Extradition (Provisional Arrest) Bill [HL]

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Tuesday 4th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support the Bill and have just one suggestion for how it could be improved. Martin Hewitt, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, described this legislation as filling a loophole in the law, which is a fair description. It is also supported by Lynne Owen, the Director-General of the National Crime Agency. Neither person would generally want to widen police powers, but they do want to make them effective.

Presently, police officers have powers of arrest only for category 1 countries, which includes all members of the European Union, so it is not a radical departure to give them powers to arrest before the extradition warrant has been agreed. Although people have expressed concerns about that, in this sense, it is a power that exists already for category 1 countries, unless a judicial warrant has already been sworn.

The problem is that in category 2 countries, an officer may become aware that a person has been notified as wanted for extradition, but until the warrant has been sworn out, they cannot arrest. Of course, there is no warrant because the UK was not previously aware that the person was in the UK—or I guess police would have been looking for them—and therefore no one has been able to apply for a warrant of extradition. I wonder whether the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, about Sections 73 and 74—neither of which I am an expert on—rely on the fact that someone knows that those people are in the country. These changes are merely to cope with the fact that an officer may come upon or discover that someone who was not previously known to be in the country is available and may therefore need to be taken into custody for a warrant to be applied for.

A series of helpful and reasonable steps have been put into this Bill. It does not cover all category 2 countries—it is the Five Eyes countries. They are all our significant partners, relying on jurisprudential rules which are very similar to ours, as well as Switzerland—I do not think anybody would doubt that it observes the rule of law—and Liechtenstein. Some people have expressed a view that perhaps Russia might be included as a category 2 country. It is not. We have no extradition agreement with Russia. In fact, I think its constitution prevents anybody being extradited from Russia, so even if we were to decide to have an extradition treaty, it would have something of an obstacle to overcome should it decide to agree with us.

The circumstances that this power might be involved are: a stop and search of a pedestrian or a vehicle, which has already been mentioned; an arrest for another offence when the arrest is refused or when the person is released before the warrant can be sworn out; or when an officer starts an investigation, during which they come across a suspect or witness who is wanted.

Although it has not been mentioned tonight, it is possible to argue that the officer should not advise the person that there is a notice in place and that there is to be a hearing to avoid warning him and him absconding. However, if that was a strong argument we would not already have this power for category 1 countries, so I do not think that is the best argument to pursue. It is quite possible that if someone is arrested in this country from a category 2 country for an offence that is nothing to do with the extradition and is then released it might put him on notice that the police might start checking to see whether there is an extradition warrant and if the individual knows he is wanted for a serious offence he may then abscond, or certainly be hard to find, so there are good reasons why the arrest power for category 2 countries is a good idea. It creates a level playing field with category 1 countries. I do not think that is unfair or unreasonable.

A further safeguard is to be added for category 2 offences, which is that the offence for which the suspect is wanted needs to be classified as serious. That test is whether somebody in this country would serve three years’ imprisonment. That is not available for category 1 countries, such as those in the European Union. Poland has not been mentioned today, but it has been criticised for seeking extradition of its citizens for very minor offences, such as shoplifting, and clearly wasting everyone’s time. Poland is a member of the European Union and a category 1 country.

The first test is whether a three-year term of imprisonment is available. If it passes that test the second test is whether the National Crime Agency is prepared to certify that the offence remains serious. Someone can go to prison for 10 years for criminal damage, but criminal damage worth £25 will not lead to a 10-year prison sentence. It would lead to a minor outcome. It is therefore very unlikely that the NCA would certify that it was an offence that should be put on the police national computer to make sure that that person was excluded from the country.

Some people expressed the view that the NCA may not apply human rights conventions. It already does that, even with European Union extradition warrants. Those rules will not change. It has excluded some applications on those grounds, such as sexual orientation, political affiliations or things that are disproportionate.

[Baroness Hamwee]

I do not doubt what the noble Lord is saying, but my question was about how we can be assured about transparency in holding to account those issues. We may know that things are hunky-dory now, but I am sure that the noble Lord would accept that that is not quite the same has having the procedures available to test them.

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

I agree. We should be reassured in two senses. The NCA is one arbiter. It has been putting things on the police national computer for many years. Individuals can pursue their civil rights if they think or find they have been wronged. If an arrest is made, these cases will of course be heard in a court, where suspects are legally represented and able to make the case that this is an improper allocation of a notice. It is a fair challenge, but there are systems in place that would provide a remedy within a fairly short period of time.

We all understand why it is difficult to calculate how often the power of arrest for category 2 countries will be used. However, we know that in 2018 there were 1,394 arrests in England and Wales for category 1 offences. Interestingly, only 28% of those cases would pass the seriousness test if they were moved to category 2. Fewer people would be affected by the powers of arrest and extradition if any European countries were to come within category 2.

Some may argue—and have argued—that, in negotiating with other countries, we put ourselves at a disadvantage by unilaterally helping another country to extradite criminals it takes to its country. However, for serious offences, the UK has the benefit of excluding a suspect from the UK until their criminal justice process is completed; we get a definite benefit from that.

It is also true that the constitutions of some countries require another country to have constitutional arrangements in place to enable extradition before they can reciprocate. In that sense, this is an enabling provision; it allows a country to respond to the fact that the UK would have this in place.

I have a quick suggestion for improving the extradition process—which, in my view, has long been unhelpful. All those arrested, with or without warrant, have to be transported to one court in Westminster. These are long journeys for the suspect, their families and everybody else involved in the case—the police, witnesses et cetera. It takes time and money, and with weekends, and this potentially extends to a four or five-day period. Surely it should be possible to have regional courts in our big cities, which could hear these cases. I think it has been suggested in the past that, due to its specialised nature, the London Bar is the best place to respond to these cases. However, surely there should be a system designed for the suspects and, in this instance perhaps, not for the Bar.

I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, that we do not want to see countries added to the list if they have systems that we do not respect. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, that there are already at least two countries in the European Union which we might challenge as to whether they would pass that test. In one country—we do not need to name it—political interference, or attempted interference, has been apparent in the selection of judges, yet there is a very low bar for getting an extradition warrant. In another country, both politicians and police are corrupt. Noble Lords may ask why we have extradition treaties with these countries, but we do—we still allow for extradition to these countries. That seems quite a challenge in the European Union, let alone somewhere else; we have to be careful and ensure that we are on a level playing field with everyone.

I support the Bill, which will create a level playing field and, in part, provide a flexible opportunity to retain an effective process as we leave the European Union—although I acknowledge that the Government have said that that is not their intention.

Health: Alcohol Abuse

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I will try to answer the question differently. The noble Lord points to the wide variety of harms that alcohol causes—the economic cost is something like £21 billion a year. We can see the involvement of alcohol abuse when looking at domestic violence—later this year, we will be considering the domestic abuse Bill—and the effect it has on children. The children of alcoholic parents must suffer terribly, and of course poverty is one of the effects of alcohol.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased that the sobriety scheme is being rolled out, but it would help to hear a timeline for it. People may be aware of one benefit of the sobriety scheme. It came from South Dakota in America, where district attorneys, sick of seeing people die on the roads, introduced compulsory testing every day for a year. It led to a huge reduction in the number of people killed on the roads, but also the amount of domestic violence because, when the drunk drivers got home, they had been assaulting their partners. We experimented with this in the Met and it worked well, but I am concerned that the certainty of outcome is not as clear in our scheme because, should someone fail the test, we move them to the courts rather than insist on one day’s imprisonment. Will the Minister update us on the scheme and say whether we are prepared to look again at the penalty imposed at the conclusion of a positive test?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am afraid that I do not have an update on the scheme for the noble Lord, but I concur with everything he said. I will write to him with an update and place a copy of the letter in the Library.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I will restrict my comments to the police and criminal justice parts of the Queen’s Speech. I will first deal briefly with three issues that have come up in this debate. The first is longer sentences for violent and sexual offences. People may imagine that I would naturally support these, and I do support long sentences for serious offences. However, there has been sentence drift upwards, and parole reduction, over the last 20 years. The consequence has been a prison population, now, of around 85,000. There is a serious risk that that is too many. It is possible that we need to look seriously at that—if we allow it to continue, we will have worse problems, not less crime. In particular, we need to be more honest in our sentencing. If we were able to say, “You will go to prison for six years, but you will stay in prison for 10 should you not behave in prison or show that you have reformed your ways”, I think people would understand that but at the moment the reverse is true. Therefore, I think there is something more to do about sentencing—not necessarily making sentences longer.

My second point concerns the point raised by my noble and learned friend Lord Hope, based on the case of Helen McCourt, a young woman of 22 who was murdered in 1988 in Merseyside, an area I used to police. Her mother, Marie, has conducted an incredible campaign, for good reason, to try to identify the place where her daughter’s body was disposed of, but I am not sure that the remedy put forward is the correct one. There is a danger when, if someone cannot or will not admit where they disposed of a body, they will have a longer sentence. I propose that they should have a discount for providing the location of the body, because there is the danger my noble and learned friend described of somebody who is not guilty being trapped in prison for far longer than they should be if there is a miscarriage of justice.

My final, simple point is that I profoundly support the suggested sobriety tagging system. We started one in the Met about four years ago and it was effective. It came from a scheme in South Dakota in America and can make a profound difference where someone’s offending pattern is based on their alcohol intake and they cannot stop. The electronic tagging of people with that problem can produce a strategic difference, but not if we run only pilot schemes; we must have a UK-wide—certainly an England and Wales-wide—solution.

I want to confine my main remarks to the proposals in the Queen’s Speech about the police, the majority of which I welcome. The confirmation of the replacement of the 20,000 police officers lost is a good thing. It will take a few years, but it is appropriate. As a result of the banking crisis of 2007 we saw large cuts in public spending. I was never of the view that the police were singled out for worse treatment, but I think the cuts went too far and that they should have been remedied earlier. Even now, it will take at least until 2022 before we see police numbers return to the levels we saw back in 2009, but it is a good thing and we should celebrate it. We have to be careful not to worship police officer numbers, but there will always be a need for a critical mass of people to provide a police service, particularly, as we have heard, with a growing population and growing demands of different types, be it online or on the streets. There will be a period when those on the front line are overrepresented by the least experienced. This is a logical consequence of rapid recruitment and its effects must be mitigated, but I cannot see how they can be avoided, because it is essential that we get those officers back out on the street.

I also welcome the plan to enhance the police covenant. Apart from its direct benefits, it will also build trust between this Government and the police service. For too long there has been a suspicion among those on the front line that they have not had the Government’s support. Whether that is true or not is a different question, but that perception has certainly been there, and the enhancing of the police covenant will help to remedy a lack of trust. The proof will be in how it develops in the coming years.

I am sorry that the proposals on policing do not touch on three big areas which I think are vital to consider for the coming years. The first—it will be no surprise to the Minister to hear me say this—is that the structure of policing remains an enigma. We have a National Health Service and a British Army; we have a Security Service and we have 43 police forces. The criminals do not quite respect those boundaries. It seems to me that our investments have been fragmented in the development of policing over the years and they will only continue to be fragmented if we allow that structure to continue. We have maximised localism, which accounts for a huge amount of inconsistency and, I fear, a sad lack of development over the years.

There is no discussion in the Speech about making prevention a strategic priority of the police in the way that has allowed massive progress in the fire service and the health service. In my view, a cross-government approach to the design of place and things—alcohol control, drug control and drug policy, self-education to help people reduce the chance of being a victim and a strategy that concentrates on young people—will have profound effects. I am afraid I have seen no clear explanation of that.

Finally, there is a need to prioritise improvement in police technology. I agree that we need people—I have already said that I support the huge increase in the number of police officers. However, the use of good technology that will enhance artificial intelligence, such as facial recognition—used properly and respecting privacy—is vital to improving the police, as well as the service they provide.

Metropolitan Police: Use of Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I agree with my noble friend on all counts. Coming back to his point about hard-working people, I saw the protesters described last week as “Glastonbury meets Waitrose”. Some of those people do not know what it is like to have to use the Tube because you simply cannot use the bus. It affects people’s pockets, particularly those of the hard-working people of London.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I was glad to see the Home Secretary’s publicised support for the Metropolitan Police. These are difficult judgments. On the last occasion that Extinction Rebellion carried out its protests, the police were criticised for failing to take action. Here, we see them criticised for perhaps taking too much. It is a difficult position to land fairly on. When we have the threat of airports being closed and the Tube system being shut down, this is a serious a matter for London, as it is for the country generally. Perhaps the use of this power is a reasonable response on this occasion.

Pakistan: Aid Programmes and Human Rights

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this debate. Pakistan has the opportunity to be a great country, but presently its development is limited by an overpowerful military interfering in democracy and a lack of respect for the rule of law and human rights. This is most obvious in its treatment of minorities. As we have heard, 95% of the people are Muslim, and Pakistan has recently created a sense of exclusionary nationalism focused on a definition of Muslimness which has had a dire effect on the status of minority groups, as declared by Minority Rights Group International in 2018.

We have heard that Pakistan was founded on religious tolerance, but recent years have seen the problems of extremism and of minorities being persecuted increase significantly. On human trafficking, the Government said recently:

“The UK Government’s approach to tackling modern slavery … in Pakistan is to reduce the permissive environment through community-based activities and to strengthen legislative and policy frameworks for more effective”,


protection of those affected.

A reasonable question for the Minister is: against a background of worsening religious persecution, what confidence do the Government have that their anti-trafficking programmes can deliver value for money when the structures of the state seem to be undermining them? The Government insist that their aid programmes are blind to religion and are determined by need and need alone. This is for entirely understandable reasons, not least wishing to avoid giving preferential treatment to people of a particular religion, which could easily be viewed as discrimination, but the “need not creed” approach is failing Pakistani minorities. The most marginalised and persecuted groups are most commonly defined by their religion. In Pakistan, blindness to religion is hindering our ability to help. Consider the case of the more than 1,000 Pakistani Christian girls trafficked to China since 2018. The traffickers are specifically targeting Christians, even waiting outside churches with signs promising Chinese Christian husbands. This an example of faith-targeted human trafficking. The UK’s anti-trafficking programme is well established in Pakistan, but if it remains blind to religion it will be less effective as a result. I serve as a trustee of an anti-human trafficking charity, the Arise Foundation. It summarised the problem, that,

“prevention work is most effective when it addresses why people are at-risk. If our aid programmes remain blind to the fact that the faith of these girls is putting them at risk, how can they possibly be effective?”

So I put that question to the Minister today: what steps are being taken to incorporate religion as an indicator of vulnerability in Pakistan? No one wants our aid programme to discriminate unjustly, but if a misplaced sense of political correctness is preventing us from reaching these girls and others like them, I would argue that we need to change our mentality, fast.

I wonder about the apparent blind eye that is being turned. The Pakistan Foreign Minister said last week that there was no truth to the reports that I have just outlined, but I have had a report from a senior official in Pakistan who told me directly that the reports were credible and that 65 Chinese and 16 Pakistani nationals have been arrested already within the ongoing investigations. Can the UK confirm whether it believes the reports or finds that there is evidence for them? I think there is good evidence, as has been said, that we need to target our aid wisely and reset the dial for the strategy of suspending it.

Knife Crime

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for this useful opportunity to reflect on the progress of the Government’s serious violence strategy, announced last year, in reducing knife crime. The Government have taken useful action which has been effective in reducing knife crime, but there remain significant questions as to whether their approach will be successful in the longer term.

At times in today’s debate it has been suggested that there are alternatives and that the choice is between short-term and long-term measures. I am afraid that the reality is that we will need both. If we do not take some of the short-term measures, people will die while the long-term measures take effect. There will therefore have to be tactical responses as well as some of the more profound strategic measures. I continue to urge the Government to have a profound crime prevention strategy, which I do not think is in place. This can also be said of health but it is certainly true of crime. The strategy should have five elements: design of places and things, drug abuse, alcohol misuse, mental health, and self-education so that people can protect themselves from becoming victims.

Although today’s debate has veered, quite understandably, into discussion of economic circumstances and the level of government support for vulnerable individuals, it is about the impact of government policy on knife crime. While low economic vibrancy can certainly lead to more crime, the debate is specifically about how government policy is affecting knife crime. Why is the current situation disproportionately causing people, particularly young people, to stab one another?

The effective measures taken include finding an extra £1 billion, or something of that order, for police funding, which is a good thing. There has also been an increase in the average sentence for those convicted of a second knife offence. My friend the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and others are not persuaded that prison sentences are the answer, but they certainly must be part of the answer. As I think he acknowledged, if someone is stabbed or there is an offence of serious violence, the young need to know that this is a terrible thing and that there is a serious consequence in the most extreme cases. It will happen only on a second conviction, and the average sentence has risen to eight months. The dilemma is that to arrest and to take serious action against someone carrying a knife before stabbing someone is a preventive measure against the murder that may subsequently occur. If we take no serious action against those carrying knives, we will have problems. The initiation of local serious violence units to work long-term on a public health approach, which the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, talked about, is a good investment, and I am sure that we will see its benefits in the coming years.

I do not necessarily share the confidence we have heard in the data we are offered to decide whether things are getting better or worse. The reports by the House of Lords Library are very good but are based on data that concludes in December 2018, and here we are in June 2019 and someone was stabbed to death yesterday. We do not know whether things are getting better or worse. Surely that data should be available. The statisticians often want this data to be perfect, but it must be available and transparent. I hope the Government have that data, and the police should have it so that they know whether or not the action they are taking is helpful. We also need statistical information because it helps us to stop having moral crises about things that may just be blips. I do not think the rise in knife crime is a blip, but there are statistical ways of checking that. This type of crime is seasonal. When the weather gets warm, the profile is different. Certain things can affect crime which can be analysed statistically. The bottom line is that every murder and stabbing is a serious event that we all need to take seriously, as we are doing.

My analysis, which is supported by that of the serious violence strategy, is that there are four principal causes of what we see at the moment. First is the increase in the supply of cheap cocaine, which has destabilised the controlled drug market, leading to more violence. Secondly, the distribution methods have changed such that there is now online ordering and delivery of drugs to customers rather than collection from their dealers. The very young are becoming involved in this, which is leading to the issue of county lines we see right across the country. Thirdly, clearly too many young people are carrying knives, and they are not deterred by being caught or by its consequences. Finally, communities that are getting younger see higher incidence of violence.

The questions that remain for the Government concern two things that have been in their control but have aggravated the situation I described. The first is the loss of 20,000 police officers since 2010. I am afraid I still cannot understand why, if the Government are putting £1 billion in, they have promised only 3,500 more when officers cost on average about £50,000 each; £1 billion should provide about 20,000. I do not understand why there is such a big discrepancy between the promise and the money being put in. My second point has been picked up by many people: the exclusion of young people from schools and the limited effectiveness of the pupil referral units, which I am afraid are becoming pathways to crime rather than inhibitors of it.

The questions that remain for the Government are these. First, if it is true that police officers costs on average £50,000, why can the Government not promise more officers? When they arrive, can they give any kind of assessment to the police about where they will put them? If they end up being shared politically or equitably that will not be the right way to distribute them.

Secondly, the National Crime Agency, which is charged with stopping the importation of drugs, still does not have a tier 1 objective to try to control the supply of controlled drugs. It has a very vague set of words and the performance data is almost meaningless. What about stopping some of the drugs getting in? How much is getting stopped and seized, with people being arrested and put in prison for 80 kilos of heroin? These are vital things that the NCA should have. The Government have not given it an objective to explicitly stop that supply.

Thirdly, have the Government considered amending the criteria for intrusive surveillance to monitor online ordering? It is currently reserved for the most serious of crimes, such as 80 kilos of heroin being imported, but in these cases we have very low volumes of cocaine being delivered and somebody, such as a 16 year-old who delivers it, dies. That is a serious event, which is why intrusive surveillance is so important to match the nature of the problem.

Fourthly, what is the Government’s analysis of the adverse impact of educational performance indicators on exclusions from schools? What are they doing to improve the performance of pupil referral units? Fifthly, what technology is being made available to the police to improve the quality of stop and search? That can make a real difference.

Finally, I recently did a documentary TV programme in which I suggested that there should be a tsar to pull this together. As a result, I saw the Home Secretary say that he did not agree with tsars. As it happens, I am not entirely confident that tsars always work, but if Ministers do not like tsars, who is pulling this together? Who will drive it forward and who will make sure that, across government, someone will do something week by week and day by day, and not report in six months’ time, when, sadly, things get out of control? It needs a drive. Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, said, sometimes central government can make things happen.

Emergency Services Network

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by the National Audit Office Progress delivering the Emergency Services Network, published on 10 May, in particular its finding that the new emergency services communications network may go over budget by at least £3.1 billion.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the emergency services network aims to deliver an ambitious world-leading digital communications network for the emergency services by 2022, resulting in savings of £200 million a year. When fully implemented, its mobile technology and infrastructure will transform the emergency response of police officers, firefighters and ambulance crews. This will result in faster and better treatment for victims.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. The Audit Commission has provided an excoriating judgment on this Home Office-run project. Not only has the cost risen by 49% but the project should have finished in 2019, while it is now hoped that it will finish in 2022. The Audit Commission has no confidence that this project will be delivered, given that a technical solution is not defined, and the police have no confidence. So will the Government guarantee that the extra funds needed for this project—which will be significant—will not be taken from the police, fire or ambulance budgets?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to point out what the NAO report says. I am not going to sugar-coat the cost and time overruns, but we can take some comfort from the fact that a new team is in place, and the additional costs should ultimately be recouped. But I take the point that a reset is needed, that the project needs to run to time and cost, and that that needs to be done as a priority.

Victims of Crime: Mobile Phone Data

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness and all that she does for victims. I concur with her that at the point victims are asked to sign a form they may be in a highly traumatised state. This process is nothing new—it has not just happened today—but the standardised form is new. However, I take on board the fact that victims and potential victims are in a vulnerable state when they are asked to sign the form. There is nothing to preclude a victim having a legal representative with them at the time they are asked to do this. However, I take the noble Baroness’s views on board and, as I have said, the CPS has undertaken to review the form.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I am concerned about these proposals for two reasons. First, the major cause of some of the problems is demand. We have had far more reporting of sexual offences over the past few years, there is a greater availability of devices for recording digital data and there is far more social networking. There is a huge amount of information to trawl through and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, it is no good giving even more access to this type of material if the police do not have the skills and resources to act on it. It would have been a good idea to talk about that alongside this proposal. Although resources have been going to the police, they have not been in this particular area.

More fundamentally, I am less relaxed than some noble Lords who have spoken about whether it is okay to trawl, as that is how it will be seen, through someone’s material. It will be seen as an intrusion into the privacy of the victim, even though I am sure it is not intended in that way. We have got to the stage where a person is now entitled to withdraw consent at the point of the sexual offence. It does not matter about sexual history or what happens after the event. Many of the offences where disclosure has been an issue have been about things and communications which have been shared after the event. I wonder, as a point of principle, why it is relevant to search someone’s communications before or after. Surely it is the event and the consent. We are in danger of moving away from that fundamental principle, which has been fought for an awful lot over the past 20 years, and this seems to be a backwards step.

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)]

My Lords—

Police: Recruitment Criteria

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

It is absolutely right that good-quality candidates should be allowed to come forward. That is why there are a variety of options available to candidates. As I said to the noble Lord earlier, it is important that candidates do not necessarily need a degree to be able to go into the police force, but that they are educated and trained to degree level going forward, to make the best police officers.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the purpose behind the College of Policing’s accreditation system is to do two things? First, as the Minister has already said, it aims to make sure that the training received is of a high standard—surely we all agree with that. At the moment, 50% of police officers recruited are graduates already. Secondly, for officers who have worked for 30 or 40 years in some cases, perhaps investigating murder, cybercrime, rape and other policing matters, it is really important that we accredit to graduate standard, because it allows those officers to move on to other careers at the end of their police career. It is not good enough to carry on as we have in the past, where we have not accredited great skills—but that does not mean to say that everyone has to be a graduate.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right and, of course, speaks from the highest experience. To be able to go on and do something else with the skills that you have accrued through, say, policing is really important. On the point about accreditation, it has to be recognised that the pattern of crime, and therefore of policing, has changed so much over the years. Police need to be trained in the new and emerging activities that criminals are undertaking—digital crime, for example.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 26th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 5 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Paddick, I shall speak also to Amendments 6, 7, 20, 21, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and 34.

For most of us in society, the idea of going to prison for even a short amount of time, with the loss of liberty that that entails, is a real deterrent. But that thinking fails to get into the mindset of many of today’s criminals, who may be reckless or who may not fear prison because they have friends and family who have done time. Perhaps their lives are so chaotic that, in the scheme of things, prison does not seem so bad. That is true of no group more than those serving the shortest sentences. It was recently said:

“In the last five years, just over a quarter of a million custodial sentences have been given to offenders for six months or less; over 300,000 sentences were for 12 months or less. But nearly two thirds of those offenders go on to commit a further crime within a year of being released. 27% of all reoffending is committed by people who have served short sentences of 12 months or less. For the offenders completing these short sentences whose lives are destabilised, and for society which incurs a heavy financial and social cost, prison simply isn’t working”.

By now noble Lords may have recognised the source of this quotation. The speaker went on to say that,

“there is a very strong case to abolish sentences of six months or less altogether, with some closely defined exceptions, and put in their place a robust community order regime. Let’s be honest. The public will always want to prioritise schools or hospitals over the criminal justice system when it comes to public spending. But where we do spend on the criminal justice system, we must spend on what works. Why would we spend taxpayers’ money doing what we know doesn’t work, and indeed, makes us less safe? We shouldn’t”.

Thank you, Justice Secretary, for putting the case so well.

I commented at the last stage of this Bill that, not so long ago, the Home Office and the MoJ were a single department. It was too big, but it is a great pity that thinking has moved so far apart that one department is now legislating for a sanction which the other considers unproductive.

These amendments would remove the sanction of short-term imprisonment for up to 51 weeks—the same points apply as those made by Mr Gauke in his speech a few days ago. We are dealing with various offences: the sale of corrosives to under-18s, the delivery of corrosives to residential premises and having the corrosive in a public place. We would have preferred to focus on robust community sentences, but we learned during the last stage that they can be applied only as an alternative to a custodial sentence. In my view, that needs updating—but that is for another day. I hope that the Government might address this: otherwise, we will do so at a suitable opportunity.

In Committee, it was said, understandably, that victims feel let down because community sentences do not have the same weight and are ineffective. That is an important issue, which should be addressed by the robustness of community sentences. I have heard over the years that a tough community sentence is much harder than custody.

The offences in question are rather difficult. The first two that I mentioned are likely to be committed by adults. Being found to have committed a criminal offence and being fined, which is what our amendments would achieve, would have a serious impact on the offender as an employee—or possibly, in the circumstances, as an ex-employee. The third offence may be committed by an adult but also by a child. The arguments about custodial sentences being rather good at fitting someone for a life of crime particularly apply.

The Minister in Committee talked about the significant harm that corrosive products can cause if misused. The offences in question, which are the subject of these amendments, are not about the use of corrosives as a weapon. We are not seeking to minimise or make light of the harm that corrosives can cause; that is not the point. The Minister will also say that the court has discretion as to disposal, which is of course true up to a point.

That takes me to Clauses 8 and 9—the subject of the last two amendments in this group—which we would leave out. They require particular, mandatory sentences. Clause 8 applies to, among others, children over 16 who have one previous relevant conviction. We are concerned about the age threshold, for reasons that we went into fairly extensively at the last stage and which, I suspect, other noble Lords may raise today. I say in advance that I will probably agree with them. We have an in-principle objection to mandatory sentences. The Minister described them as providing the appropriate custodial sentence. But is not “appropriate” something that the court should determine? We may have criticisms of pre-sentence reports and so on, but the court is looking at both the offence and the offender; those taken together will lead the court to take a view on what is appropriate.

In Committee, we explained our opposition to the application to under-18s—I felt then, and still feel, that Clause 8(4) is inadequate. It is, if I may put it this way, the legislative equivalent of lip service that,

“the court must have regard to its duty under section 44 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933”.

The text refers back to Clause 8(2), which tells the court that if it is,

“of the opinion that there are particular circumstances”,

it can take a different course. But the circumstances here are that the person is under 18. So how does having regard to the welfare of the child or young person actually work? Does it mean that one child is more resilient than another, that one offence is less serious than another, or that the circumstances make custody “unjust”? This is what discretion in sentencing is about, and these Benches prefer judicial discretion to executive sentencing. I beg to move.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I am going to say some contradictory things on this amendment—I have spent a career doing that, so it is perhaps not that unusual. Fundamentally, I think we probably need fewer people in prison. We could probably manage with half the number we have now. The question might be how we get there. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, mentioned, the Government have said that they would like to have less use—if not no use—of short sentences, so this seems a little contradictory. I would not do that myself; I would find other measures to reduce the prison population. That would probably mean releasing people at the end of their sentence rather than not putting them in there in the first place should it be deemed that they have committed a serious offence.

Here we should come back to the idea that prison is needed as a sanction in these cases; I think that it is relevant. There is no doubt that prison is not helpful for recidivism. All the evidence shows that, when people go to prison, some 80% reoffend within two years of their release. The most effective mechanism for reducing recidivism is called a police caution: broadly, 70% of those who offend never reoffend when they have received a police caution. So prison on the whole will not help with recidivism, but of course while offenders are in there, they will not attack members of the public—although they might attack each other.

The offences here are serious enough for prison at least to be considered. There would obviously then be a debate on how long the sentences should be. If the Government do decide to exclude short sentences, either on this occasion or as a general policy, that would also exclude things like weekend sentences, which would help reduce the prison population. They can be a very constructive way of reintegrating someone after a long sentence, or they can be an alternative to a short sentence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Representatives of USDAW are part of the steering group along with staff from large retail organisations right down to small shop owners. It is important that we have a wide range of representation from organisations so that we can see the full spectrum of exactly what issues are involved. I am aware of my noble friend’s past employment with Tesco. Somehow I had assumed that a big organisation would suffer less abuse because the shops are covered by security officers, but that is not necessarily the case. I have witnessed this myself in big retail organisations, and to improve our understanding, we need representation from across the spectrum of those retail companies.

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

I am minded to support the amendment, because the case is a good one for shop workers. I just wonder whether, if the Government are not minded to support an explicit offence—whether for shop workers or any retail worker who is enforcing a licence—in legislation in whatever form, the Sentencing Council could consider that as an aggravating factor in the offences that already exist. This could relate to many other types of offence, so we may be able to support the people who need supporting without needing all the legislation to change to cover the different types of licensee who need that support.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord makes a good point about aggravated offences—and of course, that can be explored through the call for evidence. As he will know, it is already an offence to abuse or attack someone who is serving the public. USDAW wanted something specifically related to shop workers, and that is one of the suggestions that could be taken forward—in fact, it may well be taken forward—to the call for evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

I had hoped that the days had gone when Governments gave the police all the powers they wanted so that they could blame them, not themselves, if things went wrong. They have apparently not. These orders have not been thought through and we oppose them.

[Lord Hogan-Howe]

My Lords, I also spoke in Committee. I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, as he is aware. I come from a similar background and do not have the same experience of anti-social behaviour orders. They were introduced by a Labour Government and, at the time, I think they had an effect. We had a moral panic, and we also had a problem with anti-social behaviour. They were intended to address repeat offenders, repeat locations and, sadly, repeat victims. They did have an effect. They probably went on a bit too long and eventually outlived their usefulness, but the principle was valid and addressed the order to people’s offending. People had the choice to address their offending pattern or have a criminal sanction, and some chose not to address their offending pattern.

The point that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made—that it seems to intervene with young people who may not be able to remember all of the conditions placed on them—is not unreasonable. However, generally, this order’s aim is to replace the parental care that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred to earlier. When some of these kids do not have someone who cares enough to say, “That’s a line—don’t cross it”, this is one way to give them some advice. I do not think that it means that a 12 year-old will always end up with a prison sentence or even a criminal conviction, but someone needs to intervene in that pattern. Why are they getting involved with gangs and, frankly, mixing with people who are not helping them? Someone needs to advise them where they should not go, who they should not see and about the types of behaviour that are causing them problems. This is one way of doing it. I accept that there may be others, but I do not think that it is unreasonable to give that type of advice.

I broadly support these orders, mainly because we have a serious problem. The Minister went through the number of people who have been hurt and arrested carrying knives, and we clearly have a cultural problem at the moment. We have had it in previous years—this is not the first time. People in this Chamber will remember tens of years ago, when various groups who carried knives ended up competing with each other, often to sell drugs or for any other form of territory where a weapon became the means of establishing it. We have to intervene now and send a message.

I will contest one final point from the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, about whether community officers are there to arrest people. They are not, but in my view they are not there just to smile and be nice to people. They have powers. It does not help the community they serve if they ignore offences and leave someone else to make the arrest. They are there to exercise the powers that allow people to trust that it is worth telling them when an offence has been committed.

I would ask the Government still to consider two areas for the future. I agree with the point about pilots. At one time, the Ministry of Justice had so many pilots that we thought it was starting an airline. The danger is that, after a while, it becomes confusing. It also becomes quite difficult to evaluate the success of multiple pilots; so, I worry about pilots generically.

The second point, which the Minister quietly mentioned earlier, is that some people are released from prison to areas other than those where they were convicted. Also, offenders move from where they live to other areas around the country, which means that officers in areas where a pilot may not be in place would have to understand what the powers are; frankly, that could get pretty confusing. This House and the other place generate a huge amount of legislation; officers are expected to remember and act on it fairly. The more legislation there is, the harder it is to enforce when it is partial and fragmented. I worry about pilots for that reason too.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, if we accept that there is a need for this legislation—as I do, and I am prepared to support it—deciding to implement it partially seems an odd conclusion, since we have agreed that nationally there is a problem. We need to implement legislation in a uniform rather than a fragmented, incremental way.

Finally, I repeat a point that I made in Committee: this Bill does not give a power of search. The Minister said in Committee that existing powers of search were sufficient. I honestly do not believe they are. Section 1 of the Bill gives a power to search—anybody at any time—on reasonable suspicion, but these orders are for people who have already gone through a court process, probably at least twice, and have been found to be at risk of carrying knives. It seems not unreasonable to support the police in the relatively few cases concerned, as mentioned by the Minister; I am sure that far fewer than 3,000 of these orders will be implemented. It would not be an incredible burden for the legislature to support the police by saying that a power of search goes with this power, without the “reasonable cause” that Section 1 requires; it would not be unreasonable to support the police in that way. The officers described by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who proposed this power—which is generally supported by the police—had requested that the power of search went with it. They were disappointed when they saw that this request had not been accepted in the legislation.

I support the amendments but I suggest to the Minister that the Government consider the two issues I have mentioned: piloting and the power of search.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I rise to respond to the government amendments in this group, as well as Amendments 55 to 60 in relation to the proposed pilots of the new KCPOs. I thank the Minister for meeting me to discuss my considerable concerns about these knife crime prevention orders. Amendment 52 could provide some reassurance, but that would depend very much on how those pilots are undertaken and reported upon.

In view of the Government’s claim that these orders were wanted by the police, I asked Ron Hogg, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Durham—which is one of the top-performing constabularies in the country, according to the inspectorate—whether he and his chief constable, Mike Barton, would find KCPOs a helpful contribution to policing and dealing with knife crime. His considered response—given at some length—amounted to a resounding no.

I would be grateful if the Minister could inform the House how many police services want knife crime prevention orders and how many would prefer not to have them. Police and Crime Commissioner Hogg reiterated many of the concerns that I raised in Committee; in particular, that there is a body of evidence to show that criminalising and punitive civil deterrents have not had a significant impact on reducing youth violence. These policies, as others have mentioned, have included ASBOs, dispersal orders and criminal behaviour orders. Can the Minister confirm—this is very important—that the KCPO pilots will specifically assess, and report on, their impact on the criminalisation of children, and the impact on knife crime in the areas involved? It is no good having pilots if they do not nail down what the orders are achieving in the crucial areas.

Does the Minister accept that in the light of recent swingeing cuts to local authority youth services, and drug services in particular, it will be important to boost these services and restore those cuts in the pilot areas, with a view to rolling out that restoration of funding across the country? Only if these prevention orders really do lead to children and young people accessing the services and treatment they need will criminalisation be avoided and positive outcomes achieved.