Crime

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, for, and congratulate her on, securing this debate, which, because of its wording, covers a wide spectrum of subjects and will, I suspect, prove to be very interesting. I ought to declare at the beginning of my contribution that I will speak on roads policing. It is an area in which I have up-to-date experience, as I still go out on patrol, despite my grey hairs, and in which I continue to seek a better understanding from others who say that traffic officers are there only to issue speeding tickets. They are not. It has been said on numerous occasions that ““Most drivers aren’t criminals but most criminals drive””. That is still the case. The specialist traffic officer will observe a little something in someone’s driving or vehicle that leads to an arrest, which could be for something not connected in any way with the driving or the vehicle’s condition. The drive for efficiency through local neighbourhood policing has tended to skew policing activity in favour of fixed targets and measurable performance which, in some ways, is not a bad thing; but the consequences of this has resulted in forces becoming detached from providing a visible and operational presence to deal with roads policing issues. But there is no target encompassing roads policing that the performance of chief constables is measured against. Is this another example of what gets measured gets done and what is not measured is ignored? I shall return to the subject of targets later. Because of that, the number of traffic officers has been reducing year on year, with the result that they rarely have the time to patrol inquisitively but can react only to calls from the control room, be it an emergency or not. I ask your Lordships how many times they have driven on a motorway, perhaps for hundreds of miles, and not seen a uniformed police presence. There are, of course, HATOs but they are not police and have very limited powers. In many constabularies, the police only go out on to the motorways in marked cars if and when they are called to deal with an incident, and the criminals are aware of this. Motorways carry the biggest travelling community in the land. Open European borders and increased continental traffic make our borders and roads network more vulnerable to breach by criminals and terrorists. Observant police patrols, which have the latest technology in their cars, are able to use their powers spontaneously to stop and apprehend offenders. If they are not there—as they most certainly are not—what message does that send out? A few years ago, I did a course called Tactical Pursuit and Containment—TPAC—which, in effect, gave instruction on how to stop a vehicle, usually on a motorway, by boxing it in with a few police cars. Before the course started, I went out on patrol with an officer who was driving very carefully, as he did not know me. After we had been chatting for a couple of hours, he said something to the effect that I had attended more police driving courses than he would ever manage to do in his whole career. After that statement, he went into proper traffic officer driving. Now, noble Lords may well smile at his comment but it brings into focus the loss of skills among roads policing officers, which has been creeping up over the years. I am assured by operational police officers that this seriously concerns them. Gaining the required range of abilities to tackle the full extent of enforcement requirements necessitates experience and knowledge, which are not being maintained. So, if the police are not able to enforce the law—especially some of the specialist legislation that requires detailed understanding and practical awareness of the law—who can? At the moment, there are 43 forces that have different force requirements for their vehicles. I add my voice in support of the efforts of the Police Federation and the national police fleet managers, who are actively trying to get some national consistency with the procurement of standardised police vehicles that are factory-built to police specifications. It must make economic sense and bring about cost benefits if all forces collaborate more effectively in obtaining a vehicle built to police standards rather than do their own thing. Local communities are important and need strong, robust policing but they stretch the length and breadth of the country and across all road networks. The transient population use all sorts of vehicles and, in one way or another, they contribute to the many examples of anti-social behaviour that we often hear about and the myriad offences that are becoming routine and unenforced other than through fixed cameras. As the criminal fraternity use vehicles to get from A to B, it makes sense to assume that they know that the chances of their being caught on a major road are very small, provided that their vehicles do not come up on the ANPR for any reason. So why do chief constables ignore roads policing? The answer is simple. There are no targets and the vehicles detract from their financial budgets. Oh, and they fail to acknowledge the fact that a roads policing officer usually has a higher arrest rate for non-motoring offences than most other types of officer. Sir Ronnie Flanagan, in his recently published review on policing, mentions the needs of modern policing to deal with threat, harm and risk. Applying these three key elements from Sir Ronnie’s assessment to the problems on the roads, we still have an unacceptably high death toll. Approximately 3,200 people are killed on our roads every year, which equates roughly to the loss of people on eight jumbo jets. The serious injury figures are worrying and the drink-drive figures are no less acceptable, with around 550 people killed each year while under the influence of alcohol—that is, 10 people killed each week due to drinking and driving. The problem of drugs and driving is difficult to quantify but police sources tell me that the figures are equally damning. Correctly, concern is raised from many areas about the high level of male drivers under 25 being involved in this terrible carnage each year. These are crimes and most certainly not victimless crimes, yet the police are not generally asked to account in their neighbourhood policing plans for their activity and intervention in tackling this local and national problem. I used to go out on traffic patrol on a regular basis with a constable whom I have known for many years. I said that I would return to targets and I would like to read part of an e-mail I received recently from him which, to me at least, is very disturbing. He said: "““The garage has changed quite a bit, mostly because of management ... ‘decisions’ and of course the introduction of ‘targets’ for individual officers viz 14 arrests per year minimum, 150 endorsable tickets for No Insurance and at least 150 either seatbelt or speed tickets—you will note the absence of any tickets for defective tyres, steering, brakes or other vehicle condition or con””—" that is, construction— "““and use offences as these will be effectively torn up as they are not regarded by management as counting towards the totals!! So now we have the bizarre situation of traffic officers not being trained in vehicle examination or accident reconstruction techniques and often not wanting to be so trained! All this change of course depresses the older ‘trafpols’ such as myself and others like Pete, Paul, Alistair and Dave (who all send their regards by the way) as it seems we no longer perform such a wide safety and enforcement role, merely a ticket generating role but if we don’t meet the targets well—‘look for another post’ was the chief’s response!!””." I conclude by providing additional food for thought. On 13 March this year, North Wales Police undertook an operation to target heavy goods vehicles using a certain road—just one road. The operation finished earlier than anticipated due to the high level of offending, with the check site becoming full despite vehicles being escorted to a secondary parking area: 59 vehicles were stopped and the offending rate, which covered a wide range of offences, was two out of every three goods vehicles stopped. Does this happen elsewhere in the country? Are there other road policing officers available to carry out similar operations in other constabularies? I wonder.