Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2022-05-12
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Hastings (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, at Oral Questions in this House on 9 November 2020, my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham asked for the third time when Her Majesty’s Government planned to announce the chair, the timeframe and the terms of reference for a royal commission on criminal justice. The now disappeared noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, replied that "the Government remain committed to establishing a royal commission on criminal justice."—[Official Report, 9/11/20; col. 798.] That was of course promised in the manifesto in 2019 and committed in the gracious Speech of December 2019. On 7 July, the Law Society Gazette reported that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, our great friend who stood down on right principle, said that the Government "are absolutely committed to the delivery of this key manifesto pledge." We still have not seen it. Can the Minister put all of us who have been interested in this subject out of our misery and tell us whether a royal commission on criminal justice will or will not happen? If it is not going to happen, can he please tell us, so that we can stop fretting about it? If it is going to happen, there is not a lot of parliamentary time left in this Government’s tenure, so when might it happen and how might it report This is incredibly important to those of us who care about not just victims but perpetrators. The Government say an awful lot about wanting to ensure that our streets are safer, and that the police are the ones who should make our streets safer. After 35 years as founder and chairman of Crime Concern and founder and vice-president of Catch22, I venture to suggest that it is not the police who make our streets safer; it is the public, who desist from crime and who look after one another in communities and neighbourhoods, who make our streets safer. The police often arrive after the event; it is before the event that we must be primarily concerned with, not after it, when holding inquiries In opening this debate, the Minister stated that this gracious Speech and its prospective legislation were about issues that matter to the people of the United Kingdom. That includes fighting crime. However, it seems that one section of the people of the United Kingdom do not matter. We have already heard the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, who is no longer in his place, defend stop and search, saying that it is up by 22%. Those of us who are connected to the communities most affected by stop and search, notably black people, will tell you that it is a hapless injustice and has destroyed confidence in communities and confidence in the police, and has unsettled those who would be more inclined to support the law so that they are less inclined to participate in it It is worth noting that, on 5 July 2020, a British black Olympian gold medallist and her partner, Ricardo dos Santos, were dragged out of their car, leaving a baby in the back, because police suspected that there was the smell of cannabis. That of course relates to the dreadful events around a child, which we have also discussed in this Chamber. Three days after what was almost, in a way, the terrible clubbing of those two—certainly they were handcuffed and dragged out of the car, leaving a baby abandoned—the hapless and now evaporated Ms Dick apologised for the abusive behaviour of the Metropolitan Police. Stop and search is massively, perpetually destructive and damaging, and anyone connected with minority communities knows what it does. If noble Lords wish to come with me to any of those communities, they will find that young men and women carry weapons to defend themselves against the police; often, because of the aggravation, they then get involved in aggravation that then involves unnecessary crime We must note the Home Office’s continuing figures showing even last year that, despite the numbers being up by 22%—as was unhelpfully noted by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower—80% of all those stopped and searched had no questionable behaviour. The damage done to their psyche, their sense of Britishness and well-being, and to the identity of their communities, is unparalleled and almost unhealable. It must end. A royal commission—in the same way I am sitting on a commission with the Legatum Institute at the moment—has concluded that stop and search is the great evil of the system. It must end. The Public Order Bill should prevent it, and it is about time that the police realised that this act of perpetual discrimination is vile and repugnant I have one further comment on the gracious Speech. Saying that we will make our streets safer by further empowering the police forgets the fact that so many people now locked up in prison unnecessarily and without proper appeal will, because the courts are stuffed up and cannot respond properly to their responsibilities for justice, come out of the system angry, instead of recovered in their well-being. If we do not deal with injustices in the system, we allow the possibility of vast numbers of people on our streets being furious with a system that has damaged them for ever. Getting this right is fundamental to the security of our community. Please, let us have the royal commission.