Policing and Crime Bill

This is a mixed bag of a Bill. We have seen it passing like the proverbial bus, loaded with the various parcels that the Government have seen fit to put on it. We certainly welcome some of its provisions, including those on the extension of foreign travel orders for sex offenders, which seem proportionate and sensible. We support the Government on that issue. New clause 22, which amends the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 in relation to penalties for encrypted data involving indecent images of children, is also to be welcomed as useful for tackling the terrible crime of child pornography. The new sex encounter establishment licensing regime is also a useful development that we welcome. It will allow lap-dancing premises to be considered as such for licensing purposes, which will allow local authorities to make decisions based on their own situations, which we very much welcome. Against the positive aspects of this portmanteau Bill, however, we must set a number of real problems. The Government are proposing to address the S and Marper judgment on the DNA database in the wrong way and by using the wrong principles. They are the wrong principles because the proposal they have brought forward seriously questions the long-standing commitment of our judicial system to the principle that everyone should be presumed innocent until they are proven to be guilty; and it is the wrong way because the Government propose to use secondary legislation—statutory instruments—for a change that is of such significance and controversy that it should be properly debated on the Floor of the House and implemented through primary legislation. The precedent is provided in the Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Act 2008, which was a response to another court judgment. There is absolutely no reason for the Government to go ahead in the manner they are suggesting. There are also missed opportunities in the Bill, particularly on police reform. My party has long been committed to putting more police on the beat and to an increase in police officers. We are still an under-policed society, in comparison with other western democracies, but even more importantly, we are a society for which policing could be much more effective than it is. The discrepancies between the best performing and the worst performing police forces are enormous, yet there is no suggestion in the Bill to allow police authorities to pressure forces that are underperforming to reach best practice. We need real police reform and a move towards real local accountability—not elected sheriffs, on the model proposed by the Conservative Front-Bench team, because that would not adequately represent minorities in important parts of the country. If we are going to get better policing, what we need are directly elected and accountable police authorities. Yes, there is a cross-party consensus on dealing with the issue of police bureaucracy, but let us not disguise the fact that there is a massive difference, for example, between the effectiveness of the best performing police force in North Yorkshire, with a 67 per cent. clear-up rate of violent crime, and the 36 per cent. for the Metropolitan police. We have to find ways of improving police performance towards best practice. That, I am afraid, is a opportunity missed in the Bill. I believe that the measures personally championed by the Home Secretary on sex offences and prostitution are misguided. They are misguided because they introduce something that the House should always set its face against: a strict liability offence. There are many basic principles of legislation that we abandon at our peril. One is obviously retrospection, but another is the strict liability offence. The reason is simply that people do not know when they are committing a strict liability offence; and if they do not know, anybody deciding whether that offence has been committed—whether it be a magistrate or a more serious court—will regard the offence as unfair. What we always see with strict liability offences of the sort in the Bill is that the penalties are absolutely puny. Why? It is precisely because of the unfairness of the original offence. That is why I very much hope that when the other place considers our deliberation on the Bill and reflect on how it has been hammered through this Chamber with many parts completely unconsidered, it will amend it and do its absolute worst. What we have seen is a Bill that has some good elements, but others that are frankly against many of the fundamental principles that this House ought to hold dear. We have heard all the usual tough talk, rather than tough action, from the Government about tackling crime, and we have seen a failure to get to grips with some of the real problems of fighting crime in this country—notably, police reform and police accountability. I very much hope that our colleagues in the other place will look at the record of our deliberations—outrageously truncated as they have been by the timetable motion pushed through earlier today—and then very substantially amend the provisions. On that basis, we will not press for a Division, but we will hope for a very substantial degree of amendment in the other place. Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.