Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)

My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, to which I added my name. Sadly, he is right: the police do not have sufficient knowledge about the law changes, which are now quite old. I suspect the reason is that the complaints tend to be infrequent, but of course it can be a Catch-22 because, if people do not think that their complaints will be listened to, they do not tend to make them. But, in the process, that means that the police have probably not kept pace with the law as it has changed, and with the needs of complainants. Traditionally, the police did get involved, even in civil disputes, usually to prevent a breach of the peace, because people were worried there would be violence. Sometimes, a tenant might have access to a firearm, so there would be pre-work to make sure that that was removed from the scene so things could not get more serious. This seems a reasonable step. I could not necessarily give the amendment that level of support in Committee because I thought there was a danger that it was directing the police to do certain things. All this tries to do is establish the level of the problem and what can be done about it so that the police perform their duty. The risk is that, at the moment, they are not. Obviously, the amendment may or may not be accepted, but there are some fairly straightforward ways in which it could be helped. The Chief Inspector of Constabulary goes around and inspects every force every year and, if it were put on the list of things to look at, that would certainly make the police think about it. Tenants having a single point of contact within a force would mean that at least one person—or two or three people, or a department—could provide this knowledge and expertise for the officers on the street. That would be helpful. Carrying on as we are is not fair on the tenants, and it is not proper if Parliament has decided that this is a criminal act and the police have a role to play. So I support this amendment; it is a reasonable step. If the Government do not accept it, they might want to make it clear how they will address the gap.