Criminal Justice Bill (Second sitting)

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Phillips]

I didn’t think there was. Okay, thank you.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

Q Andy Marsh, can I continue with you? I have an observation, following on from Jess Phillips, about what sounds like a nightmare, where you were accused of rape by somebody. Just as an observation, were that to happen to a Member of Parliament, you might find yourself being asked to stay away from the House. You might lose the Whip from the party you are a member of. It is an interesting observation that in this place, there is almost a presumption of guilt before anything else when it comes to this type of crime, where in theory Members of Parliament can have access to vulnerable people. It is an interesting dichotomy, I suppose, that where the police have access to vulnerable people the whole time there could be this same problem. As I say, that is more of an observation than me necessarily asking you to respond to it—

Andy Marsh: Well since you make the observation, I am not sure, as a police officer, that most police officers would agree that the standards of conduct in Parliament are necessarily higher than the standards of conduct for a police officer—if you don’t mind me saying.

[Mark Garnier]

Q It is about the response to the standards of conduct; it is not necessarily the standards of behaviour, but the response to them and how Parliament responds.

Andy Marsh: The College of Policing is responsible for a number of different products to support the professional standards that are maintained within policing. In relation to violence against women and girls, we conducted a super-complaint review in partnership with the Independent Office for Police Conduct and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, and we found a number of weaknesses and flaws in the way that, for example, allegations of domestic abuse against police officers were dealt with.

We are working very hard to tighten up those shortcomings and make improvements. In fact, the lead for the violence against women and girls taskforce, Maggie Blyth, is now working as my deputy and using all the levers at the disposal of the college to hardwire those standards into the way we go about our business. I would challenge any suggestion that we have a soft attitude to violence against women and girls.

[Mark Garnier]

Q No, no—I wasn’t trying to suggest there was a soft attitude. I was just trying to say that there are lots of different examples.

I wanted to follow on from Minister Philp’s questions earlier about powers of entry, because I was fascinated by your response. You mentioned that you might see that somebody obviously has an iPhone in their house—it has been stolen and then found on the Find My iPhone app, so there is very hard evidence that it is definitely there, but a police officer cannot do anything about that. You mentioned similarly a bicycle that could be for sale—a daughter’s bicycle for sale on eBay, for instance. You talked about how you would give guidance to police officers on how they go about enforcing this, but I came away slightly more confused; this is more me as a layman, trying to understand how you go about doing your business.

What struck me is that at the one end of the scale through the Find My iPhone app, you are looking directly at a bleep that says, “This phone is in the front bedroom of this bloke’s house in Walthamstow” or wherever—other constituencies are available. You know for a fact that it is there because the electronic signature is there. If someone has a bicycle up on eBay, it is probably there because that is where the person is advertising it from, but you do not necessarily know for sure. At the other end of the scale, you have a hunch that somebody may have some stolen goods in their house, but you would obviously then get a search warrant. If you are writing the guidance, how do you find the point at which one side is very clearly, and the other is very clearly not, eligible for the powers of entry?

Andy Marsh: There is a continuum of reasonable grounds and belief, which is written into this proposed legislation, that is actually very strong. It is about as strong as it gets in the judgment of a police officer. We will give forces written guidance, probably in authorised professional practice, and we will give them material on which they can be trained face to face in the classroom and material that can be used online.

Without a doubt, there will be some scenarios that will need to be debated among the groups of police officers engaging in professional development. We will also put this in the initial training curriculum. I am sure, given my confidence that we can introduce some guidance and training that would ensure consistency, that we will see a testing, through the judicial process, of what that belief actually means. At some stage, I am pretty confident that we will end up with a consistent interpretation of what it means under different circumstances.

[Mark Garnier]

Q There are different forces across the country. Some could be a bit more punchy about it, and some could be a bit more reticent about it, but eventually through legal testing in the courts you would come to a—

Andy Marsh: It is my job, through the college, to ensure consistency. Within a bandwidth—Mr Cooke’s inspection reports show this for pretty much any aspect of policing—you will see forces that do more of something and less of something. Actually, it is my job to ensure that the good practice from the inspections conducted by HMIC is fed back into our guidance.

We have a practice bank which turns that good practice into examples on our website—I would welcome you all looking at that—for a range of things. That will be one of the ways in which we help forces interpret this. But I would not subscribe to any suggestion that it will be the wild west out there, and that you will have one force doing something completely different from another.

[Mark Garnier]

Q No, I am sure that is the case.

Andy Cooke, there will be a number of people who are going to be worried that the police may take advantage of these powers in order to get around the trouble of getting a search warrant. How would you reassure my constituents that that is not going to be the case and that we can be confident that this is going to be used for the legitimate reasons, which I am sure Andy Marsh will lay out? How can we be confident that that is not going to be broken?

Andy Cooke: I think the first stage is the fact that it is an inspector’s written authority to do it, and it can initially be given verbally, but then the inspector has to put the name to that action and fully understand what the reasonable belief is to ensure that to happen.

Secondly, we will consider this as part of our inspection regime. When we look at the legitimacy of policing and at the powers of policing, we focus on stop and search and on use of force. We focus on the legitimacy of the powers that the police are using in any particular way. As this is a new power as well, if it is passed by Parliament, it will get particular attention from ourselves.

[Mark Garnier]

Q And you are both confident it will be safe.

Andy Cooke: I am confident it is the right thing to do and the right law to pass. Will mistakes be made? Of course they will. Police officers are human like everyone else. Is there a danger of it being misused in a very small number of cases? Potentially—but that is the same for any power that policing has, which makes it so important that the right people come into policing.

[Mark Garnier]

That is really helpful. Thank you very much.

[Laura Farris]

Q I just want to pick up on one point about the suspension issue that Jess Phillips, who is no longer in her place, was raising with you, because I did not totally understand your answer. What is the threshold for the suspension of a police officer?

Andy Marsh: To explain the process, when a complaint is raised, internally and externally, the chief constable will have a delegated appropriate authority, which tends to be the deputy chief constable. They will have a pretty much weekly meeting, but sometimes it is a real-time daily meeting if something crops up that they need to consider.

The first thing that would happen is that a complaint would reach a threshold of gross misconduct or, indeed, criminal. Once it has reached that threshold, the deputy chief constable—the delegated appropriate authority—needs to make a decision about what should happen to that person. Should they be suspended? Can they continue with their duties? Should they engage in some degree of protected-type duty? What I can say, from my experience of working with police forces across England and Wales, is that the threshold and the tolerance before suspension has dropped substantially.