subject to a new statutory duty, which in essence is to safeguard and to promote the welfare of children. That means that the agency will give appropriate priority to children when it comes into contact with them and that it will share early concerns about the safety and welfare of children, ensuring preventive action before a crisis develops.

Those requirements will be part of the training that each and every NCA officer will receive. I emphasise the point that CEOP will be a separate command within the NCA; we do not want to see these matters silo-ised. Contrary to the noble Baroness’s amendment, it is imperative that the responsibility to discharge that duty remains with the whole of the National Crime Agency and not just with CEOP.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, I hope that in due course I will be able to answer those points, in particular those final questions from the noble Lord, Lord Harris. I begin, though, with two points. First, my noble friend Lady Hamwee referred to “architecture”. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, also used that word. My noble friend did not particularly like the term and I agree with her. I find it inelegant, but as a form of shorthand, it is quite useful on this occasion. Therefore, I suspect that architecture is something that might be referred to. Secondly, I make a brief apology to my noble friend about the website.

I was discussing the Home Office website with the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, earlier during the Division that took place. We have had some problems with the Home Office website. This is true of other government departments, all of which have been targeted. I hope to write to the noble Baroness in due course and I am more than happy to copy my letter about the problems we are having with the website to my noble friend Lady Hamwee. It can be difficult for all noble Lords if, in trying to discover what the Home Office is doing—or any other department for that matter—they cannot get into our website. Obviously, that is the means on every occasion by which we learn what is going on. There have been problems and we hope to address them. Perhaps for the first of many times, I give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, since the Minister raises the issue of the website, I believe that the Home Office’s explanation of why booklets will not be issued about the election of police and crime commissioners is that people will be able to access the information about candidates from the website. When the Minister writes to my noble friend, what reassurances will he give that the elections will not be interfered with by the same sort of malign intervention on his website?

Stephen Lawrence

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, on occasions, I have heard allegations that one in three people think that the police are corrupt, but other surveys seem to show relatively high levels of satisfaction with the police, both in the white community and in the BME community. It is much the same for both groups, although it varies once one gets into sub-groups. I note what my noble friend said about the need for a new independent inquiry. That has not been ruled out and it is a matter that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary will consider in due course. As the noble Lord, Lord Blair, put it, at the moment it is right for the Met to conduct and complete its internal review and for this to move on in the appropriate way. I think he was also right to stress the need not to rush on too fast in these matters.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, public confidence in the police is extremely important. If there is an underlying feeling that the police, either in these circumstances or in others when allegations have been made, have acted in a way that is not with full integrity and is corrupt, is the Home Office satisfied with the current arrangements within the police service for monitoring and reassuring the public about the integrity of officers? What steps does the Home Office envisage putting in place to ensure that priority is given to this work when the new regime of police and crime commissioners comes into force later this year?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right to talk about the importance of public confidence in the police. If we do not have public confidence in the police, we move to a rather different form of policing and one which neither he nor I would ever wish to see. I shall not go wider into the debate on police and crime commissioners at this stage as I appreciate that there are differences of view between the noble Lord and myself about them. We believe that they will bring greater accountability and that, in future, we shall have better policing as a result. As I made clear in the Statement, my right honourable friend takes all allegations of this sort extremely seriously. If any allegation, and particularly this one, is proved to be true, that can undermine public confidence in the police force which he and I and everyone else in the House considers so important.

Criminal Records Bureau

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the Bill has not completed its passage and it will obviously have to come back to this House after consideration of Lords amendments in another place. After completion, when we have had our last chance to discuss these matters, we will issue that guidance.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

Further to that question, the noble Baroness suggested that it would be discretionary for the ISA to pass such information to the police. I had understood the Minister to say that his intention was for that information to be passed to the police automatically, so that they could use their discretion. Does he agree that having two sets of discretion in this area is likely to lead to individual cases falling through the net, which could be very damaging to the children who might subsequently be abused?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I do not have the precise words that I used on that occasion, but the noble Lord is probably right to imply that we were offering discretion to the police.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Monday 12th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I will again remind the noble Lord and the House that we are at Third Reading. I shall repeat the words I used. If the police judge it relevant to the post applied for they may disclose it on an enhanced certificate—no more and no less.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I am grateful to noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. I was particularly struck by the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford, the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Howarth, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.

The issue is to protect children. While we, as parents, warn our children against stranger danger, we are talking here about individuals who are not strangers. These are people who have been put into a position where it looks as though they are trusted individuals. That is why these complicated discussions we are having about what checks should be done on individuals who are supervised and the nature of the supervision are extremely important.

Because of the developing thinking that has taken place in your Lordships’ House through the Committee stage, Report and now at Third Reading, my amendment was almost a Committee stage probing amendment to try to understand the nature of the guidance the Government are envisaging and what day-to-day supervision would look like. However, we have heard that the Government do not think it will be possible to provide sufficient guidance on day-to-day supervision to give the reassurance we are looking for. That is why the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, refers to guidance on,

“regular and close contact with children”.

Quite properly, the issue is whether the relationship between the adult and child is one where the contact will create that position of trust.

The Minister talked about the circumstances in which information that has led to an individual being barred is provided to the police. In my 26 years in local government, to which the Minister referred earlier as being insufficient to have acquired adequate judgment about these things, I chaired on a number of occasions disciplinary panels to decide whether individuals should be dismissed for inappropriate behaviour with children. Those individuals were not reported to the police but would have been put on a barred list. Now I am a trustee of a charity, for which I have been CRB-checked, which has volunteers working with children to put on theatrical productions, and so on. As a trustee or a parent I would be appalled if some of those volunteers could not be checked to see whether they had been barred previously from working with children, whatever the circumstances.

It is a strange way to go about the business that, rather than the simple information on which the authority has decided that an individual should be barred, it should now rely on that information being passed to the police and the chief officer of the police deciding whether it is relevant. It is a very convoluted way to do something when most of your Lordships—I accept not all—believe that there is a more sensible way.

The substantive issue is explored in Amendment 5 and in a moment we will hear what the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, intends to do with that amendment. In the mean time, partly because I have not received the clarification that suggests to me that day-to-day supervision can appropriately be defined in guidance—my amendment could not do so either, I suspect because it is impossible to provide adequate reassurance about day-to-day supervision—I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Police and Crime Panels

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Monday 12th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I have made it quite clear that we are going to fund the panels properly. I am not going to respond to the specific allegation made by the noble Lord, but if necessary—if I think it appropriate—I will write to him. What I am making clear is that we think we are providing appropriate funding for the panels to do the job that was set out in the police Bill last year. We think that they can do that because their job is to look at what the PCCs are doing.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, the experience in London is that so far the only information to have emerged from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, which is a surrogate police and crime commissioner, is a series of listed decisions on the website. How on earth is a police and crime panel outside London going to get to grips with the detail underlying that and the issues determined by the police and crime commissioner, with money that is insufficient to employ more than one or two people in support of busy local authority councillors who will have many other roles in addition to that on the panel?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord misunderstands—dare I say it?—how local authorities work. Obviously, the funding will be available to provide for some staffing to assist that panel, but within that local authority there will be other officers doing other jobs who will also be able to assist in that role. That does not require the extra funding that he described. However much money the Government offered, no doubt he and others would say that it was inadequate. We made an announcement on how much it would be. Having reviewed it, we have since increased it. We think that it will be sufficient.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Monday 6th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that correction. My noble friend Lady Stowell has just reminded me that there is a strong distinction between schools and FE colleges. For that reason I think it is very important. Oh, dear, I have to give way to the noble Lord, Lord Harris. Can he wait and let me finish my remarks? Calm down, as they say. I shall look very carefully at what I said. Obviously there is an important distinction between the two. I now give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

All I would ask is that when the noble Lord is looking very carefully to clarify that distinction he also looks at the situation of the large numbers of volunteer assistants in schools and volunteers used for out-of-school activities linked to the school—for example, to interest children in science, since we have been talking about technicians, but it could also be in art or other activities—to see whether they would be covered.

[Lord Henley]

Of course I will look at those matters and respond to my noble friends Lady Randerson and Lady Walmsley. I will even send a copy of that letter to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, in due course.

Let us return to the amendments because that is the important thing to do. I suspect this might now have to be the last amendment that we can deal with. In putting forward the amendment, the noble Lord has questioned whether we are confident that any supervision would be adequate to protect these children. In making the case for these amendments, reference has been made to the concept of secondary access. Some commentators imply a unique causal link between initial contact with the child and later contact elsewhere if the first is the place where most work is regulated activity. We do not accept that premise. Initial contact may happen where regulated activity takes place or it may happen in some other setting, such as a leisure centre, library, church or wherever. In our view, one type of setting does not offer significantly more help than any other for seeking contact with the same child later and elsewhere. Whatever the setting, we believe that parents have the primary responsibility for educating their child in how to react to an approach from any adult if it goes beyond that adult’s normal role. I give way to the noble Baroness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, on the contrary, it would be covered now, and following the changes that we are going to make it would still be covered. He was not covered by what was in place before and that is how he slipped through the net. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, was asked to set up his review into these matters and why the changes were made. The point that we are trying to make is that the changes have gone too far—this was the point also made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss—in terms of the bureaucracy involved. As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, put it, one can never totally eliminate risk and there has to be a degree of balance in how one deals with these matters. One must be proportionate. Merely to think that any number of checks imposed by the state is going to eliminate all risk is, I suspect, a wish too far. I give way to the noble Lord.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. He said a few moments ago that there is a responsibility for parents in this. The difficulty is that the normal assumption of parents will be that every person whom their child comes into contact with in a club or other activity is safe. So presumably what the noble Lord is saying is that, in the guidance that will explain what all this means, parents will be provided with a list. It will say, “The following people whom your child comes into contact with have been checked and the others on the list have not been checked. Please advise your children not to have any contact outside this activity”. That is the implication of what the Minister is saying. Of course parents have a responsibility, but what the Government are doing is creating a situation in which parents will think that an environment is safe, but it is not because some individuals will not have been checked and those individuals may build up a relationship of trust with a child that they could choose to abuse at secondary contact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

The noble Lord may say what he wishes, but he should not try to put words into my mouth, which is what he is trying to do. He is trying to suggest that we could tell all parents exactly who is safe and who is unsafe. Obviously we cannot do that. What we are trying to do is create a system that will provide the necessary safeguards but does not make parents feel that their children are automatically safe. Parents must still have the duty of looking after their children by warning them of potential dangers. They should not assume that merely because someone has been CRB-checked, merely because the process has been gone through and merely because every box has been ticked, which is what the noble Lord seems to suggest, all is safe.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords—

[Lord Henley]

I am not going to give way to the noble Lord. I am going to get on with my speech. If the noble Lord will allow me to do so, I will continue.

These amendments seek to preserve what we believe is a disproportionate disclosure and barring scheme that covers the employees and volunteers far more than is actually necessary on this occasion for safeguarding purposes. In so doing, it subjects all the businesses, organisations and whatever to unnecessary red tape and discourages volunteering. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, also made the important point of whether it would still be open to schools, organisations and businesses to continue to check volunteers and others. Of course they can, and we will ensure that they are still able to request the enhanced CRB certificate when necessary. We want to emphasise the importance of good sense and judgment by the managers on the ground when they look at this issue. That is at the heart of our proposal and it is why we think we have got the balance right. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, is now looking somewhat quizzical but no doubt we can have further discussion about this between now and another stage.

The right thing is to get the correct balance in how one looks at these things. The noble Lord asked about schools and what they could do. This gives local managers the ability to determine these things flexibly and make extra checks. With the various interruptions I have had, I appreciate the slight muddle I got into earlier over the letter to my noble friend Lady Walmsley. There has been a degree of confusion here.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My understanding is that it would be unlawful and that therefore they would destroy what they had taken. I can give that assurance to the noble Earl.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

To clarify further, presumably part of the difficulty here is that this is an inadvertent error by the police, because they have taken somebody under Section 136 to a place of safety which in this instance has turned out to be a cell in a police station. Is not the real problem here, and the reason why, presumably, custody officers have then made this mistake, that there is an inadequate supply of places of safety in more appropriate accommodation? That is a fundamental issue. If the Government were to address that, the chance of this arising would become far less.

[Lord Henley]

If I may say so, that is another question. I accept the fact that it might be better if there were other places that they could take the individual to, but the important point is that they have taken that person to that cell. They have then done something wrong by taking his or her DNA in whatever form. That would be unlawful—that is what I am trying to make clear—and I hope that the noble Lord will accept that point.

I turn now to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and welcome him back. I had not actually noticed that he was absent from the Committee stage of the Bill, because I seem to remember that we dealt with some of these things—but perhaps it is just a fantasy that I remember us addressing these matters. I certainly remember that we had considerable discussion on these matters.

I appreciate that the noble Lord feels that he has misdrafted his amendment and would like it to read “and only” instead of “or”. We are at Report stage, so it is possibly too late to fix these things, but I suspect that it is to some extent a probing amendment. If the noble Lord remembers, we had some quite spirited discussion in Committee of what the appropriate period should be, and I dare say that we will have another one when we discuss Amendment 4, which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, will be moving. Amendment 3 does not define that period. If one assumes that the appropriate period would be the relevant period set out in the various provisions of the Bill, I would say to the noble Lord that subsection (3) of new Section 63D of PACE, as inserted by Clause 1, already does this. Subsection (3) says that in,

“any other case,”—

in other words, except in the circumstances already provided for in subsection (2), which are where the arrest or the taking of biometrics were unlawful,

“section 63D material must be destroyed unless it is retained under any power conferred by sections 63E to 630”.

We have a general presumption that material must be destroyed unless the Bill explicitly permits its retention. I will come back to retention on that later amendment from the noble Baroness and later amendments from the noble Lord. But it must be destroyed unless the Bill explicitly permits its retention, either for a fixed period, such as for a person charged with a qualifying offence but not convicted, or for an indefinite period for those with convictions.

I hope that with that explanation my noble friend will feel able to withdraw her amendment and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, will not press his amendment. I appreciate that we will discuss these matters in further detail on some later amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, that provision will be available here; it is available there. That is the important point. The police will have the ability to apply to the courts. Those arrested for a qualifying offence but not charged, where the victim is vulnerable, will also have their DNA held for three years, subject to the approval of the new independent commissioner. The noble Lord may not like that but that is the case.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The Minister said that an application, which has not, or may not have been exercised in Scotland, could be made when the police consider it necessary. Could he define what he thinks would be necessary under such circumstances?

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, such is the benign nature of my speaking note—I am not even sure that “Resist” appears on it, as sometimes is the case—that I thought I might be able to get through the whole of this debate without an intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Harris. This was going to be a little test to see whether I could manage that. Unfortunately, he then mentioned rickshaw drivers and associated problems. I had a quick word with my noble friend Lord Attlee, who assures me that this matter was hotly debated during the Localism Bill. I am sorry that I was not there for that, but I will remember the occasion and make a point of looking up those debates. I have a picture in my mind of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, setting off home this evening to Haringey with the long-suffering rickshaw driver.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I value my life too much.

UK Border Security: 30 November

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as I made clear in my original Answer, our first priority, our highest priority, our top priority is the security of the United Kingdom. If the noble Lord thinks that we are involved in strike breaking he should think again. We want to make sure that our borders are kept secure. We think that the unions are endangering that security by the actions they are taking. The offer is still open to talk to the Government and others and we wish they would take that up.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, of course our borders should be kept secure, but are the Government doing enough to negotiate with the unions on this point? Are the Government in fact making every effort to try to resolve this dispute rather than, as the Minister has told us, having been preparing since April for just this eventuality? Is it not that they actually wanted to provoke a strike, for whatever political reasons they may have?

[Lord Henley]

Come on, my Lords. The noble Lord knows perfectly well that the Government’s doors remain open and that the Government are prepared to negotiate. It is the unions who are being intransigent and it is the party opposite which is refusing to condemn an action that will possibly endanger our security. Because of the actions we have taken, and have been taking since April of this year, we think that we will be able to keep security at the appropriate level at the borders on Wednesday.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we have a curious group, as some noble Lords have put it, with the amendments relating to relocation, and Amendment 44A, put down by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, I believe late last night.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, who is a pretty experienced politician, curiously came over rather naïve about this and could not quite understand why these two amendments had been grouped together. That point was answered by my noble friend Lady Hamwee when she pointed out that it was possibly a somewhat opportunistic amendment to put down. I give way, as always, to the noble Lord.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

I know this is fearful—every time the noble Lord mentions my name I stand up, and I will endeavour not to do that.

My puzzlement was associated with the grouping. Had this been freestanding as Amendment 44A, we could have had a nice little debate about that and about its place in the Bill. I was puzzled that it was grouped with these other amendments on the relocation powers.

[Lord Henley]

Given that the noble Lord is quite an experienced Member of this House, he will know that the grouping is not a matter, sadly, that the Government have any control over, and that it would be a matter for the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, to decide that he wished to have this amendment grouped with the other amendments. Of course, the Government are more than happy to go along with that.

If I may, I will deal with that amendment very briefly. It is an amendment that asks for yet another report and I have to say that it is not necessary. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, knows, there is ample provision already in place for independent review. We have the independent reviewer of counter-terrorism, currently David Anderson QC, and for 10 years before him we had my noble friend Lord Carlile of Berriew, who did that job exceedingly well. The independent chief inspector of the United Kingdom Border Agency, currently John Vine, is also required to review the operation and effectiveness of the measures in place at our ports and airports. They both report annually to the Home Secretary and their findings and reports are laid in Parliament.

I will not go much further than that and I will not deal with the specific points that noble Lords have raised in relation to recent events, partly because John Vine has been asked by the Home Secretary to make a report into these matters. There are also two other internal reports that deal with these issues—again, which have been promised by my right honourable friend—that will be made available when they come out. It would therefore not be right or proper to deal with those matters.

Referring on to the question of private planes coming in and what controls we have there, as my honourable friend in another place, Damian Green, made clear, we have absolutely nothing to hide. We have in fact strengthened the procedures there compared to what they were pre-2010 and we have made sure that we prioritise and make appropriate risk-based assessments on any planes that come in. A Statement was offered to the party opposite but for reasons of its own it wished not to take it.

I turn to relocation. Again, I accept that this is an issue that has been debated extensively throughout the Bill’s passage both in this House and in another place. Obviously there are strong views on all sides. We accept that relocation has proved effective in disrupting terrorism-related activities, but it does, as my noble friend Lord Macdonald made clear, raise particularly difficult questions of proportionality. The question is therefore, as I put it at Second Reading and which I repeat now, one of balance. Our review of counter-terrorism acknowledged these difficult questions and considered them carefully. The review concluded that the best balance lies in a more focused use of the robust restrictions that will be available under the Bill together with the increased resources that will be available for covert investigation. It concluded that it will be possible to protect the public without the powers of relocation being routinely available.

We must always remember not to look at this Bill on its own. It is part of that wider package of changes, including those in the counterterrorism review, aimed at striking a better balance across the whole range of counterterrorism and security powers, and it will be complemented by the significantly increased funding that we are providing for those purposes. We have also published the Draft Enhanced TPIM Bill, which will be introduced if necessary, in exceptional circumstances, after some degree of prelegislative scrutiny, as is found appropriate by the authorities in this House and another place. It would provide more stringent restrictions, including that power of relocation, if necessary.

I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has concerns over timing, particularly in relation to the Olympics. Again, he ought to listen to what my noble friend Lord Newton had to say about that, and possibly the Olympics is the one occasion when we would not want to be showcasing to the world the fact that we have measures of this sort. However, I take his concerns about the Olympics. The Government have made very clear that arrangements will be in place to manage effectively the transition from control orders to TPIM notices. Security arrangements for the Olympics are being planned on the basis that the TPIM Bill, and the powers available under it, will be in force. These plans are also proceeding on the basis that the additional powers contained in the Draft Enhanced TPIM Bill will, we hope, not be needed or be necessary. As is right and proper, our planning for the Olympics is both flexible and risk-based, and we will continue to monitor the threat to ensure that we adopt the most appropriate response, including keeping this issue under review as necessary in the light of developments.

Finally, my noble friend Lord Faulks raised a detailed and very important question about the transition period when this Bill comes in, which will be over Christmas. He asked whether I could provide some reassurance that the police would be able to manage this transition during that period. As the House will be aware, the Bill includes provision for a transition period during which control orders will remain in force to enable the necessary arrangements for TPIMs to be put in place where appropriate. The Christmas and New Year holidays are likely to fall within that period because we are approaching the time when the Bill will complete its passage through both Houses, assuming that the Bill receives Royal Assent before the Christmas period. We have recently received advice from the Metropolitan Police that while extensive preparations are being made for the transition to the new regime, an extension to the transition period from 28 days to 42 days would be required to ensure that operational risks are minimised over the holiday period. I give an assurance to the House and to my noble friend that I undertake to bring forward an amendment to the Bill at Third Reading that will make that necessary change in Schedule 8 to the Bill—I think it is more or less the last sentence of the Bill.

I hope that with those explanations, and stressing again the need for balance and proportionality, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I start with one point on which I am in total agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. The Bill will be the subject of detailed debate at its later stages and I look forward to those later stages. I also offer my congratulations to all noble Lords who spoke. I never thought it was likely that I would be getting to my feet so soon after 9 pm. I do not know whether the usual channels will notice this but I hope they do not suggest that we start every day with a two-and-a-half-hour debate on procedural matters hoping it will speed up later proceedings.

We have done very well to get through a big and detailed Bill of this sort—a Bill with some 115 clauses and 10 schedules—in the time we have. I will endeavour to be brief in responding because, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said and I agreed with him, obviously a great deal of this must be discussed in further detail at later stages.

The Bill was described rather cruelly by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, as a “mishmash” and by others as a “Christmas pie”. It is possibly a bit too early to describe it as a Christmas pie so I was going to use the word “pudding” because it is a mix of a number of things. The reason I wanted to use the word pudding is thinking of those great remarks of Winston Churchill to emphasise the fact that it has a theme running through it—it is not a pudding without a theme. There is a theme relating to the protections of freedoms that I hope I outlined at the beginning of the debate. There is also a theme that runs through the Bill which I again think is important—the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to it—and that is one of balance. On each of the different issues that we will deal with, it is important that we address the question of the right balance between the protection of our freedoms and the protection of security. Very difficult judgments have always to be made in this area, which is what we will have to do. That is why I will come back to the word “balance” time and again.

The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, thought that the balance was wrong, but a great many other speakers, including my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lord Goodhart, thought that the balance was right. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, thought that the balance was right, but he wanted to see extensions in the Bill in areas such as freedom of speech. He said that he would not bring forward amendments relating to freedom of speech or removing “insulting” from the Public Order Act while our consultation was out, but he asked whether it might be possible to have some debate on that. As always, I will say that that must be a matter for the usual channels, but no doubt the noble Lord will find some way of introducing it in Committee.

In the time available to me today I hope to run through the various parts of the Bill and make a few brief comments on them, starting with Part 1, on DNA and biometrics. I shall deal first with biometrics in schools, particularly because my noble friend Lord Lucas referred to the proposals as—I think that I have got his words right—a “daffy overreaction” to a perceived problem which would do nothing to improve safety or privacy. I note what he said, but I noted also that his general reaction to the Bill was positive. I can assure him that, although the coalition agreement is generally our bible and something that we always abide by, the proposals have been included not just for reasons of the coalition agreement. No doubt my noble friend will want to come back to that in due course.

On the wider question of DNA and whether we should keep the DNA of people who have not been convicted for three years or six years, again there was a division of opinion within the House. My noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and the noble Lord, Lord Dear, both thought that the current position was untenable. I had the support of my noble friend Lady Randerson, but others, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the right reverend Prelate, had considerable concerns. I think that it was the right reverend Prelate who used that dread expression “the precautionary principle”, which always worries me. I tend to run away when I hear about the precautionary principle, because it implies that one cannot do anything because something might go wrong. I do not know what it would prevent us doing if one took it too far, but, again, I note what he says.

It was my noble friend Lady Berridge, speaking from her experience as a barrister, who reminded us of the importance of the presumption of innocence, the right to privacy and the risk of a breach of Article 8 and rights of privacy if we kept an excessive amount of data. Again, these matters will have to be looked at in considerable detail, but it is important that we get this right. It is important also that we come to address the questions raised by my noble friend Lady Doocey and by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, who discussed possible costs to the police in dealing with that.

I will cover two other points in relation to the question of retention of DNA. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who suggested that we were going to be taking some 17,000 rapists off the database and that potentially some 23,000 offenders’ details per year will not be entered on the database under these provisions. The contention that every single person suspected of rape will instantly come off the database is simply not true. It is about keeping the details of thousands of innocent people, who have not been convicted, on the DNA database because of a hypothesis that a proportion of them may go on to commit—

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

The figures I quoted were from the Home Office’s own figures, reanalysing the cases where individuals would have been taken off the database as a result of these changes and subsequently —these are facts and involve real people—gone on to commit other crimes in 6,000 or 7,000 cases. I will have to check my notes again on the figures, but these were serious crimes, including rape and murder.

[Lord Henley]

I will obviously allow the noble Lord to check his facts again in due course, but I stand by what I said. The presumption that he was making—along with, I think, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall—was that we were taking all these people off and that they were all going to be guilty. I was trying to make clear that simply keeping the details of those people on the database, because of a hypothesis that a tiny proportion of them may go on to commit serious crimes in future, is not actually going to do anything to increase the conviction rate for rape. As I explained in opening this debate, those charged with a qualifying offence, including rape, obviously will have their DNA retained for three years. It is then up to the police to apply to the courts to extend that by a further two years. That is set out in the Bill. For those arrested but not charged with a qualifying offence in cases where the victim is vulnerable, the police may still apply to the independent commissioner to retain their DNA for three years.

My noble friend Lady Berridge also raised the very important question of the over-representation on the DNA database of those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. Obviously, the database is not self-populating, because for a person’s DNA to be taken the person must have been suspected of committing a recordable offence and that arrest in law must have been necessary. You cannot, as another noble Lord said, simply arrest so as to get the DNA. That is a significant threshold. However, our proposals will mean that the vast majority of those who are arrested, but not subsequently convicted, will have their DNA profiles destroyed very soon unless they are convicted of a crime in due course.

We have very difficult questions to address, again, on the regulation of surveillance and very difficult questions of balance between those who feel that we need further safeguards and those who feel that people always welcome more cameras, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Harris, suggested. I have to say he ought to look at Project Champion in Birmingham, which I referred to in my opening remarks, and he will find that that is not always the case. I had better stop mentioning the noble Lord if he is going to rise to his feet on every occasion, but I will give way.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

Perhaps I will not rise on the next occasion you mention me. The issue about Project Champion was that people welcomed the original introduction. It was when they found out they had been misled about the purposes of the cameras that the anger—the very real and justifiable anger—arose.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, it was a real anger and it was quite right that something should be done about it. I think he is wrong, though, to imply that people welcome more and more cameras on every single occasion.

Obviously, we have got to get this right, so I was very grateful that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, for example, welcomed the fact that we were going to have a code of practice and a new commissioner. Again, she said it was important that further things should happen. I think she saw that there was insufficient provision for complaints to be made and she also suggested that there was not—I think I have it right—sufficient oversight. I will certainly look at that, and these are obviously matters that we can examine in Committee.

The last point that I should pick up on is that made by my noble friends Lady Miller and Lady Doocey, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, when they talked about the number of commissioners and considered whether there could be a merger of commissioners. I appreciate that the number of commissioners seems to be growing, but their roles are distinct. Again, that is a matter of detail that we should be able to consider in due course in Committee.

Turning to powers of entry, my noble friend Lord Goodhart, who generally welcomed the Bill, for which I was very grateful, raised the issue that it includes a number of Henry VIII powers. Whenever that expression is mentioned, I think back to what was almost the first Bill that I handled at this Dispatch Box, which related to statutory sick pay, which was one of the earliest modern reintroductions of Henry VIII powers. I remember the savaging that I received from the then good friend of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, Lord Russell, and the problems that we had with the Bill. When I die, no doubt Henry VIII powers will be found engraved on my heart. However, the noble Lord accepts the fact that it is possibly appropriate here, in removing powers of entry, to use those Henry VIII powers. I stress—in particular, to my noble friend Lord Selsdon—that that power is only for the repeal of powers of entry. Clause 41, which allows amendments to be made to powers of entry, makes it quite clear that those powers can be used only where they do not reduce the protection for the individual. Again, I pay tribute to all the work that my noble friend Lord Selsdon has done over the years in trying to reduce the number of powers of entry. In due course, I will write to him with further details on the code of conduct.

Turning briefly to wheel clamping, that is a matter for Committee on which I know that my noble friend Lord Attlee, who has great expertise in the area, will be able to deal with it. As my noble friend Lord Bradshaw said, this is something that we need to look at with very great care, especially access to the DVLA database. I shall also consider, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, what we need to do about ticketing and abuse in that area. I have also noted what the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, did not have to say about the abuse of blue badge parking, which concerns all of us and which we should address. However, clamping in a disabled parking area is not the solution to that problem, because once you have clamped a vehicle in that area, you cannot use that area. There are other, better ways to deal with that problem.

Moving to counterterrorism and the questions raised about the reduction to 14 days, I note that most noble Lords are happy with the reduction from 28 days to 14 days, but I note the concern about the measures that would have to be used to raise that 14 days to 28 days if we were in a difficult situation where we needed to do that. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, was very honest when he said that it was difficult to see how we could get from the 14 days back to the 28 days. We have to look at that. At the moment we have Clause 58 and the powers in the Bill as set out, but certainly we will want to look at those again very carefully. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, had to say, that he thought that we had not gone far enough in what we were doing, and that it would be too difficult to do it. He would certainly want to try to extend Clause 58, as I understood him, to allow the Home Secretary to extend the period in other circumstances where appropriate. I was grateful that he made it quite clear that he hoped she would never have to make use of any of those powers.

I come now to vetting and barring, and again that expression I used at the beginning about getting the balance right is more important here than in virtually any other field. Of course, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, put it, our first priority must be the protection of children and young people, and that will remain our priority. However, we obviously have to have the right balance, as was stressed by my noble friend Lord Hodgson, though others thought that we had got this wrong and thought more protection ought to be brought in. As I said at the beginning, I want to stress that if you bring in too great a control and too great protections, there is the danger of encouraging a tick-box mentality, which might not provide the better protection for children and young people that we want. Again, I will look at that as we discuss these matters in Committee.

I would say to my noble friend Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, but more particularly to my noble friend Lady Heyhoe Flint, who all spoke about sporting issues, that I would be more than happy to see a delegation of sports bodies if she would like to bring them to see me in due course.

I would also like to suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who said that he was not happy about what might happen to volunteering and the risk to volunteers, that he look at some of the briefing provided by Volunteering England, which states:

“However, we would not want to see this wording tightened up by use of terms such as ‘close’ or ‘constant’ supervision, as has been suggested by other organisations, because it could further restrict the involvement of volunteers. If the requirements for supervision are too prescriptive, organisations may be put off from involving volunteers and potential volunteers deterred from volunteering”.

UK Border Agency

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Monday 7th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

On my noble friend’s first point, I am aware that there has been a certain amount of criticism over the years of the various controls that we have on our borders—going back, as he pointed out, to Mr John Reid, now the noble Lord, Lord Reid, and others. We are trying to put that right. My noble friend also commented on criminal activity within the UK Border Force. No doubt they are only allegations at this stage, and are another matter that it will be permissible for Mr John Vine to look at in his review. As I said earlier, at the moment we are still discussing the draft terms of reference for the review, but I am sure that he would be more than happy to look at matters of that sort as well.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, is it not the case that Home Office Ministers frequently visit our border posts? In the circumstances, is it not surprising that they did not visit sites where these pilots were taking place—or if they did, that they did not notice or hear from the staff concerned how the pilots had been extended? Can the Minister also tell us what arrangements Ministers made to monitor the pilots and the way in which they were working?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, speaking for myself, I have to say that I have not visited any of the pilots, but then I have not been in the Home Office for that long. No doubt I will make inquiries of my honourable and right honourable friends and let the noble Lord know what visits have been made. However, I believe that Ministers have visited ports and airports on quite a regular basis to see how these things operate. I certainly was intending to do that at some point in the near future, but when I will be able to manage that is another matter. Of course Ministers always want to evaluate any pilot schemes they put into place, whether by visits or by other means.

Police: Station Closures

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question, and I am aware that she is a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority. The question is about police contact, and the important thing to remember is that police contact is not just about stations; as I made clear in my original Answer, it is about police stations and all other means by which we can achieve that police contact. Police stations are not necessarily always the best means of doing that.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority. Given that contact is the key issue, how does the Home Office view the decisions by the Mayor of London and his deputy for policing to cut by nearly a half the number of sergeants responsible for safer neighbourhoods and liaising closely with local communities? Is that not a significant reduction in contact with the community?

[Lord Henley]

The noble Lord is a member of that police authority and will no doubt put those questions to the mayor in due course. The important point is that those decisions are made by the appropriate authority. It is not for us to micromanage these things; it is for us to make the appropriate resources available to the police. We accept that the cuts that we are having to make, which were forced on us by the previous Government, are difficult. However, they are challenging but manageable, and all police authorities will manage to achieve them.

Universities: Alternative Medicine

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I again remind my noble friend that it is very important to remember that universities are autonomous bodies and it is for them to make decisions about these matters. The Government have no power to intervene. I have some sympathy with the message that my noble friend is getting across but it would be wrong for the Government to intervene in these matters.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, is it not the case that the Government have differentially removed resources from universities on the basis of some of the courses concerned? Does the fact that resources are not being withdrawn from these Bachelor of Science courses suggest that the Government are endorsing the pseudo-science that is implicit within them? If they are not endorsing that pseudo-science, why are they allowing the funding to continue?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord is trying to take us back to a debate we had last week. Those matters have been dealt with. I am making clear that it is not for the Government to interfere. We offer guidance to HEFCE. The letter to HEFCE from Dr Vince Cable and David Willetts went out yesterday. That sets out the parameters for HEFCE to make the appropriate decisions about university funding, but it is not right that we should do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we have offered guidance to HEFCE in the letter that I mentioned, which was published yesterday. I will make a copy available to the noble Lord. It is then for HEFCE to make its decisions.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, what does that guidance say about pseudo-science and the courses which the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, mentioned in the first place?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I will make the letter available to the noble Lord as well.

Dangerous Dogs Act 1991

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Henley

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to amend or to improve the operation of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, on 1 June a wide-ranging public consultation on dangerous dogs laws closed. This consultation received 4,250 responses, which will need to be analysed before any action relating to dangerous dogs legislation is considered.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, given the explosion in the number of attack dogs in London, with the number seized by the Metropolitan Police—I declare an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority—rising 22-fold in five years and with the Met having to budget £10.5 million for kennelling costs alone, when can we expect the Government to complete this review of the legislation? What, in the shorter term, is going to be done to expedite the processes that can often mean that dogs have to be held for many months before a final decision can be taken by the courts on their disposal?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right to draw attention to the growth in such attacks and in the number of people who have to seek hospital treatment as a result of attacks by dogs. The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 is not the only piece of legislation available to local authorities and others dealing with those matters. There is the Dogs Act 1871, the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Animal Welfare Act 2006. We will certainly consider carefully the consultation started by the previous Administration and make appropriate decisions afterwards.