Policing and Crime Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-07
Topic: Law and Crime
Keith Anthony Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): What the Minister has said today is extremely powerful and important, and it will give great comfort to people such as Paul Gambaccini. That is a common-sense approach to the cases of people have been on bail continuously but where no evidence is then found. People should conduct these investigations in a timely fashion. What the Minister has said will be something we can use as an example of good practice The shadow Home Secretary, who is not in his place at the moment, mentioned the case of Siddhartha Dhar, whose sister came to give evidence to the Committee—it was an emotional time, but it was important evidence. We were concerned that his passport was not handed over when he became a suspect. The police actually sent him a letter asking him to come along and surrender it; of course, by then, he had left the country—he had booked his departure, got on a coach with his family and crossed the border, and he was gone. He is probably still in Syria, although we do not know for sure The Minister may think this is also a matter of common sense rather than statute, but it is important, where we have terrorist suspects, as the shadow Home Secretary said, that we insist on their passports being handed over when they are in the custody suite; we should not wait to write to them and say, "Please will you hand over your passport?" because they will have used the opportunity to leave the country, as Mr Dhar did This may be a matter of common sense rather than statute—this is not a criticism of individuals, but us looking at a system—but many years ago we said to the Justice Department, "Wouldn’t it be a good idea to ask a foreign national prisoner to surrender their passport to the court at the time of sentence?" The Prime Minister has now said that that is a very good idea and we must ensure that it happens Those are common-sense suggestions. I know it requires a whole inquiry by the Home Affairs Committee to come up with them, but why have they not been implemented before? That is my concern. I welcome absolutely what is being done on police bail—it is the right course of action—but the handover of passports is very important. The Committee has been trying for some time to get the new director general of the Passport Office in. He has so far eluded us, but we will write to him again and remind him that he needs to come in; otherwise, we will be writing a very stern letter. He has an important contribution to make to this debate. When the Prime Minister appeared before the Liaison Committee, he also said he would look at these issues I welcome what is being suggested with regard to the reform of the Police Federation. Its new management, if I can call them that, have made substantial changes. It is right that the federation’s core purpose should be amended to include a commitment to acting in the public interest. However, a recent letter from the chief executive and the chairman touched on some of the promises made about returning subscriptions to police officers because the federation had amassed huge reserves. I know the Policing Minister loves talking about reserves, and the federation had amassed quite a lot of reserves, so the Committee suggested that it hand some of them back to PCs, rather than collecting more subs. We also suggested that a smaller amount be spent on legal action, because the federation is spending quite a lot on supporting legal action. The Bill helps us along that road, and I hope that the other issues—the Bill does not mention reserves—will also be looked at The fifth area where the Bill implements recommendations by the Select Committee is police integrity. We are pleased that there will be a new statutory police barred list for officers and staff who have been dismissed, and that a police advisory list of those who are under investigation for matters amounting to gross misconduct is also included in the Bill. The Bill also places a duty on senior officers and policing bodies to check job applicants against the list before employing them and to report to the College of Policing Shortly the Committee will open up a review of the work of the College of Policing, and Alex Marshall will be coming before us. The Home Secretary talked about the massive changes she has made, and no Home Secretary has ever made such dramatic changes to the landscape of policing. However, I think we have neglected the College of Policing. I rate it very highly, and I think Alex Marshall is an excellent chief executive. We need to call it the Royal College of Policing. We need to make sure it stands on a par with some of the other royal colleges, such as the Royal College of Nursing, and with the British Medical Association and other organisations. I think we are getting there.