My Lords, it is a genuine privilege to follow that eloquent introduction to this group of amendments by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I make it absolutely clear from the outset that, for me, this is no competition between amendments: we are absolutely on the same page, in the same chapter and in the same book. In my view, it would be inexcusable for any Minister to reject these amendments on the grounds that they are not sufficiently well drafted.
The noble Baroness and I are both Back-Bench Members of your Lordships’ House; neither of us is a parliamentary draftsman. Yes, we are perfectly capable of drawing up a basic amendment or new clause and of obtaining advice elsewhere, as I am sure we both have. What we both trying to say, however, is that there needs to be a solution to the fear that now exists among young women about lone male police officers. It is a solution that the Government have to produce and that parliamentary counsel has to draft and put in a form that will be clear both to women and to the police.
Our feelings of sympathy for the family and friends of Sarah Everard are in no way diminished by the passage of time. Indeed, it is vital that we should keep this story running until we reach a satisfactory ending. If I may be forgiven for putting a personal slant on this, we are fortunate enough to have five daughters. One is a young professional woman, single, living with friends in a shared flat in Clapham, just like Sarah. She goes out with her friends or on her own and walks across the common, just like Sarah. She walks home when she feels like it and is obviously responsible in the way that she approaches her journey, just like Sarah. And she was brought up absolutely to trust the police, just like Sarah.
All those assumptions have been smashed on the ground as a result of this case. I am sure that we are not the only family who, for obvious reasons, sit up at night looking on Find My Friends, worried about the whereabouts of our children—although they tell us now that they are worried about our whereabouts and use Find My Friends for that purpose. We are genuinely concerned as they go about their lawful lives day and night. We have taught them the basic conventions of good self-protection and safety but, of course, one of the basic tenets of that domestic advice was that you can always trust a police officer: if something goes wrong and you can see a police man or woman, turn to them; they will see you right. We and they are now shocked to the core by the number of cases of police sexual misconduct that have come to light. This case is the very worst of the very worst, but it does not sit in a category all of its own. More than 70 incidents of police sexual misconduct, almost all by male police officers, have now come to light and been investigated to a greater or lesser extent.
Sarah Everard should, of course, still be alive and free to come and go as she wishes. In her death, she should not have to be remembered for the unspeakable things that happened to her, to which the noble Baroness referred—for the abuse of her person when alive and the desecration of her body in death. She must not be seen to have died in vain. It is our duty, in both Houses of Parliament, to take the appropriate steps to demonstrate to the world at large that Sarah Everard did not die in vain and that other young women—other women—will be protected from such events so far as is possible. That is our responsibility.
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I fear that I had a fairly naive view of the accountability of the police—particularly, that their accountability was reliable and to be trusted. We know now that
when they prefer to file misconduct in the drawer labelled “under the carpet”, they have been able to do just that. They have been culpably slow on the uptake when issues have come to light of the kind illustrated by what we know of Sarah Everard’s killer.
In my view, her death has shown that police leaders do not understand fully the demands and necessity of the level of accountability to be taken by highest ranks. What issue can anyone think of, beyond this one, that would lead to the resignation of a chief police officer? Surely this is it. The person involved may not be personally to blame—they may be a very good person—but nevertheless the buck has to stop somewhere, and it has not yet.
I am also concerned about the ethical issues behind this case. In my view, it raises profound ethical issues about behaviour and habits—everything from the tweeting of junior officers to the leadership of senior officers. At one time I chaired something called the London Policing Ethics Panel. I have been waiting in vain for our successors on that panel to take up the issue of the ethical matrix within which Sarah Everard’s death is being treated. When I looked on its website yesterday, it was not even mentioned as a live issue. There are police ethics panels all over the country. What is the point of them if they do not immediately pick up independently the baton offered by cases such as this?
The operational response has already been mentioned by the noble Baroness. It is wholly inadequate. As I understand it, the response of the Metropolitan Police is to offer a single call on the telephone of the officer who purports to make the arrest or on a number given by him. It is a proposal that the killer of Sarah Everard, if he had had to follow it, could easily have circumvented without any difficulty whatever. In my view, that response shows that the senior leadership of the Met, however well motivated—this is not intended as personal criticism—is simply not fit to mark its own homework. We need an inspection, as has been described. Above all, we need to create something that is at the core of what police officers think in their continuing training and is fully understood by women.
I think the noble Baroness, Lady Moulescoomb, and I probably tabled these two amendments, which are very different, at about the same time. They appeared on an amendment paper at about the same time, and my view was, “Let’s leave the options, because the final wording is the responsibility of them down there— the Government—to resolve, not us”. My amendment started its life in the pen of a young, female lawyer—someone I know well—who approached me. We worked on it together to try to produce a codifiable system that would guarantee the protection of women. While I regard my amendment as workable, I would welcome anything better and would be delighted to work with Ministers, as I am sure the noble Baroness would, to produce it.
I and others, including all those who signed these amendments, are determined that there should be a new law that women facing lone male police officers should understand: well advertised, well publicised, ubiquitously known. Above all, it should be a new law that the police would regard as absolutely core learning—something they would be reminded of frequently. When
I was chairman of the London Policing Ethics Panel, I used to go on night patrol with the police from Stoke Newington police station. I was present at the going on shift meetings they used to have. It is the sort of law that police officers should be reminded of at those meetings, when some of the junior officers were deployed to tell the more senior officers what they were doing on that shift. It should be second nature to the police. Only if we take measures like that will Sarah Everard’s memory truly be respected. Only then will our daughters be able to have confidence in the police, day and night.