My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, in support of her amendments. I want to start by paying tribute to the Minister of State, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who has been extremely accessible and helpful. In an attempt to resolve these issues there have been several discussions, some of them initiated by her, and I am sure that those of us involved would like to place our gratitude on the record. I thank her very warmly.
I reassure your Lordships that I do not wish to repeat what I said in Committee. Indeed, the amendment I put down in Committee has not been tabled on this occasion because of things that have occurred since then. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I regret very much that we are dealing with this important debate at such a late hour. Speaking at 11.10 pm takes me back to my days in the House of Commons in the 1980s when, routinely, we had debates at this time of night on matters of importance and principle—something that is now avoided because it is known to be poor practice. Furthermore, I must say to the usual channels, particularly the Government Whips, that there must be oblique reasons behind holding this debate at this time of night. If we look at the result of the last Division, which took place a few moments ago, it is clear circumstantial evidence that if you want to get out of the way something you think you would lose a vote on if it took place mid-afternoon, hold that vote—if it is to take place—somewhere around midnight and you will be quite safe. Those tactics do absolutely no credit to the reputation of this House and I regret very much that my representations were rejected a little time ago by the Government Chief Whip.
This is not just about Sarah Everard or Wayne Couzens. Without commenting on any pending case, there are proceedings pending in which it is alleged—it may not be proved, of course, and I do not wish to comment on any individual case—that other police officers have acted in every bit as outrageous a way as Wayne Couzens. I am in the lucky position of being in a family with five daughters. It may well be that our daughters, who would generally, I hope, defer to instructions given to them by police officers, will now feel unsafe on the streets of London, where they live, unless further protection is given.
This is about a broad principle. We know, because it has been proved in other cases—the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, for whom I have the greatest admiration, has demonstrated this in a major inquiry that she undertook—that the police will sometimes strain every sinew to avoid being held fully accountable. Unfortunately, the reaction to the Sarah Everard vigil was outrageous, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, and it never received the sort of apology it should have from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, whose position in this leaves one very concerned. Where, in the end, does ultimate accountability for the police lie when people from the diplomatic and parliamentary division are the culprits in the most serious cases, as Wayne Couzens was?
That is a particular reason why I think it pretty outrageous to be asked to debate these important issues at this time of night. That is not a repetition of a
Second Reading point; it is a discourse upon the way in which procedure in this House is, in my view, being abused on this Monday evening.
11.15 pm
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for her kind remarks, which were not wholly merited, about Amendment 109. I urge the Minister to reflect on Amendment 108 or Amendment 109. If young people, especially young women, are to have confidence in the safety of talking to police officers when they are walking home at night, as they are perfectly entitled to, across Clapham Common, Victoria Park or wherever it happens to be, they need more protection. At the very least, the use of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act codes of practice would cause no operational difficulties for the police. It would give some level of reassurance, and it would enable us at least to test whether the right action had been taken. I simply urge the Minister to reconsider the resistance to Amendment 108 or Amendment 109.
I turn to Amendment 102. One of the things that has happened since Committee is that we have seen the terms of reference of the Angiolini inquiry. We saw them this morning, and we are grateful for the opportunity to see them before this debate took place. I have a suspicion that that was done to help us, under the urgings of the Minister of State who will reply to this debate. If so, I am personally very grateful for that. They were accompanied by a statement from Dame Elish Angiolini about her approach to her inquiry.
I am delighted that Dame Elish has been appointed to this inquiry. She is very good and she has the right experience: she has, in effect, been the chief prosecutor of Scotland—she has been the Lord Advocate; she has run, sometimes in difficult circumstances, a college in which inquiries had to be undertaken that made life uncomfortable for her and for the college; and she is a very good analyst. She knows how the criminal process works and she is concise, as she has proved in reports that she has written in the past. I absolutely support her appointment. I am sure that Dame Elish will want to complete her inquiry in good time and with great thoroughness.
I agree with the Minister, and, I believe, with Dame Elish—I understand that this is her view—that the first part of the inquiry can be completed satisfactorily without it being made statutory. There is no difference between me and the Government on that. The question is what happens after that. Again, I do not have much difference with the Government about the terms of reference; the terms of reference are what they are. Having done many independent reviews, I know that terms of reference are only the first line of the first movement of the concerto, which is varied an enormous amount while it is developed in the concert—forgive that rather clumsy metaphor, but it is very late at night. I am sure that Dame Elish, like all of us who have done these kinds of inquiries, will extend the terms of reference to whatever extent is necessary, so the terms of reference do not cause me much concern.
But what happens if she is obstructed by the police, the Home Secretary or the Government? When I was the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, I saw Home Secretaries—some of them very distinguished,
some less so—come and go through the revolving door of the Home Office, with undue regularity on occasions. And who knows? We may have a different Government and a totally different Home Secretary in every way by the time that Dame Elish comes to complete the second part of her inquiry. So whatever the intentions of this Government in 2022, we cannot assume that they will be the intentions of the Government or the Home Secretary in place when the report is produced. What will happen if Dame Elish finds that she is not getting the co-operation that she needs and therefore could do with a statutory inquiry to be able to complete her job? I have drawn this to the attention of the Minister.
Sky News, which is normally very careful about what it writes on political issues, and usually accurate, published something today which contained the following:
“But Dame Elish will be able to convert it to a statutory inquiry if she needs to fulfil the terms of reference set out on Monday.”
If that was the position offered by the Government, I would say amen and sit down, because that would be entirely satisfactory. She would have been assured that, if she were not able to complete her inquiry, she would be able to have it converted to a statutory inquiry. If that was said by the Minister from the Dispatch Box, I would not vote against the Government if a Division were called.
My understanding of the situation at the moment is that the Home Secretary is saying that it would be possible to convert it to a statutory inquiry in certain circumstances. That is one of the most meaningless statements in this context that I have ever heard. Of course it is possible to convert it to a public inquiry; we could have a public inquiry on the knowledge of Ministers about the price of milk, or almost anything for that matter, if the Government chose to do it—it was rather better done, of course, by the “Today” programme, but there we are.
In this serious context, the vagueness of what has been said by the Home Secretary and the Home Office is wholly unacceptable. It gives no reassurance to your Lordships, and it gives no reassurance to those many intelligent young women who are judging the reaction of the Government to what happened to Sarah Everard and other young women who have been attacked by police officers. It is just not good enough. Something has to be done about this, and I regret very much that I have to express these views to a pretty empty Parliament at just after 11.20 pm on a Monday evening.