Queen’s Speech

Lord Davies of Gower Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, this is a fascinating and enjoyable debate, much of it concentrating on constitutional matters, but I would like to speak a little on policing. I was very pleased to see that Her Majesty’s gracious Speech contained several interesting Bills on law and order, which will affect policing. Like most people, I am pleased to see investment in more police. Police numbers have fallen over the last decade, so I am encouraged to see a steady increase to achieve the Government’s ambition of 20,000 extra. I have often heard the cry from opposition Benches and other quarters, more times than I can remember, that police numbers have been cut drastically in the last decade. There may be some truth in that, but numbers are on the increase. However, these new appointments will be effective only if those officers are well-trained and properly managed. It is a point I will return to in a moment.

While not everybody’s cup of tea, I was delighted to see that stop and search is up by 22% compared to 2019-20. Stop and search is the only really effective tool that police have in their crime-fighting tool-box. Without doubt, it helps to take weapons and drugs off the streets. With the appalling number of murders of young men we have seen in recent years, on the streets of London and in other UK cities, through knife crime, I contend that, when legitimately conducted, these stop and searches are operationally necessary. I hope that the £200 million 10-year youth endowment fund assists in reducing such dreadful offences.

I want to say one important thing on training and management, which is particularly relevant where there is an abuse of procedure by police on stop and search. There is certainly evidence of that. In recent years, we have seen a serious decline in training facilities. In the Metropolitan Police, Hendon Police College has all but disappeared. The centre of training excellence that once was higher command training at Bramshill has been abolished and the site sold. With reduced budgets, police forces have been forced to ensure that front-line policing is protected but, sadly, at the cost of training. We have the College of Policing, but it serves only those who are prepared to self-improve and fails to create an essential learning environment. It is no coincidence that the challenging issues faced by the Metropolitan Police and other police forces are the result of many years of neglect and a lack of funding for training.

Recently, Parliament passed a number of demanding pieces of legislation on criminal law. Looking forward to this Session, we are making further demands on the police with a new Public Order Bill to deal with disruptive influences in society. We are going to be asking a lot more of our police service and it must be match-fit for the task. If we are to succeed in putting more rapists behind bars under the rape action plan, we must have a detective force that is properly prepared and trained to achieve this. All this can be achieved only through a well-trained and a well-managed police service. My plea to the Government is that sufficient resources are available to enable this.

Changing tack slightly, I return to combating illegal channel crossings and the Government’s new plan for immigration. There is only one solution to this and it is to remove the criminal gangs that organise these perilous journeys. This can be achieved only through partnership working with intelligence and investigative bodies on the other side of the channel. You can put as many Royal Navy frigates in the channel as you wish, but clearly we are fighting a losing battle daily, and it is not helped by the intelligence-sharing situation in which we find ourselves, post Brexit. I wonder if the Home Office understands the operational implications of this intelligence-sharing challenge.

We seem to have tried everything. We had a clandestine channel threat commander; when his role was announced, we were told that this was the panacea to the problem. He proudly proclaimed that he would stop these crossings. Tens of millions of pounds have been handed to the French authorities. This has all failed. The Nationality and Borders Act, the legislative framework for the new plan for immigration, became law at the end of April, aiming to deter illegal entry into the UK, break the business model of people-smuggling networks and speed up the removal of those with no right to be in the UK. I wait with interest to see how effective this will be, but very much hope that it will be. We need to welcome and protect those legitimately seeking asylum in the UK, but the summer months ahead will put this new Act to the test. I repeat that it is no substitute for cross-border intelligence-sharing. I very much hope that the Nationality and Borders Act assists in servicing this need.

I look forward to the introduction of the new criminal justice Bills. I have a particular interest in the Online Safety Bill, as somebody who suffered during the 2017 general election through criminals hiding behind anonymity. I look forward to the victims Bill, addressing a much-ignored section of the criminal justice system, and I look forward to the Public Order Bill. I will certainly play my part in their passage through your Lordships’ House.

I return to the point that such legislation can be enforced only by a well-trained and well-managed police service. Based on my previous policing experience and from speaking to a great number of serving police officers, I know that these elements are somewhat lacking at present; government, and particularly the Home Office, need to pay attention to them and their resourcing.