My hon. Friend makes a good point. The evidence is that police officers are the biggest supporters of body-worn cameras. They are crying out for them and want to use them more often, and they want the cameras to have a longer battery life. I agree
that it is entirely unnecessary, so do we need to go down the road of criminalising police officers because they forgot to wear a camera? It might have been entirely practicable, but they may have simply forgotten. Should that really be a criminal offence? I am dubious. We ought to be giving our police officers more support, not trying to make their lives harder.
I have been discussing my amendments, but other right hon. and hon. Members have tabled several amendments, and I want to start on those by discussing new clauses 1 and 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Croydon North. I understand what he is seeking to do, and it was perfectly reasonable for him to say that if there is death at the hands of the police, the Independent Police Complaints Commission—although I think it has a new title these days—will get involved and all the rest of it, so why should other deaths not be subject to a similar procedure? That is a perfectly respectable point, and I have every sympathy with that view.
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I contacted my local trust, the Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, about these points, and it is worth putting on record the fact that it said:
“The death of a patient under the circumstances”—
covered by the Bill—
“would be investigated as a Serious Incident…in line with NHS England’s “Serious Incident Framework”. Once an SI has been identified we have 12 weeks in which to complete our root cause investigation and report. The family of the deceased would be invited to be involved in that process from the outset…the only thing that might prevent us from proceeding with an SI investigation would be if the police told us not to for fear of prejudicing their own investigation. In other words, the initial NHS-led investigation would be very quick. I cannot speak for the police’s internal investigation. If an independent, external review is also required that can take a very long time (which might be an unintended negative effect of insisting that all inpatient deaths are automatically subject to external review).”