My Lords, this is a difficult and contentious part of the Bill. There has been much debate for decades about the police approach to vehicle pursuit in particular, and the ability of emergency service drivers to disregard traffic signs and speed limits in an emergency. There have been tragedies where emergency vehicles on their way to serious and urgent incidents have ignored traffic lights or give way signs, or driven on the wrong side of the road, often in an attempt to save or protect lives, and tragically they have been involved in collisions with innocent members of the public, causing serious injury and sometimes loss of life, as my noble friend Lady Randerson has so graphically illustrated from her own personal experience.
This is perhaps the less contentious of the two areas. But even here, for police control room staff—I am sure the same happens with the fire brigade and the ambulance service—calls are graded as follows: emergencies, with arrival as soon as possible; immediate, with arrival within an hour; or routine. This is to ensure that police vehicles are not driven at speed unnecessarily.
I declare an interest as a former police officer who, although in possession of a full driving licence, attended a six-week, full-time police driving course just to become a standard police driver. I was not authorised to drive high-powered cars designed for use in responding to emergency calls and I was not allowed to become involved in vehicle pursuit of criminals, but simply to
be a police driver answering routine calls. Of course, it is possible to become inadvertently involved in a chase, when a car that is asked to pull over refuses to stop, as happened to me on occasion, but as soon as a qualified driver was behind, I dropped out of the pursuit. Being an advanced trained driver involved many more weeks of intensive training; from memory, two six-week courses, with a very high failure rate. The courses were highly sought after and awarded to only the most experienced officers. Police drivers are trained to some of the highest driver standards in the world.
In addition, police control room staff have the authority to direct police vehicles to withdraw from pursuits where the driver of the police vehicle involved is not suitable to conduct the pursuit, where the seriousness of the offence alleged does not justify the risks associated with a high-speed chase, or where the driving conditions —the type of road, the time of the day or any other factor; my noble friend mentioned the presence of pedestrians, for example—present an unreasonable risk to the public and the officers who are involved in the pursuit.
8.45 pm
The picture I am trying to paint is one of highly trained police officers whose driving skills are way in advance of the average driver and whose opportunity to break the traffic laws is severely restricted. Clause 4 is not about giving police drivers carte blanche to break the law with impunity but is designed to consider the difficult and often dangerous tasks that they are asked to undertake, and to provide them with a degree of protection commensurate with the training that they have received and the skills that they are able to deploy. To that extent, we support the changes proposed by the Government.
I agree with my noble friend Lady Randerson in her Amendment 13 that the dispensation should not be for all police purposes—certainly for police pursuit purposes but also perhaps for calls officially graded as emergencies. The kind of dispensation should perhaps be limited to “I” calls only, or the equivalent in other police forces, where, as my noble friend said, the immediate presence of a police officer will have a significant impact on the outcome of an incident. As my noble friend said, according to the Metropolitan Police, that is where there is likely to be danger to life, a serious threat of violence, serious damage to property or serious injury. I understand, as an example, that Sussex Police grades its calls similarly from 1 to 4, instead of using letters.
As my noble friend suggests with her Amendment 15, if police drivers are to be given the kind of dispensation provided by Clause 4 in relation to emergency response calls, in addition to police vehicle pursuits, the question must legitimately be asked as to why such dispensation should not be afforded to other emergency workers responding to emergency calls, such as the fire and rescue service, the ambulance service and the coastguard.
I also agree with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, in his Amendment 14. Other than in a driving instruction scenario, which his amendment also covers, this dispensation is akin to the legal use of force almost uniquely exercised by constables, who are accountable to the law in a way that other police staff are not. For
example, in cases where the CPS decides that the evidential or public interest tests are not reached that would justify a criminal prosecution but that the driving amounts to misconduct, there are ways in which constables can be held properly to account through police misconduct procedures that are not available to police staff and others employed by the police but who are not police officers. Similar arguments apply, and I similarly support the amendments proposed to Clause 5.
Highly trained police officer drivers chasing criminals in a vehicle pursuit should be judged against a higher threshold of dangerous or careless driving. If such police officers are also to be judged against a higher threshold if they are driving for other police purposes, this should be limited to responding to emergency calls, such as those defined by the Metropolitan Police as “I” calls—those which require attendance within 15 minutes. If that is to be the case, then other emergency services responding to similarly defined emergency calls should also be judged against the higher threshold.
As with so much in this Bill, it appears to us on these Benches that Clauses 4 and 5 do not appear to have been thoroughly thought through.