Violent Crime, Gang Activity and Burglaries

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Snape, for the opportunity to debate these issues. It has been an interesting debate, with much of the focus being on policing and resources.

When I joined the Metropolitan Police, in 1976, sometimes it was very busy, you were rushing from one call to another, and it was difficult to empathise with the third burglary victim you visited that day. At other times, there was time to sit on a wall on a housing estate and talk to the skinheads and punk rockers—I am that old. However, not any more. Police are seriously under-resourced and overstretched. Difficult decisions had to be made to cut costs. It is unfortunate that we have not been able to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, about the very difficult decision that he had to make when he was Metropolitan Police Commissioner, in the light of those cuts. It is very easy for me to say that I would not have made the cuts that he did. I was not the commissioner at the time and so did not have the accounts.

The noble Lord, Lord Bach, talked about cuts during the coalition. Cuts were universal during that time, and we have seen the consequences of unfunded public spending. But, as the noble Lord said, the Conservative Government continued to cut after 2015, when the 2015 Liberal Democrat manifesto said that we wanted to increase public spending in line with economic growth.

Public trust and confidence in the police are essential. The significant reductions in—and, in places, almost total absence of—visible policing, with cuts in police community support officers, have not been restored by this Government. There has been decimation of frontline supervision. Putting a chief superintendent in charge of multiple London boroughs, given that I just about managed to effectively lead one London borough, Lambeth, as a commander—the equivalent of an assistant chief constable—illustrates why we have some of the current problems with the Met.

I fear that it has gone past unreasonable cuts to police budgets. There may now be a culture whereby cuts are used as an excuse not to provide the service the public requires and deserves—a policy-driven situation. Police officers on the front line want to give members of the public the service they deserve, but they are unable to. For example, there was a burglary at the block of flats where I live, and there was CCTV footage of the suspect. Nobody came, and the crime was written off within days. I spoke to a serving superintendent who said that many crimes that could have led to prosecutions are now being written off, rather than being investigated.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and the noble Lord, Lord Bird, have said, this is about the whole criminal justice system, not just the police. When I made an allegation of homophobic abuse, the police were great. It was a hate crime, to which they responded very positively. Then we went to court, my husband was a witness, and we were both treated as though we were the ones on trial—we were the ones in the dock. He is Norwegian, and he says that he would never give evidence in a British court again after the way he was treated. The examples given by the noble Lord, Lord Austin of Dudley, are of course far more compelling.

We operate a system of policing by consent, and the support and co-operation of the public are essential to the police operating effectively. That means we have fewer police, unarmed police, who rely on the public being their eyes and ears and dialling 999 when they see something suspicious and giving evidence in court as witnesses, rather than large numbers of armed police officers acting without the active involvement of the public.

If the public do not like and do not trust the police, it is not just a PR disaster; it makes the police ineffective. We cannot have, and do not want, a police officer on every street corner, routinely armed—policing by force rather than by consent—but without the active support of the public, the current system fails.

I will comment briefly on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, talking about young people being seen not as criminals but as victims. When I was the police commander in charge of Brixton, I said that if you randomly stopped a young black man in Brixton, they were statistically far more likely to be a victim than a perpetrator of crime. Unfortunately, that was not the way a lot of officers treated them. That is why the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is so important. It is not just about what is morally right about political correctness: it is about treating everyone with dignity and respect, and the fundamental effectiveness of the police, by getting the public on their side.

The Government are clouding the crime figures, claiming that crime is falling, by ignoring the fact that criminals are increasingly moving online, committing telephone fraud by conning vulnerable people—many of them elderly—who can lose their life savings. They are not including these crimes in their publicity. They claim that crime is falling, but when you include online crime, it is actually increasing. But there is hope. The current Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, whom I do not know, seems determined to turn things around. Nationally, the police have committed to attending every burglary. In my opinion, either a forensic examiner or a police officer should attend, but only if it is necessary should they both attend.

As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans said, the issues of gang violence and knife crime are complex and deep-seated. Restoring a visible police presence may at least stop the vulnerable from carrying knives for their own protection, but only if they believe that the police will be there to protect them, whatever the colour of their skin.

Concerning gangs—here we go, I am going to be controversial—drug law reform needs to be seriously looked at, to take drug dealing out of the hands of criminals and put illegal drug dealers out of business. The two main political parties in this country need to get over the ideological aversion to serious drug law reform. People are dying: from knife crime, from drug misuse and from overdose—including a former partner of mine—because of ideology.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, said, county lines is child criminal exploitation, and the victims of that exploitation need to be treated as such. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, has again reminded us, alcohol misuse is an even bigger problem in terms of the damage that it causes and the drain on police resources.

Not only has the Conservative Party lost the confidence of the public for financial competence; it can no longer claim to be the party of law and order.