THE POLICE SERVICE

HL Deb 27 January 1960 vol 220 cc700-66

3.2 p.m.

LORD STONHAM rose to call attention to the need for improving the conditions of service of the police, with the objects of strengthening the police forces of the United Kingdom and improving their relations with the public; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, you will be aware that the subject of my Motion is covered by the terms of reference of the Royal Commission on the police which was set up last month. Nevertheless, I feel that a debate now will be helpful, first because the views expressed by your Lordships will doubtless be of interest to members of the Commission, and secondly because some matters are of such exceptional urgency that the Commission, if its investigations confirm my contentions, may decide to make them the subject of an Interim Report.

In my view, the most urgent question is that of police pay, not only because of its effect on recruitment but because is has an extremely important, though indirect, bearing on the question of relations with the public. In this I am supported by a message which I received today from the noble Earl, Lord Winter-ton, who has much knowledge of these matters and who, after expressing his regret that he could not be here to-day to support the Motion, said: I hope the Government will not say that any improvement must await the Report of the Royal Commission, because this would mean a delay of two years at least, and improvement should be effected now. I think that anyone who is fully aware of the facts must support that view.

Before he is accepted, the constable must be up to required standards of physique, education and character. He then undergoes rigorous and extensive training, and by the time it is finished he has spent as much time and effort and covered as much ground in study as the average solicitor. His life thenceforward is one of discipline, monotony, boredom, discomfort and danger, and he must work a permanent three-shift system. And for all this he receives the scandalous wage of £9 16s. 1d. a week. His actual take-home pay after deductions is about £8 a week. It is true, of course, that he gets free lodging or rent allowance, but in any case, taking that into consideration, he gets only about two-thirds of the average of £14 1s. 3d. a week which is the present average wage of factory workers in the country. In fact, he gets about half what any young man of parts can earn in industry to-day without the responsibility, without the discipline and without the night-work. If he remains a constable throughout his service—and of necessity many of these men must—the greatest rate of pay that he will ever receive is £13 7s. 1d. a week, which is still less than that of the average manual worker.

There might be some excuse for these derisory rates if the men at the top were suitably rewarded, but if anything they are relatively worse off. Recently the Daily Express published the photographs and some details of the careers of the seven-man murder squad. All of them are detective superintendents, and their ages range from 48 to 57 years. All of them have 25 or more years of unrivalled experience. They are called upon to solve serious crimes in any part of the country, or indeed in the Colonies. They are men of international reputation, veritable tycoons of detection. Their financial reward is precisely £28 9s. 0d. a week.

Not only are they and all ranks in the police insultingly underpaid in relation to the importance and responsibility of their work, but they are much worse off than they were before the war compared with men in less responsible and less exacting occupations in industry. There is a deep and unhappy awareness in the Service not only that their pay is grossly inadequate but that their pre-war standards have seriously declined. Your Lordships will be aware that those standards were set up by the Desborough Committee in 1919 following on the police strike. It is, I think, beyond question that the present troubles in the Police Service arise directly from the failure to maintain the real value of those standards set up by that Committee. Because an undermanned, underpaid police force cannot be expected to maintain good relations with the public that pays it.

Let us consider some of the principal consequences of this actual and relative decline in the standards of remuneration. First of all—and I think this is extremely important—there is the decline in status and esteem. One considerable handicap suffered by the police is the persistence of the newspapers in describing them as"wonderful". In fact they are ordinary working men of average intelligence and superior physique, under discipline. They do their duty, often in dangerous circumstances, usually in unpleasant circumstances, and even routine duty in blazing sun or freezing cold or pouring rain. In that respect they are wonderful in exactly the same way as farm workers, steel workers and miners who do their job are wonderful. In other words, what we really must acknowledge is that the police are ordinary men, but they are ordinary men with power who are paid far less than their counterparts in industry.

Before the war it was different. A young man joining the Police Force had a higher social grading because he had no worries about unemployment, he was better paid than other workers and there was a pension at the end of his service. That pension was actually greater than the average of workers' earnings at that time. So he enjoyed a dignity, a respect and a superior status which does not exist to-day except in rural areas. Thirty years ago these men joined the police for a career. To-day it is just a job. Men come in for a short period and then leave, perhaps because their wives complain about the night work or they do not like the lodging. The authorities know that it is wasteful to accept such men, but they are obliged to take them because of extreme shortage. If we are to attract enough men of the right type we must restore the former wage differential, which means a very substantial increase on the present salary.

In this connection, a number of special factors should be considered. For example (and I think this state of affairs must continue), the opportunities for promotion are relatively few, with the result that many good officers must remain constables throughout their service. This seems to apply particularly to the sort of father-figure types idealised in Dixon of Dock Green. Men of experience like that are invaluable. They should receive merit awards and long-service increments which acknowledge their service and are, in fact, compensation to them for remaining constables. Then there are comparatively few really top jobs. A civil servant has much more chance of becoming head of his section than a constable has of becoming a detective superintendent; and if he does get there, the financial reward is just about one-third of that available to men of equal rank in any other service.

Another problem, friction between men in the C.I.D. and those in the uniformed branches of the Metropolitan Police, could also be removed by appropriate adjustments in pay. It is, I think, significant that the Deputy Commissioner and three Assistant Commissioners are uniformed men, while the head of the C.I.D. is a civilian. The same thing applies at district, divisional and station levels: the principal officers are uniformed men. That is probably right and probably as it should be. That would not matter so much if promotion in the were not so extremely slow. It may take a bright young constable four years to get into the C.I.D., a further five or six years to become a sergeant, and five years more before he reaches inspector rank; whereas, his chum, who perhaps could not quite make the grade into the detective force, may in ten years' time have become a uniformed inspector. Thus occasions arise when a uniformed officer is in a position to rebuke a C.I.D. man inferior in rank but senior in experience.

This sort of thing largely accounts for the fact that the entire detective strength of the Metropolis is little more than 1,400 men. This tiny force, many of whom are necessarily doing desk jobs, is constantly called on to assist provincial police all over the country, and sometimes hundreds of detectives are engaged on a single important case. It is impossible for them to cope adequately with all the demands that are made on them, and it is grossly unfair that, because of that fact, they should be so completely and unfairly condemned for not achieving what they just have not the strength or the numbers to do. We must have a larger force of detectives.

That brings me to the second serious consequence of inadequate pay—namely, the difficulties of recruitment. According to official statements, the police forces throughout the country are, in round figures, some 8,000 men below establishment. In England alone, the deficiency in December was 5,759 men. That is serious enough, but it does not reveal the true gravity of the situation. Serious as the shortage of numbers undoubtedly is, far more serious is the shortage of experienced officers. We have reached the truly alarming position—I doubt whether members of the public are really aware of this—that out of every three uniformed constables on patrol, two are probationers with less than 2 years' experience—that is, two-thirds. Only 20 per cent. of the police are men with from 2 to 20 years' experience, and about 10 per cent. are men with more than 20 years' experience. That is because most of the middle generation, as it were, the experienced men, have transferred into industry; they are no longer in the force to pass on their experience. Formerly, a new man going out on his first patrol went out with a man with 12 or 14 years' experience from whom, in 48 hours, he learned more about police work than he had learned in the previous 13 weeks. Now it is quite common, almost usual, for a new man to go out on patrol guided by a man who himself has been less than 12 months in the force. I think that is an extremely serious matter which we shall ignore at our peril.

I turn to the question of under-manning. Let me give some examples of that, because under-manning, particularly in the large towns where the need to combat criminals is usually greatest, is simply chronic, particularly at night. For example, in busy areas in London, like King's Cross, formerly, and even quite recently—within the time of officers still serving—there were never fewer than 27 men per square mile on night patrol. Now they have not 7 per square mile. In Birmingham, there is an area which includes the jewellery manufacturing quarter. It comprises 32 police beats where formerly at night 32 officers were on duty. Now there are 4. Of course the authorities argue,"Ah, but we have mobile police who can get there two minutes after a crime has been reported." What we want is men on the beat to prevent crimes happening. At Luton, Vauxhall Motors have 160 industrial police and no vacancies. The town of Luton has 140 police and 30 vacancies, because, of course, Vauxhall Motors can pay a wage which will attract men and apparently Luton Town cannot. I think it would be even dangerous to mention the small number of men who can be spared to go on duty after 12 o'clock. But it is the case that in substantial towns in this country there are no police on duty after midnight. I give another example. Imperial Chemical Industries at Billing-ham are establishing their own police force. They are doing it by recruiting men with 10 to 12 years' experience in the Durham Constabulary. I do not think that there is anything that could more clearly demonstrate the position.

Then no allowance, so far as establishments are concerned, is effectively made for the ever-increasing duties imposed upon the police. For example, in the last year for which figures are available there were 775,000 motoring offences alone—more than three-quarters of the total. It makes one wonder, not what the police did with their time before the motor car was invented, but what else they can spare time for with their present depleted numbers. I do not propose to say anything more about motoring offences because I believe that other noble Lords will have something to say about its effect on relations with the public. But there is just one thing that I would say. One often hears about discourteous police in this connection. We do not hear quite so much about discourteous, impossible, thoughtless, motorists and other members of the public who have no regard for either the safety or the convenience of others. I will say no more about the police because it may well be that their tempers in this matter do get a bit frayed sometimes. But the conduct of some motorists one sees on the road is such that no strictures that could be applied by the police would in my view be too severe.

What is the real shortage of the police strength throughout the country? As I have said, the official shortage on present establishments is given as 8,000, but I assess the real shortage at 16,000 men. The discrepancy arises from the fact that when an increased establishment is asked for, because of increasing duties, the Home Office usually refuse on the grounds that existing establishments cannot be filled. They cannot be filled, of course, because we cannot pay the men. In Birmingham, for example, the shortage is officially 250 men, but the Chief Constable there says the real shortage is 500. When they applied for an increase in establishment that was denied, and so the true position is concealed. In Metropolitan London, on what is virtually the same establishment as 1938, the shortage is 2,600 men; and the City of London has a shortage of 28 per cent. The Commissioner for the Metropolis rightly describes the deficiency as"crippling", and a crippled police force can be neither happy nor efficient.

In the provinces, relations between the police and the public are still good; in London, not so good, largely because the authorities have had to scrape the barrel. To maintain even 86 per cent. of strength they not only recruit men who they believe will not stay but they even take rejects from provincial forces. As one senior police officer said to me only this week:"If they can read and breathe, they are in". We cannot build up a good Police Force in that way. In fact, we get the Police Force for which we pay, and it is unfair to the public and grossly unfair to the great majority of loyal and hard-working officers on whom we thrust this unfair burden. And in the long run it is also very costly and leads to waste of public money.

It is precisely because we have not enough police to do a proper job that we have hundreds of policemen buzzing about on motor-cycles to no very useful purpose, that local authorities are employing so many school crossing-keepers and that we are now threatened with an army of traffic wardens. It is difficult for me to understand how it is hoped that traffic wardens will be a cheaper substitute for traffic police on patrol, having regard to the fact that the policeman can go and attend to another incident in his vicinity and has the authority and knowledge to do so. If pay and conditions were such that we could recruit 15,000 men into the Police Force as a worthwhile career, none of these auxiliaries would be necessary, because we could deploy the Police Force properly and restore the core and backbone of the Service—the man walking his beat.

A police officer should know and be known by the people in his area. It is the man who walks round and talks to the people and keeps his eyes open, noticing anything amiss, who frequently stops trouble before it starts. On how many occasions, a few years ago, could one open a newspaper on Monday morning and read that thieves had been in a bank or a jeweller's store over the weekend, having cut holes through walls? That just could not happen in the days when men were walking their beat and looking on, knowing what was happening. In this view I am reinforced by what former Chief Detective Superintendent Jack Capstick said in his book, published last week, that the tricks officers must know to combat modern criminals can be learned only through the experience handed on by senior officers whose careers began on the heat. He also said: The time is fast approaching when there will be no more experienced officers left at the Yard. They will have retired as they have done in many provincial forces. Then the men trained at Hendon will not be able to go to them for guidance. This situation will create an even more serious problem than the one to-day. We have to accept that there is no substitute for the real"man in blue", and it is nonsense to suggest that, with the right pay and conditions, we could not recruit another 15,000 of them. Some policemen on motor-cycles may still be necessary, but they must be regarded as auxiliaries and not as replacements for men on the beat.

I come with some reluctance to the third consequence of inadequate pay; that is, that it fosters corruption. Here it is extremely important to preserve a sense of proportion, because policemen share with parsons and peers the misfortune that if they do anything wrong it is fully reported. If a case goes on for weeks the public see the same case reported over and over again, and think it is ten or fifteen cases. Undoubtedly, however, we have recently struck a bad patch which, as one of The Times articles pointed out, has generally provided the impetus for the appointment of a Royal Commission on the Police Service, because public opinion has found expression as a loss of confidence—justifiable or not—in the police generally. What is the size of this bad patch? The only figures readily available are those for the Metropolitan Police Area, and in the twelve months ended November 30 last 16 officers were convicted of indictable offences, of whom 10 were sentenced to imprisonment. So during the bad patch we have had less than one conviction per 1,000 officers, which is one-tenth of 1 per cent. and my remarks on this subject concern only that tiny proportion and not the other 99.9 per cent. But I am not suggesting, and certainly the Police Federation do not suggest, that this low figure does not matter. It is fair, however, to point out that it is vastly less than the number the public probably imagine.

My main concern in respect to corruption is in those fields which rarely come before the courts, and it is those forms in particular which in my view would vanish if the police were properly paid and became virtually a corps d'élite. I speak only of what I know, and would say at once that when I was a Member of another place, I lived for nine years in Somerset, and there was no bribery there. Nor did I ever receive, in the whole period, a single justifiable complaint against the police, of whom as personal friends and officers I cannot speak too highly. In London the situation is somewhat different. In some districts street bookmakers make regular payments to the police on a graduated scale, according to rank. In return, they are accorded virtual immunity from arrest, except that a"dummy" has to be arrested periodically to"keep the books straight". Other parts of the country have betting shops, instead of street bookmakers. I am told that in Scotland, for example, an impending raid is well advertised and as the proprietors are liberal in compensating their clients, the police are assured of a full house.

In the North of England, according to the honourable Member for York, there are hundreds of betting shops. Speaking in Committee in another place, he said: Some in Scarborough know almost to the day when they are to be raided; others are raided almost as an annual festival. In York there are 40 to 50 betting shops and, he said,"none has been raided since 1938." In this matter I have some sympathy with the police in that, faced with an unworkable law, they have accepted the form of violation which causes the least nuisance. But I wish they did not do it for a consideration, because it is bad for young men to discover the set-up when they go into the Force, and to be confronted with the choice of becoming part of it or resigning. So it is to be hoped that, in whatever final form the Betting Bill reaches the Statute Book, it will end, once and for all, the temptations and possibilities for bribery, because we shall remove public unease and suspicion only when the police are above suspicion.

In this connection, I think the Home Office has done persistent ill-service, both to police and to public, by virtually refusing to admit that there are any bad practices or bad policemen. The public interest demands that, however few, they should be rooted out; and if there were a clear directive from the top I think they would be. When I represented a London constituency newly appointed police superintendents always used to come round for a chat, and after discussings ways of mutual helpfulness I would say to them,"I know what you do with bookmakers and I shall not interfere. But I will not have prostitutes on the streets, and I will not have undesirable all-night cafés in my constituency, and I will not have anybody 'framed'." Not one of those officers ever asked me what I meant; they always said,"I understand", and obviously they did, because we did not have any prostitutes and the only all-night café was closed. But in the immediately adjoining borough of Stepney the situation became so intolerable that public outcry forced the Horne Secretary to take administrative action; and in my view similar administrative action could be taken in other directions with beneficial results. We cannot dispose of unpleasant facts by ignoring them or denying their existence.

One unpleasant fact that must be faced is that a few policemen—very few—sometimes enlarge on, or even completely fabricate, evidence in order to secure a conviction. If it comes to light in court the accused person is acquitted, but the public are rarely informed what happens to the policeman. This lack of candour is very damaging to public confidence, as was so clearly demonstrated in the comparatively trivial Garratt-Eastmond case, where apparently £300 of public money 'was paid in order to keep it Clark. And it is still worse in those cases which are never exposed, because the authorities appear to be determined to shield the officer concerned every step of the way. They apparently take the view that, since a criminal obviously escapes the consequences of many crimes he has committed, it does not matter if he is put away for something he has not done. I do not accept that view, and I hope that no Member of your Lordships' House will. I am not here talking about cases publicised in the newspapers: I am speaking of cases within my own knowledge, which I have investigated and which I know to be genuine, though I do not think it would be fair to discuss them in detail in your Lordships' House. The details can, of course, be given to the proper authorities if they wish to have them. These cases, although they represent only a tiny fraction of all cases, do occasion great damage to the reputation of the police in the eyes of the public, because they know about them. These facts are known in the locality and they are not diminished in the re-telling.

Justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done, and my point in raising this matter is that when serious complaints against police officers have to be investigated they should not be investigated by other police officers, because then justice cannot be seen to be done. It will be recalled that when considering the position of chief constable the Oaksey Committee regarded a police authority as unsuitable for the consideration of appeals as they would be in the position of both prosecutors and judges. Exactly the same objections apply to the consideration of complaints by members of the public against the conduct of police officers. Serious complaints should be investigated not by other police officers but by an independent civilian authority appointed for that purpose; and he must be available to anyone with a legitimate complaint, without cost and without a lot of red tape. This, in my view, would do more to allay public disquiet and improve relations between police and public than any other single step the Government could take.

My Lords, we know that cynics allege that Royal Commissions are sometimes appointed because the Government wish to buy time. Be that as it may, I am convinced that the present Royal Commission is very necessary and that its exceptionally distinguished members will produce a most valuable Report. The Police Federations welcomed the setting up of the Commission. At the very moment when the Royal Commission was appointed the Federations had been at the point of putting in a claim for a very large increase in pay. They regard this question of pay as a matter of paramount importance and great urgency, and clearly it would create a very difficult situation if they had to wait, say, two years for a complete report on every point the Commission has to consider. The Federations have set great store by the fact that the Prime Minister, when asked in another place if there will be an Interim Report on the broad principles of pay, said that it was a valuable suggestion and added: It may well be that the Commission would think it possible to divide its work in this way. I sincerely hope that this will prove to be the case.

Meanwhile it is in my view beyond question the duty of the Government to provide sufficient funds, with the local authorities, to ensure that our Police Force is large enough for efficient policing. It is equally beyond question that the Government and local authorities have failed in that duty, and I submit that the deficiency in numbers would be quickly overcome if the pay and prospects of police officers were in conformity with the importance of their duties and the value of their service to the public. I submit also that, with increase in numbers and improvement in status, many of the practical difficulties complained of by all of us to-day will disappear, and the blemishes to which I have reluctantly referred will disappear also. That is why I believe, my Lords, that this question of pay is so important and urgent, and I hope that if, after investigation, the Royal Commission supports this conclusion it will issue an Interim Report. Then, given appropriate action by the Government, our Police Force will continue to enjoy and deserve its reputation as the best in the world. I beg to move for Papers.

3.38 p.m.

THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER

My Lords, any natural diffidence that I should feel in rising to make my first and, I hope, fairly brief contribution to the deliberations of this House has been sharpened by a curious personal circumstance that I think I must just explain before I proceed. It is that, as some of your Lordships will have noticed, there has been a difference in the exact wording of this Motion at different stages of its appearance on the Order Papers. When it was standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, shortly before Christmas, it had in it a modifying clause that all these things about the police should be considered in the light of current statistics on crime. For, I am sure, very good reasons, those modifying words have been dropped from the final Motion, but I had the misfortune to prepare my speech on the first draft, and I hope, therefore, that the House will be indulgent if it 'partly consists of an exposition on a now nonexistent clause. I hope, however, that it will not be irrelevant, even to the administrative problems and purposes that have inspired the noble Lord in presenting his Motion.

I do not feel at all equipped to comment on the detailed questions of pay and numbers of the police. On a quick calculation, it seemed to me that the payment of the police almost exactly coincided with the payment of the clergy, and no doubt both should be raised. But I should like to agree with what was said to us about the importance of keeping a sense of proportion when one hears of apparent lapses in behaviour by members of the Police Force. Parsons do have a fellow feeling with the police in this matter, because in both cases their failings are news. This is the nation's unconscious testimony to what it expects from them, and a clear sign that usually they even now do not expect in vain.

The police deserve, and must retain, the goodwill and gratitude of the community as they pursue their thankless and often dangerous task. They not only deserve to be guarded from ill-considered criticism and gossip; they need the active support of the community. Only in the last day or two there has been an incident in my own city of Leicester, where it was felt in many people's minds that the public ought to have helped the police much more positively than they did in the case of a public affray in the market place; and only last night, in the leading article in our Leicester paper, the words appeared that the police cannot fulfil unaided their duty of maintaining law and order in the community.

That is really the point that I wish to emphasise this afternoon. No police force, however efficient and trustworthy, can perform its task of maintaining law and order if there is not in the whole community a much more widely-held and deeply-rooted sense of conscientious obligation to do the right. No police force can watch all the people all the time. What we have to aim at is that there should be fewer people wanting to commit crimes; more people able to resist the temptation if and when they do want to commit them; and more people to help the police in every way when in fact crimes have been corn-milted. My own feeling is that if there were in the community as a whole a greater sense of the importance of the maintenance of law and order, the status of the police as the outward expression of the community's desire would be considerably higher; and it might even have an effect on such problems as recruitment and what the community feels the police should in fact be paid.

We are getting much too familiar with crimes of every kind—so much so that, unless crimes occur in people's immediate vicinity, they have little interest in them except as news stories. I have even heard in most unexpected quarters, when crimes are being discussed, comment made as to the ingenuity or daring nature of the crime that had been committed, to the detriment of any clear recognition of the cruelty or injustice and thorough badness of the thing that had actually been done.

Now at this time, when the nation needs more than ever a widely-respected moral code, there has been a retreat on almost all sides from any willingness to make moral judgments. We in the churches have shared in this, anxious to avoid the mistakes of our Victorian predecessors, who were too ready to be on the side of reactionary authoritarianism. We have now too often directed our thought to subtle points, such as the distinction between sin and crime, to the detriment of our clear witness in simple matters or honesty and dishonesty. The sociologists and psychiatrists have rightly shown that there are many factors other than those of the conscious will that affect decision in these matters; and some may believe that they are what they are because of factors outside their own control. Judges and magistrates are often at pains to point out that their courts are not courts of morals. While this is, of course, true, it surely is necessary that in the public mind they should be seen as in some sense courts of elementary basic morality. For if the legal system becomes in the popular mind a mere tribunal of social convenience, it will be in vain that we surround it with outward dignity, for it will have lost its overtones of ultimate authority.

There are similar problems in schools and universities. Only last night I was meeting a group of teachers, some of whom explained to me that they are confronted with this difficulty; that their children would sometimes say to them,"We know that this line of action which we are discussing is wrong we know it is dishonest; but we prefer to do it, and mean to". Now this is something new in our country. It is not easy to attribute blame to anybody, but these are some of the problems which we have to face: and, in the light of it, it is not surprising to me that the moral revulsion which has kept many from taking the first step towards crime is largely non-existent.

When we study the criminal statistics for 1958, two facts seem to me to stand out. The first is that the average number of indictable offences known to the police per million of population—and it is the proportion that is important—in the decade before the war was 6,300 odd; and in 1958 it was 15,700 odd. This concerns only indictable offences; the multitude of offences against regulations does not affect the figure directly. Secondly, from the graphs section we see that the rising graph for sexual offences is little different from that for violence and larceny, except that the increase is still more steady and uniform. I draw from these facts the conclusion that something is happening in our country that is too deep to be explained merely by economic trends. The fact that a youth has too much money ought not to make him more likely to rape a girl; and the fact that he has too little ought not to justify him in battering an old woman. Something has happened inside him which makes him discontented with what the law-abiding life in our country seems to have to offer him.

The question is: can something be done to fortify resistance and reduce temptation at the pre-criminal stage? In other contexts I might say that all this is a by-product of the decline in religious belief and practice. In 1909, Charles Masterman wrote: Ethical advance is accompanied by spiritual decline". After 50 years the spiritual decline may still cause some of us anxiety, but the ethical advance has proved to be a complete illusion. In this place, however, we have to view the problem only in its broadest aspects, and to call on all men of goodwill, whatever their religious allegiance, or their lack of it, to ask themselves, What are the real grounds for doing right, quite apart from whether I am likely to be found out if I do wrong?"

I have sometimes wondered whether the Ministry of Education, with the support of all churches and other well-intentioned people, could work out some simple, agreed, moral catechism which could be taught authoritatively to the very young and subsequently discussed—and, we hope, freely chosen—by adolescents. I understand that in French schools there is a subject called"La Morale", and it might be worth looking into that to see whether there is anything that we can learn from it. What I am thinking of is something like a sort of moral kerb drill which would pull up young people instinctively during that time before their final allegiance and steadfastness of purpose has been built up.

In conclusion, I want to say that a great responsibility rests on all the"guardians" of our community, if I may borrow a conception here from Plato. Think of the police as the outward expression of the common purpose of the whole nation. The real guardians of to-day are not those commonly thought to represent the"Establishment" in its modern controversial sense, but the leader writers, the television interviewers, even the teenage idols, and, of course, in their place the judges, magistrates, clergy, Members of Parliament and so on—all who write what many read and say what many hear. Our need, as I believe it, is a revived sense of a permanent difference between right and wrong and a growing agreement as to the concrete content of right and wrong. Only so, I believe, can the public attitude to crime reach its proper expression. Only so can we see the importance of what the police are doing for the community as something preservative of its true nature and not merely the performing of a passing temporary service. Only so can the problem of crime be brought within such limits as a police force of reasonable size can hope to compass.

3.52 p.m.

LORD BLACKFORD

My Lords, when I came down to your Lordships' House this afternoon I did so in order to listen, I hoped with sympathy, to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, with the idea of supporting what he had to say. I expected to find my name in its usual position in the speakers' list—that is to say, during the tea interval. I am rather surprised, therefore, to find it somewhat prominently here so early in the debate and to be called upon—indeed, to have the privilege of congratulating so distinguished a maiden speaker as the right reverend Prelate who has just addressed your Lordships. That, at any rate, is an easy part of my little speech, because we have listened to a very thoughtful and valuable contribution from him on a subject to which he has evidently given deep thought, and it has been a pleasure to us, and an instruction, to listen to him. I assure him that we shall look forward to hearing him on many further occasions on a diverse number of subjects.

I agree with every single word the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said. It seemed to me that he covered the subject so completely that there is little room for any further debate. I regret that it is necessary to have this debate at all because, like, I dare say, almost all other noble Lords, I have been brought up all my life in admiration and affection for our Police Force. I have joined with all those who have said that it was the best force in the world. And I have been brought up with the idea that one must always co-operate with the police in their duties. But there can be no doubt that recently there has been a deterioration, not only in the quality of the force—and here I speak only of the Metropolitan Police—but also in its relations with the public.

I doubt whether these remarks apply to the provincial police. I know nothing about policemen in provincial cities, but for twenty years I have been a magistrate in a country district, and I must say that I have always had a high opinion of the local police in that country district. But, of course, our serious crime is very rare. Indeed, we went three years without a single case of drunkenness being brought before us, and I am afraid that when at last one case did come we were so cross with the man that we might have erred on the side of injustice in fining him a pound or two too much. Most of our time is taken up with motoring cases. So I think that our country police are as good as can be expected. That is not the case in London, however. There has certainly been a deterioration here. The noble Lord spoke of the difficulties of recruiting and said that the police would pick up as a recruit anybody who could read and breathe. I am bound to say that, in passing about the streets of London and looking at the police, one gels that impression. It is supposed to be a sign of old age to think that the policemen look younger and less powerful than they did when one was a young man, but I really do not think that one is mistaken in thinking that many of the young police recruits one sees about the streets of London really are of a somewhat inferior calibre and of rather inferior discipline.

Another aspect is the relationship of the police with the public. I cannot help feeling that this also has deteriorated. One knows that the police, if they are to perform their duties effectively, must rely a great deal on the willing co-operation of the general public, and there have been signs recently that that willing co-operation is not so forthcoming as it used to be. It may be that the public feel that an undue proportion of the time of the police is taken up not so much with the detection and prevention of banditry and burglary as by certain other duties, like harassing motorists. One cannot help noticing, shall we say, anywhere in the vicinity of West End stores any morning, half a dozen young policemen hanging about doing nothing or very little. Yet one cannot pick up a paper without reading of some wretched person having been coshed by bandits, and hardly a week passes without a serious burglary or bank robbery taking place. A great deal is heard of it just for 24 hours, but very rarely are the culprits detected.

A most glaring case occurred only a few weeks ago, at the shop of the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Company, at the junction of Dover Street and Piccadilly, one of the most brightly lit and crowded positions in London. Thieves stopped there, filed through a padlock, substituted another padlock, kept watch outside while the jewellery was being rifled within the shop, came out again and replaced the padlock. But was that the end of their day's, or rather their night's, work? Certainly not. They got quietly into their car and drove on to the Burlington Arcade. A couple of them climbed over the gates, walked down that well-lit Arcade to the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths' shop, which is by no means at the end but towards the middle of the Arcade, carried out a burglary there, climbed up over the gates again and got quietly into their car and so on to Regent Street, where they went through the same performance. And then, at the end of a good quiet night's work, they went home to bed. All this within a distance of 500 yards of Savile Row Police Station.

I am bound to say that if I were the Commissioner of Police I should think that that was a very grave slur on my Force, and I should institute a minute inquiry into the administration of the Savile Row Police Station. I do not know what all the policemen were doing on that particular night, whether they were so tired with their daylight duties in the neighbourhood of Selfridge's that they were enjoying their well-earned night's rest, but the fact remains that three daring, barefaced burglaries were carried out within 500 or 600 yards of the station in one of the most brightly lit and central districts in the whole of London.

I noticed in the newspaper this morning that a chief superintendent and a detective sergeant, accompanied I suppose by a team of two or three junior officers, kept watch on, and finally raided in the middle of the night, some people playing chemin-de-fer in the mews behind St. George's Hospital. Of course that is against the law, and no doubt it is right to apprehend such people. But I cannot see that they are doing very much harm to anybody except themselves, and it seems to me that the commission of burglaries on the scale I have described is more worthy of the attention of a chief superintendent and a detective sergeant, particularly when the police are so hideously under-staffed, as was described by the noble Lord opposite.

It may be that thoughts of this kind—and if they are wrong no doubt some subsequent speaker will quickly put me right—rather spoil the relations between the public and the police. I am all for those relations being improved, and I support wholeheartedly the contention of the noble Lord opposite that the only way to do this is by so increasing the attractions of the police as a service that the very best men are anxious to get into and serve in it, which I fear is not the case at present. That can be done only by making the conditions of service attractive; and that, of course, will cost money. In the speeches that I have inflicted on your Lordships' House over the last twelve years I have never been an advocate of spending more public money than could be avoided, but this seems to me to be an exception to that rule. I do not know what it would cost, and the noble Lord Lord Stonham did not help us in that respect. But would it cost another £10 million a year to put the police right? Does the noble Lord wish to say something?

LORD STONHAM

It is not possible for me to say how much more it would cost, or how much the Government, together with local authorities, would be willing to pay; but in the opinion of the Police Federation, to do the job properly would probably cost something of the order of an additional £100 million.

LORD BLACKFORD

Does the noble Lord mean £100 million a year?

LORD STONHAM

Yes, £100 million a year.

LORD BLACKFORD

That is certainly a big sum, and it makes all of us think seriously.

LORD STONHAM

Perhaps I may make it clear also that that would not be a net increase, because you would have to offset the inevitably high cost of traffic wardens, keepers of crossings and the like, who would no longer be needed.

LORD BLACKFORD

I quite see that, and no doubt that is why the Royal Commission will consider these forces. It rather horrifies one to think that the present unsatisfactory state of affairs is likely to be continued, not only for the two years which it will take Sir Henry Willink's Commission to report, but also the time it will take for legislation to be passed in consequence of that Report. Therefore one supports wholeheartedly the hope expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that an Interim Report may be forthcoming so that these bad conditions can be considered in the very early stage and an improvement brought about in the Police Force at the earliest possible time. I cannot usefully add anything further to what has fallen from the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, because he has covered the subject so thoroughly. I only hope that his Motion will receive the support of all your Lordships.

4.5 p.m.

LORD CHORLEY

My Lords, first it is my pleasure to associate myself with what the noble Lord who has just resumed his seat said in congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Leicester. The right reverend Prelate and I have interests in common in quite another sphere from those which we debate in this House, which makes it a particular pleasure for me to associate myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, said.

Turning to the subject matter of this debate, I intervene with some diffidence because, although I have given a good deal of consideration during my life to problems of crime, their prevention and cure, I have no particular knowledge of the Police Force or of their work. My main contacts with the Force, except for a short period during war time, have been as a magistrate, an honour which I share with most Members of your Lordships' House but which gives me no special authority to speak on this subject. Like most members of the community who drive motor cars, I have had my contacts with the police on that side, but perhaps I have been luckier than I deserve in that respect, because fortunately those contacts have been slight. I did, however, have in Civil Defence arrangements the war-time experience of close contact with the police forces in the north-west of England for a substantial part of that time.

For my part, I do not think the tremendous service which the police of this country rendered in Civil Defence has ever received adequate recognition in any tangible sort of way, either from the Government or from the general public, although, undoubtedly, moving about among the public at that time one could not fail to realise and be sensitive to the very real feeling of gratitude and affection which the bombed people of the country had for the work which was done by the police in connection with the Civil Defence services. That is really a little peripheral to the subject under discussion, but it did give me the opportunity of realising the exceptional standard of public service which, so far as my own contact with them was in point, the police, to a man, displayed over that exceptionally difficult period. It was a remarkably high standard of public service and of ability, particularly among the leaders of the Force at the time.

I must say that, as I have been brought up in the same sort of faith as the noble Lord who has just spoken, to admire and respect the police, that rather theoretical attitude was practically enforced very powerfully during that time, and it is really that which has moved me more than anything else to take part in this debate. I do not believe that there is any section of the community which renders better service and is more deserving of the regard of their fellow citizens than the police officers of this country. I feel that the disregard into which they seem to have fallen in late years is almost entirely unmerited and is a matter of considerable danger to the State and to the community. It is because I want to express my views on this particular matter, and possibly to express them with a certain amount of heat, that I decided to take part in the discussion this afternoon.

Some of the matters which were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, in his remarkable speech will no doubt be more effectively dealt with by the Royal Commission in due course than it is possible to deal with them in your Lordships' House this afternoon. But, as has been pointed out by more than one speaker, the Report of that august body is a long way away. Indeed, I think it is highly desirable that the Government should take any steps which it is commonly agreed ought to be taken without waiting for the Report of that Commission, and I hope that what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has said will induce the Government at any rate to deal with this problem of pay by means of an interim award. After all, we had a similar case with the Royal Commission on medical remuneration, which has even now not reported, although it must be something like three years since it was set up. The doctors have had an interim increase, which I think we should all agree they thoroughly deserve. Is it not perfectly clear that the police ought to have an interim award on the same sort of lines?

Moreover, I should say that it is important that in the interval the good repute of the police should not be further diminished. It has been interesting to note how this motif has been a leitmotiv in all the speeches so far made this afternoon. I have no doubt whatever that the Commission will in the end vindicate the fair name of the police as a whole, just as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has done this afternoon. But if this constant sniping in the Press goes on without any intermission during the whole of this period, then I think there is grave danger that the exculpation, which I have no doubt will come, will be regarded by the public as a whole as so much"whitewashing", and that would be an unfortunate thing. Anybody who knows Sir Harry Willink, as I have had the privilege to do for many years, will know perfectly well that he would not lend himself to anything of that sort, and the other of the people on his Commission whom I happen to know personally I am quite sure are in exactly the same position. But, of course, the public do not have the same opportunities of judging, and unfortunately there a danger of there being built up in the community at the present time a feeling of distrust of the police which may well lead to the Report's being described as"mere whitewashing".

Therefore, appeal to the Press—to the working pressmen, and to those who control the Press, who perhaps are more important in a way—that they should stop this spotlighting of every case when a policeman gets into difficulties. I think it is most unfortunate—more than unfortunate, really dangerous—that whenever a policeman gets into any sort of difficulties it becomes headline news right across the tops of the newspapers. It is not a question of instituting any kind of censorship; it is simply an appeal for moderation. I do not believe that any ordinary person, reading the newspapers in the ordinary way in the last few years, could fail to come to the conclusion that there has been a considerable increase in corruption and oppressive methods—two quite separate things, but equally important—on the part of the police. It is a very serious thing, as several of your Lordships have emphasised this afternoon, that the confidence of the public should be weakened in this way. Indeed, it is in grave danger of being destroyed altogether.

Lord Justice Devlin's article in the Sunday Times a week or so ago shows that any departure from the normal standard of practice in the Police Force has to be kept in check partly by the judges and partly by public opinion. That is the important point in this connection. I should myself have added to that that the leadership of the Police Force is a matter of possibly first moment in this regard also. That was a remarkable article, which I am sure most of your Lordships, if not all, must have read. I should like, in parenthesis, to pay a tribute to the work which Sir Patrick Devlin has done in the discussion of matters of the criminal law over these last few years. It is interesting and significant that a most learned Judge, whose experience in the law has lain very largely in commercial matters, should, on appointment to the Bench, have so quickly made himself an outstanding authority on problems of criminal law; not only on the law itself, but on all the surrounding and background business of the law which is so particularly important this afternoon. No doubt an acute and able man is at an advantage, in a way, in coming from outside and having at the height of his powers to grapple with problems of a different kind in this manner.

The only thing I was a little sorry about was his final tribute to the police, that"They discharge their difficult task well enough." That was perhaps slightly what we call faint praise, because I think, considering all the circumstances of the present time, they discharge their difficult task more than well enough. They really discharge it in a remarkably able and successful manner. Possibly the learned Judge has himself been a little affected by this general feeling of denigration which is going about and which I think is so unfortunate. Of course, I am not for a moment suggesting that all policemen are angels—neither did the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. As the noble Lord said, there is an enormous force of ordinary men—thousands of them—engaged in work which brings them into contact with tremendous temptation, and brings many of them continuously into contact with tremendous temptation. It would be unbelievable if some of them did not succumb to it. The extraordinary thing is that even in the Metropolitan Police Force, where the temptations are at their highest and where the tradition is unfortunately not so good as in the provincial police forces, the crime rate, one may say, is as low as one in a thousand during the year.

It may be that at the present time the morale in the Metropolitan Police is not as high as it has been sometimes in the past, but anybody who has even a superficial knowledge of the history of the Metropolitan Police must know quite well that these difficulties have arisen from time to time from the very beginning. Right back in the middle years of the last century, and again in the later years of the last century, and again in the period between the wars, there were serious troubles in the Metropolitan Police, and that is bound to be so. It is a particularly large force, where discipline is particularly difficult and temptations of all kinds are undoubtedly more outstanding than in the provincial forces and in the country districts, where I am quite satisfied myself—I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blackford—there has been no falling off in the incorruptibility and the general honesty and capacity of the police.

The problem really is, why there has been this intense Press publicity over these last few years? I think there is a most unfortunate tendency in the Press at the moment to concentrate on moral failings generally, and one paper vies with another. There is a sort of Gresham's Law relating to this. The bad coinage drives out the good, and even papers like The Times and the Guardian have been showing signs of following in the wake of the cheaper Press in regard to this sort of thing. I suppose the point is—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Blackford, who pointed it out, or perhaps it was the right reverend Prelate—that the average sinful man gets a sort of kick out of reading about the failings of those who ought to have a higher standard of moral conduct than he has himself. The parson who backslides, as the right reverend Prelate said, is spotlighted at once; and the policeman, in a way, seems to be open to the spotlighting process more than any other member of the community. It may be because we have been brought up to regard the police as particularly invulnerable in matters of this sort, and there is always a kind of joy for the average man to see an idol knocked off its pedestal.

It is interesting to compare the spotlighting of police criminality with what happens in my own profession, the legal profession, which is a very honourable profession. Occasionally members of it get into difficulties, because they are entrusted with large sums of money by clients and otherwise, and from time to time an odd member here and there falls into temptation and is brought up before the Law Society's Disciplinary Committee and is struck off the roll. That will receive two or three lines in the bottom of a column in the newspapers. There is nothing like the same public interest in a criminal offence by a lawyer as in a criminal offence by a policeman. It is possibly because lawyers are not held in such high esteem by the general public, but I think this is an interesting and significant point. I suggest it is very much to the advantage of the newspaper proprietors and to the leaders of the journalistic profession that police morale should be maintained. So I trust that they will consider this matter carefully and will exercise some self-restraint in this spotlighting of the occasional case where a policeman goes wrong.

Make no mistake about it, the morale of the Police Force is a good deal affected by this attack. I have talked with them even in my own out-of-the-way part of the country where there is very little criticism of the actual members of the local police force. There is no doubt that the general feeling in the country as a whole has communicated itself, and the police officers, even up there, feel that the whole position of the Police Force has been weakened. This, I think, is a most unfortunate thing. No doubt it is known to the Home Secretary and no doubt it is one of the reasons for setting up the Royal Commission.

I think that this aspect of the matter, the effect of this Press propaganda going on all the time on the morale of the Police Force, is just as important as the decline in the public respect for the Police Force. Indeed, I believe that in some ways it is more important and unfortunate, because there are still large areas of public opinion where the old affection and confidence for the Police Force still exists. It is interesting to see how popular the B.B.C. television programme, Dixon of Dock Green, is with the public as a whole; that gives a very good impression of the work which is done by the police, and I think it has had a heartening effect. There was a film shown two or three years ago about the work of the Metropolitan Police which was admirably done and was splendid propaganda. It was called The Blue Lamp. Sir Harold Scott, the late Commissioner of Police in the Metropolitan District, wrote a book on the work of Scotland Yard which had a very good Press, and I think was almost a best seller. It would, I think, pay the Government to have it distributed very cheaply so that much wider sections of the community would realise the wonderful work which is done by Scotland Yard and has been done over the years.

Of course, it is only the police themselves who can build and maintain public confidence, but they can do that only if the 99.9 per cent. of cases where they are doing well are publicised just as much as the 0.1 per cent. of cases where they are going wrong. Public confidence is particularly important with the British police, because as Sir Patrick Devlin pointed out in his article, we have in this country, with our own police system, a very much more delicate balance to maintain than in most foreign systems of police work—the most delicate balance between the work of catching the criminal and dealing with the criminal after he has been caught according to the rules of cricket which our police are expected to observe and which are so brilliantly described by Sir Patrick Devlin in his article.

I have said that in my view the maintenance of a very high standard in the Police Force depends a great deal on the work of the superior officers just as much as on the control, or even more than on the control, by the Judiciary and by public opinion. I hope that this matter will receive very careful attention from the Royal Commission, because the problem of the officering of the Police Force, and particularly the problem of its officering at the higher ranks, has not been effectively solved. It has been before the public a great deal. The educational side, I think, is particularly important. In the early days it was to a considerable extent got over by appointing military officers. Now there are many serious objections to the appointment of military officers direct from the Army to be chief constables. On a number of occasions certainly it was a brilliant success. In my time in the north-west to which I have referred, the Chief Constable of Lancashire, who was an old Army officer, was a man of outstanding ability, and I should not like to see the practice completely dropped. But undoubtedly there are fundamental differences between the policeman and the soldier and it is a dangerous thing to have too many ex-military officers in the Police Force.

I think that Lord Trenchard when he was Metropolitan Police Commissioner appreciated this, and he was anxious to establish a new officer class. We all know of his experiment at Hendon and we all know that it was most unpopular in the Force itself. I think he went about securing an absolutely essential objective in an unfortunate way. But, even so, many of the men who came out of the Police College at Hendon are leaders of the Police Force at the present time, and the importance of that ought not to be overlooked. I am sure that we have to find a rather better method of getting and training our officers at the top of the Police Force. This is one of the most important matters with which the Royal Commission have to deal, and I hope that they will pay very particular attention to it.

4.30 p.m.

LORD PARKER OF WADDINGTON

My Lords, may I occupy a few moments of your Lordships' time by voicing an earnest plea, a plea that some immediate steps should be taken to make the terms of service and conditions of service of the police forces such as will attract new recruits, and recruits of the right type and calibre? I start from this—and I am afraid that I have been saying it over and over again; that it is a sound principle that the certainty of punishment is a greater deterrent than its severity. It was a principle advocated by Sir William Blackstone, and has bean repeated often since; but I think that to-day our attention is so concentrated on the reform of the prisoner that we are apt to forget that fundamental principle. Let us reform the prisoner, if we can. But, first and foremost, let us see that no offence is committed and, accordingly, that there is no prisoner to reform.

Surely that principle is all the more important when, human nature being what it is, every potential criminal thinks that he is the one clever man who is going to escape. Unless and until we approach the ideal of the certainty of punishment, there is little except the fear of punishment to deter the potential criminal. In case after case to-day we are finding, when sentencing a prisoner, that he is asking for a whole batch of other offences to be taken into consideration. Only last term in the Court of Criminal Appeal a young man asked for 65 housebreakings to be taken into consideration. These offences had taken place over eighteen months. It was not until his 66th offence that he was discovered. There is no deterrent to be found there. All there is is confirmation that crime pays. All the time, as the noble Lord has said, the police forces are under strength. The Metropolitan Police Force is nearly 3,000 under strength, yet nothing is done—and that at a time when crime is on the increase, and when I think we all agree that the art of the criminal (if art it be) is increasing faster than the art of detection. To-day, the motor car, stolen for the occasion, is as much the instrument of housebreaking as a jemmy.

I am fully in favour of the appointment of this Royal Commission. But even the best of Royal Commissions are bound to take time, whether it be two years or more, if they are to consider all the matters referred to them. It seems to me that this is a matter which really brooks no delay. I appreciate that it is often said that, in a time of full employment whatever you offer you may not get sufficient recruits, or sufficient recruits of the right type. But if there be any validity in that argument, it seems to me that it makes it all the more important that we should start at once to try to recruit new entries into the Police Force. For myself, I earnestly hope that consideration can be given to some immediate increase in pay or improvement in the conditions of service, or at any rate that the Royal Commission should be asked to deal with that as a matter of urgency and by way of Interim Report. Black sheep, I suppose, are to be found in every force; and they are perhaps the more prominent in the Police Force, because the Force as a whole is white. And whatever anybody may say, I still think that the police forces of this country consist of men who are still almost universally respected and in whom the citizen has confidence. When one realises that, it seems to me that to inquire into their behaviour, to inquire into their relations with the public and at the same time to prevent them from getting new blood, and blood of the right group, is thoroughly unfair to a fine body of men doing their duty in very difficult circumstances.

4.34 p.m.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, I should like first to say that when I saw that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, had put down this Motion I knew that we were going to get something good. I am grateful to him for the way in which he has handled this matter, for everything that he has said and also for everything that he did not say but had in mind. For the past 40 years it has always seemed to me that a grave and rather guilty responsibility has rested upon Parliament for creating offences which did not involve any moral stigma, but left on the police duties which they could not properly carry out without doing something which nobody would dare to suggest that I myself should do. To me that is something that Parliament seems to do with utter disregard. I think it is wrong to legislate in this way and it involves a guilty responsibility on their part. I will give the example of only one rather mild case, although I am aware that from time to time this results in cases of misbehaviour in consequence of which some wreched policeman gets into severe trouble. It always seems to me that the greater part of the guilt rests not so much on the policeman as on Parliament.

I am going to devote my remarks to the end portion of the noble Lord's Motion, concerning the relations between the police and the public. It is my opinion that the giving to the police of the whole duty of concerning themselves with traffic offences is largely—indeed, almost entirely—responsible for the bad relations between the police and the public. I will tell your Lordships of something that occurred to me: it was a quite trivial incident, but it seems to me to illustrate the point I wish to make. I was driving down the (as it then was) new Chertsey Bridge Road before it was semi-decontrolled, and I found myself driving behind a"trap" policeman on a motorcycle. I kept behind him, and as he was going along he looked round and saw me. After about three-quarters of a mile he began fiddling with his carburettor, looking at it with a worried expression, and drew into the side, evidently to give the impression that there was something wrong with his machine. I went on at the same pace as before, and after approximately another half a mile I saw he was"tailing" me. He"tailed" me for quite a long time, then drew up close, after which he suddenly accelerated to between 50 and 60 m.p.h. He shot off ahead to look for some other victim, disappearing at about 70 m.p.h. In the first place, this man knew that I knew that he was not going to catch a burglar or stop any crime, but was merely trying to catch another victim. By accelerating on that road he showed that he knew that it was perfectly safe to go at 60 or 70 m.p.h. at that time in that place, and that my going at 30 m.p.h. was only obeying an unnecessary regulation. That is the first thing. The second thing is that he had tried to trap me into an offence—I quite realise how that can be justified. It sounded from his exhaust that he was disappointed that I had not committed that offence.

Several cases have come to my knowledge which seem rather more reprehensible, but I do not want to go into them. All I want to say about that is that in due course, rather against my will, I found myself talking to authority, and I put this and other cases to authority. I was told, quite frankly, that the traffic policeman would view this matter in a quite different light from the way in which I did. That is the basis of my case. Of course he does. He must do so. If he did not, his duty would be intolerable to him. In this matter, therefore, he must have an entirely different moral conception and set-up to that which I have. I could tell your Lordships of another incident but I think, for good reason, that I will not. But it shows that my view of the matter is entertained very widely, and by people in all walks of life—quite humble people who are drivers equally share with me that feeling. It has always been my opinion that, once the motor car came in, the only proper people to look after the direction and guidance of traffic and deal with traffic offences were probably the Automobile Association themselves. If they recruited people for that duty, the motorist, if he was trapped, would be trapped by his own people for whose payment he himself subscribed. Such a course would relieve the police of a very onerous and unpleasant duty and set them free to deal with real crime.

Your Lordships may think I am making too much of a small matter, but I should like to remind you of how bitterly Rudyard Kipling felt about it—so bitterly that he could work it out of his system only by writing a story, The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat. It may be said,"Oh yes, the police in those days behaved dreadfully, but today things are different." Not a bit of it! In essence it is the same, the one as the other; and that does show what indignation is felt on that account, often by people who have not committed any serious offence at all.

The right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Leicester made a most impres sive maiden speech which I enjoyed very much, and I am bound to say that I agree with him. I believe there is, lamentably, a lack of co-operation between the police and the public to-day which is quite significant. That is a serious change in the attitude of the public in the last twenty years. I myself raised this matter with your Lordships during the discussion on the Prevention of Crime Act, which prohibited the carrying of lethal weapons or weapons that might be lethal. The Home Secretary of the day said in another place (I quote from memory) that it was quite erroneous to think that the public had any duty with respect to the preservation of peace, and that that duty devolved—

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR)

My Lords, I was Home Secretary at that time, and I have never uttered such an appalling statement in my life.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, I certainly thought the noble and learned Viscount had said that when he was Home Secretary, but I am very glad to hear his contradiction. It was my sincere belief that he had said it; and, after all, one of the effects of that Act was to make it illegal for girls to carry something for their own protection when they were coming home at night. I believe it is very serious when people of this country feel that all their duties of self-protection have been taken away from them by the existence of the Police Force. I will not pursue that subject further, because I am extremely glad that I have extorted that denial from the noble and learned Viscount who is to wind up this debate. It was my fixed impression that he had said something of that kind, and I am very glad to hear that he did not.

4.45 p.m.

LORD UVEDALE OF NORTH END

My Lords, in the first place I must congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, on the statement that he has made to your Lordships to-day. If I said that I found in it a certain amount of special pleading, I am sure he would say,"Oh yes, that was deliberate". My own experience of the police is confined to the police in the metropolitan area, whereas the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has dealt with the police on a national basis. If we take the Metropolitan Police, what do they expect? They expect to join the Service as a junior cadet, at the age of 16½, and to be a full constable at the age of 19. At the age of 19 they receive a salary of £510 per year, a rent allowance, or accommodation, and also uniform and a special boot allowance. When I was 19 I had to be content with a little pocket money from my parents—but times have changed. The constable has his chances of promotion. If he becomes a sergeant he may expect a salary of from £745 to £795 per year. As a station sergeant he may get £825 to £855 per year; as an inspector, £895 to £960; as a chief inspector, £985 to £1,060; as a chief superintendent £1,685 to £1,805. And there are, of course, higher posts not within the reach of the average man.

Anyone who has been in contact with the Metropolitan Force knows that at the present time there are many excellent men in it; and even in the past it has been possible for a man to make a satisfactory career in the Metropolitan Police Force. That is not to say, however, that conditions are satisfactory to-day. The Metropolitan Force is short to the extent of 3,000, largely because the requisite numbers are not recruited. Of those who are recruited, quite a number leave the force in the first few years of their service, and the reason why there are not more men forthcoming, and why a proportion of men leave in the early years, is that they do not regard the Police Service as a career but are looking for some immediate advantage, which they will get if they turn their attention to industry, especially in the engineering and building sections. The cost of building, it is notorious, has greatly increased since the last war; it has gone up to three times, perhaps even in some cases five times, the pre-war figure. The way we are building our cities makes a motor car not so much a luxury as a necessity, and motor-car manufacturers are in a position to pay very high wages to their mechanics. The Police Service therefore loses by the departure of men who are not looking to the future but are taking advantage of the immediate present.

But there is another aspect of service with the police which I am sure must be in the minds of most of the members of the Police Force, and that is that a man leaves the Force when he is about the age of 45; that is to say, at about the same age as that at which a professional man begins to expect a reasonable professional income. After 25 years a man leaves the police with a pension of half his salary. Supposing that when he finishes his service—to get the pension attaching to his grade he has to be in that grade for three years; we need not go into those details—he leaves with a pension of £450 a year. He then looks out for another job, and frequently gets it. Some may ask,"Why could not a man at 45 be retained in the Force?" But here again there is the question of promotion. If a senior man is retained, then, of course, there is not the same opportunity of promotion for the juniors. Nevertheless, I feel that although these men have left the Force, and although they are drawing their pensions, there could be a department connected with the Police Force in which these men could be usefully employed. I do not know whether the Royal Commission which is now sitting can deal with that aspect, but the question of employment of ex-constables is, I think, a very important matter.

We have heard a good deal about deterioration of morals in our time, but I have not heard it said that the morals of the police have deteriorated in harmony with the deterioration of the morals of others So I think we may say that any deterioration that has taken place (though I personally doubt that there has been any) in the Police Force cannot be accounted for on that basis. I believe—I may be wrong, of course—that the discipline of the Police Force is good. I believe that the senior officers know all about the possibilities of temptations put before the Metropolitan Police, and I believe that they take all possible steps to reduce those temptations. I also believe that, even though a policeman who offends is tried and condemned by other men in the same Service, the trial is a fair one. It might help, as my noble friend Lord Stonham has pointed out, if a man so condemned had the right of appeal to a civilian body. I hope that this is a matter which the Royal Commission may consider.

It has been said that there is an irritability between the police and the public at the present time such as was not present years ago. If that be so, I know only one cause for it; and that is, as the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, pointed out, in connection with the Road Traffic Acts. There are occasions when a constable can either give a word of warning and let the matter rest, or enter it in his notebook, with the result that the offender may be brought to court. The offender brought to court may often feel that a word of warning would have been sufficient, and in this matter a constable has a certain amount of discretion. These things cannot be overcome, because men have different temperaments, but here again I have confidence that the constables are instructed not to bring forward trivial complaints such as they can deal with themselves on the spot.

May I close by saying that we are all dependent on the Police Force. We cannot do without it; and we must have the best. And although some of us who are relying on fixed incomes do not like to see the national expenditure increased, in this case I would say that something beyond justice should be done: that we should give generously.

4.58 p.m.

THE EARL OF ARRAN

My Lords, it occurs to me to add just a footnote on the last part of the Motion. In the matter of the relations between the public with the police, might these not perhaps be very much improved if the manner (not the manners but the manner) of the police were somewhat altered? In my experience the police are never rude. On the contrary, they are studiedly and sometimes icily correct. One tends to feel, when taken to task by them on some minor matter, that they are not so much human beings as uniformed automata, carrying out a pragmatic task in a pragmatic manner with not much regard to the people and the circumstances. This police manner, which is quite new since the war, is now so common that one cannot help wondering whether there is not some general direction from above which tells the constable never to forget that he represents the majesty of the law, which he does, and that he is different from other people, which he most definitely is not.

This little criticism, which is meant to be constructive, does not, of course, apply everywhere. The village"bobby", one is glad to say, is still the friend of the community that he has always been. He has his drink in the pub; he knows everyone and is liked by everyone; and, with the vicar, he represents all that is most respected in that place. Of course, there are many police forces—such as, for example, the City of London Force—where good temper and a desire to help are the keynotes of the service. Your Lordships may think it is a small point: I do not think so. I believe that relations between individuals in this matter, as in everything else, are of the first importance. I believe that there might be a vast improvement in the attitude of the public towards the police if police chiefs were to instruct their young people that their primary duty is positive rather than restrictive; that while they must prevent crime and apprehend criminals, they, like other public servants, are there to help the community; and that, in the last resort, the public, like themselves, are fallible human beings.

5.2 p.m.

LORD DENNING

My Lords, in the administration of the law in this country we have, on the one hand, the judges, who have the reputation of being honest and upright and have the confidence of the people. I suggest to your Lordships that for the wellbeing of the country, just as with judges so with the Police Force: it is essential that they should be honest and upright and have the confidence of the people. Over the last one hundred years our Police Force has had it, but I have noticed myself, when trying cases, a change of attitude lately, even among counsel. When I was a young man practising at the Bar I hardly dared cross-examine a policeman and suggest that he was telling untruths, because I knew that that would go badly and hardly with my case before a jury. The police were widely respected: it did not do for a counsel to challenge their veracity. But I have noticed recently, when trying cases, that counsel often attack the police because they feel it will help them with the jury. Indeed, up to the usual degree in which it can be done, if two policemen give evidence and their notes are the same it is said,"You must have collaborated one with another. We cannot rely on your evidence." If they differ, it is said,"Look at these two policemen. One says one thing and one says another. How can you rely on them?" And that sort of conduct seems to pay, or counsel would not adopt it.

Why is it, then, that our juries, in whom we have had so much confidence in the past, are ready to listen to attacks on the police in this way? My Lords, it is a reflection on the country as a whole, perhaps on the organs of publicity in this country as a whole, that they magnify misdeeds of the police when they are discovered—though they are very few in number—out of all proportion. At all events, the lack of confidence is there.

May it not be something to do with the conditions of pay and service of the police? I have said how important it is that they should be honest and upright. Remember the great powers, and equally the great temptations, of the police. The judge can only try such cases as are brought before him, but the police decide whether a case should be brought or not. Not only the superintendent but the policeman on the beat is capable of being offered a bribe. It is very rarely accepted. I remember that when I was a special constable one of the regular policemen said to me,"A main road beat? That's worth 10s. any time". There is a great temptation in the way of bribery. What about the temptation, not to give untruthful evidence, perhaps, but to"touch-up" or improve upon the evidence in an ardent desire to get a man who is believed to be guilty convicted?

Again I recollect, when I was at the Bar, prosecuting a man for loitering in a railway carriage with intent to steal. The defence was that he had gone in there only to sleep. He asked the railway policeman,"When you found me, had I got my boots on or off?", and the policeman said,"Off". Of course, he was acquitted: he was in there to sleep. But the detective said to me afterwards,"If I had found him he would not have had his boots off". I am merely illustrating that there are great temptations in the way of the police, and how great are their powers and their responsibilities. The whole wellbeing of this country depends on an honest and upright Police Force. How is it to be ensured if you do not pay them enough; if you do not look after them enough; if you do not uphold their standing in the country?

My Lords, it has happened before. When, in 1829, Sir Robert Peel introduced our great Police Force, they were not held in great repute then. Placards were put about London in 1829 which had these words upon them: Liberty or death. Englishmen! Britons! Honest men!The time has at length arrived. All London meets on Tuesday. Come armed. We assure you by ocular demonstration that 6,000 cutlasses have been removed from the Tower for the use of Peel's bloody gang. These damned police are now to be armed. Englishmen, will you put up with this? My Lords, that attitude of hostility to the police, with which the force was met at the start, was overcome. And how? By proper selection, by training, by leadership, by proper pay, prospects and pensions. Many of the men of the Police Force are selected from sturdy country stock, as you know. They have until recently been well-paid, above their fellows. They have been respected everywhere. These men ought to be paid and treated according to their great responsibilities and their great powers, and not be subjected to temptation. It is a reflection on us, on the country as a whole, if their reputation has fallen; and the sooner it is re-established the better.

5.9 p.m.

LORD CITRINE

My Lords, by the courtesy of my noble friend Lord Pakenham I take the opportunity of intervening in this debate, although my name is not down on the list of speakers. I shall confine myself entirely to one aspect of the subject; and I hope that, with the arguments that have already been presented, there will be little doubt left in the minds of the Government of the day, or of the public, in regard to the matter and the urgency of better pay for the Police Force. It is common ground that we need a Police Force, and that we require from it loyalty, freedom from corruption, and, of course, efficiency. If those qualities were required in any kind of occupation with which I am familiar, no doubt it would be in the mind of the employers concerned that such service should be adequately paid. Perhaps not in such a direct sense, Members of your Lordships' House and of another place are the employers of the police. The community expect from your Lordships' House and from another place a sense of fairness and justice in respect of the people employed by them, such as they would expect to find displayed by employers in industry generally.

May I express my personal gratitude to my noble friend Lord Stonham, who made this his first point in the incisive address he made to your Lordships, and also, in particular, to the noble and learned Lords, Lord Parker of Waddington and Lord Denning, for their spontaneous and direct support of the plea for better pay for the police. I am a trade unionist of 49 years' standing, and right through my trade union life I have learned the application of what might be called the principle of"the rate for the job". In industry, we are able to establish the rate for the job by the process called collective bargaining, whereby trade unions representing the workers concerned meet representative bodies of the employers and are able, by the process of free bargaining, to establish the rate. That process is not nearly so applicable in the case of the police. By the nature of their duties, they are prohibited from engaging in the same kind of measures to effect the justice of their demands as are ordinary trade unionists.

The Police Federation are deliberately deprived of their right to strike. I am not questioning for a minute the propriety of this limitation, but the very fact of its existence means that the police are deprived of a means which is open to practically all the workers of this country, no matter what their status or grade may be. The Police have not the capacity to"kick up a row": they cannot declare a ban on overtime; they cannot work to rule; they cannot use all those devices which are to the hand of ordinary trade unionists. If they could, it is highly probable that a good deal more notice would be taken of their claims.

I say, with respect, and in the hope that I shall not be misunderstood, that it is very difficult, in matters affecting employment and the question of pay, to separate the merits of the question from the power of the parties to inconvenience one another and perhaps the general public. In my experience, a great deal more notice is taken by the public and by the Government when the organisation representing the people concerned have the power to make things very difficult for the direct employers or for the community or for the Government as the case may be. In my opinion, the mere existence of this limitation in the case of the police should cause us all to refrain from trading upon it. We have to recognise that here is a body of people who are deprived of the normal means of making effective their claims, and se I would hope that the Government of the day will not trade too much on the loyalty and patience that is displayed in these matters by the police.

They have a most unenviable job. Some aspects of their employment, as has been stated, may appear to convey advantages, but those advantages have been consistently relatively reduced. In pre-war days, for instance, the force was up to strength and it was thought to be a job which people should aim at because it had security of tenure and for later life in the shape of a pension. But such advantages have been so widely spread by the policy of full employment, which we all endorse, and by the extension of pension schemes, that the relative advantages the police formerly enjoyed have practically disappeared. Let us not forget that aspect when we are considering this matter.

I will not bore your Lordships by going on any further, but I would say that it is the duty of the Government, if the unanimity displayed in the speeches that have been made to-day is representative of popular feeling, to make substantial and immediate concessions without waiting, for the long-drawn-out procedure of a Royal Commission. It is in that hope that I have risen to take part in this discussion.

5.17 p.m.

LORD PAKENHAM

My Lords, I know that the whole House and the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor himself will have paid particular attention to the words that have just fallen from my noble friend Lord Citrine out of his great weight of experience and background. The noble Lord, Lord Blackford, was altogether too modest about his elevated position in the order of speakers. He suggested that after my noble friend Lord Stonham had spoken a silence might have fallen upon the House, because my noble friend had really said all that could be said on the subject. Apart from his own observations, that might well have proved to be true, but since then we have listened to a series of remarkable speeches, all pointing in the same direction. I cannot recall in fifteen years in your Lordships' House a debate where such a weight of opinion was mobilised in favour of an immediate reform. I am sorry that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice has been compelled to leave the Chamber, because his intervention was one of altogether special significance, and he was supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, who also spoke with great authority.

That is the situation that confronts the noble and learned Viscount this afternoon and I may say confronts the Government still more seriously when he discusses the matter with them and when the Royal Commission give the matter their attention. I think we all appreciate that the noble and learned Viscount can hardly rise this afternoon and say that he has been entirely converted by what has been said and promise an immediate improvement in pay and conditions. That is almost too much to hope for, but before I close shall indicate certain directions in which I hope he will be able to allay our anxieties.

I am entirely in agreement with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice when he said that certainty of arrest is the best of all deterrents. I was not quite sure whether he was going to draw some distinction between those who favoured deterrence and those who favoured reform, but in his absence I assume that he was not drawing distinctions of that kind, and I would agree entirely with all that he said. I have often spoken, as have others from these Benches and from other parts of the House, about the need to improve the lot of the prisoner, and no doubt we shall be speaking on that subject often again in the future, but none of us, I hope, is neglectful of the need to improve the lot of the custodian of order, and I am for that reason especially pleased to be speaking in this debate this evening.

The tasks of the police are always heavy, and perhaps, as has been said by more than one speaker, they are heavier and more complex at the present time than at any other time within living memory. In this country we expect an extraordinarily high degree of service from our Police Force, and provided we do not demand a superhuman merit from human beings who, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, are ordinary people like ourselves, we are not disappointed. An illustration of the particularly high demands we make in this country on our police can be provided, perhaps, from an extract from a brilliant book which I have begun to study, though I cannot say that I have mastered it, Lord Justice Devlin's The Criminal Prosecution in England. There, among other interesting things, he says: … the English system of criminal prosecution is designed for a fundamentally law-abiding country. He goes on to refer to the imposition upon the police of a quasi-judicial function, and he refers to the exacting demands made upon them. He says that they must fight ardently against the criminal and yet they must learn to know when ardour must be subject to restraint. That is the special task which we in this country expect from our police.

Lord Justice Devlin refers to our country as a law-abiding country, and compared to certain other countries that may be true. But a glance at the criminal statistics makes one wonder whether our country is as law-abiding as it was. I do not want to return at any length to the subject which, as the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Leicester, pointed out (and if I may I will refer to his speech in a moment) was, so to speak, eliminated from the Motion, namely, criminal statistics, but perhaps I can remind your Lordships in a sentence of what the criminal statistics add up to. In 1938 there were 283,000 indictable offences known to the police, and in 1958 there were 626,000. That is more than double. Even if we make some allowance for a slight increase in population, I think we can say that, according to the figures, there was twice as much crime in 1958 as in the last pre-war year. In 1959 the figure was slightly higher. (It has not yet been published.) I am informed that the increase was at a slower rate than in 1958; and I am told that at this precise moment the figures are almost stationary. That is the latest information I have been able to obtain. But we must not build too much on that. When the noble and learned Lord, Lord Parker of Waddington, said that crime was going up, he was, of course, proceeding on the last published figures, and it is true that crime has gone up enormously in recent years and might be said to be roughly twice what it was pre-war.

There is, it seems to me, a rather strange reluctance in this country on the part of most people concerned to face the full implications of this increase in crime. Some people do not like to believe that our country could ever, so to speak, settle down at a level of crime like this. Other people, many of them rather of my own persuasion in social and political matters, are inclined to pooh, pooh! the figures. But although it is true that the statistics are open to a great deal of argument and controversy, I feel that the broad conclusion stands out that there is roughly twice as much crime in this country as there was before the war. It is not the result of, as it were, a crime wave, in the sense of something that has blown up in the last two or three years, but of the state of affairs with which we have to live, or with which, at any rate, we have been living more or less in one way or another since the war. That is the position that confronts us.

As the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor knows well, because he was Home Secretary at the time and gave me so many helpful facilities, some years ago I conducted an inquiry, with much expert help, and eventually produced a book on the causes of crime, though it is a small thing compared with the mighty work which covers the same sort of subjects and many others produced by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger. I should like to stress one close connection between the amount of crime and the strength of the police, although I do not think that this is a connection which anyone has yet been able to establish statistically. For example, it is not easy to say that because there has been a special shortage of police in the Metropolitan area crime has been worse in the Metropolitan area. That would not be true. It is easy to trip up, as it were, anybody who tries to establish such a close statistical connection. Yet I am sure myself—we can only speak of our convictions, and I have made what might be called a professional study of these matters—that this shortage of police is the only one of the major causes of crime which could be removed in the near future by official action. There are other causes which we may regard as fundamental. Some of them are very much disputed. People could go on to the end of time arguing as to whether the mother who goes out to work tends to increase the amount of crime, and there are many other factors mentioned. Some are accepted, though here again the connection is difficult to establish.

Here I should like to refer to the powerful speech made by the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Leicester. I feel sure that we all sympathise with him in finding that the subject has been subtly changed since he prepared his remarks. We all admired the way in which he overcame that handicap, and we look forward to hearing from him repeatedly in the future because I have no doubt that he has a great deal to contribute to the life and thought of this House. He stressed his anxiety as to whether to-day we were losing sight, or whether we had at any rate lost sight in recent years, of the fundamental distinction between right and wrong. The right reverend Prelate developed that subject in a way that I should not attempt to emulate, but it was a basic point in his speech.

Are we in this country all clear and prepared to persuade others, to teach our children and the public, that there is this fundamental distinction: that there is an objective difference between right and wrong? I do not want to pursue a subject which aroused a certain amount of controversy when I touched on it once before in a debate on television, although then I was concerned with theology and I am not now bringing in religion at all. Leaving religion on one side, do we feel that it should be regarded as an open question as to whether there is or is not a fundamental distinction? We have heard this treated as an open question by eminent men on the wireless and on television. I know of many people who would say that I would interfere with freedom of thought by raising this issue. But I feel that if we think that this is basic we must ask ourselves whether it can be treated as an open question in any sphere under official control. That is all by the way, but I thought I owed it to the right reverend. Prelate to mention it, in view of the importance of the subject he raised.

Coming back to the question of the police, we see this great increase in crime, which has roughly doubled. What about the police? The noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor is always so fair and gently coercive, if I may so put it, in his arguments, that I found an argument of his some little time ago (I was not present) or, shall I say, a statement of his in Hansard, which I feel he may not wish to press so hard as he seemed to be pressing it then. It occurred in a short debate initiated by the noble Earl, Lord Winterton, on the administration of the police. The Lord Chancellor then stressed the fact that the total strength of the Police Force is greater than it was pre-war. He felt that that was an important point of which the noble Earl, Lord Winterton, had lost sight. If I may so put it to the Lord Chancellor, that is the beginning of the discussion, and I hope that he will have more to say on that topic this afternoon. Taken in that form, it might convey an impression of complacency which I am sure is far from his mind.

According to the latest figures—and one difficulty seems to be that it is not easy to get very late figures for the police—there were on the actual working strength of the police before the war 61,000-odd police officers. According to latest figures I have (the Lord Chancellor may have some later ones), there are now just over 70,000. Those are round figures, and they are about a year old. In round figures the police have increased from perhaps 61,000 to 70,000, which is an increase of one-seventh or so. Meanwhile, crime has doubled. I am not saying that because it doubles you must automatically double the police, but I think we must recognise that if this increase in crime and criminal activity is accepted as a fact, the burden on the police, apart from its complexity, is that much greater. They are dealing with a much more powerful and larger enemy than before the war.

I feel that we have not yet faced as a nation the gravity of the crime figures, and I do not think we have faced the gravity of the shortage of police. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, brought it out in the most striking way, and I do not want to repeat his argument which he put much better than I can do. It is not enough to say:"It is true we are a bit below establishment, but it is not so bad: we are only about 6,000 or so below." It seems to me that the comparison with the establishment is only the smallest part, and the least frightening part, of the comparison that we ought to undertake. I have not come to the House to name a precise figure for the right number of police. But it is obvious that, for the reasons given by the noble Lord, the figure quoted is far below the real figure of police that we require. Therefore, if we say that the police are perhaps 6,000 down on the establishment, and we are content with that, we are only trifling with the problem. We have a serious shortage which becomes all the more serious when it is analysed in the way the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, explained. If I understood him rightly, he told us that 70 per cent. of the Force have less than two years' service. That was the figure I understood the noble Lord to be giving to the House. Whether you look at the figure absolutely, or whether you break it up, you get a terrible problem, and a problem closely related to this appalling increase of crime.

I have spoken long enough, because we all want to hear the Lord Chancellor. I join in a great deal of what has been said about the methods that could be adopted to improve the lot of the police and so attract many more recruits of high quality. I feel—and it is a rather heretical view—that we must look forward to a period when we obtain a certain number of recruits who are regarded as among the ablest members of the community. I do not think it is enough to say that we want men who will make good N.C.Os. If we are going to raise the status of the police to the pitch and height that is required, we have to look even further and higher than that. Those are controversial thoughts, and I do not wish to become involved in difficult questions of how exactly the promotion should be organised and of the whole structure of the police. I wish to stand solidly behind the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and all those noble Lords who have spoken to us with so much force and eloquence to-day. I submit to the Lord Chancellor that, whereas in our debates on crime we have always admitted that the crime figures could not be pinned on the shoulders of any Government, there would come a time when that would cease to be true if the Government did nothing much about improving the lot of the police. Then a terrible responsibility would fall on their shoulders for the appallingly high rate of crime in this country.

5.35 p.m.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I am sure that every one of your Lordships shares my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for choosing this subject for debate to-day. We meet and discuss this subject, if I may put it that way, under the shadow of a Royal Commission. I want to put the approach which seemed to me the most profitable, and I hope the noble Lord will agree. I am quite sure that all the members of the Royal Commission will consider very carefully the speeches that have been made in your Lordships' House to-day and will find them of great interest.

The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, referred to the cynical view associated with the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, that Royal Commissions were really there to buy time. I do not think that on mature thought he would believe that that applied to a question like this. Certainly to me, having studied it carefully for many years, I should have thought it was a question on which it was helpful to get the views, after careful examination, of fresh minds. I do not wish to make an argumentative speech tonight. What I want to do is to show that we are alive to the problems, that we have considered them, and perhaps to extend, on the strength of my own experience, the realisation by noble Lords of their difficulty. It is interesting to note the divergencies that occur. Lord Stonham is against traffic wardens, or indeed the invention—for which I am afraid I was largely responsible—of those people who help schoolchildren across the road. On the other hand, as I understood my noble friend Lord Saltoun, he would have pre ferred traffic to be under the Automobile Association. If he will allow me one Kiplingesque reminder, he did use as an illustration the police in a village that voted the earth was flat. I am sorry that the Liberal Benches are empty at the moment, because the noble Lord will remember that in that excellent story the police were inspired by Sir Thomas Ingell, Bt., the local Liberal M.P., to take their extreme measures against those using the highway at the time. That is an entirely irrelevant digression, but I was so delighted to hear someone refer to one of my favourite stories that I could not resist it.

I would say that it would not be right to embark upon a policy of largely increasing the numbers of the police without considering all the consequences. As my noble friend Lord Blackford pointed out, one of the consequences is financial. I think your Lordships ought to have the background of that part of the problem in mind. In 1938 the cost of the police for Great Britain was about £27 million a year. In 1949, which is the year of the Committee presided over by my noble and learned friend Lord Oaksey—whom I was so glad to see here in the earlier stages of our debate—it was £55 million. In the current financial year it is more than £110 million. That is just over four times the pre-war figure. Of course much of the increase is due to the altered value of the pound, but even when that is taken into account there is, on these figures, a substantial real increase.

My Lords, I am not going into criminal statistics. The noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, reminded us that we have discussed the trends several times, and I think they are broadly in all our minds. Therefore I shall not seek to give the picture again, because I am afraid I have a good deal to say to your Lordships on the immediate point before you. I do say again that it is particularly disappointing that after the fall in criminal statistics—the fall ended in 1954; they were then at a point lower than they had been since the war—they have again risen substantially. I hope that the right reverend Prelate will forgive me if I do not follow him into the causes of crime. Again it is a subject in which this House is intensely interested. We are most grateful for his contribution to the debate, and I should like to add my congratulations to him, not only for the excellence of his speech but for his ready assumption of the responsibility of the Church in that field. I should just like to say to him that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is initiating studies to throw light on to that subject, and I hope that we shall hear more. I should like to return at the end of my speech to the question of the prevention of crime, which is a slightly different facet.

May I respond to what the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, asked me and endeavour to give a clear picture of the present strength of the police? There has been, rightly, much publicity, and much has been said to-day, as to the need for more police, but I do not think that there is a general awareness of the facts. The position is that at the present time there are more police than ever before in our history; and that is true both absolutely and in proportion to the population. Dealing in broad figures, and covering Scotland as well as England and Wales (the difference between my figures and those which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has may be caused by the inclusion of Scotland, but I will give mine which are the inclusive figures) the facts are as follows. In 1938 there were 67,000 police, and to-day there are 80,000. There are now 11,000 more police than there were eight years ago when I first became Home Secretary, and there are 6,000 more police than there were four years ago. In each of the last four years the number of police has increased, never by less than 900 in a year, and in one year by more than 2,500. At the same time, the number of cadets and of ancillary civil staff employed with the police forces has greatly increased. In 1938 there were perhaps 1,000 civilians employed in ancillary capacities in police forces throughout Great Britain; there are now nearly 9,000. In 1938 there were only 500 police cadets; there are now 3,000.

Later on I propose to show—and I need spend little time on that in this House, though I would point out that not everyone agrees with this House—not only that these increases are fully justified but also that in the great conurbations still more police are needed. I do not want anyone to think that I am trying to argue that point; I believe it, and I really feel that we must consider the position a little more care fully and meticulously, in order to see where the problem arises. Believe me, I am not trying to influence the Royal Commission in any way; I am merely trying to give them the opportunity of considering the results of my own experience, for what that is worth. That is the picture, and I think it is fair that your Lordships should have these increases in mind, because, while not making the problem a little one, it does make the picture rather less gloomy than your Lordships might have thought previously.

I want to return for a moment to the need to convince people. There is no need to convince the Government of the need for more police, as I shall show; but not everyone who has looked at this problem has concluded that there should be more police. It is just over two years ago that a Report by the Select Committee on Estimates of the House of Commons was published, and that Committee made many interesting suggestions. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will remember that they recommended that all police establishments should be reviewed, and it is clear, from the way they presented that recommendation that they thought a review might lead to substantial reductions in some cases. May I spend just a little time on that, although I am really swimming with the tide on this point?

The Select Committee drew attention to the main reasons why we must have more police now than in 1938; and these are that the population of the country has increased, crime has increased, and traffic has increased out of all knowledge. These are obvious considerations, but some of the other factors may be less obvious. In the course of his reply my right honourable friend the Home Secretary drew attention to the substantial increase that has taken place in the size of the built-up area of the country. Your Lordships are aware that since the war there has been a great increase in the number of housing estates, in the growth of suburbs of large towns and, of course, in the new towns themselves. I suppose the increase in the number of dwelling-houses is probably about 25 per cent.

I do not know whether your Lordships have had in mind that normally, when a built-up area is extended, a fundamental change is made in the method of policing that area. Speaking very generally, rural areas can be adequately policed by one constable, not on duty the whole time but on call for 24 hours; but a built-up area has normally to be policed continuously throughout the 24 hours, on three eight-hour shifts, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, mentioned; and it follows that three constables are necessary instead of one. Indeed, if I may carry the point a little further, if due allowance is to be made for the leave, training and sickness of these three officers it will be found that quite often four are necessary and not three.

It may be possible to achieve savings in manpower by mechanising beats and by the use of wireless—I am not so pessimistic on that point as I think Lord Stonham appeared to be—but after you have allowed for that compensating factor there is still an immense need for more police. We have to consider that a larger number of police are necessary to do a given task than was the case in 1938, because the constable is, of necessity, absent from his job much more, for many more days than he was 20 years ago. In the first place, annual leave has been increased, and very properly increased: in the second place, Bank Holiday leave, or leave in lieu, is now granted; in the third place, the standard of training to-day requires that officers must attend courses to a far greater extent; and in the fourth place—again I think rightly—the hours of work have been reduced from a six-day week to a five-and-a-half-day week, or rather an eleven-day fortnight. The total effect of these factors again means that more police are required.

The other matter which I should like your Lordships to have in mind is the diversion of beat and patrol officers to specialised but necessary work. We tend to forget that in 1938 many of the criminal investigation departments of the provincial police were in a most rudimentary state, and that in some cases they did not exist at all. Again, I do not want to put it argumentatively, but I do want to put it as my view that there has been a tremendous advance in criminal investigation departments and in the technique of criminal investigation. I am not going to weary your Lordships with figures as to the number of forensic laboratories and things like that, but if your Lordships were to go round the equipment and mechanism of these departments, I think you would find that there has been a tremendous advance. I cannot remember which noble Lord it was—it may have been more than one—who said that the criminal is always a jump ahead. Of course he starts something new. But I should not like your Lordships to think that the police only put a patch where there has been a hole in the net. They are constantly thinking out methods of making the net stronger and more forceful.

So much for the moment for criminal investigation. In 1938 many forces had no traffic departments. Of course, to-day there are large numbers of officers in both criminal investigation and traffic departments throughout the country, and there are other specialised tasks which make demands on police manpower. These developments make the police more effective, but the men must be provided for them. Then one comes to the other point. I see that my noble and learned friends are no longer with us, but I think they would agree, if they were here, that there is a much greater demand for court work. The noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, will now see the junction with another of his subjects—the preparation of pre-trial reports for the courts and, of course, the discovery and proving with great care of previous convictions in order to fit in with the new systems of treatment by corrective training and the new preventive detention.

All this means more work; it all adds to the increase of paper work, which may be one of the most necessary features of modern life but in every field is one of its most depressing characterises. Therefore, I hope your Lordships will agree with me that there are reasonable factors. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary pointed these out to the Select Committee of another place and said that he would not, on the information then before him, be prepared to accept the view that police strength and establishments were, in general, too high. Certainly everything that has been said to-day suggests that my right honourable friend was right in making that answer to the Select Committee of another place.

May I now say a word about current deficiencies? The figure that has been given to me is that there is a deficiency of about 6,500 in present establishments as compared with a deficiency of 2,000 in 1938. That brings us to the second limb of the question: Are the present establishments realistic? So far as England and Wales are concerned, the general conclusion of my right honourable friend is that, leaving the large conurbations out of the picture for the moment, the current establishments are about right in most of the counties and the boroughs. The general picture is that if we could obtain the 6,000 men needed to bring all the forces in England and Wales up to their current establishments, and if we could attract that number of men into the large conurbations, we should have about an adequate number of police.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble and learned Viscount for a moment? Does that mean that in regard to the conurbations the Government are not at present prepared to consider increasing the establishments?

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord did not hear, but I said,"putting the conurbations on one side for the moment." I should like to deal with that. I hope that the noble Lord will interrupt me again if I have not covered the point. The current overall deficiency in England and Wales is one of 7½ per cent., the provincial overall deficiency is about 6 per cent., and the Metropolitan deficiency is just under 14 per cent. Five counties and five boroughs have each more than 50 vacancies. If I may take that figure as a rough index of serious recruiting difficulties, in Scotland the position is better. The overall deficiency there is a little over 4 per cent., and only one force, Glasgow, which is 200 short, has a large deficiency.

Now I come to the problem of London and the other great conurbations. I am glad to say that over the last four years—and that is outside my period, because your Lordships have had to put up with me in the last four years, and therefore it is nothing to do with me—there has been a significant increase in the strength of the Metropolitan Police. In each of these years the strength of the Metropolitan Police has increased by between 200 and 500, giving, as a result, an increase of 1,400. But when that is said, the Metropolitan problem is indeed sufficiently serious. There are still 1,700 fewer male police in the Metropolis than there were in 1938. It is true, of course, that there are two compensating factors. First, there are 400 more women police officers, and some 600 police officers have been replaced by ancillary civilian staff. Nevertheless, there are still substantially fewer police in London than there were twenty years ago, and your Lordships will see the need.

Some of the other large conurbations have similar but smaller problems. One of the most persistent shortages is in Birmingham, which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham mentioned, and the Watch Committee there have recently made known their concern. There are other areas in like situations, but I am glad to say that some of the large cities, such as Leeds and Bristol, appear to have overcome their worst recruiting difficulties. The view I want to put to your Lordships is that although there are a few local shortages elsewhere, the recruiting problem is now very largely one for the conurbations; and while the position outside the conurbations is not too bad, the position in some of the large conurbations is bad. I do not want your Lordships to think I am being at all complacent, but it is helpful to try to distinguish where the heart of the problem is; and in weighing up the situation we have to remember that it is in the large conurbations that crime is most likely to flourish.

In practice, the main responsibility for recruiting rests with the chief constable, and in London with the Commissioner. In the areas where shortages persist every effort has been made, by advertising, and by visiting schools and the Services, to persuade people to join the police. I will not trouble the House with all the details, including films, television, leaflets and posters, but I should like your Lordships to believe (and I should very much like to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham feels about this) that if recruiting has failed to bring sufficient men to the police in the great cities it has not been for want of effort or ingenuity, either in England or in Scotland. Here may I make another very short diversion to say that, like another noble Lord, I am an addict of Dixon of Dock Green. I always enjoy dinner on Saturday night better if I have seen that television show. I believe that it does a great deal of good. It is done in a human way, with interesting stories, and it creates a sympathy not only for the police but for their treatment and the friendship in which they get on with the people in the locality.

I will now ask your Lordships to consider why we have failed to get the recruits, especially in the conurbations. This is what really worries me, and I do not think it can be put on a purely financial basis. I do not know what is Mr. Chuter Ede's view to-day, but I know that when we discussed this in another place when I was Home Secretary (and we had also discussed it when he was Home Secretary before me) we were inclined to agree that the result of a pay rise is an increase in recruiting but a very short-lived one; and I believe that we have to consider some deeper subjects. This is not an excuse for it but I do not believe that the problem is susceptible of so easy a solution.

One of the reasons, of course, is that we are looking for recruits among fairly narrow age limits, and the physical and educational requirements, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, himself has said, are a good deal higher than they are for many forms of employment. I should like to say something about the quality and behaviour. As I understood them, both the noble Lords, Lord Stonham and Lord Chorley, took the view that if we had only one-tenth of 1 per cent. who were offenders—the small figure mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham—that was a sign of a generally very high standard of conduct; and, of course, in 80,000 men we are bound to get a number of"bad hats." I believe the noble Lord gave the figure of sixteen convictions for indictable offences in a year. There will be some"bad hats," of course, as I have said, but the number is remarkably small. I checked this point after the noble Lord had spoken, and we have no evidence of any increase in corruption during the last three years. I know all the arguments on street betting and betting houses very well, because I had to consider that from the other angle; but we have no evidence of any increase in corruption.

The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, dealt with the disciplinary procedure. It has probably been improved, but I introduced the modern form of disciplinary procedure, with the agreement of both the local police authorities and all parts of the Police Force; and I should like the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to consider this point. If there is a criminal offence it is dealt with by an outside body, but for matters that are not criminal offences I believe that we must have our disciplinary body inside the Force. Although I have not refreshed my memory on this matter, and I am speaking from memory, what I had in mind, and what I believe was applied, was that one officer was taken to deal with the formulation and presentation of the offence and the chief constable acted as judge. In some cases the matter would have to go through the watch committee, but one tried to have in the Service itself someone who, for that case, was the prosecutor, so that there would not be the combination of prosecutor and judge which was feared.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble and learned Viscount? I am sorry that I did not make myself clear in my speech. I do not advocate in any way at all any interference with the present procedure in the case of discipline. I believe that to be admirable, and I believe that it would be wholly wrong to attempt to alter it. I was concerned with those cases—it may be a complaint to the Home Secretary—which would, or might, involve criminal offences and criminal prosecutions if they could be proved. I think that complaints of that kind should not be investigated by a police authority. They are not disciplinary complaints.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, broadly I have always understood that what is done is this. If it is a criminal offence it goes outside the disciplinary procedure of the police. I think that if the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has been discussing this problem with the Federation he will know that one of the matters they are always afraid of concerns the way a criminal offence should be dealt with. He will remember Section 40 (I believe it used to be) of the Army Act relating to conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline. A great many people in the Service felt that when a substantive charge could not be brought a charge should be brought under Section 40 and the offender dealt with under that section. The same applies in the Police Force. But if there is a criminal offence, let it stand as such and do not let it slide into the broad category.

I was talking about the age limits and quality. We are really in the position that a large section of the population are ruled out before we start. The second difficulty is this. Whatever improvements in conditions of service are made, a police career will appeal to only a limited number of people. Your Lordships will have in mind the question of hours and so on. I am not going through all the points again, but I was most interested in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Uvedale of North End, because he really raised the same point about wastage as did the Commissioner of Police in his 1958 Report. It is so important that I would ask your Lordships to bear with me while I read a short passage from it: Much of the blame for this"— that was, for the shortage of police, said the Commissioner— has been placed in the public mind upon the inadequate state and rate of recruitment. On the other hand, the rate of recruitment over the last few years has been greater than at any other similar period within the history of the force". My Lords, that is rather a remarkable fact. May I read it again: … the rate of recruitment over the last few years has been greater than at any other similar period within the history of the force: more serious is the rate of wastage. Inevitably a number of men find the pressure of work too great or its nature unpalatable during their training and probationary period, but there is also a greatly increased wastage of other young men in their first five years of service. For this no doubt the high degree of employment at a comparable wage is responsible, coupled with the dislike of many men to submit to the standards of discipline required in the police service and to its hours and conditions of service. The Commissioner goes on to say: This is not so much due in my opinion to the make-up of the present-day recruit who, by and large, has the same standard of loyalty and sense of service as his counterpart in the previous generation, as to the fact that whereas his predecessor came into the force single and during the 1930's was not allowed to marry for four years, over 25 per cent. of the recruits to-day enter the force already married, and many more marry within their first year of service. It is probably the addition of early domestic cares and pulls that is responsible for a large part of this unfortunate wastage. I have always felt that that is so. I felt it for years before the Commissioner issued that Report. If we consider the youngish man and a young wife we realise that if he is in the Police Force he is on call. He has to turn out at night. And if an arrangement is made for him to go to the cinema or to a Friday night dance with friends, and then the time comes and he is called away to do his job, he has no answer. That is one side that has always worried me, and, I think, everyone who has, like myself, been responsible for police forces. I feel that if we could retain the men who now leave in the first five years of their service we should settle our difficulties—I repeat, we should settle our difficulties. But how to do so has not yet been discovered. Of course, improvements in conditions of service—and I will come to the other side of the matter in a moment—may help, but I do not think that our experience in the past years shows that they would solve the problem.

The noble Lord, Lord Citrine, was good enough to tell me that he had to leave to keep an engagement, as he has to be in the chair at a meeting; but he raised the point of the negotiating machinery. Again, I hope your Lordships will not think I am being egotistical—it is not for that purpose that I mention it. But in fact I was responsible for putting the negotiating machinery into its present form. It came into force in 1954. I got it accepted by both the Police Force and the local authorities, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will remember, without any legislation: they accepted it as a voluntary measure. Improvements in conditions of service for the police are negotiated on the Police Council for Great Britain. That body is representative of the police authorities and of all ranks in the Service, and it meets regularly. Of course, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, and the Secretary of State for Scotland, are represented on the official side of the Council. Obviously it would not be right for me to discuss the details of claims of that kind, but it was the best machinery that I could think of.

The noble Lord, Lord Citrine, with his immense experience, made a speech which I shall read again, but as I understood it he said the ordinary trade union procedure and ordinary collective bargaining could not apply in the same way. I am sure he said that, because I listened very carefully. That was the best we could do. But that leaves the other point—and again I think this is the real basis of the troubles of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham—which we have referred to the Commission, and that is the broad principles which should govern the remuneration of the constable, having regard to the nature and extent of police duties and responsibilities and the need to attract and retain an adequate number of recruits with the proper qualifications. I think it was essential to get that broader question examined, and I hope that the Commission will examine it.

Nevertheless, I hope your Lordships do not think that no improvements have been made in the conditions of service in the last few years. Since the Police Council for Great Britain was established six years ago the pay of all ranks in the Service has been increased on four occasions—four occasions in the last six years—and the last increase was in April, 1958. So, my Lords, it was not merely a question of setting up the machinery in order to say,"There is some beautiful machinery." The machinery has been used. There is a further piece of machinery of arbitrators in case the Council disagree, and they have worked on three out of the four occasions I have mentioned.

Your Lordships will appreciate, of course, that, in addition to his pay (and Lord Stonham stated this with complete accuracy), the police officer has a house or a rent allowance which is untaxed; and the rent allowance reimburses, up to a maximum limit for the force in question, the amount of his rent and rates. That allowance has recently been increased by the police authorities, and the House will be interested to know that an effect of the re-assessment has been greatly to increase house-ownership among police officers. Those of your Lordships who are interested in the subject may remember that, in the course of a short debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Winterton just before the Recess, he questioned me about police housing. I had not had any notice of the matter, and I dealt with it to the best of my ability. But again I should like to quote an even shorter passage from the Report of the Commissioner for the same year. On housing he said this: It has been suggested in some quarters that a generous and enlightened housing policy would attract all the recruits required to a police force. There might have been some support for this view in the Metropolis until this current year but there are signs now that the total number of 5,500 married police quarters which the existing programme is designed to bring about, and of which it is only 350 units short, is nearly, if not completely, sufficient. Increased and more realistic rent allowances and the improved housing position have made it possible for policemen to provide their families with houses of their own choice, and this system of police housing always has the advantage of improving public relations as well as providing a high degree of dispersal of loyal policemen who will, if necessary, take action whether on or off duty. I have always thought that that was nearer the ideal. I have often had to ask police authorities, especially in county districts, to put up a clump of houses—really, to make a small village—but I think that all your Lordships will agree with me that ideally we want these policemen spread through the ordinary population.

May I now bore your Lordships with just one or two figures on this point? In 1954, when I left the Home Office—again, I am giving your Lordships figures for which I take no credit at all—there were 1,250 men in the Metropolitan Police District who were waiting for married quarters. By April, 1958, when the higher rates of rent allowances were announced, this number had fallen to 887. By the end of December, 1959, barely four weeks ago, only 308 men were waiting for married quarters, 135 of whom could expect to move into existing quarters before long. That is not a bad position. On the total, we have only 350 short out of 5,500; and there are only 173 who are waiting for quarters. There is one curious point here, and I wonder whether the researches of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, have led him to the same result. Of course, everyone wants to do the best he can in housing in every way. Curiously enough, our diagnosis at the Home Office is that the provision of houses has had little effect on recruitment; and it is significant that some forces practically at full strength have provided very few houses, while others with shortages of men have houses to spare. That is just one of those mysteries which come into a question of this kind. Indeed, broadly speaking, in England and Wales no restriction has been put on the building of houses for the police, and the police authorities have used this freedom to provide, often with the help of the housing authority, all the houses necessary to meet the reasonable needs of their forces.

There is one other major improvement in the conditions of service. In the autumn of 1955 the Police Council reached an agreement for the provision of what is known as the additional rest day. As a result, police officers work five and a half days a week, or eleven days a fortnight. That change has already been introduced in about 60 per cent. of the forces. I want, however, to face up to the result. The effect of the deduction in police working hours which has so far taken place is equivalent to a reduction of about 3,000 in the numbers of the police. That has been more than made up by the increase of about 6,500 that has taken place over the last four years; and I am quite sure that the reduction in hours was a proper one, and that as a result we get better work out of people. But it is quite a solemn thought that the reduction of hours is equivalent to reducing the number by 3,000.

My Lords, may I turn now—and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will agree with me—to what is really one of the bright spots, and that is the question of the cadets. I told your Lordships that there were only 500 before the war and that now there are 3,000. The number continues to rise steadily, and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has plans to increase substantially the number of cadets in his force. The Select Committee on Estimates recommended the expansion of the cadet system, and my right honourable friend has brought this to the attention of the police authorities. If any of your Lordships are doubtful about police cadets, and share my love for Dixon of Dock Green, the Scottish character—a countryman of Lord Saltoun and myself—Cadet McPherson, is the cadet in that well-known television programme. Now I think your Lordships will agree that we are not being unreasonable in expecting that the rate of wastage among those who have come into the Force from being cadets will probably be less. I think that is a reasonable hope, and we have evidence to show that it is so. We hope, therefore, that they will have some effect.

There is another reason—it is a rather statistical one—for hope. We lose something like 2,000 officers a year on pension, and a large proportion of them go out after 25 years' service. No officers were recruited from the end of 1939 until 1945. It follows that, from the end of 1964 to 1970, there should be an abnormally small number of retirements, and that fact should help us substantially. But, my Lords, we do not need the men in five years' time: we need them now—I want to make that quite clear—and it would be wrong to sit down and wait for this factor to come into play. The other factor which I think will help us is that in a short time we move into what statisticians call the little bulge. That is not the bulge in the birthrate after the end of the war, but the little bulge that occurred in 1942 for the rest of the war. There again, as a good many come in at the age of nineteen, the number available, providing the proportion remains the same, will be greater. Again, it would be idle to hope that this will conclude all our difficulties.

I hope that have given your Lordships the grounds on which I feel that there is no one solution to this problem. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has said that he thought that the idea of an Interim Report was an interesting one. I am sure that the Royal Commission will consider it. I am sure that that factor will be under constant consideration by everyone concerned. But I wish that other people would come forward with other ideas. I try to work out all the methods by which we can attract recruits. I do not believe that it is entirely a matter of £ s. d. I am not sure that we shall not need to make an appeal to ordinary people, as the right reverend Prelate suggested, to make a sign of living a good life by not falling into crime.

We may well have to make an appeal on a high level for people to volunteer for this service. I am not ruling out the suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham—do not let him misunderstand me—but I do ask your Lordships to bear this in mind. I do not think that the population of this country for the remaining 40 years of the twentieth century is going to view everything on a material basis, and it may well be that there are other ways by which we can make an appeal for service in this field, as has been done in many others. I throw this out only as a suggestion, and I will tell your Lordships why. One of the most experienced police officers I have ever known, who is not in the force now, suggested to Sir Winston Churchill years ago that an appeal should be made on the basis of duty. It is interesting that someone who had spent his life in the police thought that it was not a matter of material benefits only. I do not want anyone to think that this is trying to get out of the matter. The material side is something we think should be considered both in principle and in practice.

I think it would be absolutely hopeless if we were to take the view that the prevention of crime is a matter for the police alone. And here I come back to another aspect of the right reverend Prelate's speech. The problem is far too big for any one Service to deal with, although, of course, the police have the biggest part to play. Their presence prevents crime and, as we have heard from my noble and learned friend the Lord Chief Justice and others, a high rate of detection is a powerful deterrent. If I appeared to be distressed, I hope that my noble friend Lord Saltoun will not hold it against me. I have said various silly things in my life, but I have no recollection of saying, and I hope I did not say, anything quite so silly as what I seem to have conveyed to my noble friend. I should like to give him my own view on that point. There are two aspects of it. One is that we hear a great deal to-day of the duty that the police owe to the public—and I am all for it—but we do not hear enough of the duty that the public owe to the police.

In this country the system of law and order has been built up on the principle that law enforcement is a matter for the citizen, who has a legal duty to help to preserve the Queen's Peace. The constitution and organisation of our Police Force and the extent of the powers we give police officers are all founded on the assumption that the police officer, as a citizen, can look to other citizens to help him in his duty. A free society, such as ours, can flourish only if its members are ready to discharge their responsibilities, and as ready to discharge their responsibilities as they are to claim their rights. Their primary responsibility is to preserve the Queen's Peace. I hope that my noble friend Lord Saltoun has no doubt at all about my views.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Viscount for that statement. I should like to add one other thing. Is it not equally the duty of private citizens who seek to maintain the law to call on the police to aid them?

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

Certainly, my Lords.

LORD SALTOUN

May I add one thing? Would it not stimulate recruiting if the danger of a policeman's life was made quite clear?

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, you will only get people for this job who are prepared to contemplate the danger. I am not sure that we want anyone who worries too much over the danger. I must say that the fellows I saw at the passing out of the training schools were good and courageous men and I do not think that they would be too worried.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, I think that my noble and learned friend misunderstood me. I was suggesting that if we make the danger quite clear, we shall get people coming forward more readily.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, my noble friend and I are entirely ad idem on every point, and I am very glad. I am sorry to have detained your Lordships so long, but this is a vitally important matter. We must do all we can to encourage the police and show them that they have our support.

If your Lordships will allow me one other personal recollection, may I say that I am proud of the fact that I was the first Home Secretary in 130 years to recommend a policeman for the Commissionership of the Metropolitan Police. Before that, the Commissioners had always been brought from other Services. As your Lordships can see, I have the greatest admiration for and sympathy with the Police Force. Again, I must come back to the speech of the right reverend Prelate. Even if we do this, we shall not have done enough. There are many others who have their part to play—the courts of law, the teachers, the general public and, probably competing for the first place, the parents and the Churches. Unless all these fulfil their responsibilities we shall not solve the problem. Let us not think that any one Service, however important and however much we want to do for it, can bear the burdens of the whole community.

6.40 p.m.

LORD STONHAM

My Lords, I realise that I should be extremely foolish and unpopular if I were to detain your Lordships for long, but I should like to thank those who have taken part in what I believe to have been a most useful debate. We have had twelve speeches, all of which, in my view, will be of value to the Royal Commission, who I hope will study this debate and at least get some ideas from it. In a debate of this quality it would be invidious for me to make many comments, but I hope that I may be allowed just two.

The first is in the form of an apology to the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Leicester, who made what I thought was an outstanding maiden speech. My noble friend Lord Pakenham said that in fifteen years in your Lordships' House he had not previously known a debate which showed such unanimity in supporting the case for an increase in the wages of the police. I feel that it is my fault that the right reverend Prelate somewhat disturbed that unanimity, in that he had prepared another speech on a different subject. On a previous occasion when I moved a Motion there was a notable maiden speech, but I had then taken the precaution not only of informing the noble Lord of the subject but also of telling him what I was going to say, and on that occasion we did get complete unanimity. I am sure that, with his eloquence, which inevitably reveals him as a son of Wales, and the manner in which he presented his case, which also gives some indication of his work as head of the religious division at the Ministry of Information, there would have been unanimity if he had known previously what I was going to talk about.

The noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack has made a speech which, as always, has been full of courtesy, comprehensive and brimful of information, which of course will repay study again and again; and I, for one, am grateful to him for it. I must say, however, though I appreciate the difficulties of his position that what he has said, in so far as I have been able to assimilate it, has done nothing to relieve the anxieties that have been expressed in this debate. We have had from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Parker of Waddington, the Lord Chief Justice, an expression of opinion as definite as that this matter of pay"brooks no delay"; and similar observations have come from all parts of the House. I feel sure that, when the debate is read and studied, when the arguments and facts which have been put forward throughout the debate with regard to the extreme shortage and the great need are weighed, and against them are put the facts which have been put forward by the Lord Chancellor, the case will have been established. It seems to me inevitable that the Government, even without a recommendation from the Royal Commission (although I hope that such a recommendation will come, and will come soon) will have to take action in the matter. It is in the belief that as the evidence has been presented it will be studied and will be useful that I think this debate has justified its purpose. I am grateful to all those who have taken part in it, and I now ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.