Police Reform

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The power to appoint the chief constable will reside with the appointed person who has responsibility for policing. That could well be the mayor, the person appointed by the mayor as the deputy mayor, or the lead councillor in a policing and crime board. The dilemma that the noble Lord mentioned will still be there, but it is important, given their wider responsibilities, for the chief constable to be appointed by the person to whom they will ultimately be accountable. That is the same as for any chief executive. Political interference on the day-to-day business of the chief constable is an absolute red line that we want to strengthen.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support the Statement to which my noble friend the Minister is responding. He was right to remind us of the history, which is that the Labour Party opposed the creation of these positions. We were 100% right in doing so, because they failed in their central objective to make policing more accountable. The abysmal turnout for the elections shows that that has not worked. Added to that is the recognition figure in the Statement, whereby only 16% of people can say who the police commissioner is in their area. I have only one rather nosy question to ask my noble friend. With his insight and information, and bearing in mind that this was a decision by the coalition Government, who do we primarily blame for this: the Tories or the Liberal Democrats?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As a believer in collective government responsibility, which I have to be at this stage, I say that there was joint and several responsibility for the policy. I am very sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady May, cannot be with us today; as Home Secretary at the time, she was the prime deliverer of the policy. I wrote to her to give her advance notice of the Statement. To answer my noble friend, it is a shared responsibility.

Undocumented Migrants

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As noble Lords will know, we have negotiated the French pilot for the first time with the French to ensure that we have detention in the UK and return to France. As I said in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Massey, we intend to have returns under that scheme imminently. That is a pilot scheme; it will be assessed, and the intention, if both parties think it is valuable, is to increase its capacity over time to meet our obligations. In the meantime, there are a number of legal routes that people can apply to. There are asylum claims that individuals can make. We have put in additional support to speed up those asylum claims to determine who can stay and who can go. It is the responsibility of any responsible Government to try to deal with this with constructive solutions, of which I know the noble Lord is supportive. I look forward to his support in evaluating the success of the French pilot.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Does my noble friend agree that we would be in a far better position to deal with issues like border security, access to services and knowing who is in the country illegally and who is not if the last Labour Government’s identity card scheme had not been scrapped by the Tories and the Liberals?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for reminding me that, when I was last a Minister in the Home Office, we had an identity card scheme in place that was scrapped by the then-incoming Coalition Government of 2010-2015. It is an expensive business to re-jig ID cards, but all options are always being examined by this Government. I am genuinely sorry that the Coalition Government took the decision at the time to scrap that deal.

Respect Orders and Anti-social Behaviour

Debate between Lord Hanson of Flint and Lord Grocott

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The policing of rural communities is extremely important. I live in north Wales and I represented a semi-rural community in the House of Commons for 28 years. It is extremely important. I will give the noble Baroness three points, if I may, as a starter. First, there are going to be 13,000 additional neighbourhood police officers who can be deployed, in her case, by Devon and Cornwall Police to look at, with their proportion, how they develop them to build community resilience at a local level.

Secondly, on off-road biking and 4x4 biking, there will be measures—yet to be implemented but subject to scrutiny by this House and, if passed, implemented—to put in place the ability to seize those vehicles and to take action. Protections will also be put in on the important issue she raised about machinery theft.

Thirdly, the whole government approach to shop theft says that it is not an acceptable crime; it has consequences. Individuals in this House all pay more for their shopping because of shop theft. There are shop workers who are attacked because of shop theft and there are organised criminal gangs which need to be broken to stop shop theft. What we trying to do, which I hope will reassure the noble Baroness, is tackle those three issues, and many more, in the forthcoming police Bill.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this Statement from my noble friend. I also welcome the forensic analysis he gave of the performance of the previous Government in office, which I hope he will be able to develop in future answers. All these welcome objectives are fundamentally dependent on the recruitment of more police officers. It is good that new recruits are being brought along at the moment, but surely another avenue that should be explored is to encourage those experienced police officers who are coming close to retirement age and are wondering whether to retire or not to remain in office. It is not just numbers we need but the experience that can be gleaned only by years of being in the police.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I agree with my noble friend 100%. It is important that we do not just recruit additional officers. The way that we will deal with the 13,000 neighbourhood police, PCSOs and special constables will be around how we better recruit and engage with those individuals. He makes an extremely valid point that it is important that we recognise experience, try to maintain and keep that experience, and deploy it against the issues that this whole House will want police deployed against: in this case, primarily shop theft, anti-social behaviour and serious organised crime.