King’s Speech

Debate between Baroness Doocey and Lord Lemos

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, I will restrict my remarks to the Government’s proposals for policing. At the start of the last Session, many of us hoped for a serious reforming agenda after too many years in which our public services stagnated and, in too many respects, went backwards. Nowhere is this truer than in policing. We therefore await details of the police reform Bill with great interest.

These Benches agree with much of the direction set out in the recent White Paper, particularly the ambition to strengthen neighbourhood policing and address the workforce, skills and training issues that are central to a successful, modern police service. This Bill provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity for long-overdue structural change, but will this ambition be matched by the necessary political will? I sincerely hope so.

We are on our sixth Home Secretary in six years. Reshaping policing requires sustained commitment, not a revolving door of leadership. Do the Government have the focus to carry through bold reform when the Home Office is consumed by so many other priorities?

The real test of the Bill is whether it will improve investigations, deter lawbreaking, and give witnesses and victims a better response when they turn to the police for help. It must also remain faithful to the core principles that have underpinned British policing for generations: policing by consent, local accountability, impartiality, and restraint. That is the standard against which it will be measured.

Much attention is focused on plans to merge forces and create a national police service, but structural reorganisation will mean little if we ignore the reality that front-line policing demand routinely exceeds capacity, and policing is permanently struggling to cope. For too long, politicians have colluded in the fiction that all demand can be met, when everyone on the front line knows that it cannot. The burden is pushed downwards, to be absorbed by officers and staff who must find their own ways to ration resources, while Ministers avoid confronting those trade-offs openly.

This has to stop. We need an honest, public conversation about what we are asking the police to do and what we are prepared to fund. Innumerable chief constables have told me that their key ask is greater clarity about the role and mission of the police. New responsibilities must come with the funding to match, and when difficult choices are made, they must be owned collectively, not pushed down, as now, on to local forces.

The Government want a more active Home Office setting national priorities. But the question remains: who will decide what is to be deprioritised? What politician will admit that without significant extra investment, some tasks can no longer be done to the same standard? If everything is prioritised, nothing will be. Can the Minister tell us how much of the investment for these new national structures is expected to come from savings within policing itself?

The Liberal Democrats’ priority is to protect local policing. We want every community to have guaranteed access to a police counter, not in buildings resembling Fort Knox that alienate the public. We want hubs in familiar places, such as supermarkets and post offices, so that people can report a crime, get advice, or pass on their concerns as they go about their daily lives. In too many areas, policing is verging on irrelevance, called upon only in the direst of emergencies. We must restore the Peelite principle of the police as part of the community, not a distant ancillary service.

We welcome the end of the failed police and crime commissioner experiment, but its replacement must be better, not just different. Shifting powers from one underscrutinised politician to another is no answer. Policing must be accountable to the communities it serves, and day-to-day operations must be protected from political interference. We must not drift towards a model where the police answer more to Whitehall than to local residents, even as we sensibly reduce duplication and improve the sharing of data and intelligence.

In relation to police use of AI, the belated promise of a world­leading regulatory framework is very welcome, but in one of the most heavily surveilled democracies, it is surely the minimum the public should expect. Regulation is still lagging far behind the technology, even as the Home Secretary urges forces to adopt AI at pace and scale. Public anxiety about a drift towards a surveillance society is real, and international experience shows how easily such tools can be misused. Troubling early signs of misuse here at home only reinforce that risk. We will therefore press hard to ensure that any new legislation is genuinely robust and enforceable.

Finally, I share the concern about the increasing amount of ping-pong—but when the only way to have sensible ideas properly considered is to press them repeatedly, those of us who want to contribute constructively are left with little choice. In the debates on the last policing Bill, we repeatedly argued for proper safeguards on facial recognition, only to be told, time and again, that it was premature. Weeks later, the Home Office proposed those very safeguards. I am delighted the case was finally accepted, but I hope it does not become the pattern. The public want us to work across party lines to improve public services, especially in the fight against crime. They do not want point-scoring; they want visible improvements in policing and public safety. If the Government are serious about reform, they must show it not only in what they say and how they legislate but, crucially, in how they listen.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

My Lords, before the full debate begins—I know your Lordships are looking forward to a full and fascinating debate—I note that we have 77 speakers today, and therefore the advisory speaking time has been set at four minutes. I therefore encourage your Lordships to stick to that, to give the later speakers a fair crack of the whip and so that we can achieve a reasonable rising time. I know that being a Whip is not a path to popularity, but I hope your Lordships will forgive the Whips if we feel the need to intervene if people exceed the advisory time beyond what the House thinks is reasonable.