My Lords, here we are, quite late into the evening, to discuss the group of amendments refined from amendments tabled in Committee in response to the horrific rape and murder of Sarah Everard and, I am afraid to say, a wholly inadequate response from some of the most senior police leaders in our country.
I do not want to dwell too much on this, but I do not think that it reflects incredibly well on the way we do business in your Lordships’ House that this group has miraculously come to be debated at this particularly late hour, not least given the fact that I have been around all day and have heard some very lengthy, florid, colourful, relaxed speeches on all sorts of subjects all afternoon and evening from all sorts of delightful Members of your Lordships’ House who have been infrequent engagers with this Bill and most of whom, for all sorts of reasons, are no longer here. I do not think that this self-regulating House has done justice to women and girls in this country, nor, indeed, have those who effectively control the agenda and have allowed this group to be opened at approaching 10.50 pm.
I feel the need to put that on the record for Hansard so that the various women’s groups and victims’ groups who have been waiting for this group to come up will be able to understand exactly what has gone on. I was particularly concerned about some of the debates that went on just before the dinner break with no concern for time—and sometimes not much concern for kindness or the dignity of our fellow human beings, but enough of that—no intention of a vote and no real intention of changing the law. I have also noticed the way in which some of us are censored for our length at strategic moments and others are not in this so-called self-regulating House.
This group deals not just with the Sarah Everard outrage but with the public concern about it and the way that women and girls have been treated in our criminal justice system more generally, and what that means for a crisis of confidence, potentially, in our police service, which is so essential to the rule of law.
I am grateful to noble Lords from parties and groups from all across your Lordships’ House for their consistent support for the calls for a full statutory inquiry, particularly into the broader matters arising from the Sarah Everard scandal. It makes the earlier remarks necessary. Of course, for all sorts of completely legitimate reasons—not least that people come from
all over the country, have different health conditions and are of different ages—it is not possible for everyone who wanted to be here to be here right now.
Amendments 108 and 109 are in my name. Amendment 108 is supported by the noble Lords, Lord Carlile of Berriew and Lord Paddick, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, while Amendment 109 is supported once more by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. These two amendments deal with the specific issue of it being lawful at present for arrested people—that is, people who are suspects but have not been charged and are therefore not defendants, or at least believe themselves to be suspects when they are stopped by a police officer, as poor Sarah Everard was—to be taken away in a vehicle by a lone police officer. Noble Lords, particularly those who have engaged with this issue and were here in Committee and at earlier stages of the Bill, will appreciate that that possibility has understandably caused a great deal of concern, in particular since last autumn when Wayne Couzens’s sentencing hearing revealed some of the truly horrific details of that case.
Amendment 108 would prevent a single officer ever lawfully taking suspects away in a vehicle. Amendment 109 takes a slightly gentler approach—helpfully suggested to me by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, I might add; I am grateful to him—to the same problem. It does not create an absolute legal bar to a lone officer taking a suspect away in a vehicle, with all the dangers that that one on one creates for both the officer and the suspect; instead, Amendment’s 109 approach is to amend PACE—the Police and Criminal Evidence Act—so that the Secretary of State would be required to issue a full-blown PACE code of conduct to deal with the transportation of suspects.
Given who is left at this time of night, I know that the noble Lords here are engaged with these issues and understand the importance of PACE codes in particular. They are required in relation to things like detention and the questioning of suspects in a police station. Since 1984, they have been a really important protection for citizens in the police system. Amendment 109 is a new amendment—I did not table it in Committee—and I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I really want to hear any conceivable argument against this mild amendment, which would add “transportation” to the list of activities in relation to suspects for which the Secretary of State should issue full-blown statutory PACE codes of conduct.
When one considers Amendment 108—my previous amendment, unenlightened by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—with its absolute bar on single officers taking suspects away, or the amendment to PACE, it is worth noble Lords remembering some of the quite bizarre and hubristic public comments that were made. They included, I am afraid to say, comments made by a police and crime commissioner who is no more, as well as by certain retired and serving police leaders, about women being naive in going along with a police officer who stops them late at night. They said that there is something wrong with them—that it is the woman’s fault. Some ridiculous public comments were made.
Equally, however, there were other comments suggesting that this practice should be changed and things should be done. If things can be done by way of police administration, why can they not be somehow reflected in this Bill? This would give greater confidence to the young women and girls in particular—wholly law-abiding people—who have been feeling such anxiety and such a crisis of confidence not just since Sarah Everard’s murder during a lockdown, at a very difficult time for our country, but since the Wayne Couzens sentencing hearing. I hope that I can persuade the Minister to reflect on that particular issue and on how to grapple with what I am proposing in Amendments 108 and 109.
Then, of course, we return to Amendment 102, which calls for a statutory inquiry. It is not only my repeated call: it has been a call from so many people. I am so grateful to my noble friends in the leadership of the Opposition, to the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and his noble friends and to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. She and my noble friend Lady Lawrence are, in my view, two of the greatest champions of victims’ rights, cutting across all vested interests, all party interests and all bureaucracy. The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, has been with me in relation to this amendment from the very start; it is nearly 11 pm, and she is still sitting there and is with me now. I thank her so much.
This is a call for a full-blown statutory inquiry, not an administrative inquiry, under the Inquiries Act 2005. It follows resistance and hubris, I am sorry to say, from senior police leaders who, as we obviously know by this time, do not want an inquiry of this kind. To put it in context once more—I know that I am taking time, but I feel the need at least to do this argument justice—I mention the relatively recent inquiry and damning report of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. Not much longer than six months ago, she spoke about the obstruction that she faced from the Metropolitan Police—including from the commissioner, I am sorry to say—in reporting on the Daniel Morgan scandal. I need not paraphrase, because noble Lords have heard from the noble Baroness in the past and her report, including the shortened press summary, is there for all to read, along with her speeches in Hansard. She faced obstruction, and said specifically in her findings that she knew that she had been hampered by not having the statutory powers that would have been available under the 2005 Act. I give that as a piece of evidence in my call for a statutory inquiry into the matters arising from Sarah Everard’s murder.
I also give the tin-eared and insensitive—to say the least—policing of the Clapham Common vigil. We know in your Lordships’ House that this was contrary to the original working and decisions of the borough command and the police service on the ground, who were working with women’s and victims’ groups to facilitate a peaceful vigil. Senior leadership and senior officers in the Met decided that was not to be. We can now trace back the timeline, because it is all in the public domain if one takes the time to look at the newspaper reporting. We can tell that those decisions about the disproportionate, tin-eared and counterproductive policing of the Clapham Common vigil would have been made at a time when the senior police leadership knew
things that we only now know about Wayne Couzens, what he had done—because he had interviewed at this point—his policing career, and various things that obviously went wrong. I know that that is embarrassing, but that is why we must have a statutory inquiry. All institutions made up of humans feel the need to close ranks when things terribly wrong. That is precisely the moment when outside forces, including your Lordships’ House, need to prevent that closing of ranks.
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Weeks and months have gone by since then and there have been further scandals involving abuses of police power, in particular in relation to women, living and dead. We do not need to go into all the horrific details, but this is not helping to rebuild the trust and confidence of women in the police service, which I know that every single Member of your Lordships’ House would want. That is particularly in the light of the terrible attrition rates in relation to violent and sexual offences going back years, which are stopping young women in particular and women in general coming forward. Stories appearing in the newspapers, day after week after month, about the attrition rate between the number of reported rapes or sex offences and how many come to trial are not helping.
I am grateful to the Minister for our discussions about these issues. I know that she personally takes them incredibly seriously, so I hope that she will understand that nothing that I have said is intended in the slightest to be a criticism of her. I am delighted that just today, late this morning, her department published the terms of reference for phase 1 of the non-statutory inquiry that the Government have announced. I have said before in your Lordships’ House that I am equally delighted that Dame Elish Angiolini has been appointed to chair that inquiry. She is a lawyer and a person of great reputation, but you could not come with greater credentials than the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. I repeat my point: it is no criticism of Ministers or of lawyers or chairs of inquiries to say that I have residual concern that all the evidence, going back years and perhaps decades—I shall not even cite the Hillsborough programme that people have been watching on Channel 4 —suggests that without powers to compel co-operation from witnesses, from police officers serving and long retired, and retired at convenient moments in the disciplinary process, we will not get the kind of inquiry that is required.
To develop that point further, the inquiry that has been announced to date is phase 1, which even on the basis of the very welcome terms announced today, is really quite specific to Sarah Everard’s demise, Wayne Couzens and how that came to be. It is understandably fairly narrowly drawn. I still have questions, and so do people all over the country, about the wider issues of culture, professionalism and practices in our police service in relation to crimes against women and girls, as well as in relation to women police officers, their treatment and what they have to face. We have not had our Lawrence moment.
All sorts of stories have appeared about how that is how people see the world and about the obstruction that was faced when my noble friend Lady Lawrence
sought her inquiry all those years ago, not just for her family or herself, but for the treatment of black people by the police service. If she had gone quietly, that inquiry would never have happened. I believe that our country and our police service would have been poorer for that, and it is high time for a broader statutory inquiry into not just matters arising from the Sarah Everard case but from the culture in the police service in relation to the treatment of women and girls and crimes relating to women and girls in particular, because none of the data is positive. Only last year, the Home Secretary and the former Justice Secretary had to apologise to women because of the attrition rates to which I referred.
What are the arguments against me? In recent months I have read carefully various statements from the Home Department. One argument repeatedly made is about speed. There is the suggestion that a statutory inquiry is inevitably more cumbersome and longer than an administrative inquiry. That is not always the case. I contrast the inquiry chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, into Daniel Morgan—I think the original plan was that it would be dealt within a year or two, but it took eight years—with the Lawrence inquiry, with all its ground-breaking success, which took two years.
Another potential argument is that a statutory inquiry is inevitably some kind of huge media circus that is very painful for those closest to it. I am of the view that that need not be the case. It is all down to the person trusted to chair it. In any event, the Government have already taken the decision to have a phase 1 and a phase 2 inquiry. Therefore, it is perfectly possible to shield, for example, Sarah Everard’s family from a wider inquiry into the culture in the police service. That begs the question of why there is no statutory inquiry, at least for phase 2. Now that the Minister has done so much and got us to phase 1, with the terms of reference which were announced today, I would like her at least to consider what it would take to broaden it. My Amendment 102 is not just about giving statutory power to the chair, but broadening the terms of reference and insisting on a panel including at least one person with expertise and experience at the grass-roots level in dealing with violence against women, which is what women’s and victim’s groups need. It would comfort them in participating, as they should be invited to do, in this process.
I cannot think of any credible argument against phase 2, at least, being a full-blown statutory inquiry. I cannot help but feel that the Government are dealing with intransigence from the most senior echelons in the police, and they are wrong. In my view, the police service in our country was improved by the Lawrence inquiry and it would be improved further, all these years later, by a proper Everard inquiry into the wider issues for women and girls in the criminal justice system and the police’s part in that. If the police cannot see that, if institutions are going to close ranks, it is an issue for other institutions, including your Lordships’ House. What is the point of an unelected, independent Chamber if not this? I am sorry that I have taken a few minutes so late at night, but I hope noble Lords will agree that this is vital to public confidence in the police service, which is vital to the rule of law.