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Human Rights

We are asking the police to do a great deal if they are to be held responsible for the headlines in certain newspapers. Speaking as a Home Office Minister, I can say that Government policy is often crudely misrepresented. I can do my best to change that, but I cannot tell a journalist how to do their job. We have a free press in this country. Whether or not we agree with the press, we have to allow it to do its job. We are in danger of overstepping the mark with regard to what the police can actually achieve. I am sure that police press offices up and down the country work to calm things down, but we have a free press and we must allow it to work unfettered. The hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned containment. I would be grateful to hear from him examples of where police have moved in and closed an area so that we can raise them with ACPO. If he provides information to the Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism, he will look into it. The hon. Gentleman also raised forward intelligence teams. The ACPO review of guidance on their work to date will be forthcoming. The hon. Gentleman also raised the Wood case. That did not go against the Government, as he said. The case was brought against the Metropolitan police, who welcome the clarity that the judgment brings. It is important to put that on the record. As I said, we agree that photography can be a valuable intelligence-gathering tool, but it raises human rights issues. It is important that those issues are tested in the courts. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds raised some useful points. I welcome his cross-party support for the valuable and important work of the police. It is important that we send a message out to the police that Parliament supports the work they do. I am glad that we can do that in this debate on a challenging area of policing. The legal test for the use of force, which is one of the concerns the hon. Gentleman raised, is set out in the Criminal Law Act 1967. That applies to any use of force. The law is clear that any use of force must be reasonable and appropriate to the threat or perceived threat that officers face. The disproportionate use of force is unacceptable and any officer found to be using excessive force will be disciplined accordingly. Where there is doubt or concern about the use of force, the police should be scrutinised. That is rightly happening under the auspices of the IPCC and HMIC. Once again, I stress that most officers do not overuse force, but they are working in very challenging areas. At the sharp end of policing, officers need to know that they are scrutinised and will be trained to do the job properly. We need to be sure that we have safeguards in place for any officers who overstep the mark. We will continue to work with all police agencies and associations to ensure that the legal position on the police use of force is embedded in every area of policing from the first day of training right the way through. We will also ensure there is consistency in different areas of guidance that impinge on the use of force; for example, armed policing and officer safety training. Those will be cemented in the code of practice. The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of there not being enough trained officers. We take that very seriously, as do ACPO, which is working on building regional capability. The Home Office will be producing a code of practice on public order to ensure that the police have appropriately trained officers. That is core policing and, as I mentioned, it is important to have that across 43 forces, because of the need to move officers, from time to time, into other force areas. The HMIC is clear that the issue is not more training, but better training. ACPO and the National Policing Improvement Agency have already piloted a new command-level training approach. I am happy to provide the hon. Gentleman with guidance on that as necessary. We agree that guidance needs to be implemented, and that the Olympics will be a challenge in that respect, so we need to make sure we have got it right.