Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Code A) Order 2022

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Paddick]

At end insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Order does not restrict the powers of police constables to stop and search people without suspicion to those limited geographic areas piloting Serious Violence Reduction Orders, but instead permits all police constables in England and Wales to make use of this power during the time of the pilot.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have tabled my amendment because the concession we reasonably believed we had secured from the Government, to limit new without-suspicion police stop and search powers to specific geographic areas, is not being delivered. As the Minister explained, the Government now want the new police powers to be used throughout England and Wales during the pilot.

As the Minister explained, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 gives the police a new power to stop and search anyone who is subject to a serious violence reduction order, or SVRO, without any reason to suspect that they might be carrying something they should not carry. A court can place a serious violence reduction order on anyone convicted of any criminal offence if they, or anyone they were with at the time of the offence, had a knife on them, whether it was used in the commission of the offence or not. This goes far wider than making it easier for the police to stop and search those convicted of knife crime.

The key to violence reduction is not stop and search, but police and communities working together and turning offenders’ lives around. The former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police said that the police could not arrest their way out of knife crime. The success of such schemes as Operation Trident in London were the result of the police and the black community working together, for example. Having visited projects there, I know that the success of knife crime reduction in Scotland has been based on turning offenders’ lives around, particularly at teachable moments when offenders have themselves been seriously injured.

You are 14 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police if you are black than if you are white, using existing without-suspicion stop and search powers, with about one in every 100 searches resulting in a knife being found. Having such a large number of people being stopped and searched who are not committing any offence, and who the police have no cause to suspect are committing any offence, can lead to a breakdown in relations between the police and communities—one of the keys to successful violent crime reduction. Allowing the police to stop and search an unlimited number of times, without suspicion, someone who has already served their sentence and could well be trying to turn their life around, as these new powers allow, is likely to damage any attempts at rehabilitation. Those in danger of reoffending may see no point in trying to be good citizens when they are being treated by the police as criminals even when they are doing nothing wrong.

When these measures were debated, we believed the new powers could be counterproductive and we told the Government that we were prepared to vote against them, with the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who led on amendments to this part of the Bill. As a result, the Government agreed to a pilot scheme, geographically limited to a few specific police areas—not court areas, police areas. The pilot scheme would be independently evaluated to establish whether the new powers reduced violent crime in those specific police areas. On that basis, we agreed not to vote against the measures. Following discussion with the police, the Home Office has now agreed to allow the new police without-suspicion stop and search powers to be used throughout England and Wales during the pilot, with the only geographic restriction being to limit the courts that are able to issue SVROs, limited to the specific police areas that were originally agreed.

We made it clear to the Government that it was the new police powers that we objected to, and it was on the basis that they would be limited to certain geographic police areas that we accepted the government concession. It was never discussed, let alone agreed, that the powers of the courts to issues SVROs would be treated separately from the powers of the police to enforce them. As a result, not only have our concerns about the use of these new police powers damaging police/community relations and offender rehabilitation been ignored, but it is difficult to see how the pilot can be effectively evaluated if part of it is limited geographically and the other part is limitless.

There are also practical problems with serious violence reduction orders, such as how police officers are supposed to know that someone is subject to an SVRO, particularly if the power can be exercised over such a wide geographic area, where those subject to them are not likely to be personally known by the officers. Someone innocently walking down the street who is not subject to an SVRO is under no obligation to provide their name and date of birth to the police—the minimum requirement for a check to be made on the police national computer to establish whether they are subject to an SVRO. In that case, can the Minister explain how these orders will work in practice?

The Police Federation, which represents the overwhelming majority of officers likely to use these new powers, was asked to comment on the debate in the other place on this statutory instrument. Among other things, its representative said:

“I imagine we would be deeply concerned about moving away from a form of stop and search that isn’t rooted in ‘Reasonable Grounds’. We could easily make a case that this leaves officers vulnerable to complaint, ‘post stop’, in an area which is already supercharged as an issue in many communities. Reasonable Grounds has a firm legal basis, is tried and tested, and therefore affords reassurance to our colleagues engaged in these stops. The SVRO removes that need … and inadvertently that reassurance. It also strikes me that they are predicated wholly on the stopping officers having prior knowledge of the person being searched, so what happens when this power is used to stop somebody and their identify cannot be confirmed—you then have no reasonable grounds to fall back on, and are potentially left wide open to the ‘you only stopped me because I am black’ allegation. On the face of it, the officers’ only rational [response] if such an allegation came their way would be ‘I believed you were subject to a SVRO’, confirming the allegation [‘that you only stopped me because I am black’] and not ending well when identity has been mistaken.”


That is the view of the representative of rank-and-file police officers: that these powers are likely to place them in jeopardy, particularly if they use them outside the pilot areas where those subject to SVROs are unlikely to be known to the officers carrying out the stop and search. What consultation was there with the Police Federation on these powers?

The Government need to rethink their plans for a pilot scheme. For these reasons, I beg to move the amendment in my name on the Order Paper.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I spend my life being furious at the Government, as I am sure some noble Lords will recognise. However, I want to spare a moment of sympathy for the Minister, who has had to bring this to your Lordships’ House. Clearly, this is going back on a promise; the Government are cheating. They are choosing not to honour a promise. That is really rather disgusting, as it shows a complete lack of respect for your Lordships’ House. I really hope that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who has made a brilliant opening speech, will take this to a vote, because clearly we would have voted on these issues before if we had had the chance. We trusted the Government, but this shows that we cannot. That is very depressing because, if you cannot trust your Government, the whole of democracy falls apart.

I am also worried about the fact that the Government are putting the police at a disadvantage. Trust in the police is at an all-time low, and I think these measures will make it much worse. We worry all the time about the police being distrusted. They cannot do their job if they do not have the support of communities. Of course, with this sort of measure, there will be social and racial barriers to implementing it, and there will be disparities about who the police target. The Government are actually making life much harder for the police. There should not be a power to search without reasonable suspicion.

While I am talking about not trusting the Government, I should say that they are also treating peaceful protest like gang and knife crime. I just do not understand why the Government cannot see the difference between those things. Dissent is healthy; it is part of our democracy. In measure after measure and legislation after legislation, it seems to me that this Government are saying, “We don’t like society the way it is. We are going to radically change it”—and make it much worse for the majority of people.

On the issue of knife crime, my Green Party colleague Caroline Russell, who is a member of the London Assembly, has repeatedly asked the police to stop posting pictures of knives on social media, because it makes things worse. The evidence says that young people feel more at risk and that it encourages them to carry knives. There are other measures that the police can use to reduce knife crime. We have to show young people that it is safer for them not to carry a knife.

All in all, I have two questions for the Minister. First, do this Government have absolutely no respect for this House and for democracy? My second and much smaller point is: why on earth are the Government doing this before the pilots are finished? Surely the pilots should show us the way forward. The Government seem very confused about what pilots are for. Why promise a pilot and then go ahead and introduce these measures anyway? I am disgusted with Lambeth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

We have not actually started the pilot and we are not rolling it out. It is stuck to four pilot areas. We are talking about the territorial extent of the stop and search powers.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

I am very grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to the debate, particularly those who supported my amendment.

The Minister has completely glossed over the whole point of the regret amendment, which is that a concession was made by a government Minister at the Dispatch Box to limit SVROs to specific police areas. There was no mention of restricting only the issuing of SVROs, rather than their enforcement, at that time. It was never even considered, let alone agreed to. What has happened is this. The Home Office has consulted the police—what the Government called “key stakeholders”; I think the Minister means the police, as that is who they consulted—and the police said, “Hang on a minute, we need the power across all of England and Wales because these criminals travel”. That may or may not be a valid argument, but it was not what the Minister promised from the Dispatch Box. That is the point and that is why there is a regret amendment, but I do not intend to delay the House further because there is a big debate to come. I therefore wish to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.