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Independent Police Complaints Commission

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to debate the Independent Police Complaints Commission, an organisation that has taken on increasing importance in recent months. It is right in such a debate to begin by thanking all local officers in Tottenham for the work that they do day in, day out. The vast majority of them serve us very well indeed. Some of those brave men and women serve their own community, and it is clear that they put others ahead of their own needs. All of them put their lives on the line to keep Tottenham safe, and I thank them for that. However, for all the bravery of those officers, things very occasionally go wrong, and when they do go wrong, individual officers must be held to account for their decisions and actions. 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. With the death of Cynthia Jarrett in 1985, Roger Sylvester in 1999, and 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 are not only a Tottenham issue, as, for example, the unexplained death of Christopher Alder in Hull more than a decade ago shows us, and they are not 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 our 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 a lot of good work, it is the list of deaths that everyone remembers. It is not just the fact that a person has died following contact with the police that is important; how the death is investigated and who carries out the investigation are just as important. That is what I want to discuss this evening. Before describing how I think 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 and resistance, because we have come a long way indeed. In 1985 Lord Scarman produced his groundbreaking report on the Brixton riots four years previously. He 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 of restoring trust. Unforgivably, it would be another 19 years before the IPCC opened for business. Instead of the Government agreeing to what was so obviously needed, deckchairs were duly rearranged and the old Police Complaints Authority was set up to replace the Police Complaints Board, but it proved just as hapless. Changing a word in the title proved easier than changing the way of working, because in those days it did not matter whether it was the Police Complaints Authority or the Police Complaints Board that conducted the investigation. They were not investigations for the victim, their family or the concerned community; they were investigations by the police and for the police. The opening of the Stephen Lawrence murder trial yesterday again brings the failures of the Police Complaints Authority into sharp public view. The Macpherson report on Stephen's death highlighted these failures perfectly. It noted that the authority's report on the Metropolitan police's handling of the death was known as the Kent report, principally because the Kent police handled the inquiry into the Metropolitan police. The Kent report began making excuses for the Metropolitan police in its preface:"““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.””" The Macpherson report highlighted the shocking extent to which the Police Complaints Authority examined whether racism impacted on the Met's investigation, stating:"'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 racism in the Met. Like the Scarman report, the Macpherson report called for an independent body to investigate police complaints. Thankfully, one Home Affairs Committee report later, the Government listened that time and the IPCC was set up in 2004. Make no mistake: the IPCC is certainly an improvement on what went before, as the police are not investigating themselves. We are pleased about that, but not very pleased, and certainly not content. The death of Mark Duggan tells us why we should not be content with what we have, because it is not yet good enough.