Policing and Crime Bill — House of Lords, 2016-11-30
Topic: Law and Crime
John Gummer (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, many of us wish that we were not having this debate at all. I will ask three questions of the noble Baroness who will reply. The first is: will she not agree that there is a promise, and that it is a serious thing not to carry that promise through? That is particularly true given the circumstances in which we live, where large numbers of people have ceased to believe in the integrity, the impartiality and, if I may use a non-word, the upstandingness of those in authority. Therefore when a promise has been made, to renege on it is always harmful but particularly harmful at this time, when not only in this country but elsewhere there is clearly a fundamental feeling among large numbers of people that they have not been dealt with properly by those who are in power, have authority and are able to change the lives of others. Therefore, first, there is the promise Secondly, there is the need. Will my noble friend explain why it is not necessary to clear the reputation of the police, and particularly the Metropolitan Police, given that so much has been said about them and so much is thought about them? As somebody who lives much of the time in London, I have to say that the Metropolitan Police’s reputation is not good, has not been good for some time, and needs to be improved. Therefore one has to ask why this would not be a valuable way to ensure that that happened. The noble Lord, Lord Blair, said precisely that—there is a need for that There is also a need for the press to face up to the fact that it, too, has perhaps the worst reputation in this country that it has had, certainly in my lifetime, which is getting embarrassingly long. This is a very unhappy time, when we think of the purveying of hate that has been on the front pages of so many newspapers, and the attacks on our institutions and their independence, which we have seen latterly. We therefore have to say to ourselves that this is an opportunity for the press, too, to clear that part of its name which is clearable. For my noble friend Lord Hailsham to stand up today and say that he expects the press kindly to arrange in future that it will sign up to not doing bad things suggests that he has not followed the news over the past months. This is not the mood of a press that is largely owned outside this country, by people who have little commitment to this country, and now has standards wholly different from those which perhaps we might have expected My third question to my noble friend Lady Williams is as follows. If the noble Baroness’s amendment is not agreed—or, more importantly, if it is not accepted—and if there is no alternative that we see as satisfactorily meeting the very powerful statement that she made, does my noble friend not agree that the public will think that we have not taken these steps due to the power of the press and our closeness to the constabulary, which leads me back to my first point? That is extremely dangerous at any time and particularly dangerous at the moment. The amendment attacks neither the press nor the police; it suggests that perhaps this is the moment to clear both of unfair allegations and to reveal real allegations, which seems to me a not unreasonable position to take. I hope that my noble friend will enable me to support her in the Lobbies by giving me an alternative to this amendment that meets those obligations.