Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)

My Lords, I join in condemning the attacks on police officers, mosques and asylum seekers and the places where people believed they were. I also support the officers who carried on walking forward when they were being bricked, despite occasionally not having the full equipment. We saw, particularly in Southport, some serious injuries to officers who still kept walking forward. They did an excellent job. I ask the Minister to consider two big issues in the review that he mentioned. First, there was clearly a lack of intelligence at times about the groups involved— what they were planning and how many would turn up. Sometimes over the last few years it has become difficult to use some of the most intrusive surveillance gathering against political extremists. We understand why—obviously, political parties should not be targeted in that way—but, where politics veers into violence, that is a different matter altogether. It is vital that informants, undercover officers and all those intrusive things that only Home Secretaries can authorise are available to use against this type of people, whether from the left or the right—although at the moment we are particularly worried about the right and its ability to organise. The second area that the review might consider is the number of officers that can be mobilised together quickly and in large numbers. It was mentioned that by the time that the riots started to subside, around 4,000 officers were being deployed. This sounds like a lot, but when you consider that in Notting Hill recently—where two murders sadly occurred—7,000 officers were deployed in about half a square mile, and that the riots of 2011 were only subdued when 16,000 officers were patrolling the streets of this city, I do wonder whether sufficient officers were available quickly enough. Should things recur, I believe the Home Office has a proper, strategic role to play in this, to ensure that forces are ready and rapidly able to reinforce. I am certainly aware of forces waiting hours for reinforcements to arrive when one would hope it would be minutes.