Queen’s Speech

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I will restrict my comments to the police and criminal justice parts of the Queen’s Speech. I will first deal briefly with three issues that have come up in this debate. The first is longer sentences for violent and sexual offences. People may imagine that I would naturally support these, and I do support long sentences for serious offences. However, there has been sentence drift upwards, and parole reduction, over the last 20 years. The consequence has been a prison population, now, of around 85,000. There is a serious risk that that is too many. It is possible that we need to look seriously at that—if we allow it to continue, we will have worse problems, not less crime. In particular, we need to be more honest in our sentencing. If we were able to say, “You will go to prison for six years, but you will stay in prison for 10 should you not behave in prison or show that you have reformed your ways”, I think people would understand that but at the moment the reverse is true. Therefore, I think there is something more to do about sentencing—not necessarily making sentences longer.

My second point concerns the point raised by my noble and learned friend Lord Hope, based on the case of Helen McCourt, a young woman of 22 who was murdered in 1988 in Merseyside, an area I used to police. Her mother, Marie, has conducted an incredible campaign, for good reason, to try to identify the place where her daughter’s body was disposed of, but I am not sure that the remedy put forward is the correct one. There is a danger when, if someone cannot or will not admit where they disposed of a body, they will have a longer sentence. I propose that they should have a discount for providing the location of the body, because there is the danger my noble and learned friend described of somebody who is not guilty being trapped in prison for far longer than they should be if there is a miscarriage of justice.

My final, simple point is that I profoundly support the suggested sobriety tagging system. We started one in the Met about four years ago and it was effective. It came from a scheme in South Dakota in America and can make a profound difference where someone’s offending pattern is based on their alcohol intake and they cannot stop. The electronic tagging of people with that problem can produce a strategic difference, but not if we run only pilot schemes; we must have a UK-wide—certainly an England and Wales-wide—solution.

I want to confine my main remarks to the proposals in the Queen’s Speech about the police, the majority of which I welcome. The confirmation of the replacement of the 20,000 police officers lost is a good thing. It will take a few years, but it is appropriate. As a result of the banking crisis of 2007 we saw large cuts in public spending. I was never of the view that the police were singled out for worse treatment, but I think the cuts went too far and that they should have been remedied earlier. Even now, it will take at least until 2022 before we see police numbers return to the levels we saw back in 2009, but it is a good thing and we should celebrate it. We have to be careful not to worship police officer numbers, but there will always be a need for a critical mass of people to provide a police service, particularly, as we have heard, with a growing population and growing demands of different types, be it online or on the streets. There will be a period when those on the front line are overrepresented by the least experienced. This is a logical consequence of rapid recruitment and its effects must be mitigated, but I cannot see how they can be avoided, because it is essential that we get those officers back out on the street.

I also welcome the plan to enhance the police covenant. Apart from its direct benefits, it will also build trust between this Government and the police service. For too long there has been a suspicion among those on the front line that they have not had the Government’s support. Whether that is true or not is a different question, but that perception has certainly been there, and the enhancing of the police covenant will help to remedy a lack of trust. The proof will be in how it develops in the coming years.

I am sorry that the proposals on policing do not touch on three big areas which I think are vital to consider for the coming years. The first—it will be no surprise to the Minister to hear me say this—is that the structure of policing remains an enigma. We have a National Health Service and a British Army; we have a Security Service and we have 43 police forces. The criminals do not quite respect those boundaries. It seems to me that our investments have been fragmented in the development of policing over the years and they will only continue to be fragmented if we allow that structure to continue. We have maximised localism, which accounts for a huge amount of inconsistency and, I fear, a sad lack of development over the years.

There is no discussion in the Speech about making prevention a strategic priority of the police in the way that has allowed massive progress in the fire service and the health service. In my view, a cross-government approach to the design of place and things—alcohol control, drug control and drug policy, self-education to help people reduce the chance of being a victim and a strategy that concentrates on young people—will have profound effects. I am afraid I have seen no clear explanation of that.

Finally, there is a need to prioritise improvement in police technology. I agree that we need people—I have already said that I support the huge increase in the number of police officers. However, the use of good technology that will enhance artificial intelligence, such as facial recognition—used properly and respecting privacy—is vital to improving the police, as well as the service they provide.