Police Integrity

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My noble friend has raised two very interesting aspects and I thank her for bringing them forward. The key thing about these proposals is that they will affect the professionalism of the police at all ranks so, as she rightly points out, they represent a development that I hope will be welcomed. They will be part and parcel of ongoing discussions that we are having as we seek to create a modern police force in this country—something that covers a whole load of matters and will now include this. We will make sure that that happens.

It is intended that those employed by the police in a civilian capacity will be subject to IPCC involvement, a matter that the IPCC itself has raised with us. I cannot say whether the register of gifts, or of contacts with the media, will be extended into that area but she makes a very interesting suggestion that it should do so.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister a question which my noble friend did not ask. The noble Lord started his Statement by referring to falling crime levels. The Minister will be aware that integrity and transparency are not simply about high-profile corruption cases or miscarriages of justice but about the way in which the police represent what is going on in relation to crime and their success in dealing with it. He will also be aware that, a couple of weeks ago, the Office for National Statistics seriously queried the rate at which crime is falling and suggested that some of the police forces’ figures,

“overstate the true rate at which crime has been falling”,

and that officers may have been failing to document some offences.

The Minister may also be aware that there are even more serious allegations around, some of which may well be aired in a meeting here tonight, that some of that underrecording is deliberate, whether as result of reduced resources in police forces or as a result of deliberate connivance or encouragement by senior police officers. If that is at all the case, there are serious issues of integrity that need to be addressed. I am not clear whether this new structure would be able to address such issues in the police force; they are basically administrative but have huge implications for the public’s and the body politic’s trust in what the police are telling us. In particular, can the Minister indicate whether the ONS suggestions are being pursued and whether, in future, they could be pursued through these new arrangements?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The noble Lord raises a very serious issue. There was in fact a letter in my local paper only last week on this very point, and I get—gratis, I have to say—a copy of the New Statesman, where I think there was a similar article last week. I have certainly read an article in a journal recently implying the same thing.

[Lord Whitty]

The Minister is a more avid reader of the New Statesman than I am.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I must remind noble Lords that this is a Statement, not a debate.