In the first Lords’ Question Time of 2009, the Conservative Frontbench took it upon themselves to malign the people of South London, when Lord Howell of Guildford took it upon himself to say, “My Lords, I had the honour of being the Member of Parliament for Guildford for 31 years. I know that I do not need to teach the noble Lord any geography, but Surrey is not an island surrounded by sea; it is bang up against London, from which a large number of the criminal element of southern London descend into Surrey. That presents the policing of Surrey with a special problem, which I hope is taken into account in assessing proper funding to enable law and order to be maintained in that very pleasant county.”

Now as an unrepentent North Londoner, I am rarely moved to defend those living South of the river, but this is really going too far.  What is being done to protect people from the hordes of bankers (to say nothing of hedge funders and other undesirables) who each weekday commute into London from Surrey and have over the last few years wrought such damage to our financial system and the well-being not only of Londoners but of people throughout the country and beyond ……

A large amount of today’s news coverage seems to have been about the alleged “row” between the Conservative Party and Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, who has overall responsibility for the continuing police investigation into the leaks of material from the Home Office which led to the arrest of Damian Green MP.

The story so far seems to be that the Mail on Sunday for reasons best known to their editor (and no doubt completely unrelated to his role in the Green case) decided to investigate Assistant Commissioner Quick and, in particular, whether there was anything reprehensible in the wedding hire car business run by his wife.  They couldn’t find anything wrong, so instead published a story alleging a “possible” security risk because the family home of the head of Scotland Yard’s Specialist Operations Directorate was also where the vintage cars used for the wedding hire business were garaged.  Then to make sure that any security breach was maximised showed pictures of Assistant Commissioner Quick, his home and the vintage cars.

The following day, as Assistant Commissioner Quick was in the process of moving his family away from the security risk exacerbated by the Mail story, he was collared by another reporter and made some tetchy comments suggesting that the whole farrago was part of a smoke-screen set up to distract attention from the investigation being carried out into the leaks from the Home Office and intended to create sufficient fuss to get the investigation dropped.  No doubt he shouldn’t have been so tetchy, although I suspect most people in similar circumstances might have reacted in even more forthright terms.

In response, the Conservative Party threatened to sue for defamation and David Cameron went into over-drive and, using the prestigious platform of his end-of-year interview with the BBC’s “Women’s Hour” called for the offending remarks to be withdrawn and for Assistant Commissioner Quick to make a full apology. 

Finally, after an apology was made in more fulsome terms than I would have been able to manage in the same position, David Cameron declared that the matter was closed and that the Conservative Party were “drawing a line” under the affair.

So what exactly was the Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve, doing on BBC Radio 4’s “World at One” programme a couple of hours later?  Apparently, he was very keen to go on air (or so I was told, when the programme contacted me to join him to debate the issue – I declined on the basis that that nice Mr Cameron had declared the matter closed and therefore further discussion was pointless). 

What in the event Dominic Grieve said on the programme was hardly drawing a line under the affair, as he said Assistant Commissioner Quick should consider his position and stand down from his role in respect of the inquiry into Home Office leaks.

So either David Cameron was being disingenuous when he accepted Assistant Commissioner Quick’s apology and said that it “drew a line” under the controversy or Dominic Grieve was deliberately ignoring what his Party Leader had said.

Either way, it begins to look as though the Conservatives really are trying to make sure that Assistant Commissioner Quick stops his investigations.

Commander Sue Akers is reported this morning as saying that youth gangs in London are becoming younger and more violent.  The messages she gives are remarkably close to the issues that emerged at a conference I chaired about six weeks ago.

The political importance of all of this (coupled with media sensationalism) sometimes clouds the need for a dispassionate approach to the problem and leads to a desire for an illusory quick fix.

It is worth remembering that (as the conference summary highlighted) that:

• The problem has been made much worse by stereotyping which has identified gangs with black people.

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The decision by Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, to drop the plans for direct election of some of the members of Police Authorities will be greeted by unalloyed joy by leading figures in the Association of Police Authorities and the Local Government Association.  Some of the statements made by opponents of the proposal make it sound as though there will now be dancing in the street across the country in reaction to the news that this allegedly unsound and hugely unworkable proposal is to be shelved. 

The reality is that not many people are really exercised by the idea one way or the other.  And that, of course, was always one of the potential weaknesses of the plan: it was simply not clear that additional elections (even if on the same day as other local elections) would have galvanised voters and made them feel that as a result the police were genuinely more accountable.

However the proposals were drafted, there were always going to be problems and dangers.  At present, the members of Police Authorities who are appointed by elected councils have to reflect the balance of political power on the councils across the police authority area.  If members were elected directly for each Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership district, that political balance would have been lost – indeed, in some areas only representatives of one political party would have been returned.  The requirement for each CDRP to be represented could have in some instances led to very large memberships of police authorities and/or the squeezing out of the independent appointed element.

As turnout would not necessarily have been very high, this could have led to right-wing populists being elected in some areas – and the immediate effect would have been that a number of police authorities that are currently Labour-led would no longer be so.

It was reported that some senior police officers were disturbed by the idea.  At one level, this reflected the distaste felt by them about the idea that Police Authorities should be part of their personal appraisal process.  However, more significantly was the concern about the “politicisation” of policing, particularly following the so-called “sacking” of Sir Ian Blair as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police by Mayor Boris Johnson.

There were some genuine issues here.  However, the dangers could have been mitigated by a strengthening of the current distinction between setting policing priorities and the operational decision-making – with the former being the responsibility of Authorities and the latter the clear role of Chief Constables.  This probably needs restating anyway – particularly given the comments of Mayor Boris Johnson, in his capacity as MPA Chair, on the arrest of Damian Green MP.

Nevertheless, the proposal for direct elections was trying to solve a real problem.  Many Police Authorities are not well-known in their localities and the police service does need to be made more visibly accountable for its direction and answerable for its actions at both local level and force-wide. 

Similarly, I know that my position when I was Chair of the MPA would have been strengthened (in respect of the Mayor and for that matter the Home Office) had I had a personal electoral mandate to oversee London’s policing.  In fact, I was able to develop a strong relationship with the then Mayor, Ken Livingstone, despite the things I had said about him prior to his election as Mayor in 2000.  As a result, there was no significant conflict and the issue of my mandate did not arise.  The matter has now been resolved in London since 2008 by the Mayor being given a much more direct involvement in policing than previously existed (whether Mayor Boris Johnson has yet used that direct role wisely and usefully is, of course, a separate issue).

What Mayor Johnson will, of course, discover is that by taking personal responsibility for policing by becoming Chair of the MPA he himself will be held much more directly to account for any failures of the police service during his tenure.

And while I am not predicting that there will be a long catalogue of policing failures in London over the next few years, I do predict that Mayor Johnson will find an excuse – sooner rather than later – to relinquish the role of Chair of the MPA and appoint his Representative-on-Earth, Kit Malthouse, as the de jure rather than de facto Chair.  Watch this space.

It has now been publicly confirmed that the nine applicants for the post of Met Commissioner (or “Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis” to use the proper title) have now been whittled down to four.  This follows a short-listing meeting earlier this week, chaired by Sir David Normington (Permanent Secretary at the Home Office). 

The lucky four are:

• Sir Paul Stephenson, currently acting Commissioner, who was Sir Ian Blair’s Deputy and was formerly Chief Constable of Lancashire;
• Sir Hugh Orde, Chief Constable of Northern Ireland and formerly a Deputy Assistant Commissioner at the Met;
• Sir Paul Scott-Lee, Chief Constable of the West Midlands; and
• Bernard Hogan-Howe, Chief Constable of Merseyside and formerly an Assistant Commissioner at the Met (and the only non-knight in the list).

They all have substantial experience and it would be wrong to describe any of them as the front-runner.  The race is genuinely an open one.

The next stage is an interview for the four candidates at the Home Office in January, followed by an interview a few days later at the Metropolitan Police Authority.  The names will then be considered by the Home Secretary, presumably with the comments/recommendations from the two interviews.  Technically, the Commissioner is a Royal appointment with the Queen being advised by the Home Secretary, who must in turn have consulted the Metropolitan Police Authority and considered any representations made by the Mayor of London.

White smoke by the end of next month?

John Biggs AM, a former colleague of mine on the London Assembly – although our relationship was not always 100% harmonious – has made an interesting comment on the difficult position of Mayor Boris Johnson, as Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, following his remarks about the Damian Green affair.  There is also a comment on this on the same web page from another Damian – Damian Hockney, who was elected to the London Assembly as a UKIP member in 2004, followed Robert Kilroy-Silk into the short-lived Veritas Party, and then left that to sit as a “One London” representative before losing his seat in 2008.

Gerald Kaufman MP has it right in a Guardian article today.  First, there is a bit of Kaufman-esque rhetoric:

“People confined in closed institutions can tend, if circumstances provoke, to become self-absorbed to the point of the irrational. Such a state of mind can arise in an army camp, a prison, a boarding school, or a parliamentary building.”

followed by the key point:

“We are called the House of Commons for a very good reason. We do our best to represent our constituents but we, rightly, have no status that inflates us above our constituents. We, rightly, unlike MPs from some other countries, have no immunity from arrest.”

The simple fact is that MPs (and for that matter members of the House of Lords) are not above the law.  We may play a part in making laws but that does not make us exempt from them.

As far as the public are concerned, MPs are hardly highly regarded and they already think that MPs are paid too much and award themselves too many perks.  For some MPs to try and take on a new privilege – that MPs should be exempt from the criminal law – is hardly going to improve public confidence.

i have been appointed as the Chair of the new Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody.  This is a new body reporting to the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and the Department of Health which will produce expert advice on measures to be taken to reduce the number of people who die each year in the custody of the state.  It will build on the work of the Forum on Preventing Deaths in Custody.  I will start work on this in the New Year with a view to having the Panel established by April 2009.

My knowledge of these issues stems from my involvement in three high profile cases involving deaths following police action or in custody during my time as an elected councillor in the London Borough of Haringey: the death of Cynthia Jarrett in 1985 which precipitated the Broadwater Farm riots; the death of Joy Gardner in 1993; and the death of Roger Sylvester in 1999.  In the case of Joy Gardner, I had meetings with her family, attended her funeral as the Leader of the Council, attended public meetings on the case and had meetings with the police to discuss it.  In the case of Roger Sylvester, I was Leader of the Council at the time of his death and met with the family, attended public meetings and had meetings with the police.  The involvement continued, when I became Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, as the long saga of the mishandled subsequent investigations unwound, with the eventual inquest and the judicial review of the verdict.

As Chair of the Police Authority, I also conducted a number of hearings with families of those involved in death in custody issues, held meetings on good practice in custody, which included discussions of cell design and custody suite arrangements, availability of medical/nursing support and mental health issues.  A series of meetings were also held to discuss the handling of investigations after such cases and the support provided to the families involved.

The issues surrounding such deaths are never easy.  The human rights and other considerations were examined thoroughly by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the structure for advising on these matters was reviewed in a report by Robert Fulton.

When I was on the London Assembly between 2000 and 2004, most meetings of the Assembly itself were pretty dull with the only excitement (and that only counted as excitement if you were a pretty sad individual) being some fairly petty inter-Party bickering.  However, maybe things have changed.  Earlier today, I finally caught up with the webcast of yesterday’s meeting of the Assembly (I know I’ve been a bit slow but I have had quite a number of other things on in the last couple of days).  This was the meeting where the Assembly was questioning Mayor Boris Johnson (in his capacity as Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA)) along with Sir Paul Stephenson, Acting Commissioner.

Len Duvall‘s questioning of the Mayor was scrutiny at its best and has been described to me as “forensic” by a number of people who were there.  Len, of course, is Leader of the Labour Group and followed me as Chair of MPA until Boris Johnson took over at the beginning of October.

Len first of all asked the Mayor about the comments attributed to him that the arrest of Damian Green  was unlikely to lead to a charge or a prosecution.  The Mayor then repeated the comments and didn’t seem to see any incongruity in statements like that being made by a Chair of a Police Authority, who has just been briefed in confidence by senior police officers on a continuing police operation.

Len then asked another series of questions about who the Mayor had subsequently talked to about the police operation.  Initially, the Mayor was reluctant to say, muttering something about his wife, but then blurted out that he had telephoned Damian Green himself.  This is frankly an extraordinary admission.

As Len commented subsequently:

“It is astonishing that the Mayor, following a briefing from senior police officers, has been speaking to a suspect under police investigation. He received information as chair of the MPA, then went to his political ally and old friend, who is now under criminal investigation. This is not appropriate behaviour for a chair of the police authority.

“Whether he likes it or not, the public perception will be that he his too involved in this investigation and is looking after his mates. Regardless of the merits of this particular case, should the chair of the police authority be speaking to a suspect in a criminal investigation? Should he then pre-judge the outcome of that investigation? The answer to both those questions is ‘no’. Boris should reflect on how he and his officials have behaved from the start of this affair and re-consider whether, if he is going to use sensitive information for political capital, he is an appropriate person to chair the authority.

“The appropriate time to raise issues around police action is once an investigation, and in this case the review announced today, is completed.”

A police officer who did something similar and spoke without authorisation to a person who had been arrested and released on police bail would be liable to disciplinary action.

An ordinary member of a police authority who did something like this might well be reported to the Standards Board for breaching the Code of Conduct governing members of public bodies and could, in principle, end up by being suspended from office.

So what will happen to the Mayor?  No doubt, he assumes that his charm, coupled with a bumbling mea culpa and an admission that he is new to this sort of public accountability will get him through. But Len gave him a lifeline and asked whether he would go away and reflect on whether his conduct was appropriate as Chair of the Police Authority.  However, the Mayor wasn’t having it – instead, he effectively said he would do the same thing again.

If the Mayor continues as Chair of the Police Authority, some interesting issues are raised.  Will the police ever trust him enough after this to brief him about confidential matters and on operational issues?  They will certainly think twice in the future about talking to the Mayor in his capacity as Chair of the MPA about an ongoing investigation if they run the risk of the Mayor’s next act being to ring a suspect in that investigation for a cosy chat and to publicly announce his views on the likely outcome of that investigation.  

However, if there isn’t a relationship of trust on such matters between the Mayor and senior police officers, London will lose out because everywhere else in the country one of the roles of a police authority chair is to be briefed and, on occasions, to give advice or to warn, whilst respecting the operational independence and decision-making of the police command structure.  The Mayor was quite within his rights to urge caution on the police in the matter of the alleged Home Office leaker and Damian Green, but that should have been a caution urged privately (at least, whilst the investigation is in progress – and, of course, it is still continuing) and not then briefed out to the media and repeated to the London Assembly.

David Cameron knows that attack is the best form of defence and I wonder whether the attack he has launched over the police handling of the arrest of Damian Green is intended to distract attention from the Conservative Party’s involvement in the whole matter.

So perhaps, the Conservatives might want to set the record straight by answering a few questions, such as:

1. Is Chris Galley (the civil servant, who according to newspapers, was arrested on 19th November and started the sequence of events that led to the arrest of Danian Green) a member of the Conservative Party?  If so, when did he join and does he hold any positions within the Party?  If not, has he been a member of the Party in the past and when?
2. According to the newspapers there was a relationship/links between Chris Galley and Damian Green.  How many times has Chris Galley met Damian Green and how many times have they spoken on the telephone or communicated by e-mail?
3. Has Chris Galley met David Cameron or any other member of the Shadow Cabinet?
4. Newspapers have reported variously that Chris Galley applied for a job with the Conservative Party and/or a job with Damian Green and that he has been a Conservative Party candidate in the past.  What other roles has he applied for in the past?
5. Has Chris Galley been given any assurances or promises about future roles with the Conservative Party?  If so, who gave those promises or assurances?
6. Who in the Conservative Party, apart from Damian Green, knew about Chris Galley’s role at the Home Office?
7. Who in the Conservative Party knew of the source of the leaks that are alleged to be part of this case?
8. Had Damian Green discussed leaks from the Home Office with David Cameron, Dominic Grieve or any other prominent Conservative?  If so, when?