Water Cannons

Lord Taylor of Holbeach Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to conclude this debate by first thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for raising this Question. All noble Lords who have spoken in the debate have demonstrated their genuine interest in and concern about this issue. I know that the noble Baroness is concerned and she is therefore right to use this opportunity to raise the issue. We have heard a lot of interesting comments. I fundamentally disagree with her analysis of the cause of the August 2011 riots but I have been interested in the points made by noble Lords around the Chamber.

This Government are keen to ensure that the police have the tools and powers that they need to maintain order on our streets. The police, including the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service and Chief Constable David Shaw, the national policing lead for conflict management, have indicated that water cannon, alongside other tactics, may be of use in future in tackling the most serious disorder.

Policing in England and Wales is, however, firmly grounded in the principle of policing by consent. As such, it is quite right that that the introduction of new police tools and equipment is the subject of public and parliamentary debate. It is for this reason that I am pleased that the Lord Mayor of London—I am sorry, the Mayor of London, who is not a Member of this place; I apologise for that slip of the tongue—is engaging the public on the potential use of water cannon in the capital and why I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this matter here today.

There is a well established process in place for authorising the police to use equipment and systems that, without safeguards, have the capacity to cause harm. Tasers and attenuating energy projectiles, which we all know as baton rounds, have both been covered by this process, which includes a final decision on authorisation being made by the Home Secretary.

This process will be followed for water cannon. It would require a formal request for authorisation from the police and the submission of detailed operational, technical and medical information on the likely impact of the proposed system. This would include police statements setting out the justification for the use of water cannon and how they will be used. It would also include police guidance on the training and checks and balances in place to ensure that their use is effective and proportionate. A community impact assessment and an assessment by the Scientific Advisory Committee on the Medical Implications of Less-Lethal Weapons, commonly referred to as SACMILL, would help ensure that the risks associated with their use were properly identified, understood and mitigated. The Home Secretary would then consider carefully the request and the documentation presented to her before making her decision. Parliament would be notified of the Home Secretary’s decision, and the relevant documentation would be laid in the House Library.

So where are we in the authorisation process for water cannon? The police have indicated publicly that they would like water cannon and are developing the materials necessary to support a request for authorisation. A briefing document from the national policing lead for conflict management, Chief Constable David Shaw, sets out the way in which the police would use water cannon, the operational gap they consider would be filled, and the checks and balances that would be in place. This information is publicly available.

The MPS commissioner has declared his desire to have water cannon. The Mayor of London has said that he wants to enable Londoners to have their say before confirming his agreement. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, as a member of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee, is very close to this matter and is rightly ensuring that a wide range of views are sought and debated. This debate is part of that process. However, in the interests of transparency and informing the current debate, the police have made information publicly available on the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime website. I believe that some noble Lords will already have been advised of that link by my office.

Perhaps I could just respond to a few of the questions raised by noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, was concerned that the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, would take no notice of the London engagement programme. I will read an extract from the letter that he sent to the Home Secretary, which says:

“In order to confirm the support in London for the use of water cannon in the most extreme circumstances, I will be undertaking a short period of engagement … Should the engagement plan reveal serious, as yet unidentified, concerns I will, of course, take these into consideration and share them with you”—

namely, the Home Secretary.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, asked about the sort of incidents in which water cannon might be used. The police have indicated that they want to have access to water cannon as one of their tools and tactics to deal with serious and violent disorder. The examples that they have given include defending a fixed and vulnerable or iconic location; separation of hostile crowds during demonstration or disorder; creating distance between police and opposing factions; and facilitating the advance of police resources and other emergency services to deal with life-at-risk incidents during incidents of severe disorder. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, demonstrated how they had been used effectively in Northern Ireland in those sorts of instances. So there is some value in water cannon to policing, and the police have explained that, if faced with the need to protect vulnerable premises or disperse a crowd, water cannon would be useful.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, drew attention to the use of water cannon on the continent, and quoted an incident in Stuttgart where injuries had been caused. It is not accurate to compare the use of water cannon in this country with the use in other countries, because the use of water cannon in Northern Ireland had no reported injuries. The regulatory regime for their use in this country would be determined by SACMILL, as I explained, to ensure that injuries were not the consequence of their use.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, also asked whether there would be an opportunity for water cannon to be used elsewhere in the United Kingdom. I have to emphasise that the position on this is for local police units, and we have heard that not all local police and crime commissioners and heads of regional police forces in this country agree with the Met on this issue. It would be unreal to see water cannon based here in London being shipped up to deal with activity somewhere else in the country; the timelines do not, to my mind, make that a viable proposition. So I think that we should disabuse ourselves of that particular idea.

The biggest challenge was presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asking me whether the Government believe that the police have made their case. The Government’s position is that they are keen to ensure that the police have the tools and powers that they need to tackle disorder on our streets. The Home Secretary will make a decision on the use of water cannon when she receives the authorisation package from the chief constable, David Shaw. At that point, she will consider the factors and she will no doubt consider things that have been said here in the debate today. But it is her decision and she will make it on the principles that she considers the right ones at the time.

It is important that we have had this debate. This is a serious issue and I thank the noble Baroness for bringing it to the House’s attention.