My Lords, I am hugely grateful to all Members of the Committee for the substance and tone of our proceedings. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, who dealt with our minor points of detailed difference with such grace. If I may say so, what I really took away from his comments was the sense of a loving father speaking of his daughters and the hope that we might one day return to a moment when all our daughters and granddaughters can trust the police. I was also struck by the way he worked with the young woman lawyer in trying to bring matters forward with such urgency. I thank him so much for that.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath that we have to get to the culture of obfuscation and denial—understandable human instincts when we want to protect our colleagues and the service that we love. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that if it had been a scandal of equivalent proportions at the Bar, we would feel as uncomfortable as the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, so we understand these things.
I say to my noble friends that my Amendment 275 also deals with culture, but this is not about precise amendments—this is too important for that—but about
trying to persuade the Government on both of these issues, of trust and confidence on the one hand and effective change on the other, with which we are attempting to deal in this whole group of amendments. This is about trying to persuade the Government on the power of arrest on the one hand and the inquiry and the training and vetting on the other.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, made such an important point when she talked about that period of lockdown and the way that that has, in a sense, exacerbated every problem in the world but also problems around the fault-lines between hard law, guidance, perceptions of the law and trust in policing and what really is the right thing. It was in that lockdown that this atrocity was perpetrated.
Of course, she was also the Member of the Committee who pointed out that, just hours or days after the perpetrator was charged, someone made the insensitive decision to police that vigil in that way. Whoever did so must have known what we were yet to find out. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, spoke of the young woman who now features in all of the videos and photographs. We know that, subsequently, she has been stalked by serving police officers on her Tinder account. So we really are in trouble, and we are trying to respond to a really significant problem of culture and trust in policing in this country. We are not fabricating this. No one thinks that; I know that we are all on the same page.
My noble friend Lady Blower was also clear that guidance will not be enough. We have gone too far for that in relation to any of the really serious specific issues that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and I and others have been trying to address in these amendments.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, for everything that he is doing in this group and on the Bill more generally. I say to him and anyone who is now feeling very concerned about and suspicious of policing in this country that there is another side. I would like to believe that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, still represents more of what is real and true in our policing service and in our democracy built on the rule of law. I hope that we can all listen to him and heed his practical advice. The word “gallant” is used for the military; there is no equivalent for the retired senior police officers in your Lordships’ House, but there are many retired commissioners and others here. But it is the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, who has been engaged with the Bill day after day and has spoken from the heart and from years of practical experience. We have to heed him. I was heartened by hearing him discuss, on Amendment 122, the approach where we do not want lone police officers driving off with arrestees, for the protection of either. That is best practice, but we now need to put that into hard law to reassure everyone and as a matter of good governance.
My noble friend Lord Coaker said passionately—and he is so right—that we have crossed a line in terms of public trust. Once lost, it is really hard to regain. That is why he made the point, again and again, that a full statutory and judge-led inquiry is part—just part—of trying to regain that trust. Can any of us imagine a Lawrence or Macpherson inquiry that was not judge-led and on a statutory footing, with all the iconography and symbolism of justice that comes with that?
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Important though those points are about iconography and public trust, there is a practical point too. That point was made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, in June. She said:
“Our work was made more difficult by the fact that the Panel was not established under the Inquiries Act … and therefore did not have the statutory powers available to such an inquiry. … At times our contact with the Metropolitan Police resembled police contact with litigants rather than with a body established by the Home Secretary to enquire into a case.”
This was not just any Home Secretary but a Home Secretary who was Prime Minister during the subsequent passage of that review. That is how hard it was without those practical hard-edged powers of compulsion.
Finally, I say to the Minister that I know she feels as we all do about this dangerous moment and the importance of rebuilding trust, and of course I welcome the steps that she and her colleagues have already taken, but we must go further in both these areas. On the police powers on arrest, it has to be so clear now what we say to these young women in particular. I am sorry to Mr House and Commissioner Dick, but their guidance about videophones and so on is not going to cut through—it is not enough. We need a clear-edged change in the law of some kind that makes it clear that sole officers cannot drive off with arrestees. Guidance, words and best endeavours even from senior Met officers will not be enough.
On the speed of the inquiry—which was the basis of the counter-argument made by the Minister against it being a statutory inquiry—the Lawrence inquiry took two years; the Daniel Morgan review took eight, because of the kind of resistance that has been set out; the Leveson inquiry took one year. Inquiries can take various lengths of time but, on this issue, I am sorry to say it but the powers of compulsion will be vital for a speedy and confident review.
I am so grateful for the tone and substance of this debate and I do not believe that the Minister has slammed the door on any of the suggestions that have been made; I will go home taking some heart from that. However, if we cannot make progress, I hope that, with the assistance of others in this Committee and further across your Lordships’ House, we will return to both these vital issues on Report; that is definitely our national duty at this time. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.