Operation Conifer

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for his doggedness in persisting with this, and the other Members of the House who have also done so.

I come at this from something of a different angle. We are dealing with an extremely difficult issue as a society. The Church of England knows something about it—but so do we all. This is really difficult stuff. It would not be enough to have an inquiry into the seven unresolved and said to be unsubstantiated allegations. It is about what we have learned from our experience, about good practice, about what has gone wrong and about how we develop things for the future.

The persistence in asking for a review has much more in it, because it is not right to elide from one operation to another in the way that has happened in this debate, where I think some untruths have been spoken—I am sure unintentionally. We are collecting this stuff together and we need forensically to analyse what is going on in these different cases.

There is an opportunity to learn from Operation Conifer for the good of the country—for the good of all of us. Some important principles are at stake. Salisbury has the best of the earliest copies of Magna Carta. No one is above the law. That is a really important principle for us. Victims must have the confidence in every circumstance to make complaints which are then properly investigated by the police.

We do not know the evidence in relation to the 42 allegations, of which seven remain allegations that would have been investigated under caution, because they have not been published. They were viewed by an independent scrutiny panel. That gives us some assurance that there must be something there—but we do not know.

What is to be made of this? There is clearly a problem about the reputation of Sir Edward Heath. That point has been made repeatedly in the House and elsewhere and put well tonight. I am grateful to those who, in the latter stages of the debate, spoke about the reputation of the Wiltshire Police. That matters to me a great deal. It does not help, without evidence, simply to make allegations which do not or will not necessarily stand up. Wiltshire Police’s reputation also needs reviewing to get this on to a basis where we can have confidence in one another.

Had Sir Edward still been alive, he would have been interviewed. He is not. The matter would have had to have been decided in a court of law. It cannot be. Would that the Church of England had learned from that. When the Operation Conifer report was published, I felt that that was a helpful principle to establish. But there will be more lessons to learn from it—for both Sir Edward’s reputation and for Wiltshire Police, but also for the country at large. In the very difficult process that we are going through, an independent, probably judicial, review would be very helpful to establish what lessons can be learned from this. This is not a matter to be financed just from Wiltshire: the police and crime commissioner has made that clear. This investigation was conducted on behalf of 14 forces. Therefore, it is appropriate to put this as a problem to the Government and to say that a review needs to be undertaken for the good of all.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for securing today’s debate. I also welcome the Minister to her place on the Front Bench—and I accompany that with a note of sympathy. One or two noble Lords have asked the Minister to deviate from her brief tonight. I hope they realise that that can be a seriously career-limiting activity.

I will be brief. Your Lordships’ House is familiar with the context and details of this issue, as it has been raised a number of times in Oral Questions and debates over recent months. It is a complex area of huge significance to the operation of our criminal justice system, and to our efforts to ensure justice and to prevent and protect against serious crimes of sexual abuse. Victims who come forward—those accused, and the public—must be able to have confidence in our police forces to run just and professional investigations into allegations of this nature. It must be stated that it is right and proper for allegations against a prominent public figure to be investigated, as they would be for a person without such standing. With those investigations, though, comes an increased obligation to be responsible about what information is put into the public domain.

This debate has provided many questions for the Minister regarding noble Lords’ concerns over how the operation was managed, the role of the local PCC, and what consideration was given to the establishment and funding of an independent inquiry into Operation Conifer. I look forward to the Minister’s reply on these issues.

Following Operation Midland, Sir Richard Henriques published his findings on police handling of that investigation, including analysis of some serious failures. At the time we said that the details of the report should be used to strengthen police procedures for both the investigation and the treatment of suspects—but, crucially, that changes must not be used to downgrade the seriousness of allegations or to make it harder for victims to report a crime. With that in mind, I have two questions for the Minister.

First, can she tell the House whether she is aware of any work to spread best practice between police forces on their operational handling of investigations of this nature, and to prevent the repetition of mistakes such as those that occurred in Operation Midland? Secondly, even while we debate the important issue of access to justice for a person who is accused, we must also keep in our sights the injustices that are faced daily by victims of these crimes. Rape and abuse are woefully underreported and have low conviction rates. The most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated that 83% of people who had been the victim of a sexual offence did not report their experience to the police. Will the Minister update the House on what work is being done to encourage the reporting of these offences, and to ensure that police officers are adequately trained to respond to a victim who discloses this kind of crime?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Lexden for securing this important debate, and I thank all noble Lords for their warm welcome to me at the Dispatch Box. It is a great honour to be standing here, responding for the Government on this very important topic, and I will do my best to respond to the points raised.

In preparing for this speech, I read the various debates and questions on this topic over the past three years; indeed, I have listened to several exchanges since I joined your Lordships’ House in July. I have been struck by the strength of feeling about the damage done to Sir Edward’s reputation by Operation Conifer—and that strength of feeling was echoed again, very forcefully, by your Lordships tonight. The Government remain genuinely sympathetic to the concerns raised by noble Lords but have made their position clear on several occasions.

As noble Lords know, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary recently gave his own careful consideration to this matter and wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, on 10 October. He has considered the case both for a Government-commissioned inquiry into Operation Conifer and for a review of the seven remaining allegations. To answer my noble friend Lord Lexden’s question about whether there is anything in law to prevent the Government from commissioning an independent inquiry, I refer to the response of my noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford on 11 October. In it she confirmed that, while there is nothing to prevent the Government from doing so, they would need clear justification.

My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has recognised the strength of feeling on this matter and the issues it raises, but has also thought carefully about the proper role of government. It remains his view that the handling of this is properly a matter for the local police and crime commissioner and that it would not be appropriate for the Government to seek to persuade him how to go about it.

Sir Richard Henriques’ review of the Metropolitan Police’s handling of allegations against persons of public prominence, which has been referred to in this context, was of course commissioned by the then Commissioner, the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. It remains the case, therefore, that the Government have no plans to launch an inquiry into Operation Conifer or the seven outstanding allegations. A number of noble Lords have mentioned our inability to hear the voice of Sir Edward in response to these allegations—something on which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary also focused in his letter to the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong. He wrote that:

“the problem that the police encountered was their inability to interview Sir Edward himself in order to secure his account of events. I have every sympathy, but that problem will of course remain and it is not clear to what extent a further review of the existing evidence by a judge or retired prosecutor would resolve this”.

I am genuinely sorry to give a reply which I know will disappoint some noble Lords, but it is important to bear in mind the degree of scrutiny to which Operation Conifer has already been subject. This has included Wiltshire Police’s own independent scrutiny panel, two reviews by Operation Hydrant, a review of the costs of the operation by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, and an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct into specific complaints about the then chief constable. The findings of Operation Conifer were then made public in the Summary Closure Report published in October 2017.

It is clearly disappointing that the investigation was unable to resolve the position in respect of seven of the allegations. I fully understand why this is of concern—noble Lords have put it most eloquently this evening. A man who has served this country at the highest level has had his reputation tarnished and he is powerless to defend himself. However, as I have already mentioned, the missing piece of the jigsaw is Sir Edward’s side of the story. Sadly, that is lost to us now and it is not clear that a further review would take us any further forward. However, I reiterate what my noble friend Lady Williams has emphasised so often in this House: that the Summary Closure Report makes it clear that no inference of guilt should be drawn from the conclusion that Sir Edward would have been interviewed under caution.