My Lords, I start also by paying tribute to my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond for her tireless work in supporting police officers in the many different roles that she has in addition to her work in this House. It was particularly important to hear about the work of police treatment centres, although they clearly do not have the capacity
to deal with all officers who are affected. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in his opening remarks, talked about only being able to imagine what police officers go through. I hope to enlighten the Committee about some of those experiences.
I have Amendment 4 in this group, but I support all these amendments, though perhaps with a qualification on one of them. My experience in the police service was not, in many respects, very different from that of others who have served or those who continue to serve, except perhaps that I was the most junior officer on my relief or response team, as it would now be known. For 18 months, as the junior officer delegated, I was the one who dealt with all the sudden deaths. My first appearance in court was at the Coroner’s Court, when the husband of an elderly couple had taken an overdose of prescription medication. Having worked night duty until 4 am, I was allowed to “slide off”, as I had to be at the mortuary at 9 am to identify the body. I had not seen a dead body before that night—I was 19 years of age—and I was unprepared for the sight and smell of at least half a dozen other bodies that had been opened up for examination by the pathologist when I arrived at the mortuary. It is an important role for a police officer to identify the body that he or she found as being the same one that the pathologist is about to perform the post-mortem on. I will not go into graphic details, but the Committee needs to get a flavour of the trauma that police officers are exposed to.
Noble Lords might think that the first case is the one that sticks in one’s mind, but whether it is the open-top car that overturned at speed, with no protection for the passengers in the back from the road surface, or the pensioner not seen for weeks in the summer, with swarms of flies on her badly decomposed body that was sticking to the bed when the undertakers tried to remove her, or the charred bodies in a number of fires that I attended, the impact on one’s mental health is considerable and cumulative. I can still picture and smell those scenes; I remember the taste that they left in my mouth.
It is not just the horror of such scenes; it is the emotional impact as well. There was a young man in his early 20s who had hung himself from a coat hook on the back of a door. There was a young mother, whose normal session with her psychiatrist had been cancelled because of Christmas; finding a name and address in her handbag next to her body at the base of a tower block, I went to the address, knocked on the door and was invited by her husband into a room where her young children were playing under the Christmas tree with the toys that the mother had bought them. If that was not bad enough, when I suggested that we ought to go into a different room so that I could tell the husband the tragic news that his wife had committed suicide, he asked me, “How did she do it?”. Experiences like that, as noble Lords can hear, I still vividly remember.
It is not just the deaths. I remember a young man who had a broken glass slammed into his face. We had to take him to hospital in the police van, as there were no ambulances available—some things do not change. I remember the terrified look on his face as he shook uncontrollably from the shock. Another man jumped
from the fourth floor and landed on spiked railings. We held him up for what seemed to be an eternity, while the fire brigade cut around the railings; they could not use oxyacetylene torches because the heat would have transmitted to his body. Then we had to hold him in the ambulance between two trolleys, with the railings still through his body.
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Then there are the dangers. On 11 April 1981, as a police sergeant I was given 10 constables and six plastic riot shields and told to clear Mayall Road in Brixton of rioters, as the fire brigade were being attacked and therefore could not extinguish the burning cars and buildings that the petrol bombers had set alight. Coming under barrages of bricks and lumps of paving slab, trying to edge forward, hoping that the burning cars would not explode or the burning buildings collapse on us, and trying to keep my officers safe and do the job that we were given, was another unforgettable experience.
It is not just my direct personal experiences. Many years later, I was a chief inspector of Brixton. The officer worst affected when two members of his team were shot, receiving life-changing injuries, was the officer posted to the front desk, who felt he was stuck inside and unable to help his colleagues. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, mentioned partners of police officers, many of whom are affected by feeling helpless in a similar way when their partners face trauma.
It is not just about the tragedy and danger that police officers have to confront every day; there is sometimes the trauma that the organisation inflicts on its own. We will consider later the impact that misconduct proceedings—what in my time were called complaints and discipline proceedings—can have on officers; even when there is little or no evidence, officers are subjected to months or even years of uncertainty. I will leave that to another group of amendments.
Not a week goes past when I do not dream that I am still a serving police officer trying to deal with some impossibly stressful situation. It was easier when I was serving, as most problems were solvable, albeit sometimes at personal cost, but the impacts, similar to the horrors and dangers that our brave military face, can be considerable and long-lasting. So it is good, albeit a long time coming, that the Bill places the publication of the police covenant report on a statutory basis. But it needs to be more than simply a response from the Secretary of State if she considers, in respect of any matter covered by the report, that members or former members of the police workforce are at a disadvantage compared with others.
Under the Armed Forces covenant there is an array of specialist and enhanced mental health provisions for serving personnel, reservists—similar to special constables—service families and veterans. I do not want to enter into a competition over the similarities and differences between members of the Armed Forces and of police forces in terms of which experiences are more harrowing, emotionally impactive or dangerous. I completely accept the point made by the right reverend Prelate about the difference between civilians in uniform and the Armed Forces. However, I remind the Committee that the experiences of police officers happen here in
the UK, often on the streets where they live, making it more difficult for them to put psychological distance between their experiences and their everyday lives.
I am saying that the impact of the kinds of experiences that I had as a police officer—and far worse experienced by colleagues, both serving and retired, whether dealing with child pornography and child abuse, retrieving the bodies of those killed in the 7 July bombings in 2005, or having a colleague killed in front of them—go far beyond what most people have to face in their lifetime. They, and we, as my noble friend Lady Brinton has said, need and deserve enhanced specialist mental health support similar to that provided by the Armed Forces. As the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, alluded to, the care and welfare of police officers, serving and retired, may not be at the forefront of people’s minds in the light of recent events. But in the light of the sacrifices that our police officers make each and every day to keep us safe, the least we can do is provide the mental health support that they, and we, need.
I am reminded of a debate many years ago, when football hooliganism was at its peak and an argument was put forward by a football supporter that “If the police treat us like animals, we will behave like animals”. I hope noble Lords will forgive me if they have heard this before, but there is a clear distinction between explaining the possible causes of something and justifying something—and I am not, of course, justifying any form of misconduct by police officers. But without the care that police officers need to cope with the trauma they face, we cannot expect their behaviour to be exemplary in every situation, no matter what the provocation.
The intention of my amendment is to ensure that police officers, serving and retired, and their families receive the enhanced and specialist care and support they need. If I have understood correctly, that is the intention of Amendment 7 from the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, placing a duty on local health bodies. But I believe it is the duty of the Home Secretary to ensure that adequate provision is made, although I accept, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said, that Amendment 7 reflects the obligations on local health bodies under the Armed Forces covenant. Whatever local health bodies’ assessment of the need may be, in the same way that the Ministry of Defence has played a pivotal role in ensuring similar support is provided for the Armed Forces, the Home Office should do the same for police officers.
It is clear from what I have said that we on these Benches support Amendment 1, which my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond has signed, and Amendment 3, which she has also signed. We also support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, on an oversight board. It is essential that the police covenant report reflects the needs of rank and file police officers in particular, so it is essential that it is scrutinised by the Police Federation, the only legally recognised body to represent the interests of police officers.
My noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond makes the additional point that the National Association of Retired Police Officers should also be represented, and I declare an interest as a member of NARPO. As I have explained, I still suffer from the effects of trauma
I faced in the police service, and it is important that the needs of retired officers are also addressed in police covenant reports.
I am unclear as to what resettlement schemes currently operate in the police service, but certainly such programmes did exist to help officers transition from the police when I was serving—in particular those like me who gave all their working lives to policing. I do not count what I do here as work. So I am unsure to what extent Amendment 2 is necessary. Perhaps the Minister can enlighten the Committee on what current provision is available in terms of resettlement schemes.
I hope noble Lords will forgive me for speaking at length on this issue, not least because it has been motivated to some extent by personal interest—or, should I say, to ensure that others do not have to cope largely without support in the way I and my colleagues and former colleagues have had to until now. I am pleased to be able to start this Bill on a positive note, although we believe that this part of the Bill can be improved, as colleagues around the House and I have suggested.