Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Monday 1st November 2021 Lords Chamber

I and others, including all those who signed these amendments, are determined that there should be a new law that women facing lone male police officers should understand: well advertised, well publicised, ubiquitously known. Above all, it should be a new law that the police would regard as absolutely core learning—something they would be reminded of frequently. When I was chairman of the London Policing Ethics Panel, I used to go on night patrol with the police from Stoke Newington police station. I was present at the going on shift meetings they used to have. It is the sort of law that police officers should be reminded of at those meetings, when some of the junior officers were deployed to tell the more senior officers what they were doing on that shift. It should be second nature to the police. Only if we take measures like that will Sarah Everard’s memory truly be respected. Only then will our daughters be able to have confidence in the police, day and night.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 281 and 282, which concern police culture and police training. I say at once that I agree with my noble friend that the woeful police response, which the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, emphasised, sums up a real issue about culture that I do not see being tackled cohesively.

I understand why my noble friend favours her amendment because she wants an all-embracing Lawrence-type inquiry. I can see the strength of that. The benefit of the amendment that my noble friend Lord Rosser and I have signed is that it focuses on the culture of the police, which is a very important facet.

I was very struck by HM Inspectorate’s report, Police Response to Violence Against Women and Girls, which showed woeful inconsistency between the way police forces conducted themselves. The inspectorate highlighted that, at the level of individual cases, victims reported hugely different responses depending on which call handler they spoke to. Some were very sympathetic, others made the victim feel that they were not being believed. At force level, there were hugely unexplained variations about how forces used their protective powers and orders at their disposal. At local partnership level, the roles and responsibilities for partners working together in a multiagency safeguarding arrangement varied considerably. At the national level, actions to improve police responses were split over multiple government strategies. This surely has to be addressed if we are to make real inroads into these deep-seated problems about violence against women and girls.

Behind this woeful inconsistency, lack of leadership and lack of priority lies a great cultural impediment in so many of our police forces. I know that the Minister has commented before on the performance of her own police force, Greater Manchester Police, but I was struck by the Manchester Evening News investigation into the force last December. She might not want to comment on it and she might think it is not accurate, but it looked into the primary reason why the force missed 80,000 crimes last year. As noble Lords know, this led to action being taken, new management and a new chief constable, but what the Manchester Evening News said is that it discovered a tendency for

“obfuscation, denial, secrecy and an instinct to defend the indefensible”,

taking

“misleading and inaccurate statements, denial of official criticism and legal stonewalling; police officers fearful to report failure and those attempting external scrutiny being brushed off.”

As the article says:

“Understanding and fixing the causes and solutions of what was dubbed a ‘rotten’ culture four years ago will … be central to that”.


I do not want to tar every police force with Greater Manchester’s brush, but lying behind that are major issues about how the police conduct themselves, which is very relevant to our debate.

I was interested in the interview with the former Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland, in the New Statesman on 27 October. Commenting on the Sarah Everard case, he said that instead of being “defensive”, senior officers must be “constantly vigilant” about weeding out dangerous officers and supporting those who need to improve. He said:

“Leadership is all about being honest and there will be times when the police have to own up.”


Where are the signs that most police forces and most police leaders understand that? I do not think there are many signs at all.

Then there are the comments of Sir Tom Winsor, Chief Inspector of Constabulary, to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee recently. He warned of a culture of colleague protection. He said that forces needed to be “much more assiduous” in throwing out probationary officers who had a fondness for violence or exercising power, exhibited misogyny, racism or homophobia, or showed a lack of maturity and judgment.

Why on earth did he have to make that comment in the first place? Why on earth do police forces not exercise a considerable degree of vetting over probationary officers at that crucial first stage? He went on to say—and this is controversial—that professional standards units, which countered corruption, were often not staffed with the best people, which meant that substandard officers, whom he referred to as

“cancerous growths within the force”,

were not identified or pushed out. He gave the example of a group of male officers in the locker room who did not challenge or report two colleagues who boasted of picking up a female assault victim and taking her home, where she was raped. The pair were ultimately prosecuted but nothing happened to the officers who did not report them.

I rest my case. There are so many examples of a really damaging culture. We can see this being played out in relation to this awful, horrendous number of crimes against women and girls. We can change the law. We can do all sorts of things like that but until we change police culture, I do not think we are not going to have the effect we need.

I like both amendments and clearly, on Report there will be an attempt to composite them—if I may use that word, which my noble friends here will well understand and not love. So far, we have heard weasel words from the chief police officers. There is little indication that they understand that the culture they lead has got to change. I very much hope that this House, through our debates on this Bill, will be able to influence a change of direction.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this issue of trust in the police is an interesting one. Trust has been eroding for many years now. Two cataclysmic events in the past couple of years have really made a difference. The first—not chronologically—is the murder of Sarah Everard and the way that the police policed the vigil and the ludicrous comments that solo women should hail a bus if they feel in danger and so on. Really, the whole police force needs some serious attention and serious guidance, and perhaps even a new police commissioner. That might be a very good idea.

The other thing was that during the pandemic we had law and we had guidance and then we had what the Ministers were saying at regular press conferences. That got very confusing for the police, to the point where they were trying to move people on for sitting and resting during a walk. That did not help the police and that was not the police’s fault. That was the Government’s fault for not being clear about instructions.

I support all the amendments in this group and agree that we need a statutory, judge-led inquiry. It cannot be allowed to drift past without real challenge by a judge. You have to remember that this was not somebody pretending to be a police officer: this was a real police officer abusing his position to abduct, rape and kill. The fact that he had a reputation already in the police is extremely damaging. This is a culture that we all know exists, and it should be fixed.

On Amendment 282, I have spoken many times here in your Lordships’ House about training for the police on domestic violence, because they have a reputation for assaulting quite a lot of the people they live with. We have to make sure that they get this sort of training. As far as I know, only about half the police forces in England and Wales have so far had domestic violence training. If they do not have that training, it really cannot be argued that they know what to look for and how to treat victims of abuse, so that is extremely valuable and important.