On 23 February, in a debate in the Lords on police and crime panels—bodies created in 2012 to scrutinise the work of police and crime commissioners—Alistair Lexden took the Home Office to task for making no effort to stop the gross misconduct hearing against a disgraced police chief, Mike Veale, being indefinitely delayed.
My Lords, it would hard to overestimate the importance of the place occupied by police and crime panels in the new system— a system that is still controversial and not much loved 11 years on—whose success depends on the performance of elected police and crime commissioners, all of them now party politicians.
Are we really well served by having party politicians rather than distinguished independent figures at the helm of the new system?
The advantages are not exactly overwhelming, as the long-running crises in Leicester and Cleveland, to which I have drawn your Lordships’ attention many times, plainly show.
It falls to the police and crime panels to try to deal with these crisis-ridden party politicians on behalf of their communities between elections, in which, sadly, too few people take part.
In order to exercise their crucial role, the panels have been given in statute the power to require commissioners to provide information and answer questions.
Alas, not all commissioners understand that the information that they provide, and the answers to questions that they give, need to be accurate, intelligible and free from any form of censorship, so that the panels can fulfil their duties and serve their communities fully.
The Leicester and Cleveland commissioners seem incapable of coming up to the standards that are required.
I have no idea whether these two individuals are typical of police and crime commissioners as a whole. It does not matter. Every single commissioner should provide their panel with full, clear and truthful information, as the legal obligations to which they are subject require.
To do otherwise is to obstruct their panel in the performance of their duties-- an offence which surely ought to merit removal from office.
The Cleveland police and crime panel is being obstructed through the denial of full, frank and clear information.
Quite rightly, its members have been seeking an explanation from their commissioner as to why Mike Veale, one of the most notorious discredited ex-police chiefs in the country, has not yet been brought to answer the charges against him at the gross misconduct hearing, which the Cleveland commissioner announced in August 2021.
In November last year, the commissioner was asked by members of the panel about the cause of the extraordinary delay.
He replied: “I cannot share that with you. If I told you and that is then in the public domain, that then compromises something else, which potentially compromises something else.”
Earlier this month, the panel tried again. They found the commissioner in an indignant mood, following comments in your Lordships’ House.
He said: “Someone in the Lords said I should hurry up and I have asked him for some clarity on how he believes I should be hurrying up, given the legal complexity. I can’t say more.”
It was, I think, my NF the Minister who urged him to move a little faster after a delay of some 18 months. When he comes to reply, the Minister will no doubt tell us how he has assisted the commissioner in his quest for clarity.
But how ridiculous and insulting, my Lords, for the commissioner to tell the Cleveland panel that legal complexity justifies endless delay.
The Office for Police Conduct set out the case against the notorious Veale in a report, following a two-year inquiry. And the report, which has never been published, went to the Cleveland commissioner two years ago. So four years have passed without bringing this case of gross misconduct to the start of the legal process that is required.
What exactly is legally complex about the contents of the IOPC report? The panel is entitled by statute to an answer. It is being withheld from them.
Without an answer, the panel would be forgiven for thinking that there is no complexity, and that they are being given fake information by a commissioner who wants to suppress the evidence against Veale.
Someone called a legally qualified chair will preside over the misconduct hearing, if it ever takes place,. That worries the Cleveland panel, which this month expressed fears that the hearing may run out of time, allowing Veale, a man dogged by scandal since his vendetta against Sir Edward Heath a few years ago, to escape justice.
Has a chair even been appointed in Cleveland? No one knows. If there is a chair , their name is being kept a closely guarded secret.
When asked in the House earlier this month why the chair in this case, if there is one, was allowed to remain anonymous, the Minister said he did not know.
Yesterday, in a Written Answer, he told me that “there are no provisions in legislation which entitle legally qualified chairs of police misconduct hearings to remain anonymous.”
Yet neither the Cleveland police and crime panel –nor anyone else—has been told the identity of the chair in this case.
Perhaps at the end of this debate the Minister will tell us why the Home Office is content to see the law flouted in Cleveland by the very person charged with upholding it.
Or is the reality that no chair has been appointed, and there is no name to reveal?
I think the Home Office might usefully reflect on the conclusions of a recent report produced by the think tank, Policy Exchange on the role of these chairs.
The report found that “having been introduced with the aim of increasing public confidence in the police misconduct process, the experiment is having the opposite effect.” It certainly is in Cleveland.
To events in Cleveland, the Home Office has reacted with weary indifference. It does not seem to care. It takes no action.
It maintains that it has no powers whatsoever, even to make representations, let alone intervene. And that is the most tragic aspect of this sorry saga.
Is the Home Office really so utterly powerless? It is a point on which independent legal judgement could be usefully brought to bear. But if needs powers, it should seek them swiftly through regulations.
