Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment, following on from what both noble Lords have said. Policing is a difficult, dangerous and stressful task. I have for many years referred to police officers as the men and women who are the dustbin collectors of society. They will go where other people do not want to go. I take my information source beyond those whom the noble Lords have mentioned. My son did 32 years in the police service. He has just retired as a senior detective, running one of the most difficult parts of the Metropolitan Police, and he now has a very senior role in government. Over the last two to three years, he and his friends have reported how people are either thinking about committing suicide or have attempted suicide, and in his command over about 18 months two committed suicide.

Whether and how you deal with a suicide is a difficult question. It is sensitive information. People shy away from it, understandably, but there is no doubt that we have a suicide problem in policing. My 30 years’ experience of Northern Ireland was in taking people into the most difficult situation in policing that has ever been undertaken—more of that later, no doubt, at the public inquiry, with what has been disclosed recently. Out of 28 people, all hand-picked, who went into Northern Ireland on the so-called Stevens 1, four of them never came back to policing. Two of them were thinking of committing suicide and I referred them to the force medical officer. Those people never reached the statistics.

Like my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe, I was an inspector of constabulary for nearly two years, inspecting many forces across the country, from the largest to the smallest. One of the most important roles of the inspectorate in that case—we have discussed this—was that we went and looked at the sickness rates of a force. If we found that the sickness rates were very high, performance and morale were low. We would dig deeper, but it was difficult to find out where suicide played a role or if it played a role at all. We have a problem here and I say to the Minister, who is always supportive, that this may well be a nudge in the right direction.

Some of us, as old men do, have dinner parties or meet up for a glass now and again, and the information that I am getting from my old colleagues and current colleagues, who I have to keep in contact with because of the activities that we are now about to be involved in in relation to Northern Ireland, is that there is a problem. I can understand why some chiefs would shy away from that. We have a police commissioner here who did a superb job—not many of them do or did, but he did—and if you listen to what my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe has to say and to my information, we need to do something.

Maybe this amendment is too long and complex for it to stand the test of examination, but there is an amendment further on, submitted by my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe, which is short, sharp and to the point. It holds the kernel of what we are dealing with. I support the amendments, including the final amendment, whichever way my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe wants to go. Let us have a look at it. What is there to hide behind these figures? Why has this survey come back with very little information in it? Speaking as a chief constable, a commissioner and an HMI, I think that that is not good enough. I do not believe that the Home Office should be treated in such a way.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

I, too, support the shortest of all the amendments. My noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe’s Amendment 438A gets to what needs to happen without a lot of description. I have always felt that brevity is the best answer to a problem, because you know what is being asked for. I want to congratulate him on putting in this amendment. Every organisation will face this question of suicide and, if there is a way of collecting the data and working out why, that is necessary. I believe that the duty of candour is not simply about the way the police treat citizens; it is also about the way the organisation treats the police service. There must be a duty of candour from the chief officer and, of course, the Home Office has a part to play. I support this wonderful short amendment, because that is what needs to happen. With a much longer amendment, I am afraid that what is simple will be lost in quite a lot of detail, which is not what we want.

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, from these Benches there is strong support for Amendments 435 and 438A, which would finally shine a light on one of the most sensitive and least discussed aspects of police welfare: suicide and attempted suicide among officers and staff. This is not about apportioning blame; it is about creating conditions in which people can seek help early and leaders cannot look away. Nearly two years ago I sought this very information and was assured that work was happening to collate it. Yet no figures have emerged, leaving families, colleagues and policymakers in the dark, still awaiting clarity and transparency. These amendments would ensure that bereaved families do not feel that their loss has been silently absorbed and they would confront the lingering stigma around mental ill health in policing.

Policing demands a particular duty of care that transcends the ordinary employer-employee relationship, as the state requires officers to face repeated trauma that is unparalleled in any other walk of life. We are now operating in what many describe as a crisis policing model, where officers spend most of their time dealing with the darkest parts of human experience with far fewer opportunities to balance that with visible neighbourhood-based work. In the past, time spent on community policing would lift them out of the dark place. Today, that release valve is much weaker. Much of the informal support that once existed has disappeared. Officers used to have shared spaces where they could decompress together at the end of a shift, but those communal areas have largely gone. From staff sifting through distressing online material every day to front-line officers facing the increasing likelihood of physical assault, the psychological strain is relentless. This feeds a siege mentality in a service that still struggles to recognise emotion and is not naturally open.

Policing remains an environment where taking paternity leave can invite mockery and where the burden can fall especially heavily on women and minority officers amid unreported discrimination. In too many forces, officers still fear that admitting vulnerability will derail their career progression. If Parliament seeks people to shoulder that burden on our behalf, it must insist on collecting basic information. Tracking suicides and attempted suicides would pinpoint hotspots and high-risk groups, enabling proactive measures such as resilience training, peer support and routine psychological screening. I urge the Minister to take these amendments back to the Home Office and consider bringing forward concrete proposals on Report.