Speech on the Independent Police Complaints Commission

Below is a speech delivered by David Lammy MP in the House of Commons on 15 November 2011. The full debate can be read on the Parliamentary Hansard [link].

The speech was made at the start of an adjournment debate that David secured on the powers of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.


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Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to debate the Independent Police Complaints Commission, an organisation that has taken on increasing importance in recent months.
I also thank the Minister in advance for his reply [and to the Honourable Members who will no doubt make constructive interventions in the course of this debate].
 
1)      The Context for Tottenham

Mr Speaker, I want to start off by talking about Tottenham, the place where I was born, where I grew up, and where I represent.

First, I want to thank the local officers who, day in, day out, serve us so well. Some of these brave men and women serve their own community and others come from outside to serve us. But all of them put their lives on the line to keep Tottenham safe, and for that I thank them.

However, for all the bravery of those officers, things do very occasionally go wrong. And when they do go wrong, individual officers must be held to account for their decisions and actions
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Because there is no way of escaping Tottenham’s recent history – there is a history of people in Tottenham dying during or following Police contact. I wish to God that this were not true, but anyone who has lived in Tottenham knows just how those deaths have strained the relationship between some of our residents and the Police.

The death of Cynthia Jarrett in 1985; the death of Roger Sylvester in 1999; and the death of Mark Duggan this August - Tottenham’s history has been punctuated and measured by these tragic events.
Of course, deaths in police custody or following Police contact aren’t only a Tottenham issue. The unexplained death of Christopher Alder in Hull ten years ago shows us that. And they aren’t just an issue for the black community. Recent years have seen the deaths of Ian Tomlinson and Jean Charles de Menezes due to Police actions.

But, in Tottenham, we do seem to bear more than our fair share of these tragic events.
It takes years - decades - of effort to build community relations and to foster a two-way sense of trust between residents and the people who should be their Police. Despite this work, and there has been a lot of good work, it is the list of deaths that everyone remembers.

So, Mr Speaker, it isn’t just the fact that a person has died following contact with the Police which is important. What is just as important is how that death is investigated and who carries out that investigation.

It is that which we are here to discuss this evening.

 
2)      Why did the IPCC get set up

Before we come to how I perceive the IPCC can be improved, it is important to recognise that the journey to the creation of an independent complaints authority has not been short or without controversy or resistance.

Because we have come a long way. In 1985, Lord Scarman produced his groundbreaking report into the Brixton riots four years previously. Scarman was deeply concerned about the total breakdown of trust between the Police and some of the communities they were supposed to serve.

His report called for an independent body to be set up to investigate Police complaints as a means to restore trust. Unforgivably, it would be another 19 years before the IPCC opened for business. Instead of agreeing to what was so obviously needed, deckchairs were duly rearranged and the Police Complaints Authority was set up to replace the.....Police Complaints Board.

The Authority proved to be just as hapless as the Board. Changing a word in the title proved easier than changing a way of working. Because in those days it didn’t matter who was doing the investigating – the Police Complaints Authority or the Police Complaints Board. These weren’t investigations for the victim, or the victim’s family, or the concerned community. These were investigations by the Police, for the Police.

The opening of the Stephen Lawrence murder trial today again brings the failures of the Police Complaints Authority into public view. The MacPherson report into Stephen’s death highlighted these failures perfectly:

• It noted that the Authority’s report into the Metropolitan Police’s handling of the death was known as the Kent Report, principally because it was the Kent Police handling the inquiry into the Metropolitan Police.
• The Authority already began making excuses for the Metropolitan Police in the preface of its report:
  • "The depth of detailed scrutiny applied in the complaints investigation could have found fault in most police criminal investigations. The reader of this report should bear in mind that the benefit of hindsight and the luxury of having time to assess all of the information that was available to the MPS is bound to reveal errors, omissions and flawed judgement." 
• MacPherson highlighted the shocking extent to which the Police Complaints Authority examined whether racism impacted upon the Met’s investigation:
  • “Many officers were asked directly whether racism had an impact upon their activities in the case. Predictably they replied in strong terms denying such impact. The result was the finding by Kent that:
    • "Kent Police have found no evidence to support the allegation of racist conduct by any MPS officer involved in the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence."

Scarman’s warning in 1985 about the lack of independent oversight of the Police had become, 12 years later, the whitewash of the Kent Police’s so-called investigation of the Met Police. Like the Scarman Report, the MacPherson Report called for an independent body to investigate Police complaints.

Thankfully, a Home Affairs Select Committee report later, this time the Government listened and the IPCC was set up in 2004. And, make no mistake, the IPCC is an improvement on the Police Complaints Board and the Police Complaints Authority. For the first time, the Police are not investigating the Police.

So for this, we should be happy. Happy, but very much not content. 
 

3)      Is the IPCC sufficient?

The death of Mark Duggan tells us why we shouldn’t be content with what we have. Because what we have now isn’t good enough.

The IPCC has two roles – Police scrutiny and public guardianship. They are charged with investigating complaints independently with the fullest scrutiny, but their role does not stop there. Because they investigate on all of our behalves, they must communicate to, and work with, us - the public.

In the case of the death of Mark Duggan, whether the IPCC fulfil their primary duty in scrutinising the Police actions of 4 August 2011 remains to be seen. However, I can say now that it is vital that they do all within their power to convince the Duggan family and the wider Tottenham community that their investigation is thorough, impartial and independent. Without that, we will be back in the bad old days of the Kent Report and Police investigating Police. I hope they won’t take us back to those days.  

So we wait to see whether the IPCC fulfil their primary duty. Yet, even in the days immediately after Mark Duggan’s death, it was clear they had failed completely and utterly in their secondary duty – their guardianship role.

• Mark Duggan’s family were forced to learn of their death of their son and their father from watching the television. This is beyond unacceptable. Why did nobody from the IPCC contact the family on the day of Mark Duggan’s death, when they had opened their investigation? Despite warnings from across the community, they failed to communicate with the family until two days after the shooting. Even then, they were unable to communicate anything of substance to the family. This is not good enough.
• Despite employing 15 media officers, the IPCC failed to make an appearance in the media to reassure sceptical members of the community that they would investigate Mark Duggan’s death thoroughly, impartially and independently.
• The inability of the IPCC to fulfil this responsibility is difficult to explain. There were no direct communications from the IPCC to the affected communities in Tottenham in the hours and days after Mark Duggan’s death. Would it have been difficult to hand-deliver a letter to residents living in the affected areas, reassuring them of the investigation, explaining the known facts and appealing for calm and cooperation? No, yet it didn’t happen.
• In the absence of any word from the IPPC, a dangerous vacuum was allowed to open up, where rumours were allowed to take hold in place of hard facts. This is not good enough.
• When the supposed facts were released to the media, they were quickly retracted. It was put out that there had been an exchange of fire in the incident which led to Mark Duggan’s death, which turned out not to be true. Why did that happen? Again, not good enough.
• And, to this day, communication between the IPCC and Tottenham residents (as well as the wider black community) appears sparse at best and unthinking at worst. This has to change.

The magnitude of the IPCC’s task is immense, and some of the signs are not hopeful. Two-thirds of people have heard of the IPCC – a number which has barely budged since the body was founded seven years ago. Yet, a third of those people think that the IPCC is part of the Police. Again, that figure has barely budged. Ethnic minorities are even less likely to have heard of the IPCC, and more likely to believe that it is part of the Police. This is the scale of the IPCC’s task.

It has to do more to convince a sceptical public that it is truly independent – that it has learned the lessons of Scarman and MacPherson. I hope that the Duggan inquiry will go some way to doing this, although the way that the IPCC handled the initial days following Mark Duggan’s death does not fill me with great expectations. What assurances can the Minister give the people in Tottenham that the Duggan inquiry will be thorough and independent?

A good start would be to address the shocking statistics that 30% of IPCC investigators are former Police officers and far too few are from ethnic minorities. Investigators – like Police officers – must look like the communities they are working in, and the IPCC must never allow itself to seem like a Del Boy-esque knocked-off version of the Police Complaints Authority. What assurances can the Minister give that these figures will change?

But Mr Speaker, the IPCC can only work under its current powers. It is time for those powers to change. 

• At the moment, the IPCC cannot compel a Police officer to speak to them unless they are a named suspect of a criminal investigation. They need the power to speak to everyone in the Police – right up to the very top. Can the Minister assure me that the IPCC will be given the powers to compel Police officers to cooperate with its inquiries?
• At the moment, the IPCC does not have the power to suspend a Police officer pending an investigation. The officer involved in the Mark Duggan case hasn’t been suspended and is still working. Can the Minister assure me that the IPCC will be given the power to suspend Police officers who have been involved in a death due to Police contact?
• At the moment, the IPCC does not have the power to initiate its own prosecutions following an investigation. It may believe that a prosecution should follow, but it is at the mercy of coroners and the Crown Prosecution Service. The IPCC needs to have primacy over coroners and be given the right to initiate their own prosecutions. Can the Minister assure me that the IPCC will be given these powers?
• At the moment, the IPCC does not ‘own’ the scene of an investigation until some time after an incident has taken place. The scene of the Duggan death was not owned by the IPCC until hours after the shooting. That has to change. Can the Minister assure me that the IPCC will own a crime scene from the moment that a person dies following Police contact?
• The IPCC budget to scrutinise all Police complaints in England and Wales is tiny – around £35 million a year, the same as the Metropolitan Police’s professional standards directorate. If we expect the IPCC to properly investigate Police actions, we should expect to fund those investigations properly. Can the Minister assure me that the IPCC will be properly resourced to properly carry out its work?

The IPCC has a long way to go, but we must expect government to show it the way.
 

4)      What now?

The public’s perception of the IPCC is the same today as it was on day one, seven years ago. Only a third of the public trust their independent role – a disastrously low level for an organisation that seeks to serve the public and depends on public trust for it to function. People in Tottenham remain sceptical that the IPCC will be any different from the Police Complaints Authority when it investigates the death of Mark Duggan.

That needs to change. The government needs a full review into what happens in communities when a death in Police custody, or following Police contact, takes place. And it needs to start by reviewing why so many deaths take place as a result of Police action.
 
Since 1999, according to the House of Commons Library, 322 people have died in or following Police custody, yet not one Police officer has been jailed for any of these incidents. These are shocking numbers. This has to stop. Will the Minister commit to an inquiry into deaths in Police custody and following Police contact?
 
And I hope the Minister will commit to an inquiry into the disgraceful revelations regarding the handing over of the wrong body to the family of Christopher Alder, who died in Police custody in April 1998. Mr Alder was a paratrooper who fought for his country, yet he was left to choke to death, handcuffed on the floor of a police station. The IPCC found that four of the officers involved were guilty of the “most serious neglect of duty”. However, yet again, it is another Police force which has been called in to investigate, not a robust and independent investigation from the IPCC. This is totally and utterly unacceptable. Will the Minister commit to an inquiry into the case of Christopher Alder?

And what does the IPCC need to do to strengthen its role in these cases?

• The IPCC needs to learn from its mistakes in August and to make sure that the Duggan inquiry is thorough and independent.
• Its investigators need to look like the communities they work in and serve.
• It needs to review what it does in communities when a death following Police contact takes place. Why did Mark Duggan’s family learn of his death from the television news? Why was immediate contact not made, together with the offer of legal advice? Why did the IPCC not communicate directly with Tottenham residents? Why did the IPCC not hit the airwaves straight after Mark Duggan’s death?
• For 18 months the IPCC hasn’t even had a permanent Chair, and the current recruitment process doesn’t require the new Chair to be a high profile role. We need the Chair to be a high-profile, recognisable figure - someone who will get in front of the cameras, get on the ground within hours of an incident to reassure. And the interview panel should include representatives of the Police and families who have dealt with the IPCC in the past. Will the Minister commit to this recruitment process?
• It needs to be given primacy over local coroners and allowed full powers over any investigation into a complaint against the Police. A strong, robust IPCC should not have to rely on the good will of officers to cooperate with their inquiries. A robust IPCC would have the power to compel officers to cooperate, would be able to suspend officers, and would be able to initiate its own prosecutions.
• And, finally, the government needs to give the IPCC the resources to carry out their job properly.
• Can the Minister assure me that all this will happen?

 
Mr Speaker, there is a long way to go to satisfy the people of all communities in Tottenham that the IPCC is independent, impartial, thorough and accountable to the public, not to the Police. That is the least that my constituents and I expect.