Public Order Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the right to protest in a democracy is of central importance, but I cannot see that there is much of a right to glue yourself to another person or object in order to disrupt the daily lives of other people. That is what we are talking about here. There are many ways of protesting in our democracy without locking yourself on—without disrupting the lives of others. The conduct with which these clauses are concerned is very often, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, accepted, for the very purpose of disrupting the lives of others. I think that such conduct should not be unlawful, as Amendment 1 proposes, only if it causes prolonged disruption.

Preventing people going to work or taking their children to school or relatives to hospital should be unlawful. That is, as far as I can see, more at the minor end and sufficiently strong to outweigh the interests of the protesters, as the cases cited by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, demonstrate.

I suggest that the House bears in mind one further point. There is a danger, when we consider all these amendments, that we do so by reference to protest with which we may sympathise—maybe environmental causes. But the protest may also be by those whose causes are far less attractive and far more damaging to a democratic society. Such protesters may also decide to lock on, and the law needs to deter and penalise them.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to think about how we got here. First, there has been a series of events over the past few years during which people criticised the police, the CPS and the Government for not intervening when people were seriously disrupted. That is why we are having this debate. We could go through various cases, whether it is Heathrow, the M25 or the taxis around Parliament Square, when the drivers were kind enough to leave a lane around the outside; that was their decision, a point I shall come back to. Therefore, people have complained that the police have not been intervening.

One reason why the police have not been intervening concerns the offence that they usually rely on: obstruction of the highway, which is a very simple and absolute offence. There is no intent to be proved; all that needs to happen is obstruction of the highway. The Supreme Court has had to consider that simple offence, and it concluded that there was more to consider than whether the highway was blocked. It asked whether there was an alternative route and other action could have been taken by the police. There was lots of talk about intent in respect of what is really a very simple offence. Usually the penalty is a fine; very rarely is imprisonment imposed.

The second reason why this issue is having to be considered is that the public have got angry and sometimes started to take action themselves when the police have not, which is always dangerous. We can all recall seeing film of someone sat on the top of a tube carriage and the crowd dragging him off. That is very dangerous for everybody involved—a terrible situation, and it should not happen. We have seen cases where the motorways have been blocked, and the people at the front have started to intervene because they are fed up with waiting. It appears that nobody is going to do anything and, in any case—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Certainly in Committee, the point was made—and I wonder what the noble Lord felt about it—that this was a crisis of policing, with the police not enacting laws we already have. It is entirely fair that the public have got frustrated, demanding that something should be done. If the police are uncertain what to do with a huge armoury of public order offences that could be used and sometimes are used, but in a fairly arbitrary fashion, why will giving them more powers and laws solve the problem of not using the ones they already have? That will disillusion the public even more with the whole process of criminal justice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

The noble Baroness makes a good point. I was going to come on to a point that she made, but the point the police are making is that, if there is a lack of precision around something as simple as obstructing the highway, can we help them? People have alluded to the fact that the police have asked for help, and that is one of the things Parliament can do: explain more clearly how obstruction can be a protest that is beyond the criminal boundary, particularly when political motives are involved. Generally, the police will try not to get involved in that, which why they are seeking help in asking for more legislation, rather than less, although in general I think they would say that they do not need any more legislation.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, explained very well why he would like to approach this issue in a different way. The problem I have with his amendment is that it refers to a “prolonged disruption”, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said. I particularly do not like its reference to health. What if someone is having a heart attack or another very serious medical issue that involves minutes rather than hours—or days, in some cases?

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Just to be clear one more time, prolonged disruption is just an example. One does not need prolonged disruption for significant harm to be caused to a person, an organisation or the life of the community. I cannot think of a more significant harm than a person with a heart attack not being able to be transported in an ambulance.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

That is what the amendment says: “prolonged”.

Who is going to decide? The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, made this point: people may have lost confidence in the police, for reasons that we understand. However, the alternative appears to be that we leave it in the hands of the protesters to decide how long they will stay. That is unacceptable. If the state is going to have a view on these matters, it is for the state to decide, not the protesters. Of course they will have a view, which may be different, but they have to take the consequences if they get that line wrong. That is not happening at the moment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said that we could all be disrupted. She has often made that point and I have often disagreed with her. She says that we are always disrupted every day, certainly in London—not the rest of country, frankly—by congestion and, therefore, why should we criminalise protest that only does the same thing? I hope that I am fairly representing her argument.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Nearly.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

Nearly. Pollution kills people but we are not trying to legalise unlawful killing. One could pursue that argument to its logical extent, but I do not accept that someone intentionally blocking someone else’s path is the same thing as someone suffering the consequences of congestion. I expect that the noble Baroness is going to say something.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

In a disruption, people can turn off their engines. In traffic, they keep them running.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I am sorry—I was looking at my notes and missed that. Would it be terrible if the noble Baroness repeated it, so that I can properly respond?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The noble Lord is so profound. I said that when there is disruption, people know that it is going to last some time, so they can turn off their engines. What happens in traffic is that people leave their engines running, which is, of course, highly polluting, as he said.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

But the protesters could leave. It is in their gift—I think.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

The Met Police, after the disruption on motorways into London, put out a tweet asking people to report instances of being unable to get their children to school, medical emergencies or whatever. The stream of replies after the tweet was nothing to do with people objecting to the disruption; they were supporting the action. So the Met Police might have got that slightly wrong.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My final point is that although I cannot support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, for the reasons I have explained, I support the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. However, the challenge made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is that “minor” sounds intuitively contentious when referring to something serious, and it is an unusual bar by which to define something. The noble and learned Lord I think acknowledged that there may be more work to do on that.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

I did stress that the word “more” is important. I agree that the word “minor” raises issues, but the “more” point is crucial to an understanding of my formula.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I accept that point and I would of course never tangle with a lawyer. However, I am just saying that at an intuitive level, even describing something as “more than minor” may be a concern and there may be a different form of words. In fact, I thought that noble Lords might have been able to group around the form of words the noble and learned Lord used in his speech, be it “significant” or “major”, as was suggested. It may be that we broadly agree that “serious disruption” is not okay. That is why we are struggling to find the exact definition in the amendments.

Finally, we should not leave the police with too many problems in terms of intent, recklessness or reasonable excuse. If we have a simple definition of an offence but then have to worry about intent or recklessness, the situation will, I suspect, become almost impossible and we will be back to where we started. That would be a concern.

Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Code A) Order 2022

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support broadly targeting those convicted of carrying knives, because it seems to follow the evidence we have. Repeat offenders, repeat locations and repeat victims often disproportionately contribute to the amount of crime, particularly with people who carry knives. Not everybody who is violent carries knives, but those who do repeatedly carry them, so it is not a bad idea to target them. In fact, the obverse of what is being said about without-cause stop/search is that this gives a reason to stop/search—namely, that the person has been convicted in a court of carrying a knife or being associated with somebody carrying a knife.

As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, mentioned, the Police Federation of England and Wales objected to this proposal, or at least made some arguments counter to it. I am quite surprised by that, because the arguments it makes are also against Section 60 stop/searches. Section 60 orders are put in place in a certain area to target repeat locations and allow stop/searches to be carried out without cause. A similar dilemma is that nobody knows where these areas are until a police officer stops you and says you are in one, which has always for me been a reason why we should have better ways of communicating those areas to people who may be stopped in them. However, the principle of without-cause stop/search has been there for a long time.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that this is not the answer, but I think it is part of an answer. It seems reasonable to target those who repeatedly carry knives or are likely to carry knives, having been warned by a court that they should not. They have been given an order and told not to, so it is reasonable to check whether they are keeping to that order.

I am not in a position to comment on the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, or the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on whether a promise was made about how this power would be extended, but I imagine that one of the challenges will be with those areas adjacent to the four pilot areas—where the line is drawn on a map according to 1974 local government boundaries and often county boundaries. People who wander between villages across a county line cannot be policed on the other side of it if they have an order in place elsewhere, such as in the place where they live—let us say they are in a village just on the other side of a court boundary. It would be an odd conclusion that the adjacent forces to Sussex, West Midlands, Thames Valley and Merseyside would not be able to police these orders and that, in principle, people could wander over the border, carry a knife and not suffer the same consequences.

I agree that identification is important. Officers should be able to identify the people who have these orders. If they stop them and say, “Who are you?”, they indicate that they do not know the person has an order, but there are ways around that. Markers for ground vehicles can be put on the police national computer. Specific intelligence can be shared if people are wandering between, say, various nightclubs or areas, so that local officers know who they are. That can be managed.

My final point is that I was a little surprised by the selection of the pilot areas and that London was excluded. My experience, having policed in South Yorkshire, Merseyside and London, is that where stop/search has been a problem—and it has been—that has often been in London. Frankly, in the rest of the country, the volume is low and the problem is not of the same nature. If you talk to anybody in Merseyside or South Yorkshire, you just do not hear that this is a particular problem. I am not saying that it is not a problem, but it is not of the order that we see in London.

London has seen the sus laws of the 1960s and Section 44 of the Terrorism Act in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and now Section 60 carries its own problems. When I took over in 2011, we discovered that Section 60 orders had, I am afraid, been scattered like confetti around London and something needed to be done. London’s experience of stop/search has been of stop/search without cause, but it is completely different from the rest of the country, so I wonder how much we can take from the experiments in Merseyside, West Midlands, Thames Valley and Sussex that could carry over easily to the London environment. People may not be persuaded by that. That is something the Government might want to consider as the pilots progress; if London is excluded, the evidence may not be as powerful in future.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who made some important and interesting points. I agree with many of them and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

The Chamber will wish to know that we did not oppose the Motion for this pilot in the other place, but there are also important points that I wish to pose to the Minister to add to those made by the noble Lords, Lord Paddick, Lord Moylan and Lord Hogan-Howe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, in another sense, in that this also gives us in this Chamber the opportunity to discuss knife crime, which is clearly an important matter.

We are all horrified by knife crime and the horrific murders, sometimes of young people by other young people, in the most shocking of circumstances—in full public view. Can the Minister start by telling us what the latest figures actually tell us with respect to knife crime? I looked for them before this debate, and some are impacted by the pandemic or use different years as a baseline. What are the actual official figures for knife crime and knife-related murder, and not just in London but across the country? Clearly, whatever the figures are, they are too high, and the fundamental question for this debate is how serious violence reduction orders are expected to help. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, made the point that knife crime prevention orders were backed as the answer to tackle knife crime back in 2019. They have not even started yet. Why is that, and when will they start?

On the issue of disproportionality, the pilot is for two years. However, supposing that problems emerge around disproportionality before the two years—a point the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made—is there a mechanism for an earlier review within that two-year period to look at data as it emerges? The Minister in the other place says he is open to this. What does that mean: an interim review after, say, six months, or a year? What does the Government being “open to looking at this” mean?

Can the Minister explain the transition period of six months and how that will work in practice? In particular, how will it impact on an individual given such an order as regards its length? Are all orders for only a six-month duration or just those issued on the last day of the two-year pilot, hence the six-month transition period? It is not clear to me at all, because if you are given an SVRO on the last day of the two years, it can last only for a maximum of six months. If you are given it on the first day of the two-year period, can you be given it for two years, or two years and six months, or can you be given it for six months, then another six months and another six months? Some clarity about who can and cannot be given SVROs is needed.

On the issue of territorial extent, the SVROs will be able to be used only in the four areas—the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, made a good point about how the areas were chosen, why certain other areas were not and why the number four was alighted on, and I think the Chamber could do with some explanation of that from the Government. These four areas are the areas where the orders can be given but, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, mentioned, the concern is that the police power will be applied across England and Wales. How will the data be shared by these four areas with forces across the country? What about Scotland? If somebody who is subject to such an order went to Scotland, what happens with respect to that? How will a police officer be able to know that the individual is subject to an order? Again, the noble Lord, Lord Hogan- Howe, made that point, although I understand that his point was that you would expect it to be on the police database and shared in that way. However, it would be interesting to see how that will work and what the Government’s response would be.

In other debates, we have talked about stop and search, including whether only a uniformed officer can use this power; again, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has made this point forcefully before. With respect to this order, can only a uniformed officer use this stop and search power—particularly given that, as noble Lords will appreciate, it is stop and search that can be done without suspicion? How many officers have now received the College of Policing training on stop and search, and will they be updated with respect to this order?

On the question of pilots, can the Minister look at ensuring that, if, for whatever reason, a future pilot contains one part that is focused on a small number of areas and another part that is to be applied nationally, this is clearly explained—particularly in this case where, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, have pointed out, this pilot came about as a result of a concession made by the Government because of the concerns about serious violence reduction orders raised by many noble Lords?

Can the Minister say something to inform us how this pilot will be evaluated by Ecorys? How is it going to do that? What criteria is it going to use to determine whether this pilot has been successful? Will it be fully independent of government? Also, are the Government open to the fact that these pilots may fail and not work? In those circumstances, would the Government be prepared to say that they will not carry on with them? The evaluation is particularly important given the concerns around disproportionality with respect to gender and ethnicity. If the evaluation shows that there are problems, the Government should consider other measures.

We all want to tackle knife crime, whatever its level; there is no difference between us on that. There are real issues for us as a society to deal with, as the Minister in the other place said. I want to point out one statistic that the Minister in the other place used so that noble Lords can see how difficult this is, whatever the level of knife crime. He said that

“young black people are 24 times more likely to be murdered using a knife than those from other communities.”—[Official Report, Commons, Ninth Delegated Legislation Committee, 13/12/22; col. 8.]

We all want something to be done about that. We all accept that that figure is too high. The issue for the Government is how on earth knife crime prevention orders are going to tackle that and other issues related to knife crime across the country. Can the Minister say what else the Government are doing to tackle this problem?

We have this new order alongside other orders designed to tackle knife crime and serious violence. We all hope that they work. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and others pointed out, targeting hot spots, having police on the streets in neighbourhoods, prevention, community engagement and support are also crucial. Many lives, often very young ones, are still being lost. Many families are still affected. Many communities are still affected. Orders such as this one may help, but they must be part of a wider ongoing effort by the police and communities if they are to have the impact that we all want.

Solihull Murders

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I went through some detail on that, as regards the strategy on tackling misogyny in the police. I agree that there are some clear failings on this, certainly in regard to this case. The way the police failed to investigate some very clear signals was clearly unacceptable, but the Government are determined to tackle the misogynistic culture that has been identified.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, police attendance on a crime-by-crime basis is a difficult thing to sustain. The police should attend all reports of crime if the victim wants them to or if it is a very serious event, which is something I have always pursued, but should the Government not also work with the College of Policing to share the best evidence about what highlights those most at risk? For example, Professor Larry Sherman, recently at Cambridge, highlighted a high correlation between suspects who had threatened suicide and people who eventually became murderers of victims they had previously threatened. We had previously been told that threatening the victim prior to their murder was also an indicator. Both matter, but the police’s response needs to be based on good evidence. I am not convinced that the college has yet got that connection between the evidence base and passing that on to the police to share, so that their training improves.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that, and commend him for investigating all the crimes when he was still actively policing. I will take back his suggestions on the College of Policing because they make sense. Obviously one of the college’s primary duties is to ensure that best practice is shared and disseminated.

Public Order Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

The noble Baroness is wrestling with the same problem I had in dealing with “reasonable excuse” in relation to locking on. There seemed to be cases where people might have had a genuine reason for locking on because it is so widely defined.

One might say that the “reasonable excuse” defence would be suitable if it were sufficiently qualified so that it did not provide the police and the courts with the problem of having to decide whether or not the pro-life argument was a reasonable excuse. If one looked at the offences, one would say that this kind of argument would not stand up to what this legislation is all about. There are other instances where one might find that there was an excuse for what was done which was quite detached from what this clause is really driving at. If the noble Baroness could find a way of expressing this, I should be delighted. That is what I was trying to do in the earlier debate.

I hope I have made my position clear. As it stands, this would not be acceptable. I think that paragraph (b) raises a very interesting point of definition.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support Clause 9. During this debate, I found myself challenged by our preference for not regarding this as a surrogate for talking about whether people are for or against abortion. At times I have noticed that there seems to be a link between those who oppose this clause and those who oppose abortion. This will not always been the case, but noble Lords who have spoken have often mentioned it. My heart finds it hard to contemplate abortion, but my head says that it is probably reasonably pragmatic in our society, and we have to accept it.

The reason for this clause seems to be the inconsistent application of police discretion around the country. The resources of each institution affected by the protests mean that they cannot always approach a civil injunction or remedy. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, mentioned, it ends up being a lottery as to whether or not women in different parts of the country are protected. This is not good for anyone.

I support Clause 9 and I will reject the review, not because reflection is inherently a bad thing, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, but because I take this to be a wrecking amendment rather than something which is intended to develop the proposal. If I am wrong, that is my error, but that is how I felt the argument was being developed.

The basic proposal is about stopping interfering with women as they go to an abortion clinic. I do not understand the argument about needing to offer them advice at the point at which they approach a clinic. If the point is to offer advice on whether there are alternatives or whether they should even be contemplating abortion, this must be the least efficient process that anybody has ever devised. There has to be a better method than standing in the street, potentially shouting—we have seen examples of this—to engage with a woman at the point at which she is very vulnerable, just before she is potentially going to receive treatment, to try to persuade her not to do it. There has to be a better way. If this is the only way in which any protester can think to engage, they are in error. It is not a reasonable approach. It causes the majority of people to think that carrying out this type of protest in this way should be stopped.

People have described it as a conversation. I do not accept that. It is not a conversation—it sounds like a one-way monologue; it usually sounds like intimidation and, certainly, like bullying. For me, it is something that should certainly not be tolerated in a just society. I cannot support that.

There have been examples offered of where the police have intervened when people were merely praying; I think the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, mentioned this. I would be surprised if a police officer did that but, if there are examples, we ought to examine them. Let us get to the bottom of it. That would have required a member of the public to complain and then for the officer to attend. I do not think they would just have turned up of their own volition to intervene in an event around an abortion clinic that someone had not complained about in the first place. I would like to understand more about that, but I do not think this clause is designed to stop people praying. It might be designed to stop people congregating together in such a way that it intimidates people at what may be their most vulnerable time.

The argument about this being an absolute prohibition of protest in just one very small part of the country is a fair argument. I think all of us would say that, if that is going to happen, it should be in a very small part —and perhaps no part—of the country. It is an absolute argument. I could have accepted that, but my reasons for not doing so in this case, and why I believe Clause 9 is a reasonable approach, is that the harassment that is being suffered is gender-specific. Only one half of society will generally be affected by this type of influence or advice: the women of our society. It is also time-specific; it is a point at which women need this advice and at a time when they are in most peril, either personally, by conscience, or physically, and that seems to me to be a time when we should give them most support. Finally, it is at a place about which they have no discretion; they have no discretion about where they will seek support. They have to go to a hospital or a clinic. These places are identified and the women become vulnerable because they are identified as they approach them.

I would generally support an absolute prohibition of stopping protest—but in these places, at these times, for the women of our society, I support this clause. It deserves our support in protecting the women who need it.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I made an extensive speech at Second Reading so I shall confine myself to just a few points of reflection on the debate today. First, the rest of the Bill is about protest; this is about the harassment of people seeking a legal health service to which they are entitled, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester reminded us. There are those of us who believe that women have the right to access those services freely and safely. Our amendments try to ensure that this whole clause addresses just that and, indeed, narrows it down. There are those who do not believe that such a service should exist or that people should be able to access it. They have very much exaggerated what this clause is about and its potential implementation. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, said in her introduction that all the evidence is that this activity does not stop access. I have no knowledge of any such evidence, and she did not give us any, but I have to ask: if it is not effective, why do people continue to do it, day after day?

A number of noble Lords rested their cases on the 2018 review. The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and myself have been informed by the providers of services and the thousands of women who attend those services and report to us that the current system of local PSPOs is not working, and they are continuing to suffer harassment as a result. So we need to be quite clear about the motivation behind the amendments but also their effect.

The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, was one of the many people who gave a passionate defence of free speech. She said you cannot pick and choose. I say to her that, uniquely among all healthcare services, abortion services are targeted specifically. That is why we have to seek remedies, which we would not otherwise wish to do. The reason we are doing this is that, over the last two years, influenced by America, and influenced and funded by the same organisations that overturned Roe v Wade, there has been a change and an escalation.

I listened carefully to a number of noble Lords who made emotive comments suggesting that we wish to “criminalise prayer”. In the case of a single person in silent prayer, no, we do not; in the case of a church where every member turns up, week in week out, to stand directly in the path of women trying to access a service with the avowed intent of frustrating their access, yes we do.

One amendment that nobody has talked about at all is our Amendment 87, which talks about the definition of interference. I urge noble Lords to go back and look at that. I include the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, because, when he objects to the phrase about “persistently and repeatedly” occupying something, that again comes from the experience of clinic staff and users. People come day by day to undertake their activities in the doorway of a clinic.

Public Order Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, the Bill presents a dilemma that we have faced over many years, as many have said. In a democracy that allows the right to protest, when, if at all, does that protest become unreasonable to the point of causing harm which triggers the intervention of the civil or criminal law? We usually return to the debate when the numbers involved in protest, or their tactics, have started to disrupt people’s right to enjoy a good life or a business’s ability to trade freely. Presently, the numbers involved in protest do not constitute a mass movement, but I believe they represent a majority opinion in this country that we need to deal with our climate emergency. Ironically, all political parties, including the governing party, agree with the aim of our eco-protesters, but they seem to disagree about how quickly we should address the issue and, in the end, who should pay.

It is against that backdrop that the police service is attempting to find a reasonable line of intervention and enforcement. The police generally do not want to get involved in political matters. They certainly do not want to appear to be preventing people demonstrating for a purpose that has the majority of the country’s support. However, the police are asked to intervene when people complain that they cannot exercise their rights because the protesters are exercising their right to protest. Then, there will always be a challenge and the police have to make a decision. Since around 2009, the police have generally taken a relatively passive approach, I would argue, to intervening in public protests. Following the unlawful killing by the police of Ian Tomlinson, a man not attending a protest but caught up in it, the police have followed the general line outlined in the HMI report of the time, Adapting to Protest, supported by the Prime Minister at the time, Gordon Brown, and the Government, that the police should police by consent and facilitate protest rather than confront it.

This was further amplified very recently by the Supreme Court decision in 2021, which has not been mentioned today, as far as I am aware, in the Ziegler case. Following protests in 2017 at the ExCel Centre in London, more than 100 protesters were arrested for obstructing the highway and convicted. The Court of Appeal supported that decision but the Supreme Court overturned it. In essence, it said that deliberative or obstructive protests, where there is a real impact on other road users, can still be protected by convention rights and can be a lawful excuse for the purposes of a charge of wilful obstruction of the highway. It goes on to state that when considering whether someone is guilty of breaking Section l37 of the Highways Act, courts should take into consideration a whole range of factors, including how big an obstruction was caused, for how long and what else was happening around them. Crucially, it means that protesting in a way that obstructs road users is not automatically a criminal offence.

That came as a bit of a surprise to the police because obstructing the highway has always been a simple offence—an absolute offence. No intent is required: if somebody obstructs the highway, they get arrested. If they choose not to obstruct the highway, they can walk away. There has never been a need to show intent or recklessness. What this now means is that the police have to assess the whole context of an incident. Intellectually, this position is strong, and over the last year we have seen the police become more adept at carrying out quicker assessments for planned events. The problem arises when, as with many of the protests we are seeing now, there is no notice of the protest. Therefore, the first officers on the scene are not public order specialists. They do their best but they have to make some pretty complex judgments at a time when they are not in possession of all the facts.

We have now moved away from the 2009 criticism of the police, which was that they were doing too much, to the present position that they are doing too little. This really matters. If members of the public are angry about the lack of police action, they may decide, as we have seen, to take their own direct action. While protesters may not always support the way the police carry out their operations, I believe that this is always better than groups of the public coming into conflict. As a result of this context, the police are now arguing for clarity, in whatever direction Parliament gives it, through this legislation.

In particular, the police want clarity to understand the meaning of “serious disruption”. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, referred to this and I agree. This will require either a definition or some guiding principles. Some people argue that eventually the courts will decide what is reasonable. That is always the case but it can take years. Officers on the ground need support now. The very reason this legislation is being considered is that there is confusion about where the law stands, so I argue that it is vital to provide better support now in the legislation.

A further reason officers do not really want to get involved is that most of the people on these protests usually have no previous criminal convictions. On most days of the year, they would be supportive of the police and they do not want to come into conflict with them. A really good reason for policing by consent is to make sure that they do not come into conflict just because of confusion about the law.

The second area the police service has concerns about is becoming involved in providing private security to large organisations, particularly commercial ones, which it does not want to do. That is not a matter of principle but one of resources. There are insufficient resources for the service to carry out its primary duty of preventing and detecting crime, not least fraud and cybercrime. If the police are to become involved in policing private space, their resources will be even more stretched. I really think this has to be considered.

I accept that there will be debate on the contentious area of no-cause stop and search. As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, referred to, Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 already provides for stop and search without cause in certain defined circumstances. Whether you like it or not, it exists. One area that applies to Section 60 should apply to this power if it is brought in; most people need to know whether they are in an area where this power applies. They need to know whether they are in a Section 60 area or an area of protest where this stop and search power would apply. At the moment, nothing shows that—neither a sign on the street nor anything electronic that might indicate they are in such an area. That could lead to confusion for officers and the public. In both cases, if this power is put in, there ought to be some attempt to find a way of warning the public that they are in an area affected by it—not least, if it is supposed to be a preventive power, as presumably they need to know that they are entering the area and that this power will apply.

Finally, I will touch on a couple of things that have come up in the debate. The police have not taken a position on the issue of abortion protests, but I support the policy. I would only argue whether 150 metres is sufficient. In my view, trying to prey on people at their most vulnerable, when they are about to take a huge decision and have often been receiving medical treatment—I do not think they are in the best position to receive any advice—can be regarded as intimidation. Therefore, I would certainly support some preventive power being put in to prevent gathering around abortion clinics. Why can that advice be given only at abortion clinics? If people feel so strongly, there are other places. It is not good for people to be intimidated at that point.

I do not envy the Government the task of setting the line of intervention. It is a difficult balancing point to find. However, I believe it is the right time for debate. When ambulances are being stopped from their work, airports are unable to function and national infrastructure is threatened, the Government have no choice. They have a fundamental duty to keep the public safe. We should support them in that duty while being careful not to leave a legislative legacy that could be abused by an authoritarian successor.

Police National Computer

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am afraid that that is not what I said to the noble Baroness or to the House at all. I have confidence that Fujitsu will deliver on this.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests, and I support the noble Lord, Lord Harris. The emergency services network is technology rather than IT. Not only is it five years delayed, but I think the costs have risen by five times, from around £2 billion to over £10 billion. As yet, I am afraid that the Government are trapped in a terrible contract with Motorola, which is delivering a legacy solution but is also charged with delivering the new one. Unfortunately, it is being paid £250 million more for the old system per year, so there is no great incentive. It is a great worry, not only for the Government but for the police, that this system is not yet delivered.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I understand where the noble Lord is coming from, and I commend him for his work on this and other matters. Obviously, I am here more to talk about the subject of the Question, but I will take his concerns back, find out more information and write to him.

Live Facial Recognition: Police Guidance

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I disagree with my noble friend, because it is not left to guidance. Where guidance comes in is in the deployment. There is a legal basis on which to deploy, using powers including common-law powers. It was on the back of the court judgment that it was recommended that its use be clarified: the when and where of the use of LFR.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I generally support the extension of facial recognition technology, although I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that it needs serious consideration. Technology is moving forward so fast that I think it is hard for all of us keep track of it. The three principles that the Minister might agree should underpin that are transparency of use, accountability about its use and that people should have a remedy. If things are done wrong, they should be able to check to see what they can do about it.

But the benefits are pretty outstanding. I know that, post the riots of 2011, we had to deploy 800 officers to look at 250,000 hours of rioters on CCTV footage. This allowed us to arrest 5,500 people over 18 months, but it took us 800 people. There has to be a smarter way of doing that. That would have been a retrospective use. Therefore, does the Minister agree that careful improvements in the future are wise, and that we should not stop, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, suggested, the use of it altogether?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I totally agree with the noble Lord. The legal framework in which it should operate is, A, for a policing purpose, B, where it is necessary and, C, where it is proportionate and fair. I think that pretty much accords with what the noble Lord said.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, ever since this Bill began its progress through your Lordships’ House, I have struggled to understand why the source of noise seems to make a difference.

I am lucky to live in a large, busy and somewhat noisy city. Last week one of our local Jewish communities, which I live at the heart of, celebrated Purim, and it celebrated it noisily. I live close to Salford City football ground. I have a season ticket and go to watch matches there. But I would not need to be in the ground to know the score; I could tell from the noise that emerges from it. I am well within earshot of the annual Parklife festival in Heaton Park in north Manchester, which brings countless people from all over the country and beyond to have a fun weekend. I struggle to see why a night of noise from a religious festival or a weekend of noise from a pop concert is somehow acceptable, but noise from a protest for a night or a weekend somehow is not. If noise is a nuisance, it is a nuisance. The fact that it is generated by protests and not by pop music seems entirely irrelevant.

I take great comfort from what the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said earlier. I have double glazing, so perhaps nothing at all is a nuisance to me; but not all my neighbours in Salford are quite so lucky. Unless the Minister can give me some clarity as to why the source of the noise make such a substantial difference that we have to legislate against it, I will be supporting the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and others this afternoon.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I suggest that noble Lords may want to follow Sheffield Wednesday because, if you lived anywhere near the ground, you would never be disturbed by much noise from the team scoring.

I support the right to protest. What I am about to say may leave people thinking that I do not, but I genuinely do. I say that as somebody who, like the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has been a gold commander for public order events with tens of thousands of people—hundreds of thousands on occasion. Sometimes people in London imagine that the only protests that happen are with the Metropolitan Police leading them, but of course other forces have to deal with similar challenges an awful lot of the time.

There are different types of protest, but we seem to have started to talk about the only types of protest being the ones that happen in Whitehall, which we all regularly see and hear and which we have the most experience of, but they are not the only types of protest that happen around the country. I want to say a few words about those types of protest, and why I broadly support the Government’s idea to look at why noise can be a problem. Noise can be threatening and intimidating, it can be a nuisance and it can damage health. Surely the test of whether or not noise is okay is whether somebody of reasonable firmness—not somebody who is particularly sensitive—can withstand it. In certain circumstances we would all be very prone to being damaged by noise. Imagine a family who had someone who was terminally ill. Some of us who can cope with noise most of the time cannot cope with it all the time. So I think there is a test that can be applied, and the police would be quite able to apply it.

There is another example, I would suggest, of something that is lawful generally but when done too much can be a crime: picketing. That may have been contentious in the past, but people have engaged in it as part of a trade union dispute. However, it was made illegal, some time ago now, to gather in such a large number that it would intimidate people and prevent them working or doing other things that were reasonable. Picketing is therefore lawful, but not if it is done in such numbers and is causing such damage that it would cause normal people to be worried that they could not carry on with their normal lives.

The question that is not really addressed by those who object to the Government’s proposal is: is it always okay for protesters to cause noise nuisance, even if somebody is unreasonably damaged by that noise? If it is outside your home or your business, and it is day after week after month, is that okay? If not, how are you going to deal with it? I have not heard any proposals for doing that. Of course, it is okay in Whitehall, but it is not okay if it is at your home. We have had examples where people have had complaints and protests against them at their home or business repeatedly and frequently. We have to at least consider this when scrutinising this legislation. It is important to them, even if some people do not think it is important in general.

A question was raised as to whether police officers could assess whether noise “may” cause damage. That is a reasonable question, but, of course, police officers do this type of thing every day. They have to decide whether a breach of the peace is likely, and they might make an arrest or make an intervention around threatening behaviour. Whether something may happen is one of the things that they have to decide. They are just normal people who have to make a reasonable assessment. I do not worry about them too much on those grounds: they make that sort of decision every day and I suspect that they can carry on making it even if this was to be made further legislation.

There was a question about whether the police could intervene in a particular protest if there were tens of thousands of people involved and they were causing lots of noise. Could the police intervene and do they have enough staff? That is a fair question, but, of course, they do not have to intervene on that day. Perhaps it is impossible to intervene, but they can use that as evidence to decide whether to impose a condition in the future. That is one of the reasons why we have law: to decide whether you are able to impose conditions, what the reasons are for the conditions, and whether you can gather enough evidence to say that your “may” is a reasonable test. Therefore, it may not be on the first occasion that the protest happens, but it may be on the subsequent one, which, if noble Lords accept my argument, is something that at least has to be considered if there are repeated protests causing excessive noise for people, making it difficult for them to enjoy their lives.

I understand why people complain about this government proposal, but I honestly think that the people who oppose it have not yet addressed how they would deal with the problem if it was their home, their parents or their business. How do they intend to stop the noise, which can be so damaging to life? That is the question I would ask but, broadly, I support the Government’s proposal.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I commend my noble friend for all the hard work that she has done on this Bill and for accepting a number of the amendments, as well as the Government’s own amendments which she has brought forward, having listened carefully to the debates in this House and in the other place.

I do not believe for a moment that my noble friend or her colleagues on the Front Bench would intend to ban peaceful protest, but Part 3 of the Bill seems to be straying towards authoritarianism. We see at the moment how democracy is fragile and how important it is to protect it. This House is challenging what looks like an attempt to undermine the democratic right to protest, with what could be disproportionate criminalisation of peaceful protest.

Demonstrations must almost always be noisy. The demonstrators want their voices heard—that is the point of the protest. As I understand it, the Joint Committee on Human Rights confirms that the police already have powers to stop extreme and disruptive protests. If there is enough power already, I am not clear how, in practice, as the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Paddick, explained, the police would be able to assess how to implement this legislation. It may well be an unwise hostage to fortune that could be used for repression of unwanted opposition. As we are passing primary legislation which will outlast the current Administration—and who knows what the future holds?—I urge my noble friend to listen carefully to what has been said this afternoon about the vagueness of the word “noisy”.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, as a former police officer, I must tell the House that leaving the failure to abide by such a duty of candour to the police misconduct process, as the Government are asking us to do, is inadequate, as the decision on whether to investigate or take misconduct proceedings will be left in the hands of the police themselves.

If it is in the interest of the police that something is covered up, they will not investigate and they will not take action against the officers responsible. As the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has just explained, her experience of the inquiry into the Daniel Morgan murder demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt the need for this amendment, and we support it.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I have not thought an awful lot about this, but the principle, which seems unarguable, is that police officers should have a duty of candour. They are not the only ones who should; many other groups might want to adopt a similar approach, but so far as the police service is concerned, which is what this amendment is about, it is rather unarguable. How it works ought to be clearly thought through, which I guess is why the Government are consulting on it. The only question I had, which I have just discussed briefly with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, is how this would work with the criminal disclosure process and how that would impact on any ongoing prosecution or, obviously, any separate public inquiry. However, that is a matter of implementation rather than of principle. In general terms, I see no reason why it should not be implemented for the police; perhaps others may consider it too.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, in the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, one of the challenges we faced was that the police were investigating the police—they were marking their own homework. Although Kent Police did a fantastic job, nevertheless there were areas where they could not quite press hard enough. They were very good in what they did, but it was not adequate, and therefore we proposed in the Stephen Lawrence inquiry that, whenever there is an incident, it should be investigated by an independent body.

This amendment would enhance that on the whole question of duty of candour. Again, during that inquiry we were given all the papers. There was no hidden stuff, so for that I must again congratulate the Met. However, this amendment is vital in order to support independent police inquiries, whenever there are areas of great concern. I hope nobody sees this as either intrusive or doubting that most of our police forces really want to do the best for their communities and places. Nevertheless, a duty of candour would impose a very good way of saying what concerns some people about the police, so I support the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I suspect I am going to be in a small minority of people who are supporting the Government tonight. Regardless of that, I think the police should have an opportunity to make something of their case. The only, or main, reason we are debating this tonight is because of the disruption that was caused at Oxford Circus, Heathrow airport and on the M25, some of which the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, referred to. It was dangerous at times and deeply disruptive to normal work around London and in other places where it took place. The police were criticised, and I must admit that at times I wondered why they were not using some existing powers around Oxford Circus, which looked like a fairly straightforward case of obstruction. I think they have made a case since, although they have gone a little quieter as the debate has approached, about the sort of help they need.

One of the things they needed help with is locking on. The law is not at all clear that just by locking on to something you have committed an offence. If you do not damage it, what is the problem? Well, it is fine until it disrupts the business or what people are trying to do, so I think there is a need to consider a change of law. If you are going to look for equipment that is going to be used for locking on, there is not much point unless you have a stop and search power. How are you going to find it? There is no power of prevention for these things. This is a power to try to prevent people arriving at a point where they can use the locking-on materials. People are worried about the random nature of stop and search without cause, but it is limited by geography, as it is for a limited area; by time, for a matter of hours; and by the seniority of the officer giving the authorisation. The Section 60 power already exists. Some people do not like it, but it is now relatively rarely used. Most stop and searches are under Section 1, where cause has to be given.

I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that the class of the person you are about to stop and search is relevant in any way. The law should be equal for everybody, and whether people are middle-class or whatever their background, it not relevant in deciding what the law should be and whether we should intervene in people’s life.

On the power around the road network, the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said that Labour would prefer that we should target only motorways and major highways. But some hospitals are on side roads. Some ambulance stations are also on quite minor roads, so they can be disrupted, as can police stations and fire stations. So I do not think the quality of the road is relevant for this purpose; it is the intent and the disruption that is caused by the protest when it occurs.

My final point is that it was said by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that HMICFRS had called for the law to be changed to make sure that there is a proper record of public order skills around the country. I do not think that is a matter for law. It may well be that there is a need for more recording of skills, but, frankly, I do not think that is going to get us through this problem; you are going to have to have numbers of officers with the right powers.

The very final thing I shall say about these prevention orders is that the harm that these prevention orders are trying to remedy—

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

Given the noble Lord’s criticism of what I said, which he was perfectly entitled to make, does he agree that if the police without suspicion wrongly stop and search people who normally support the police very strongly and obey the law, it will diminish the respect in which they hold the law?

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

If someone is stopped and searched without good cause, either maliciously or for any other reason, I do not care whether they were a criminal in the past or a good person; it is a bad thing. Regardless of their background, there has to be a good cause for that stop and search unless the law says that it should be done without cause.

As I was saying about prevention orders, the reason that they were considered was that the rate at which people were being released from bail to return to the protest was overwhelming the ability of the police to deal with the disruption. That is what is being looked at, to see whether there is a possibility of exerting some inhibiting behaviour on the protesters. It would still not be easy. If protesters turn out in sufficient numbers, they will always overwhelm the police—that is the nature of a democracy—but in these disruptions, quite often relatively small numbers have disrupted many people and, frankly, put their lives at risk. So in fact it is a serious matter and the Government’s proposals are fairly reasonable. There may be things that people can argue at the edges, but I do not object to this and I support the Government’s proposals.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I could deal with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, to begin with. My recollection is that the report on public order from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services showed that many officers did not want additional powers to deal with locking on. That is in the report. My experience is that the police are getting better and better at dealing with locking on, particularly people supergluing themselves to roadways—people are not now glued to the roadway for very long.

On hospitals that are on minor roads, the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, made it quite clear that he wanted the increased penalty of imprisonment for highway obstruction on the strategic road network where there is no realistic way around a blockage that has been put in. A hospital may be on a minor road, but there are other ways of getting to it, and I do not feel that that argument holds water. I will come to the noble Lord’s comments about the serious disruption orders shortly.

The Minister said that these amendments were debated in Committee. That debate started at 11.50 pm. The Minister stood up to make her closing remarks at 1 am. Does she really think that that is serious consideration and debate of these measures?

These government amendments were a hurried response to the Home Secretary’s knee-jerk, populist reaction to Insulate Britain protests at the Conservative Party conference. Consideration of this part of the Bill had to be taken out of order, to give civil servants time to cobble together these last-minute, ill-conceived, badly thought-through acts of desperation, introduced into this House late at night on the last day of Committee without any consideration by the other place. If the Government are determined to bring in these draconian, antidemocratic laws, reminiscent of Cold War Eastern bloc police states, they should withdraw them now and introduce them as a separate Bill to allow the democratically elected House time to consider them properly.

We oppose all these government amendments, for the reasons I set out in Committee—albeit in the early hours of the morning—and I refer noble Lords to the Official Report. Given the hour, we will vote against the most egregious measures: Amendment 151, which is clearly targeted at climate protesters; Amendment 155, which gives police the power to stop and search anyone and everyone in the vicinity of a protest, including innocent passers-by; and Amendment 159, by which the police can apply for an order to ban people from their democratic right to protest, even when they have never been to a protest in their life, let alone been convicted of any offence in connection with a protest. That is the power in these measures—you do not even have to have been to a protest to be banned from future ones. You do not even have to be convicted of an offence in connection with a protest before you can be banned from going to protests.

If the Official Opposition decide to vote on Amendment 148, on locking on, we will support them. We will also vote in favour of Amendment 150A, to restrict imprisonment for highway obstruction to blocking motorways and other parts of the strategic road network.

The anti-protest measures in the original Bill were dreadful. These measures, and the way they have been introduced, are outrageous.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I generally support this important legislation, but I expressed at Second Reading and again in Committee my sense of unease about the whole concept of serious violence reduction orders but also about the detail of their implementation. It is clear that my arguments have not borne the fruit I would hope to see, because I have read—since she kindly copied it to me—my noble friend’s letter to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, in which the Government made it clear that they did not see any scope for budging either on the principle or on the detail of the implementation of these provisions. So, rather than engage in a discussion across a broad front, I shall simply focus my few remarks on Amendments 90K and 90L in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, which deal with what might be the most egregious question on this subject, that of “ought to know” or “ought to have known”, depending on how it is phrased in the Bill.

The Government are proposing that people should be subject to these orders, which are serious constraints on their liberties and which have potentially severe reputational consequences. In some cases, these may be merited, but in the case of “ought to have known” it is extremely difficult to accept that the burden on those who receive these orders is merited, on the basis not of their carrying a knife, not even that they knew a knife was being carried but that they ought to have known a knife was being carried.

There are three essential problems. The first is meaning. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, pointed to the difficulties that arise from the variability of language. The expression “ought to have known” is one that we can easily use in different ways in ordinary, natural language. But we are dealing here with language that ought to be drafted in a precise fashion and can be applied in a predictable way in a court of law, because we want our laws to be predictable. We want people to know that, if they do this or that, they will be in trouble, but if they do not do so, then that is okay. I do not know what “ought to have known” means in a legal sense.

The second problem is evidence. Even if you had a clear understanding of what the words “ought to have known” mean, how is that to be established in a court of law when, as I have said before to your Lordships, it is difficult enough to establish in a court of law what somebody did or did not know, let alone what they ought to have known. There is an evidential question here.

The third problem arises from the first two. It will be a decision of this Parliament to adopt this language which throws a huge interpretational burden on the courts. We do not know how the courts are going to interpret or implement this language. I do not want to draw unfair parallels, but when we discussed in Committee and on Report the question of prisoners serving indeterminate sentences for public protection, it was clear that the Home Secretary of the day, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, did not expect the provision to be applied by the courts with the liberality that the judges felt obliged to apply because of how it had been drafted. I hope I have explained that correctly. In other words, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, thought it would be applied only occasionally, but when the judges read what they were expected to do, they felt obliged to apply it more liberally to far more cases, which had never been his intention when he had proposed it. We are potentially in similar circumstances here. We simply have no idea, if we agree this language, how it is going to be applied by the courts in actual cases: with what breadth or how frequently it will be applied to people who were not carrying a knife and did not know that a knife was being carried but it is felt on some basis that they ought to have known.

I am not trying to detract from the other amendments in this group by focusing my remarks on this narrow point, which has been addressed by other noble Lords. I am focusing on these two amendments because I would hope that my noble friend might, after reflecting on it, be willing to come forward at Third Reading with something that rethought this approach. Or at the very least, if it did not rethink it, she would say that she was going to add words or guidance or some other supplement to the Bill which would make the circumstances in which this applied very specific such that we had that level of certainty that we did not impose this burden on the courts. We should have certainty in law but also certainty in our own minds as to how frequently and commonly this penalty would be applied in the event of “ought to have known” cases.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support the general thrust of what the Government are trying to achieve, although I have some sympathy for one or two points that have been raised by previous speakers. I do not speak as a zealot for stop and search. It has dangers, which I hope I can persuade noble Lords I have taken seriously in the past.

The Government seem to be trying to change the culture of people carrying knives, either in public places or sometimes in private. Far too many people have been carrying knives and clearly still are, leading to minor arguments ending up in fatal events. We know that people who are repeat offenders disproportionately account for a disproportionate amount of crime. As few as 10% of offenders, on some occasions, can account for two-thirds of the crime. That applies to victims as well as to the places that they meet, which are repeat locations. Legislation over the years has tried to do something about that and, I think, has generally been well intended.

I agree with many of the things that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, has said. He had a worrying experience, but a lot of it has been London based. For historical reasons, there have been three different types of legislation which have caused real problems in this city, but occasionally in others. The sus law of the 1960s allowed unqualified stop and search. That caused a great many problems and was got rid of.

Then along came Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Section 44 was precisely intended for locations that were likely to be attacked by terrorists—places such as Parliament. It was intended to draw a line around places and, if someone went into this area, they could be searched without cause. In fact, the Metropolitan Police applied that throughout London. Every one of the 32 boroughs was covered by that piece of legislation, so people who live in London have had that experience of stop and search without cause for tens of years. Whether it be people who are now being stopped and searched, or their parents or grandparents, they have that experience. That is the thing that I am afraid has disproportionately affected how they feel about the legislation.

The latest version is Section 60. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, raised this and I have some empathy with part of what he said, for the reason I will explain. Section 60 was intended, again, to circumscribe certain areas where there was to be stop and search without cause—perhaps a park where many people had been stabbed or a location where gangs had been meeting and attacking each other. In that area, everybody was warned, “If you go in this area and carry a knife, you are likely to be stopped and searched without cause”, because the idea was to disrupt their offending pattern. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that often these areas are not well described. People are not told that they are about to enter one, so, therefore, when an officer stops someone, they can be suspicious and ask whether they are in a Section 60 area or have they been stopped and searched for no good reason at all.

As I said, I am not a zealot for stop and search. In 2011, when I took over the Met, we had just had the London riots. We never had a public inquiry into those events, but one of the conclusions I drew for myself when I looked at the figures was that stop and search had been very high. In the two preceding years, 2.6 million people had been stopped and searched in London. At the time, there were only 8.4 million people living in London. If we discount people who were not on the streets because they were older or younger, this was a very high number and that worried me. Over the succeeding three to four years, we reduced stop and search by 60% and we reduced Section 60s by 90% because, frankly, they were like confetti scattered around London. Ironically, the more there were, the less they could be policed.

There was a disproportionate amount of vague stop and search. Within that, we had disproportionality: there were very high figures for people of Asian appearance after 9/11 and that was certainly true of the black community as well. Over three years, we managed to get the stop and search disproportionality for people of Asian appearance down, from over seven times more likely than the white community, to less than one compared to the white community. We did not have as much success with the black community. We got better but nowhere near what I would call a more representative look.

I am only trying to convince your Lordships of two things. A targeted stop and search, even where there is not a cause, can be really helpful, either geographically or targeted on the offender. That is where the serious crime prevention orders can make an impact. Generally, they are targeted only at people who have been convicted already of carrying a knife, or who have been carrying a knife and have not been convicted but a court has been persuaded that there is a good reason.