The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, is reporting to the last ordinary meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority before it is due to be abolished in January.

This is the first (and possibly the last) time that the Authority has had the opportunity to discuss the remarks made by the Commissioner on LBC  when he announced that he had asked for a review of the availability of Tasers for officers called to violent incidents like the one in which four officers were injured in Kingsbury on the 19th November.  According to the Commissioner, he discussed the attack and possible responses with the Mayor and MPA Chair, Kit Malthouse AM (in a break from his paternity leave) before his scheduled LBC interview and his specific remarks were in response to a phoned-in question from a Met firearms officer.

The Commissioner pointed out that he was simply “reviewing the options” and that there would be “full discussion” before any final decisions are taken.  What is not clear is how and where such discussion will take place after the MPA is abolished.

In the meantime, members of the Police Authority raised substantial concerns and issues about wider use of Tasers. At least, the Commissioner recognised that this was not an operational decision for him alone and that there needed to be wider public consultation and that ultimately the Authority would need to take a view. Of course, after 16th January, the Authority will be the Mayor and the MOPC.

What is probably the final ordinary meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority is in session and Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, Deputy MOPC Presumptive, is NOT in the Chair (he is on paternity leave).  Instead, Reshard Auladin, the Deputy Chair, is presiding over what is hardly going to be a quiet somnolent meeting of the Authority.

Apart from the usual items on the agenda, like the Commissioner’s report (will he mention Tasers?), there is also the “Policing London Business Plan” that will lead to a lively (and political – given the approaching Mayoral elections) debate on the gap in the Met’s budget, the Mayor’s instruction to keep police numbers up without the money to do it (apart from £30 million that the Mayor is transferring to the Met from the Fire Service budget, about which the Fire Brigades Union threatened demonstrations outside the MPA meeting), the cutbacks in Safer Neighbourhood Teams and their sergeants etc etc.  And the report of the MPA’s Civil Liberties Panel on the DNA database (topical with the Government’s plans to remove potential rapists and others from the database) is also to be discussed.

But the meeting has started with a question submitted by Samantha Rigg-David on behalf of the United Families and Friends Campaign about the procession down Whitehall on Saturday 29th October in remembrance of those who have died in custody or state care and what the Campaign says was the disproportionate, aggressive and degrading treatment the families received from the Police after the procession had handed in a letter to 10 Downing Street.  Shortly after the 29th, I had heard about the incidents referred to in the question and had asked for a briefing from the Met about what had happened. I never received a response, so the answer to the public question is the first time that the Met has given their version of events.
That version was rather different to that of the questioner. However, the Commissioner gave an undertaking personally to review the CCTV material of the incident and to communicate directly with those involved. Surprisingly (given the fact that similar events have been organised over the last thirteen years), it was suggested that there had been a failure of communication between the organisers of the demonstration and the police.
What is not clear is how easily such issues will be aired and pursued once the MPA is abolished.

Yesterday also saw the first discussion of the role of HealthWatch during the Committee Stage of the Health and Social Care Bill.  HealthWatch is the proposed new structure to represent the interests of patients and the public in the new NHS.  It is potentially hugely important, as patients will need a strong voice to protect their interests.  However, the Government is proposing that the national body, HealthWatch England, should be constituted as a sub-committee of the regulator, the Care Quality Commission, and that local HealthWatch organisations should be run by local authorities (even though they will be responsible for some of the social care services that HealthWatch will be monitoring) without any protection of their budgets.

This is what I said on the subject:

“My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend Lord Patel if he in any sense felt beaten up by me. I absolve my noble friend Lady Wheeler from any involvement in that process. I also apologise to the long-suffering officials in the Government Whips Office. If my robust style is mistaken, they should really see what I am like when I am angry.*

I added my name to a number of amendments in the various versions of this group. I also proposed Amendment 305. If the noble Baroness whom I believe is replying to this debate is planning to highlight any technical flaws in that amendment, I should point out that I drafted it myself. Therefore, it no doubt does contain a number of technical flaws. But the purpose of the amendment is to assess the feeling within the House and the strength of feeling in the department about the extent to which it is important that HealthWatch England and healthwatch organisations at local level should be independent.

The principle underlying this group of amendments is straightforward-the centrality of the voices of patients and users in the NHS. That voice must be, and must be seen to be, independent of the various provider and regulatory interests. That is what underpins all of the different amendments.

I find it difficult to understand how the Government will oppose the amendments. They keep telling us that the voice of the patient and the user will be central to all these arrangements. They say that that is their intention. But they must be aware, because everybody else is, of the cynicism and doubt that is being expressed around the country about this whole package of NHS changes. Therefore, they should be able to reassure patients and users that their voices will be heard at every level within this complicated restructuring that will take place. That is extremely important.

What is more, it will be important for that voice to be seen to be independent. Members of the public will be concerned about what is happening. They will worry whether their doctors, who that they do not fully understand as being part of commissioning groups, will somehow be making judgments about their care, influenced by financial interests. They will want to be assured that they can go somewhere for proper advice and support, and that that place will genuinely be independent of all of those interests.

A huge expectation is now being placed on local healthwatch organisations. They are expected to provide that independent advice and information, to be able to monitor the nature of the service at local level and to be able to comment on the various changes that are taking place and on the proposals that are coming from the plethora of commissioning groups, senates and goodness knows what else we are going to have. They are going to be there to make recommendations. So, there will be enormous expectations on behalf of the public as to what these groups are going to do. Similarly, the national body, HealthWatch England, will have enormous expectations upon it. That is why it is so important to get these arrangements right. The

proposals for HealthWatch England and local healthwatch are an advance on what we have at present in terms of LINks. There is no question about that-they are a step forward. The record of successive Ministers and Governments in terms of patient representation in the NHS is not very good. This is a step forward from where we are at the moment. So, let us try to get it right. Why not deal with what are comparatively small issues in terms of how the system works?

The trouble is that, at the moment, the arrangements that the Government are proposing are flawed in two key respects: first, on the issue of independence, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has already indicated; and secondly, in terms of the resources available. Let us consider for a moment the position of HealthWatch England as a sub-committee of the Care Quality Commission. That might be a very neat way of not increasing the number of quangos by one; it may be that was the sole motivating feature. However, the reality is that it dangerously compromises the independence that I talked about as being so important. Often, HealthWatch England will have to say, on behalf of local healthwatch organisations, that the regulator should be doing something, has failed to do something or has been inadequate in the way that it has done that. In the last few weeks, we have seen the Minister’s colleagues in the Department of Health making quite critical comments about the way in which the CQC has fulfilled its remit. If Ministers are saying that-and Ministers are, after all, the paymasters of the CQC-what is it going to be like for those people whose remit is to raise these issues but are themselves subordinate to that regulatory body? It is going to be a real conflict and a very difficult position for them. The nature of that relationship-the fact that they are a mere sub-committee and are subjected to all of the panoply of arrangements that go with that-is going to be seriously limiting.

I am aware that the CQC is making enormous efforts to try and demonstrate their good faith in all of this. I am sure that the individuals involved have good faith as far as this is concerned. However, we are here considering legislation that will set those arrangements. Once those arrangements are set, the good will of the individuals who may be trying to make it work at the moment may not persist-not because those individuals will change their minds, but because, over time, those individuals will move on and others will take their place. Budgetary and other pressures on the CQC will rise. The feeling that they do not like being criticised by a body that is technically subordinate to them will increase. That is why that arrangement does not work.

There is an even stronger argument as to why local healthwatch organisations should not be subordinate to principal local authorities in their area. The Government’s flaws here are flaws twice over. Not only are they imperilling the independence of local healthwatch organisations by saying that-even though they are supposed to be independent-they are creatures of the local authority, the funds will be provided by the local authority and many of the facilities may well be provided by local authority but, because the funds will not be ring-fenced, it will be far too easy for local authorities to start to apply the screws if they do not like the criticisms that come from it.

A major conflict of interest is being created. HealthWatch cannot be accountable to, and at the same time funded by, local authorities because the bodies which commission and provide the services are the local authorities in many instances. However, the Government are saying that HealthWatch can advise members of the public about those services. How can HealthWatch organisations be funded by the same bodies that are commissioning and providing those services? This is precisely the area where the confidence of members of the public and of individual patients is so important. They have to go for advice to a body which is funded by the people about whom they wish to take advice. That hardly looks independent or satisfactory. If HealthWatch is made accountable to local authorities as the Bill proposes, the public will, frankly, have no confidence in that and all the efforts that the Department of Health and the Government have made to try to create a better structure will be wasted. That resource will be wasted because the public will not have confidence in these arrangements.

There is also a failure to protect the funding. I do not know how many hot coals Ministers in the Department of Health had to crawl over to get £60 million out of the Treasury for HealthWatch. I am not suggesting that the Department for Communities and Local Government is any more evil than any other government department, but if you hand the funding to that department, which then hands it on to individual local authorities without a label saying, “Not only is this money to be used for HealthWatch but it cannot be used for anything else”, my experience as a former council leader tells me that you cannot guarantee that the money will be used for the purpose that you wish.

I spoke earlier about localism and said how wonderful it was that the Government should devolve responsibility for this issue. However, it is not a wonderful example of localism if you expect something to happen, you pass the money on and then you are shocked if the money is not used for that purpose. If you want the money to be used for a particular purpose, you have to label it and ring-fence it. However, the Government will not do that. They say that they cannot do that as it would be inappropriate in the spirit of localism.

I have received numerous e-mails and messages from LINks on this very subject. Their experience of not having ring-fenced budgets this year is salutary. One message states:

“As a LINk our funding was reduced by the local authority by 65 per cent this year”.

Another states:

“I have spent 30 years as a senior business professional and business consultant and it is ludicrous to set an organisation targets to be funded by set criteria and then reduce those funds by 65 per cent. This makes a mockery of the organisation’s ability to carry out its public remit”.

That is what is happening at the moment. What guarantees can the Government give that it will not happen in the future?

There is a technical point here. The Department of Health has presumably secured these funds through the comprehensive spending review. Who will own those funds the next time that the comprehensive spending review is negotiated? Will it be the Department

of Health or the Department for Communities and Local Government? If it is the Department for Communities and Local Government, how will it rank given its other priorities which have nothing to do with HealthWatch? If it is the Department of Health, how will it answer the question from the Treasury, “How do you know that this money is being spent in the way that you intend?”. It will not be able to answer that question, as I suspect that the correct answer is that the money will disappear. LINks already have huge concerns about the resources question.

The other element of this concerns what sort of patient representative mechanism we want. Do we want something which is top-down or something which comes from local organisations? The amendment that stands in my name seeks to establish an arrangement whereby local healthwatch organisations have ownership of the national body which speaks in their name. I believe that that is essential. Even if you created HealthWatch England as an independent structure without the problems of it being a tool of the regulator, you will still not get the necessary buy-in at local level unless local organisations feel that they are part of it and have a say in its organisation. I speak as someone who was director of the Association of Community Health Councils for England and Wales for 12 years, and I know how important it was for the member organisations to feel that what we were saying as the national body reflected-not to the letter, but reflected-what they felt was important as local organisations. If you do not have that mechanism, if you do not have that process built into the legislation, I am afraid that you will create a gulf between the national body and the local bodies. That is surely unsatisfactory.

The Government’s proposals could make an enormous difference to patient representation in the new NHS, and patient representation is going to be enormously important in the new structure, because I think that many patients will feel disempowered and worried by what is happening. However, those arrangements are flawed unless the Government accept the spirit of the amendments in this group-and unless they accept that HealthWatch, both nationally and locally, should be independent, and that resources should be clearly ring-fenced and clearly identified and cannot be used by bodies that have no interest, necessarily, in patient representation used for other purposes.”

*This relates to a procedural manoeuvre instigated by the Government late the day before that I thwarted.

Yesterday was the seventh day of the Committee Stage of the health and Social Care Bill.  In theory this should be the half-way point of the discussions, but the Committee has only got up to Clause 20 and there are another 323 Clauses to go.

One of the debates yesterday centred on the “mandate” (crazy word, crazy Bill) that the Secretary of State will give to the National Commissioning Board (this is the biggest quango in the known universe and it will effectively run the NHS).  The “mandate” is essentially the Government’s instructions to the Board, but as they are claiming that they are giving away all responsibilities to the Board (and thereby absolving Ministers from taking responsibility for what happens to the NHS as the budget is cut) the content of this “mandate” is really rather important.  How detailed will it be and will it be subject to proper Parliamentary scrutiny?

I am afraid the Government’s attitude brought out the normally-hidden (!) cynic in me:

“My Lords, I confess that I am something of a cynic about some of the proposals in the Bill. I am a great believer in the principle of localism, the local determination of services and local decision-making. Therefore, in principle I would applaud any Government-even this Government-who desire to devolve responsibility for various things to local authorities and, in this case, local commissioning groups.

However, my cynicism kicks in because what I suspect is happening here-I suspect that it will happen in other service areas-is that Ministers are cynically saying, “We are leaving these responsibilities to you, the local bodies concerned. We are very happy for you to make all these decisions. The snag is that we will not provide you with the resources to meet all the expectations that the public, who rely on those services, might legitimately have hoped to be provided. However, we are not taking these decisions. We will not be involved. It is a matter for local determination”. To be honest, I think that is what underpins much of the localism, devolution or autonomy agenda that we are seeing.

However, the experience of all previous experiments of localism is that while Ministers say, “Yes, this is a wonderful idea. We want to do it”, pressure starts to be applied to particular things. They want to have a mechanism whereby they can say, “It is, of course, your decision. However, we want you to make sure that these things happen”. Gradually, the list of the things that must happen gets longer and longer and the list of areas of discretion gets shorter and shorter.

When I saw the proposal for a mandate to be in the Bill, I thought that that was the mechanism whereby on the one hand Ministers will proclaim that they have no involvement in these decisions and say that they are all local decisions, but on the other hand this will enable them to ensure that certain things still happen because they are being subjected, as elected politicians, to pressure to make sure that they happen. That is why the amendment of my noble friend Lord Warner, which would restrict the extent to which this could be done, is very important. If we do not have an amendment of that sort in the Bill, I can tell you now what will happen; every single pressure group, voluntary organisation and lobby will say, “We want included in the mandate”, which is being issued to the national Commissioning Board, “the following service. We will want to see it there.”

For any sensible Minister the simple answer to all this is to write an extremely long mandate that covers all those points rather than sticks to them. If they were

obliged to be limited to just five or six or another small number of issues, that would be extremely salutary. It would stop the creep that would happen. However, I suspect that the Government are not going to say suddenly, “My goodness, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has come up with an excellent idea. Why didn’t we think of that? We must accept it, of course”, because unfortunately that is not always the way in which government Ministers react. They will stick to the letter of the Bill without those specifications. They will say, “Well, why five? Why not 10? Why not 12? What about three?”. All these different things will be argued as an excuse for not doing it. You will then get the drift and the pressure to say that more and more things must be added.

Amendment 100A is so important because there must be parliamentary scrutiny of what is happening, because this will be the mechanism that drives decision-making in the NHS. It is not going to be a pure version of devolution, localism and autonomy; this is going to be done through the mandate. The mandate is then going to be the most important document that drives the NHS at any one moment. That is why parliamentary scrutiny is essential. Parliament must have the opportunity not just to see it and to know what is being done in the name of the public but to comment, amend, or put forward amendments and have the Government respond to them.

I therefore hope that when the Minister responds he will accept not only the principle of my noble friend Lord Warner’s amendment but the principle of detailed parliamentary involvement in this process in the amendment of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.”

The full debate is here.

I see that Ken Livingstone is planning to reverse Mayor Boris Johnson’s abolition of the Zone 2-6 Travelcard.  This is welcome news for the very many people who travel around London but have no need to go into the centre.

When this was announced last October, the BBC reported how this was a slap in the face for the Mayor’s core constituency of outer-Londoners:

“Day travelcard users on London’s Underground and buses face price hikes of up to 74% from 2011.

The Zone 2-6 Travelcard will be withdrawn meaning passengers wishing to continue using travelcards will have to buy a Zone 1-6 version instead.

This would mean a peak hours ticket rise from £8.60 to £15.

Tube bosses said they were simplifying fares, but watchdog London TravelWatch said outer London residents and tourists would be worst affected.

“We are very concerned that these inflation-busting fares will price people off public transport,” said Jo deBank from London TravelWatch.

“Everyone will be hit, but it appears that infrequent users, those in outer London and visitors and tourists will be hit particularly hard.”"

Even Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph was moved to comment that this was one of:

“a series of unnoticed, but hugely above-inflation, fare rises in One Day Travelcards and Oyster price caps that will hit thousands of users with rises of up to 74 per cent.”

I wonder if he will be amongst those welcoming Ken Livingstone’s announcement.

I see that the US Congress is to investigate Chinese equipment suppliers Huawei and ZTE to see whether they present a threat to US national security.  According to PC World, the House Intelligence Committee wants to:

“examine if Huawei’s and ZTE’s expansion into the U.S. market gives the Chinese government an opportunity to hijack the nation’s infrastructure to conduct espionage. U.S. lawmakers worry that the networking equipment sold could secretly contain Chinese military technology to spy and interfere with U.S. telecommunications.”

Huawei has many links to the Chinese Government and its security apparatus.  As Jeffrey Carr summarises the key facts as follows:

1. The company’s founder Ren Zhengfei was an engineer in the PLA prior to forming his company.
2. The company’s chairwoman Sun Yafang worked for the Ministry of State Security and while there helped arrange loans for Huawei before joining the company as an employee.
3. The government of China is Huawei’s biggest customer; specifically the State-owned telecommunications services.
4. Huawei equipment is used to intercept communications in China for state-mandated monitoring.

Nevertheless, despite this its products are already widely used in the UK’s infrastructure particularly given its role in providing key components to BT.  I have expressed concern about this before and back in 2006 Newsweek recorded the Conservative Party’s concerns, saying:

“Political conservatives in Britain expressed the same security concerns about Huawei last spring. In April, the company won a $140 million contract to build part of British Telecom’s “21st Century Network,” a major overhaul of its equipment. But when rumors began circulating that the Chinese company might then bid on Marconi, a landmark electronics and information technology firm that was being put up for sale, a Conservative Party spokesman sounded the alarm. The Tories asked the British government to consider the implications for Britain’s defense industry of a Chinese takeover of Marconi. In the end, Huawei didn’t make an offer, and the Swedish telecom giant Ericsson is in the process of buying Marconi.”

Huawei continue to try and expand their access to the UK infrastructure market – see, for example, their wooing of Mayor Boris Johnson with an offer to provide mobile phone infrastructure for the Underground in time for the London Olympics.  In August, they recruited the former Government chief information officer, John Suffolk.

Their latest move to gain respectability is to sponsor a charity Christmas concert in support of The Prince’s Trust at the Royal Festival Hall next month, to which they have invited large numbers of senior Government officials and Parliamentarians.

No doubt, Huawei will say they are much-maligned, but I do wonder whether a UK Parliamentary Committee shouldn’t be following the lead of the US House Intelligence Committee and launch an investigation into the company’s growing influence in the UK and any possible implications for security.

Standards are falling in the Home Office.

I know that some may feel this is a statement of the obvious, but I know that it is important that these things are evidenced….

So here is an example – albeit a small one – but not so many years ago such sloppiness would never have occurred.

Yesterday, the Home Secretary announced that  she was proscribing the organisation “Muslims Against Crusades”, saying:

‘I have today laid an Order which will proscribe Muslims Against Crusades from midnight tonight. This means being a member of or supporting the organisation will be a criminal offence. 
 
‘I am satisfied Muslims Against Crusades is simply another name for an organisation already proscribed under a number of names including Al Ghurabaa, The Saved Sect, Al Muhajiroun and Islam4UK. The organisation was proscribed in 2006 for glorifying terrorism and we are clear it should not be able to continue these activities by simply changing its name.’

In my view, this is an entirely sensible move, although some would say long overdue and – of course – it is inevitable that the people involved may simply create a new organisation with the same name doing much the same sorts of things.

However, my concern about falling standards relates not to the decision but to the briefing that goes with it.  Amongst other things this says:

“Groups like MAC – which pedal hate and glorify terrorism – are not welcome in the UK. They do not speak for British Muslims and are reviled by the vast majority of decent people. We will continue to use all legal powers at our disposal to stop them from operating here.”

Pedal???*

As Private Eye might say “Shome mistake …”

All I can say to Home Office officials is: get your homophones right and the policy will take care of itself.

* For a helpful guide from the University of Hull see this.

Tonight the House of Lords debated the Protection of Freedoms Bill.  This was my contribution:

“My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority. I fear I may be spoiling the consensus that seems to have emerged as to what a wonderful Bill this is. This is a very grandiosely entitled Bill: “Protection of Freedoms”, no less. I am sure that when the title was chosen the Deputy Prime Minister had visions that, like the authors of the Magna Carta, seven centuries on, his creature would still be seen as a cornerstone of British liberties.

Frankly, he can dream on. This Bill is a mish-mash of ill-sorted provisions, a mish-mash without any overarching or underpinning philosophy and, worst of all, a mish-mash that will bring about unintended and damaging consequences. Balancing the civil liberties of the individual against the security of the state and the protection of the lives and well-being of other individuals is never an easy task and I wish that I could be confident that that balance has been appropriately struck in this Bill. Let us take, for example, Part 5, which makes major changes to the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, who is not in her place, will remember the time spent in this House trying to ensure that children and vulnerable adults were properly protected against those who might harm them.

When we hear from organisations, such as Fair Play for Children, that this Bill introduces,

“elements of serious risk to children”,

we need to consider the points with very great care. The Government say that the arrangements under the 2006 Act were too complicated and onerous for those who had to implement them. Yet the people who will have to implement this Bill say that its provisions do not reduce or simplify the current system and that it runs the risk of sowing considerable confusion and unnecessary complexity.

There is no evidential basis for these changes. There is to be no pilot and what is being done throws away the broad cross-party consensus on which the previous legislation was based. A major concern lies in the proposed definition of what constitutes supervision in respect of affected activities. This remains worryingly vague. One suggestion is that the definition of supervision should be “line of sight”. This is so vague as to be frankly laughable and out of touch with daily realities. If the activity stays in one or perhaps two rooms and there are two staff or supervisors to monitor all volunteers, perhaps that would be possible. But in a multi-feature environment where there is outdoor activity, and in many other situations, it will be next to impossible for many organisations to provide that level of supervision. It will result in increased costs and/or a restricted number of activities, and, no doubt, fewer volunteers involved and fewer children benefiting.

In any event, supervision misses the point. The supervised activities of a volunteer are one thing but it is precisely during those activities that the trust of the child with that individual is created. It is that trust that makes possible unsupervised contact and the risks that that brings with that trust being exploited and betrayed. Of course, the risk of such exploitation and betrayal taking place during supervised activities can be reduced by good supervision. But what of the contact outside the supervised activity? The child now trusts that adult because they have encountered them in the supervised activity. But that trust is where the potential for abuse is created outside that secure environment.

That is an example of where the balance is being struck wrongly. It is based on the false belief that the bureaucracy involved is stifling volunteering. Fair Play for Children surveyed its member groups and found that more than half believe that the existing vetting arrangements have improved their overall practice. In only one instance in 200 did a group report that the arrangements had made it more difficult to recruit volunteers. Most parents will say that when they hand over their children they want the reassurance that the adults who their children will encounter have been properly vetted. Do the Government really want to put the rights of the potential paedophile above those of the child? That is just one part of an ill-thought-out Bill.

Part 4 reduces the maximum period of pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects from 28 to 14 days. The periods of detention longer than 14 days have been used extremely sparingly and are subject to judicial approval, which has not always been given. The Government, moreover, acknowledge that sometimes a longer period—up to 28 days—may be necessary, presumably because of the nature and complexity of some counterterrorism investigations.

If circumstances require it, it is proposed that the Home Secretary comes to Parliament to introduce emergency legislation to reinstate the longer detention power. That has to be nonsense. It means that during—I repeat, during—a terrorism investigation, the police and security services may have to ask Parliament to be recalled to debate an issue that it cannot discuss without prejudicing a future trial. The remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, are extremely pertinent on this point. Ministers recognise that 28 days may be necessary to investigate or avert a serious terrorist threat, but none the less intend to remove the power, even though there is no evidence that the power has ever been misused.

Part 2 adds to police bureaucracy, which is another example of extra expenditure being incurred as a result of pressure from the Daily Mail. It will make it more difficult for the police and local authorities to use CCTV to prevent and detect crime. This no doubt reflects concerns about a surveillance society, although when I was a local government leader my experience was that communities always—I repeat, always—welcomed the introduction of new CCTV schemes. If that concern about a surveillance society was so important, why are there no restrictions on the use of private CCTV cameras? I do not want to labour the point, but this oh-so-cleverly-worked-out Bill makes it more difficult and more expensive for our already overstretched police service to prevent crime but does nothing to restrict the proliferation of privatised surveillance.

Finally, Part 1 restricts the retention of DNA samples and profiles taken during a criminal investigation. This will make it harder, not easier, for the police to catch and convict dangerous criminals. The Home Office’s own research produced last year contradicts what this Bill will do. It showed that, each year, 23,000 people who will be taken off the database under these proposals will go on to commit further offences. Of these, 6,000 will commit serious crimes, including rape and murder.

Whose civil liberties are we protecting here? It will certainly not be those of anyone like Sally Anne Bowman who was 18 when she was murdered close to her home in south London in 2005. The police investigation initially drew a blank. But a year later, Mark Dixie, a pub chef, was arrested following a brawl in the pub where he worked. No further action was taken for that pub brawl but his DNA was taken and subsequently loaded on the database. It produced a match to the DNA evidence retrieved from the murder victim and within five hours he was under arrest. He was subsequently charged, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. So what are we doing removing the ability to protect people like Sally Anne Bowman? There are plenty of other such examples.

This Bill repeatedly gets the balance wrong. Of course, we should protect freedom. But why is it that the only freedoms that this Bill seems to care about are the freedoms of the would-be terrorist, the manipulative paedophile and the serial rapist?”

The House of Lords likes to talk about itself and this afternoon is no exception.

The House has been debating a series of (modest) amendments to its own procedures. First off is the idea that during Question Time the Lord Speaker should be allowed to arbitrate between the political groupings in the Chamber as to whose turn it is to ask a supplementary question.  This is regarded as revolutionary stuff.  At present the House itself decides by growling whose turn it is and, if there is still a conflict with two (or more) Peers trying to speak at the same time, the Leader of the House intervenes and arbitrates.  The Leader of the House is, of course, a Government Minister and to most people it might seem odd that he should decide who should ask a question of one of his Ministerial colleagues.  But that is the way it is at the moment and after more than an hour of debate, the House voted by 169 to 233 to retain the status quo.

The House did agree that Peers could refer to the House of Commons as the “House of Commons” rather than the “Other Place”, but the idea of simplifying the forms of address proved much more controversial.  At present, former senior judicial figures have to be referred to as “The Noble and Learned Lord”, Field Marshals or holders of the Victoria Cross as “The Noble and Gallant Lord”, and Bishops as “!The Right Reverend Prelate”.  It was suggested that “The Noble Lord” or “The Bishop of _____” might suffice.  After lengthy debate, the House divided with 173 in favour of the proposition and 173 against and the proposed simplification was declared “not carried”.

For the time being, procedural reform will  have to wait.

Ben Brogan, the Daily Telegraph’s Deputy Editor, is fed up with the tent protest at Parliament Square. 

And what is more, he is fed up with Mayor Boris Johnson’s failure to sort it out:

“Well, those of you who have long wondered about that ghost town of dirty tents lining two sides of the square might have a look at this video, which we filmed a few days ago. We used a thermal camera in the same way we did at the St Paul’s protest. If anything the result is even more damning. Turns out the ‘peace camp’ looks deserted because… it’s deserted. MPs might like to ask why the Met/Westminster Council/Boris Johnson don’t pop round and take these abandoned articles away. Either that or stop bullying us about left luggage and locked bicycles being destroyed. The Mayor should get down there this afternoon with a van and clear the lot himself.”

Strong words: “get down there this afternoon”.

Is even the Daily Telegraph beginning to realise that the Mayor needs to get a grip?

Running London is not about sound bites and photo ops – it is about doing things for London and Londoners.

Whether Londoners agree with the Daily Telegraph’s fixation about tented protests or not, they do agree that London needs a Mayor who takes the job seriously and really does care about the city.