HL Deb 12 July 1976 vol 373 cc16-31

3.12 p.m.

Report received.

Viscount MONCK moved Amendment No. 1: Page 3, line 44, after ("direct") insert ("that a member of the Police Complaints Board, not being a member who was concerned with the case under this section, shall be present throughout the hearing of those charges and").

The noble Viscount said: My Lords, with the kind permission of your Lordships, I should like to speak to Amendments Nos. 1 to 7 together; they are all related. During the Second Reading both the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and my noble friend Lord Nunburnholme paid tribute to Sir Robert Mark, and my noble friend Lord Nunburnholme said that it appears that Sir Robert Mark wants nothing to do with this Bill. I stand second to none in my admiration for Sir Robert Mark, but I also have the fullest admiration for those chief constables whom I know and have known, who are many, though as Jacob said, from the Book of Genesis, Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been. As your Lordships are aware, he was aged 147 at the time.

Let us come to this question of discipline and authority. This was referred to very forcefully in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, and also by my noble friend Lord Amory. I venture to suggest to your Lordships that next to national defence the most important matter in our lives is the protection of the person, a matter which lies in the hands of the police, and in the pursuit of which they frequently put at risk the loss of life or limb on their part. I submit that in no other country in the world does the general public—and that means us—have more, or as much, confidence in their police force than in the United Kingdom. They are a wonderful body of men and women. But to ensure that they continue to maintain the confidence of the general public it is essential that they should be subject to strict, though fair, discipline.

The police forces in the United Kingdom have their commanding officers, the chief constables and the chief officers, on whom at present lies the responsibility of ensuring that discipline is maintained. Here I would remind your Lordships that a chief constable or chief of police can be dismissed by his police authority, though he has a right of appeal to the Home Secretary, and the Home Secretary has power to tell the police authority that it must dismiss its chief constable. But what does Clause 4 state? It states that in a disciplinary charge there shall be a tribunal consisting of the chief officer of police and two members of the Police Complaints Board, and that the question of guilt or otherwise may be a majority decision. Therefore, a chief officer of police, the commanding officer of his force, could be compelled to declare a member of his force innocent when he firmly believes him guilty, or worse still, to declare him guilty when he firmly believes him innocent.

What happens to the authority and the morale of a chief officer of police in such a case? If we introduce this principle into the police, where is it going to end? Would it not possibly become the thin end of the wedge? Might it be introduced into the Army, when a sentence of 28 days CB—to which the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, referred in Committee, and which I am sure he never got in the Tank Corps—would be decided not by the commanding officer but by a majority vote of the commanding officer and two district councillors?

I have already referred to the fact that, under the present position, a chief constable or chief of police can be dismissed. My Amendments to Clauses 3 and 4 provide for a member of the Police Complaints Board to be present at a disciplinary charge, to put any questions to witnesses and to tell the chief officer of police his opinion. If a member of the Police Complaints Board considers that a chief officer of police has made wrong decisions he can go to the Home Secretary and say, "Look, old boy …", or if he is seeing the noble Lord, Lord Harris, "Look, my Lord, Mr. X must go, or at least receive a severe raspberry". I beg to move.

3.17 p.m.

Lord WIGODER

My Lords, may I suggest to your Lordships' House that this group of Amendments, moved so persuasively by the noble Viscount, should be approached with some considerable caution and hesitation, because the combined effect of this group of Amendments will be, will it not, to destroy the rather delicate balance which has been achieved in this Bill in the course of its long progress in the other place and its progress so far in your Lordships' House? This Bill is clearly a compromise. It is not necessarily any the worse for that, and I think it should perhaps be accepted as being that, a compromise. There are those who believe, with complete justification, that the present system, leaving every aspect of discipline in the hands of the police force itself, works with great efficiency and great fairness and has done a great deal to contribute towards the standing of the police. There is that view on the one hand. On the other hand, there is the view that, however efficient the present system might be, there is a particular public concern about the integrity of the police force, and it is important that the confidence of those who complain should not be undermined, if their complaints are dismissed, however rightly they may be dismissed, by the belief that they are in fact dismissed because the tribunal that deals with them is one that consists of representatives of the very force or a similar force, the very body against whom they are complaining.

In those circumstances, the balance that has been achieved so far in this Bill is this, is it not? First, that in a very large variety of situations the chief officer of police will still be primarily responsible for discipline. He will be responsible for investigating reports; he will be responsible for considering them, for preparing charges, for conducting disciplinary hearings, and for awarding punishment, if that be necessary. That is so in the very large majority of cases. What Clauses 3 and 4 seek to provide—which would be amended out of all recognition, if I may say so, by the Amendments of the noble Viscount—is that in certain very limited situations there should be tribunals set up where the chief officer of police should be assisted by two members of the Board.

The circumstances are only these: first, that under Clause 3(5) a tribunal may be ordered of that nature where there are exceptional circumstances. As I understand it, that means where there is a matter of particular notoriety, of particular gravity, or perhaps of particular complexity affecting the behaviour of certain police officers. I cannot believe that chief officers of police would do other than welcome the assistance in those circumstances of two members of the Board in dealing with a particularly difficult inquiry of that nature.

The other circumstance in which a tribunal may be ordered is perhaps a more difficult one to consider; that is, under Clause 3(2), where the chief officer of police has decided not to prefer disciplinary charges and the Board are of the view that disciplinary charges should be preferred. I suggest that that is an occurrence that is likely to be extraordinarily rare. All of us who have ever taken part in the disciplinary bodies of our own professions know perfectly well that no one is more keen to ensure the high standards of members of a profession than the bodies that are composed of that profession and are trying to administer its discipline. I find it almost impossible to concieve that a situation will occur with any regularity at all in which a chief officer of police decides that charges are not to be preferred and yet the Board decides, after consultation, to overrule him and nevertheless to direct that charges should be preferred.

In those wholly exceptional circumstances the Bill provides that there should be this tribunal consisting of a chief officer of police and two members of the Board. Again, it seems to me to be an integral part of the compromise that has been reached that, in that very unusual situation, the matter might be dealt with in that way to give confidence to the public that all sides of the matter, and in particular the public interest, is being properly represented on those occasions. On the grounds that these Amendments will very much impair a balance that has been rather precariously arrived at after protracted discussion in both Houses, I venture to hope that the noble Viscount will not press these Amendments.

3.23 p.m.

Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS

My Lords, I an looking forward to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, telling us who is not going to like this group of Amendments, other than possibly himself, because it has run through all the debates on this Bill that whenever anybody seeks to change even quite small details of the Bill it has been suggested by the noble Lord opposite that one or other of the parties to the compromise, to which the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has rightly referred, would find the particular suggestion unacceptable.

I am grateful to the noble Lord for setting out extremely clearly, and I think entirely correctly, what the situation would be. I should like to explain—and this is no surprise to my noble friend Lord Monck—why it is that I am a little disquieted by these Amendments, though my personal disquiet should not be taken in any way as advice to my noble friends if they do not wish to think on the same lines as I do. I think that we on this side of the House would like to decide this entirely on the merits of the argument, and I should not be in any way offended if they all, with one accord, disagreed with me.

The way I look at it is this: we should be very careful in approaching this group of Amendments because I believe I am right in thinking that they emanate from the chief officers themselves. If they do, they have gone a long way from the position at which they left it at the end of the working paper. If they have suggested to my noble friend the form of these Amendments, what they have done is abandoned the idea of the second Ombudsman-type machinery altogether and they are content that the independent element should be inserted into the disciplinary machinery under the Police Act itself. This is a substantial change.

I am not sure, all the same—bearing fully in mind what my noble friend has said about the supreme importance in the police force of the chief constable's disciplinary control and his ability to run and to be the centre of, and in charge of, the whole of his force—that this would not go a little too far in the way of taking from the Police Complaints Board the public confidence which I hope will repose in it. I do not, any more than the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, envisage the tribunals under Clause 4 happening all that often. I believe that the majority of the work, and certainly the majority of the physical work of the members of the Board, will not be their investigatory powers but their overlooking of all the complaints which go through the disciplinary machinery under the Police Act.

This will be a substantial job, and their influence will very largely be made known in the police forces in that way, and their role in upholding the public interest, and, to some extent, the interests of complainants, will lie in that fact; that is, merely the fact that they are there and looking at every complaint which comes in which does not go to the Director of Public Prosecutions, or is withdrawn by the complainant. Therefore, the actual tribunal, though very important, will be a much more occasional and rare occurrence for them to assert their influence. When it happens, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has said, it is likely to be a fairly important occasion. The difficulty about leaving it with the two independent members simply as assessors, which is the result of this set of Amendments, would be that the public would never know what effect had been achieved by putting the independent members in this position at all.

We discussed in Committee what the procedure would be: it is to be in private. I suppose the only member of the public who is likely to know the outcome is the complainant. He alone will discover what has happened. But I do not suppose that even he will know what went on after the end of the evidence and when, under this Amendment, the two assessors from, the Board and the chief constable were applying their minds to what happened. If even he does not know whether both the assessors perhaps disagreed with the outcome and were overruled by the chief constable, I believe that the opportunity to impress the public with the usefulness of this Bill will be damaged.

After all, this Bill has been given a Second Reading. It was given a Second Reading with my noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham showing that he rather begrudged the machinery that had been put in; but nevertheless it has been given a Second Reading. I am afraid that if we go this far the public will never know whether they can really trust this Bill as having set up a satisfactory piece of machinery whereby the two members of the Board could, if necessary, overrule the chief constable either way, as my noble friend says.

The realities are much more important. I should have thought it inconceivable that, in any but a minute number of cases, there would be any question of a majority verdict being reached. I imagine that the people who are going to be put on a Police Complaints Board will be of high calibre, and I do not imagine that they will be so thick that they cannot understand the elements of the charge, or indeed, after a little while at any rate, the nuances of police disciplinary machinery and the way the police force works.

I should have thought that it was fanciful to suppose that, in more than a minute number of cases, there would be anything other than a unanimous verdict taking place, and if that is so there will be no trouble. When it does not take place, I am afraid that the only way in which a secret tribunal can be acceptable by the public as having an effective independent element is if, at any rate in theory, the chief officer of police could be overruled. For those reasons I personally find it very difficult to accept these Amendments but, as I said, I do not want to discourage any of my noble friends from listening most carefully to the persuasive arguments of my noble friend Lord Monck and anybody else who wishes to speak in his favour.

3.30 p.m.

The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich)

My Lords, the House will not be altogether surprised to learn that I share the view just expressed by the noble Viscount, who, during the discussion of an Amendment which he moved in Committee, foreshadowed the position he has taken today, and I will set before the House the arguments why the Government find these Amendments objectionable as a matter of principle. But before going into the central feature of the argument, I will deal with the analogy of the Armed Services. The noble Viscount thought that this might be the forerunner of some legislation in which commanding officers could be overruled in some form of court-martial. That is, as he will no doubt agree, a slightly fanciful anxiety because what we are talking about so far as this Bill is concerned is complaints by members of the public against police officers; we are not talking about the internal disciplinary machinery of the Police Service where, say, a policeman is proceeded against under the disciplinary regulations for not carrying out an order given him by his superior. That is a parallel which I would accept immediately so far as the Armed Services are concerned, but that situation is in no way covered by the Bill; here we are talking exclusively about complaints by members of the public against police officers and, with respect, there is no parallel with the Armed Services.

There are, as I have indicated, substantial differences between the noble Viscount and the Government on this matter and, while I do not want to weary the House, I will go through the point which was made with great force by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, when he discussed the circumstances in which a tribunal would be set up in the first place. There are two such reasons for setting up a tribunal. The first is where there are exceptional circumstances—and I would agree with Lord Wigoder almost precisely in the formulation of the argument he put; there will be a minority of such cases and they will be decided on by the Board with, I think, some proper hesitation—concerning the public interest, where it is, in the judgment of the Board, desirable to have a tribunal. But, secondly, there will be the other set of cases—and I again agree with Lord Wigoder, in that I think there will be few of them—where the Board decides that the deputy chief constable is wrong in not preferring disciplinary charges against the police officer. I repeat that I think there will be few such cases, but they could arise and we obviously have to consider the situation when they do arise.

It is our judgment that, in the circumstances I have outlined, the right procedure is the one set out in the Bill, which is that the tribunal should consist of the chief officer of the force concerned together with two members of the Complaints Board. They would all—that is, the three of them—decide on the question of guilt or innocence, but on a finding of guilt the chief constable alone would decide on the punishment. What does the noble Viscount say in his Amendments? He says essentially that there should indeed be present a member of the Board who could ask questions and address the chief officer, but that is all; that would be his only function at a tribunal hearing. We have to ask ourselves whether we could possibly accept a procedure of that kind for the two types of case I have outlined to the House: first, the case where the Board has directed that disciplinary action should be taken following a decision by the deputy chief constable not to prosecute the officer concerned under the disciplinary regulations. I must put it to the House that there are, I suspect, very few Members even of this House who, in a situation of that kind at a tribunal hearing as a complainant—where they would know that the Board had over-ruled the deputy chief constable on whether proceedings should be brought against a particular officer—confronted with a tribunal with only the chief officer deciding the question of guilt or innocence, admittedly with a member of the Board present to ask questions, would really believe that in all the circumstances justice would have been done.

Then there is the second type of case where the Board has certified that there are such exceptional factors in a case that there should be a tribunal hearing. Again, it seems wholly inappropriate that in a case of that sort—I repeat, I do not believe that there will be a large number of such cases, but I assure the House that I see cases of that sort coming across my table as a Minister, and they sometimes raise very serious issues—when we are changing, as we are in this Bill, the machinery of complaints against the police, we should have a situation where, even though the Board is satisfied that there are exceptional factors in the case, the only consequence of so certifying would be that one member of the Police Complaints Board could attend, ask the odd question, address the chief constable, and that would be the end of the matter.

I do not think that that would be right and I come back to a particular point which is not unimportant. This argument about the machinery of complaints against the police has been going on for many years, certainly for seven or eight at the very least, and some would no doubt argue for longer still. It is now essential to bring this argument to a conclusion. It does not serve the interest of anyone, inside or outside the Police Service, to have this long and now, frankly, debilitating argument continuing year after year. We have done our best in the Bill to be fair to all concerned, to the public interest but also to the members of the Police Service, and I must tell the House bluntly that I fear that if Amendments of this kind were to be written into the law, after the passage of the Bill we should have a situation where a very substantial argument would continue as to whether the machinery was really adequate. It is for those reasons that I very much hope that the noble Viscount will decide not to press the Amendment.

Lord HALE

My Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, as I understand it, asked for the whole of his Amendments up to Clause 7 to be taken together and that the Question put from the Chair—That Clause 3 shall stand part of the Bill?—is in accordance with the Rules of the House and does not eliminate the other Questions being put without further discussion unless somebody seeks it. I am extremely reluctant to intervene in this discussion, but I must say that the last words of my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich were a little inhibiting when he referred to a "debilitating argument". I had three years of this. The Royal Commission was set up primarily on this very point. It was set up at a time when two or three chief constables were under personal prosecution for malfeasance, for crime, and when another place had spent an immense amount of time discussing the question whether or not two Scots boys had had their backsides kicked by a policeman, which finally resulted in the Prime Minister himself moving the setting up of a Tribunal of Inquiry. I, who had said that I would never support a Tribunal of Inquiry again, spoke in support of it because at that stage of the proceedings nobody had ever thought of listening to what the police had to say.

Nobody had heard what the police had had to say and the whole Press, the country and the two Houses of Parliament had heard the allegations against the police which, when the Tribunal was held, proved to be a little evanescent. So we were in difficulties and, after sitting for four years, we produced in 1962 22 proposals for dealing with complaints against the police. After long and earnest argument, we tried to accept the police point of view that, in the main, the original complaints should be dealt with by police officers. Of course, there were admirable precedents of police investigations.

I have tried to follow this debate. I certainly do not say that I understand all the noble Viscount's Amendments. I was certainly interested in Amendment No. 5, which, I take it, is under discussion now. I am rather surprised that the noble Lord on the Front Bench did not refer to it specifically or explain it. I start always from the point of view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder: I am very much biased in favour of the police. I have had to live with them. I have been pinched by them more than once, so I can be said at least to be free from any obvious bias. However, I know the difficulties and I should have thought that all of us would be very reluctant to embark upon steps which might embarrass them or cause disaffection at a time when the police are performing deeds of very great heroism and where a junior member of a disciplined force may nevertheless be called upon—and this is one of the inherent and inevitable problems—to make a decision upon which many lives may depend. He may be called upon to do so without advice, almost without reflection, almost instinctively doing what is necessary for the major task of preserving life. These are not circumstances in which one wishes to dot the i's and cross the t's.

I apologise to the House if, at an advanced age, I have failed fully to understand all the points which have been argued. However, eight days ago, the Sunday Times referred to a case of a type which I, as a member of the Royal Commission, had never heard of before and did not know could arise. That was a case in which a complaint had been made by a young stable boy of an assault by the police in the course of an investigation which, if I read the paper correctly, did not result in any proceedings being brought. I am not concerned with the surrounding circumstances, but I am concerned with the fact that, helped by the Stable Boys' Association and others, the boy brought proceedings for damages against two police officers; that the case went, after some considerable delay, to the High Court; that the boy was represented by a well-known firm of solicitors, and the police, on the instructions of the local police authority, by a no less distinguished advocate than the former Attorney General. I think it right to mention his name, because there is more than one former Attorney General. So if I may do so without being called to order, I shall say that it was Sir Peter Rawlinson.

At the end of two days, despite the determination of the police authorities to support their officers in full, a settlement was arrived at by which £2,500 was to be paid out of public funds as damages to the boy. It was then disclosed that there had been no interviews with the boy by any investigating authority at any time; that no inquiries had been made in any way adequate to the strength of his case, but that, under a procedure which I had never heard of—and I have no doubt that that was my ignorance—the two police officers had been given an indemnity in advance of any inquiry. They had been assured that no proceedings would be taken against them—and Heaven knows! I do not want any proceedings to be taken against anybody on small matters—and had been guaranteed their costs in advance of the inquiry, and that was done with the consent of the Home Office. I understand from what was said in the Sunday Times that it is also said that the Home Office has been refusing to answer questions about the details of the matter.

The police have a complete indemnity, so it is no use bringing any disciplinary proceedings, and an estimated £17,000 costs will be paid out of public funds. I know that these incidents sound much more serious when they are discussed here than they may appear at the time to those who are handling all the day-to-day difficulties of conducting a police force—in this case, the First Lancashire and Merseyside Force. It is quite true that the officer who gave the indemnity is— if the Sunday Times was right; and one can quote a long and detailed exposition which at least merits respectful attention—the Chief Inspector of Constabulary for the country and a very well-known and respected personality.

All of us make mistakes, and I probably more than most, but it seems to me that, at this stage, the noble Lord who spoke from the Front Bench ought at least to make it clear that, somewhere in the verbiage of this Act, that procedure is abolished forever and that there is something which states specifically that indemnities cannot be given in advance of an inquiry, and that we are not setting up a tribunal which can be hamstrung by a unilateral—the noble and learned Lord shook his head when I suggested that they had had permission from the Home Office and I accept that there is a possibility of misunderstanding and that I may have been misled or have misled myself.

Is there anything to prevent the chief constable from giving an indemnity before the inquiry starts? There is, as I understand it, provision for postponing an inquiry pending litigation and for the inquiry not to be embarked upon until the litigation has been concluded. There seem very strong reasons for that in the kind of case I am speaking of and I know that, in this sort of field, when one quotes a single case one is apt to overlook the great difficulty of applying general principles to a whole mass of unenvisaged cases which may arise in the case of police procedure. In these circumstances, not desiring a prosecution and not at all desiring to embarrass a force which has twice in my lifetime passed through a terrible period of crisis, I still rely on the fact that the figure given was one complaint for about 40,000 hours of each police activity and that the absence of complaints was one of the great tributes.

I agree, too, that Sir Robert Mark took over at a time of very real crisis and that the measures he has taken, without any excessive publicity, have probably removed some very dangerous elements from the force. Probably this has been done in the best and most effective way possible. But I still feel that we ought not to hurry discussion of this matter while such questions may remain, even if they be only in my mind.

3.51 p.m.

Baroness WARD of NORTH TYNE-SIDE

My Lords, I find this a very difficult Bill. I also find it difficult to come to a conclusion about the Amendments. When we last discussed the Bill I said that I had been a magistrate for very many years, but I have had no legal training and it is very difficult indeed for an ordinary magistrate to make a contribution in this matter. I fully accept that in another place, and presumably in your Lordships' House, there have been discussions for years, quite rightly, to try to provide adequate machinery for complaints against the police. The Minister, in replying to the Amendment, kept on saying, quite rightly, that this was in the interests of the public. But on the other hand, I have found during my 38½ years in another place, that when new legislation is coming forward, the Minister introducing it, whoever he may be, is often so excited about having won a point—he keeps on referring to the legislation which he has the privilege of introducing—that he forgets the other side of the question. I noticed that today the Minister, in replying to the Amendment, kept on saying that it was a matter of convincing the public that the system was a good one in terms of dealing with complaints from the public. I agree with that. But on the other hand I do not want us to be too pro public because nowadays there are many members of the public who, if they had the chance, would make unjustified complaints against the police.

Therefore, it is equally important that the police should be protected at every level. If we are discussing building up a system by which the public has the right to make complaints, we should not become so concerned with this that we are not equally certain that the police also are properly protected. I noticed, with a certain amount of interest, that the Minister kept on saying that he was absolutely certain that there will not be many cases of the type which were being discussed, but I do not know on what evidence he said that because he did not give us any evidence. There may not be many cases which would finally come to be discussed by the Board which is to deal with the public's complaints. But I think it is a little unfortunate to give the public an impression that for years and years it has not been able to make complaints against the police because that seems to indicate that there have been so many cases in which complaints against the police ought to have been made. I would not accept that view, because looking at the world today, and looking particularly at what goes on in London—though not in my part of the world—I can imagine that there will be masses of people who will be only too glad to make complaints against the police.

What worries me is that we have spoken about Sir Robert Mark and about chief constables and deputy chief constables, yet I do not think that your Lordships' House has been given enough detail about what the top people in the police force really feel about this matter. I do not want to be involved in passing a Bill of this kind, which gives reasonable protection to those members of the public who have just complaints—and I think that is fair—without knowing considerably more about the situation. I should like the Minister to give us information about what chief constables, deputy chief constables, Sir Robert Mark, and all those other people really think about this. I hate taking decisions when I do not feel that I have enough information. It may be awfully boring for everybody, but I like to know as many facts as possible. The Minister was very busy talking about building up a system to deal with the public who have complaints to make, but with great respect to him I do not think that he said enough about the protection of the police against false complaints. Perhaps he will be able to give us a little more information about this before I make up my mind which way to vote.

I am delighted to know that there are free votes. I say this bearing in mind that when I was in another place (and perhaps it is also the case in this House) there were not many Members who had been magistrates. I dare say that there are more magistrates in this House than in the Commons, but when I was there there were very few. Magistrates have to look after the interests of the public, including complaints from the public, but they also have to look after the interests of the police.

One can always pick up a lot of information when Bills of this kind come before another place or this House, but in this case I have been unable to find out how the whole machinery which is proposed in the Bill is regarded by the police, particularly the top people in the force. I am not prepared to give my vote one way or the other until I have a little more information about how the police themselves look upon the machinery which is to be provided. I do not want to say anything more because this is an awfully difficult situation when one has been a magistrate without having had any legal background. But I have found in my part of the world that the police were really the friends of the people, but from what I see in London today, I believe that there would be many people who would be only too glad to have a go at the police, whether or not they were justified.