Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

Moreover, the coroner’s investigation, including the inquest, is an inquisitorial, fact-finding process. It is a narrow-scope inquiry—in a sense, a form of summary justice procedure which sets out to give answers to four statutory questions: who the deceased was, and how, when and where they died. This means that for the vast majority of inquests legal representation and legal aid are not necessary. That is why it is available only in exceptional cases.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have given evidence at numerous criminal trials, in the magistrates’ court and the Crown Court, but the most vicious, adversarial cross-examination was at the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian shot and killed by the police following the 7 July 2005 bombings. There is no way that process could have been described as inquisitorial. Indeed, part way through that proceeding, the coroner had to advise the barrister representing the police not to proceed in the way that he had up until that point. While in some cases it may be simply a neutral, inquisitorial search for the truth, that is not how a lot of inquests turn out.

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving the Committee the benefit of his experience. Perhaps it is that experience which informed, or helped to inform, the remarks of the Chief Coroner, his honour Justice Thomas Teague, who has said publicly that one of his key objectives in his role is to ensure that the inquisitorial ethos of the inquest process is maintained. I hope that demonstrates a resolve within the system to address the failings or, at best, the over-eagerness, of counsel whose conduct the noble Lord described.

The amendment to increase the scope of legal aid at inquests would run counter to the approach of retaining their inquisitorial character. There is a risk that additional lawyers present at an inquest would not provide an overall improvement for the bereaved, that being something which ought to be a primary consideration, for the reasons expressed by my noble friend Lady Newlove. It is foreseeable—I think this is the point raised by my noble friend Lord Sandhurst—that the presence of additional lawyers could have the unintended consequence of turning an inquisitorial process into a complex exercise—

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[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I also rise to speak particularly about Amendment 292D. I support the noble Lord, Lord Bach, with all his experience of being an excellent police and crime commissioner.

There are many other examples. The noble Lord gave two. I shall just give one. A 59 year-old senior civil servant who worked for the Ministry of Justice in a responsible position connected with the criminal justice system, wished to retire and stand to be a police and crime commissioner. He was disqualified because, at the age of 13, he had been fined £5 for each of two minor juvenile offences. It is completely disproportionate and absurd that such people should be disqualified.

I seek to compare those disqualification rules with the rules applying to Members of another place. The last figures I saw produced by IPSA, the standards authority for Members of the other place, revealed that, in recent years, 43% of the Members of the other place had convictions of one kind or another. Maybe that tells you a lot about the other place. Nevertheless, this distinction makes its own point.

In passing on to the other issues, I agree very much with my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe. Fundamental to this problem is the fact that we have 43 territorial police forces. This number ought to be at least quartered. If so, the structure—including police and crime commissioners—would be much more coherent. There would be far greater consistency and police forces which currently struggle to deal with very complex inquiries would be able to deal with them because they would have the critical mass of staff.

I turn next to police authorities. I hesitate to disagree with those noble Lords who tabled the first amendment in this group because I respect them all. Part of my experience as a Queen’s Counsel has been to advise police authorities when they have got into difficulties. I recall one case from the north of England in which the police authority concerned was institutionally corrupt and in the pockets of a small group of senior police officers. It had got itself into a hopeless mess and at least one criminal prosecution ensued. To describe it as an example of democratic effectiveness was an insult to both democracy and effectiveness.

I accept, of course, that some police commissioners are better than others. So are some Cabinet Ministers. So are some head teachers. So are some doctors. So are some Members of Parliament. This is inevitable. Some of the commissioners are very good, such as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and Dame Vera Baird, who was referred to earlier. Where police and crime commissioners are effective, they are very effective indeed.

Just think about it territorially. If one of these referendums took place and there was a police and crime commissioner in Cheshire but not in Lancashire, or one in north Wales but not in Dyfed-Powys, people in the areas that did not have a police and crime commissioner would be unlikely to say, “Oh, how wonderful; this is going to be run by our local council.” In the modern world, they will say, “Our democratic rights have been diluted.”

Other noble Lords remember, as I do, when the Welsh Assembly was created. In many parts of Wales, people said, “Nobody will know who their Assembly Members are. It’s all a waste of time. It will be completely ineffective.” It is true that, for a time, people tended not to know who their Welsh Assembly Members were. Today, however, if you look at the evolution of the Welsh Government during the last 20 years or so, it has become remarkably effective. It has brought people much closer to government.

I believe that police and crime commissioners are still evolving. They have a valuable role to play, particularly, as I said earlier, if the Government have the courage to reform the territorial policing services in this country.

As to the deposits, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. The £5,000 deposit is not reasonable. I would not oppose a much lower deposit of the kind that has to be put down by somebody standing to be elected as a Member of Parliament. The election process is expensive. Some kind of gatekeeping requirement of this kind is helpful.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, when he started talking about amalgamating police forces again and the Welsh Assembly, I wondered whether this was turning into a filibuster. However, we move on.

The issue raised by Amendment 292D that we all agree on is that it is ridiculous that somebody convicted of a very minor offence at a very young age should be disqualified. The other side of the coin is that there is no process for the recall of a police and crime commissioner who commits an offence in office or is guilty of misconduct. Because they are democratically elected, the only way to get rid of them is by another election. Compare this to MPs, for whom there is now a process by which a by-election can be triggered. I agree with Amendment 292D, but there is another side to the same coin which also needs to be addressed.

We on these Benches have always been opposed to police and crime commissioners, notwithstanding, as everybody has said, that there are some outstanding ones, as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, was. Not just because he used to be my boss—this is the House of Peers now—I agree with almost everything the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe has said.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

Would the noble Lord forgive me for a moment? I know his view has always been consistent on this, but the truth of the matter is that the Bill got through only because of the support of both parties in the coalition; one of those parties was the Liberal Democrats. It is very easy to say now that you are not in favour of it as a party, but you clearly were in favour of it because you passed it into legislation. I am sorry if it is a crude point, but it happens to be true.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

Yes, and, as the noble Lord will very well know, in a coalition there have to be compromises on both sides. You cannot get through the things you think are absolutely important unless you give way on others. However, the policy of this party now is to oppose police and crime commissioners. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for allowing me to clarify the position of the party on that.

It is very difficult for one person to represent both rural and urban areas in policing, or perhaps an area where there is a large African or Caribbean community and another where there is a large south Asian or Chinese community, or even an LGBT community. These could and do exist within the same police area—as in London, for example. Therefore, with one police and crime commissioner for that whole area, it is difficult for that one person to represent all those communities. It is important to be represented when it comes to accountability around policing, particularly for minority communities, where trust and confidence in the police are not as strong as they are with others.

As others have said, the majority of police and crime commissioners are party political. Therefore, there is a danger that a small “p” political difference between a police and crime commissioner and a chief constable, or even a commissioner—without pointing at any particular examples of that—could result in a good chief constable or commissioner having to resign over that small “p” political difference, or even a personality difference with the police and crime commissioner

As the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, has said, we are in a position where, because it is one person hiring and firing the chief constable, we are not getting a range of candidates applying for the chief constable post. The assumption is that the incumbent deputy will have a good relationship with that police and crime commissioner and have a natural advantage over any outside candidate, and therefore it is not worth applying. For all these reasons, we feel that having a range of people holding the police to account—particularly if they are democratically elected councillors —as opposed to one person, would be preferable. But I agree with other noble Lords that the suggested way to replace the system is probably not through a series of referenda that could result in different mechanisms in different parts of the country.

As far as the abolition of deposits in elections is concerned, that is perhaps slightly wider than this Bill should be considering. Of course, as Liberal Democrats, we would have to declare an interest as far as that is concerned. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, about potentially reducing the size of the deposit, rather than getting rid of it completely.

Were police authorities better? In some places, I think they were. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has said, the Metropolitan Police Authority was certainly very effective. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, who experienced both, said there was not much to choose between the two on accountability.

For the reasons that I have explained, we agree that there should certainly be an examination of how effective police and crime commissioners are.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the comments of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and other noble Lords, that we have had mixed experiences of police and crime commissioners—some have been very good, and some not so good. I will not go further than that, though, in relation to Amendment 278.

I wish to talk in particular about the amendment in the names of my noble friends Lord Bach and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. They have drawn attention to the consequences we have witnessed as result of potential candidates for police and crime commissioner being debarred if they have been convicted of any offence, however many years ago, for which they could have received a custodial sentence, irrespective of whether they did actually receive such a sentence. I do not wish to pursue any individual cases but rather the general point, as others have done, of whether there should be another look at the reasons, in respect of previous convictions, for which a potential candidate for the office of police and crime commissioner can be disqualified.

When the issue has been raised previously, the Government have argued that it should not be reviewed because there was cross-party support for this requirement to be included in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. If that argument was followed through to its logical conclusion, there could never be any change to any legislation that originally had cross-party support, which is a bit of a nonsense.

The other argument advanced was that people must have complete confidence in the probity and integrity of whoever it is they elect as a police and crime commissioner because of their responsibilities and powers in relation to their police force, including the chief constable. Clearly, that is true, but whether an offence committed decades ago that could have resulted in a custodial sentence but did not—because it was not considered of a sufficiently serious nature to justify such a sentence—should automatically still be regarded as calling into question the probity and integrity of a potential candidate for police and crime commissioner, and thus disqualify them from holding such an office, is questionable, to say the least. It is certainly questionable when one looks at other positions that have powers and responsibilities in relation to the police and the criminal justice system but have no such similar restrictions on being able to stand for office or be appointed to an office.