Adam Bienkov has via Twitter drawn attention to Mayor Boris Johnson’s considered view on the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.  When asked last September at a meeting of the London Assembly about the continuing concerns over the News of the World’s use of phone-hacking he said that such concerns were  ”codswallop” and that it ”looks like a politically motivated put-up job by the Labour party”. 

He also seemed rather vague about whether he had been briefed as Mayor of London (and Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority at the relevant time) and displayed his usual vagueness and lack of grasp of detail:

“Asked by Labour assembly member Joanne McCartney about any conversations he had had with police at the time, Johnson replied that “to the best of memory I was satisfied with the police position, which was that no new information had been substantively revealed and therefore nothing more was going to be done. So I don’t think I actually had any conversations.

He later added that he didn’t recall “any specific briefings on this”.”

Interestingly, Wiktionary tells us – and with Mayor Johnson’s classical knowledge this is no doubt something with which he is familiar - that:

“Cod, as is known from medieval texts, refers to the penis, as is cod piece, peascod (ref Shakespeare et al.) and wallop (see above). Combining the two would result in the reasonable conclusion that codswallop may have come from the combination of penis and rubbish, thus providing either the explanation that it is either semen or urine.”

Not a nice way to dismiss the claims of the hacking of the phones of murder victims ….

But then Mayor Boris Johnson’s approach is to disclaim all responsibility on the basis that he wasn’t briefed or wasn’t listening when he was ….

The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill is now about a quarter of the way through its Report Stage in the House of Lords.  Further Report days will take place on Monday 4th July, Monday 11th and Wednesday 13th.  At present, the Bill is expected to be considered at Third Reading on Tuesday 19th July.  With the House of Commons going on Summer Recess that day and the House of Lords on the 20th, it will be impossible for the Bill to receive its Royal Assent until after Parliament returns on September 5th.

The Bill is so poorly drafted in places that I have argued that it is in everyone’s interests for the Government to delay the Third Reading debate until September to allow the Home Office time to prepare tidying up amendments so that the Bill can at least do what it says on the tin.

So far only one amendment has been passed by the House of Lords.  This had the effect of removing the first few lines of the Bill saying that there would be a Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for each police force area outside London and putting forward the concept of there being Police and Crime Commissions instead – these would be the PCC and the Police and Crime Panel (PCP) for each area working together with the PCP chosing the PCC.  However, the amendment agreed did not include all the consequential changes that should have followed from such an alteration and the rest of the Bill refers to PCCs and PCPs as separate entities and, for example, goes into substantial detail on the process of direct election for PCCs.

This amendment (and any others passed in the next couple of weeks) will have to be considered by the House of Commons before the Bill can have Royal Assent.  The Government have made it clear repeatedly that they will reverse the Lords amendment in the Commons and restore the concept of directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioners to the Bill.  This will mean that the Bill will have to return to the House of Lords again, when – in theory at least – the Lords could change it again (but usually the Lords agrees eventually to the expressed wish of the elected House).

Last week the Lords failed (despite my making what former Tory Cabinet Minister, Lord Newton of Braintree, said was “one of the most persuasive” speeches he had ever heard) by 15 votes to support my amendment that would have provided some system of governance round PCCs to avoid them acting entirely on their own – potentially in a capricious manner.

Debate will now focus on what can be done to strengthen the role of PCPs to act as “the checks and balances” on elected PCCs as promised in the Coalition Agreement.

And the Government has at last put forward a number of (small) amendments to the Bill in response to the views expressed in the House of Lords.  The most significant of these is that the power of veto that PCPs can exercise over the appointment of a new Chief Constable and over the size of the police precept would now be exercised when there is a two-thirds vote (a pretty high threshhold) in favour of a veto (rather than the totally unattainably high threshhold of three-quarters that was originally in the Bill).  PCPs will now also have the power to “invite “, but not compel, Chief Constables to attend their meetings – this is not actually a very big concession as there was nothing in the Bill before that forbade such invitations.  PCPs are also being given the power to hold confirmation hearings into (but not to veto) the appointment of the the PCC’s Deputy (if one is appointed) and of the PCC’s Chief Executive and Chief Finance Officer.  In London, the appointment of the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (the PCC-equivalent in London appointed by the Mayor) may be vetoed by the London Assembly by a two-thirds majority unless the person appointed  is a member of the London Assembly (in which case there will be no veto).

Ministers have also agreed to meet me and a number of colleagues to discuss the extraordinarily complex structures that the Bill creates to replace the current arrangements whereby Police Authorities employ police staff, hold the budget and enter into contracts for the local police service. The logical thing to do would be for these functions to be held by the PCCs in any new arrangements, but instead the Home Office is proposing that both the PCC and the Chief Constable in an area should become something called a “corporation sole”.  The by-product of this is that both the PCC will separately have to have a statutory chief finance officer and separate auditable accounts – for the same money, the police fund for the area.  This is a totally unnecessary and costly duplication. 

I have described the concept of the corporation sole as being “a mediaeval construct”, as it was originally created to deal with priests in the Middle Ages who could not be trusted to keep their personal finances separate from those of the Mother Church.  It is not widely used in modern public administration and, in the case of its most recent use in creating the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, the Children’s Commissioner has recently petitioned to have a different corporate structure that would be more transparent and publicly accountable.  It is not clear why the Home Office is wedded to using this mediaeval anachronism for the running of twenty-first century police forces, but I suppose Chief Constables (and PCCs) ought to be grateful that the Home Office hasn’t gone the whole hog and demand that they be celibate as well.

On Monday the Report Stage continues.  First to be debated is a group of amendments that I have tabled that would require that London’s PCC, the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, should be directly elected on the same day as the elections for the Mayor of London.  If the Government believes that directly electing the person who holds the police to account is the right thing to do, it is illogical that in London the person with that responsibility – and for the largest police force in the country – should not also be directly elected.  There would be no significant extra cost as the elections are taking place anyway, but then there is a striking lack of logic in many aspects of the Bill.

Sophos’s NakedSecurity site tells the cautionary tale of the company chief executive and the slighted IT administrator who took his revenge:

“Imagine you’re giving a presentation to the board of directors at your company. You have your PowerPoint slides all ready, you’re projecting onto a 64 inch screen… what could possibly go wrong?

Well, what would you do if your carefully composed presentation was replaced on the big screen by images of a naked woman? My guess is that you wouldn’t know where to put your laser pointer..

52-year-old Walter Powell used to be an IT manager at Baltimore Substance Abuse System Inc, until he was fired in 2009. Clearly someone who believed that revenge should be served red hot, Powell used his computer knowledge to hack into his former employer’s systems from his home and install keylogging software to steal passwords.

On one occasion, Powell took remote control of his former CEO’s PowerPoint presentation to the board of directors, and projected pornographic images on the 64 inch TV.

According to media reports, Judge M. Brooke Murdock gave Powell a two year suspended sentence, and ordered him to 100 hours of community service and three years’ probation.”

Interestingly, I read this on my way home from hearing a presentation from the CEO of a very large corporation who had described in passing the processes (that even he described as draconian) his company follows in monitoring the activites of employees who hand in their notice,  which includes checking what company files they access and download, reviewing their outgoing email traffic and monitoring memory stick usage. Once caught, twice shy?

Along with two colleagues, Baroness Ruth Henig and Baroness Harris of Richmond (no relation), I have a letter in The Times this morning:

“‘Police accountability cannot be distilled down to a single individual elected on a party ticket.’

Sir

We are heartened that ‘Ministers are preparing a “substantial package” of concessions over their plan to create elected police chiefs’ in response to peers’ concerns.

However, your report ascribing responsibility to Labour and Lib Dem peers for halting this risky revolution does a disservice to the diversity of Cross Bench peers who voted 3 to 1against the bill. They, and a majority of all Peers present, argued in favour of a Commissioner within a more collegiate model of governance.

We urge the government to listen to this public preference and to preserve the best of a diverse, broadly-based governance system for the police.

The right recipe for police accountability that has thus far helped deliver falling crime and rising public confidence cannot be distilled to a single individual elected on a party ticket.

Yours

Baroness Angela Harris
Baroness Ruth Henig
Lord Toby Harris”

Last Thursday, the sweetly formidable Government Chief Whip in the Lords, Baroness Anelay of St Johns announced last Thursday that the House of Lords would be returning to work on 3rd October rather than 10th October this year after the Summer recess (ignoring the two week September sitting that will interrupt the recess).  This will mean that Conservative Peers will have to make the choice between attending Parliament or the Tory Party Conference.  She blamed this on the slow scrutiny of legislation by the House and, in particular, the particularly thorough process (led by many Labour Peers) of consideration given to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill or as she put it:

“This is a self-regulating House, with the implication that scrutiny of legislation cannot be curtailed except by the House itself. That is only right; it is one of the aspects of our work of which we have every reason to be proud. The corollary is that when the House chooses to dwell on a particular Bill, as it did on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill-on which we spent 17 days in Committee, which is more than double the usual maximum for the largest Bills-more time must then be found elsewhere if the scrutiny of the other Bills in a Government’s legislative programme is not to suffer as a consequence.”

But it is not just the extra days.  The House is sitting longer – often way beyond the normal 10pm cut off on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  Indeed, she also announced that the House would sit four hours earlier than normal on one of the days this week to accommodate the number of Peers who wish to speak on the Government’s draft Bill on House of Lords abolition (106 at last count).  And as it turned out the House sat from 11am until 10pm (three hours later than normal on a Thursday) on the day she made her announcement, so as to complete its sixth day of Committee Stage consideration of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill.

Labour’s Chief Whip, Lord Steve Bassam, pointed out that, in fact, there was a “chaotic logjam” of Government Bills:

“The truth is-in saying this I apportion no blame to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay-that the Government are trying to force through a programme that is overlong, overprogrammed and overblown. In short, it is too long and they know it, and the House and the process of scrutiny are the sufferers. This is a crisis of timetabling, caused not by your Lordships’ rightful desire to scrutinise Bills but by political mismanagement, emanating from No. 10. This House has already had the farce of badly drafted Bills, such as the Public Bodies Bill, and still to come are the Armed Forces Bill, the Scotland Bill and the Office for Budget Responsibility Bill. We have been waiting for a health Bill that was promised to the House in May but will not be here until October or November at the earliest. We also have such complex Bills as the Welfare Reform Bill and the Protection of Freedoms Bill to come.

What assurances can the House have that, even with this extra week, we will complete our work without further incursions into Recess dates, longer nights and earlier starts? I also ask the noble Baroness to reconfirm all existing Recess dates, including those in February, and to do so with certainty. Will she also tell the House when it is intended that we shall have another Queen’s Speech, and when this Session-the longest any of us can remember-will end? How many more Bills do the Government expect to force through this House before the Session concludes? At my last count, we still had 16 in progress and another 12 or 13 to come, and had done only 16 so far. Just how many more Bills do the Government expect to bring?

May I perhaps give the Government a little advice before they embark on their next political programme? Will they ensure that, next time around, they have coherent, well worked-out Bills, and do not have more Bills in their programme than both Houses of Parliament can realistically manage and effectively scrutinise?

This a programme of legislation that has been poorly thought through, badly managed from the centre and forced on an increasingly reluctant Parliament in a timeframe that is wholly unrealistic. I urge the Government to think again about their programme, and to consult the House properly about their timetable and what they put in for the rest of the Session.”

Today, it emerged that the Government’s own coalition partners, the LibDems, are also keen on thorough scrutiny of legislation with the first day of the Committee Stage of the Localism Bill: the first six groups of amendments have all been put down by LibDem peers – the first of which being debated for an hour and a half trying to pin down what the Government’s definition of “localism” actually amounts to.

The reality is that the House of Lords is doing its job.  The Government is trying to push through too much legislation and what is worse the Bills that are being put forward or are emerging from the House of Commons are badly-drafted, full of unintended consequences and frequently fail to do what it says on the tin.

Conservative (now ex-Conservative) peer, Lord Hanningfield, demonstrated what can only be described as world-class super-armadillo-style thick skin this afternoon by returning to the House of Lords days after his conviction for expenses fraud. Indeed he sat – behind a pair of dark glasses – for several hours on the House of Lords Terrace by the river quaffing white wine …..

The Committee Stage consideration in the House of Lords of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill grinds on.  The fourth day discussions have not been comfortable for Government Ministers – the debates were all about detailed points where the Bill is silent, inadequate or flawed.

Here, for example, are the exchanges on whether there should be a standards system applying to the conduct of elected Police and Crime Commissioners, which ended with the Minister suggesting that Mayor Boris Johnson should have been arrested for perverting the course of justice:

“Baroness Browning: ….. Perhaps I can turn to the amendments; there have been a lot of them. I shall begin with Amendments 123AB, 139A, 148C, 148D, 149B, 149C and 149D. Those amendments envisage an entirely different approach to handling complaints against the police and crime commissioner. They would mean that a code of conduct for a PCC would be drawn up centrally and that police and crime panels would hold PCCs to account against it. It would even allow a police and crime panel to go as far as removing a directly elected person with a public mandate from their office and to suspend the PCC indefinitely while the allegation was investigated.

I cannot support the amendments because they would enable the police and crime commissioner to be removed from office without recourse to the public who elected him or her. A PCC will be elected by the public in their force area and will be accountable directly to that public for the decisions that it makes. Of course, that is if the Bill returns in a different form from the one that is before your Lordships tonight. I add that caveat. The commissioner cannot be removed by the police and crime panel for a perceived breach of a centrally defined code of conduct. If the PCC makes the wrong decisions, the panel will ensure that the public are informed, and the public will remove them at the ballot box. That is at the heart of the matter, and something on which probably we will not agree.

Baroness Henig: ….My amendment suggests that expected standards of behaviour should be set out in a code of conduct drawn up by the Committee on Standards in Public Life and should apply to commissioners and panel members. A later amendment suggests that a commissioner or a panel member must sign this code of conduct and agree to abide by it within a month of taking up office. Failure to do so would mean disqualification. Therefore, the code would have real force.  …

Baroness Harris of Richmond: I agree completely that the standards of conduct to be established for the PCCs are utterly inadequate in the Bill as presently drafted. Her amendments to address them make absolute sense. I also agree that the current provisions are inadequate for some of the more politically motivated complaints that are likely to be made. Just because they are political, it does not necessarily mean that they are by definition spurious, although of course many of them may be. A proper and robust mechanism for dealing with them is essential, but the Bill does not currently provide for that. More serious in many ways, though, is the lack of clarity about how complaints from ordinary members of the public are going to be dealt with or how generally poor conduct is going to be handled. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, on the solution that she has set out. It manages to balance properly the independent oversight of these matters with an appropriate and stronger role for the panel. I therefore support the proposals wholeheartedly. …

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, I apologise to those Members of the House who are keen to move on to the other debate, but I have to say that it is quite strange that we moved on at this point to this group of amendments, given their sheer number, complexity and importance. I am afraid that I have four issues to raise and, although I will abbreviate what I would otherwise have said, I think that they are important.

The first is that there must be a clear and robust framework for the conduct of people who are either elected police and crime commissioners or, in the case of London, the mayor or the deputy mayor responsible for policing and crime. The same applies to whatever other structure we may have, whether it be police and crime commissions or anything else. The reason why we must have a robust and clear set of guidelines for conduct is that potentially very serious problems could arise. Although provision is made in the Bill to deal with the most extreme examples, it does not cover the sort of things that are much more likely to happen. If an elected police and crime commissioner, having been briefed by a chief officer of police about a particular investigation, takes it upon himself or herself to telephone the subject of the investigation and talk to them about it, how will that be dealt with? Where are the guidelines and rules of conduct to say that that is not appropriate behaviour for such a person?

I find it extraordinary that there is no mechanism for dealing with such an event. I also find it extraordinary that there are no mechanisms for dealing with what are perhaps slightly less serious matters, or indeed for providing a framework so that the people who are elected understand what is and is not permissible. Things of this sort could happen, so there is a need for a robust and proper framework to deal with them. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lady Henig for tabling this group of amendments and for giving us an opportunity, albeit it at a rather inappropriate moment, to debate these points. There has to be a framework for conduct, whether it is the standard structure as set out in these amendments or something else. However, there must be an explicit code of conduct. ….

Baroness Browning: … A lot of concern has been expressed about the police and crime commissioner and what would happen if they did something outwith the law or acted in a certain way. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, gave an example—that they might ring somebody with confidential information that had been given by the chief constable. That could be construed as perverting the course of justice, which would be a criminal offence subject to investigation by the IPCC.

Lord Harris of Haringey: I am sorry to hold up noble Lords who wish to speak in the debate that follows, but my example was not posed as a hypothetical incident. It happened in London. The present Mayor of London was briefed about an operation and phoned the person who was the subject of the investigation. I think it would have been disproportionate for the Mayor of London to be prosecuted, as the Minister suggests, for trying to pervert the course of justice. It would have been disproportionate to something that was ill thought out and a spur of the moment action by the Mayor of London to phone somebody that he regarded as a chum. Because there was in existence a robust, standard structure, with clear guidance and a code of conduct as to what was or was not appropriate, it was possible to hold the Mayor of London to account and go through a process whereby, I am sure, he would not do the same thing again. But if the only answer is to arrest the police and crime commissioner for perverting the course of justice, I suspect that we are getting ourselves into a very unfortunate tangle.

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, I suggest that the Minister looks at a case in Lancashire, where the father of somebody accused of an offence telephoned a friend who happened to be in the same organisation—I do not need to go into detail—who then telephoned a friend of his who was in the same organisation, who then telephoned the chief constable, who then telephoned the police officers involved with the original charge. The charge was reduced as a result of the call from the chief constable, and the person got off from the lower charge. In the middle of all that could have been one of these commissioners. In the end, people lost their jobs, but there was not actually a crime committed anywhere in that chain of offences.

Baroness Browning: I am very grateful to the noble Baroness. I realise that the House feels under some time pressure at the moment. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, that the case to which he refers relating to the Mayor of London was one in which the person concerned was aware of the investigation, but I do not want to delay the House too much on that. It is important to state that the police and crime commissioner will be regarded as a Crown servant and subject to the Official Secrets Act.

I have to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, that I am afraid that since I last said this half an hour ago I have not changed my mind about the code of conduct for police and crime commissioners. The House heard what I said about that at the time. I have concerns around that.”

High-level legal guru, Stewart Room, gave an excellent presentation at last week’s East-West Institute Global Cyber Security Summit.  In it he called for a “general obligation for security”, saying:

“I believe that holders of sensitive data, the controllers of important networks, systems and infrastructures – and their supply chains – should face a clear legal requirement to keep these assets safe and secure. As well as describing the obligation, this general security law should describe the consequences of failure.”

He pointed out that:

“It is naive to think that all relevant actors will do what is necessary to protect these assets without a clear steer from the law. Ignorance, laziness, apathy, short sightedness and greed are all powerful counterweights to enlightened self interest.”

He also highlighted the dangers of simply addressing the problem through the prism of the protection of personal data only.  Intellectual property is currently being leeched from corporate data systems all over the world – an issue repeatedly referred to at the Summit.  Likewise the vulnerability of national infrastructure systems – including power grids and water supplies – is also now increasingly apparent.

He warned that:

“In the UK and most of the rest of Europe the law for security is effectively left to reside in the domain of privacy and data protection law. This is a grave mistake. …  it gives the mistaken impression that the law only sees security as being important in the context of the handling of personal data. Of course, we all know that the substance of security extends much further that this. The impact of this problem is worsened by the fact that far too many people and organisations do not take data protection law seriously. Thus, the law is not properly driving behaviours.”

And there may be unintended consequences:

“This gives effective ownership of the field to people who are the least competent to manage it. I am talking about a small cadre of data protection regulators and bureaucrats, who are so slanted toward privacy that they may unwittingly encumber us with anti-security policies, which could jeopardise the health of cyberspace, our economies and our societies.”

He concluded byasking “what will a general obligation for security look like?”:

“Aside from removing the issue from the privacy and data protection domain and describing the nature of the obligation to secure assets and the penalties that may flow in breach, a general obligation for security will capture:

1. Critical definitions. We need to agree the parameters and make sure that we are all talking the same language.

2. The traditional “cyber crime” subject matter, dealing with the criminalisation and prosecution of unacceptable behaviours of hackers, botnets and others whom attack information and information systems. The interests of law enforcement should be properly served.

3. The role of the private sector cyber security industry, so that innovation in IT solutions can continue. We are totally reliant upon the private sector for security solutions, so we must give it our full support.

4. Intelligence sharing between the public and private sectors and across geographical boundaries.

5. The need for identification measures for people and machines operating in cyberspace. Privacy should not provide a cloak for criminals and anti-social behaviour.

6. The right for people and organisations under cyberattack to take offensive action in their defence. This is probably the most controversial point. But we need to ask ourselves whether it is morally right to tie the hands of those under attack. And we need to be sure that we do not open Pandora’s box.”

Whilst ideally this needs a solution in international law, a good start would be made by legal changes in this country to establish a better and more robust framework, whilst British Ministers argue for European-wide changes via Brussels and press the case through the G8 and G20 fora.

There was a palpable sense of urgency about the need for change at last week’s summit.  I hope it was felt by Francis Maude MP, who is apparently now the Minister in charge of cyber-security, and that he takes it back to his Government colleagues.

The Metropolitan Police Authority meets tomorrow at City Hall for the first time since the Prime Minister instructed/encouraged/invited/asked the Commissioner to consider a review of the Madeleine McCann case.  And outside there will be a vigil to remember all missing children attended by relatives and campaigners.  Several MPA members (including Jenny Jones AM and Jennette Arnold AM) have already announced they will be joining them.

I am sure that those campaigners and relatives will be asking whether the cases in which they are concerned can be reviewed by the Metropolitan Police in the same way that the Madeleine McCann case is to be.  And this is hardly surprising.

The Commissioner will no doubt tonight be polishing up his answers as to why he made the operational decision (without being pressurised by a politician, of course) that the McCann case should be reviewed and whether the same factors will apply to the other cases.

He will also no doubt remind the Authority that the Home Office has offered to pay for the costs of the investigation.  This is, I am sure, a welcome contribution to the Met’s budget, but will this cover only the additional costs of the investigation or will it cover the costs of the salaries of the detectives engaged in the review and, if so, where will the replacement detectives be found to cover the work that those detectives would otherwise have done?

And was this offer of financial assistance a factor in the operational decision that the Commissioner made to have this review?  And, if it was a factor, does the offer to pay guarantee anyone else a Metropolitan Police case review?  Might be a nice little earner.

I am sure the Commissioner has also given thought to what will happen after the review has been concluded.  Will the review be shared with the McCann’s?  And, if not, what is the purpose of the review?  I am confident that all will be made clear tomorrow.

David Cameron has instructed the Metropolitan Police to review the case of Madeleine McCann.  This is in response to an open letter in The Sun and is entirely predictable in terms of the “pulling power” of News International on Government policy.

However, his intervention drives a coach and horses through the draft protocol issued by the Home Office designed to preserve the operational independence of the Police which says:

“The operational independence of the police service, and the decisions made by its operational leadership remain reserved to the Office of Chief Constable and that Office alone.”

Whilst no-one doubts the desirability of doing what can sensibly be done to find out what has happened to Madeleine McCann, I can imagine that the senior leadership of the Metropolitan Police are not exactly happy about this.  It again embroils their officers in a high profile investigation, where the chances of success are unclear, and which will divert limited investigative resources away from other matters.