Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)

I thank the Minister for such a constructive response and of course I thank everyone for their support. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, made a point that I had not made in my speech but that I want to amplify: in collecting the data, we should consider people for at least 12 months after retirement. He mentioned one particular case, but we can all perhaps imagine others and, if there is a link, that would be interesting to look at. I hope we do not have to end up with legislation, because, in a way, that would be an admission of failure. There are far better ways of achieving it without that, or the bureaucracy that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, mentioned. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, for his usual powerful support for this and for saying it is common sense that this needs sorting out—there was no challenge on that from the Minister. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for their wholehearted support. A couple of important things have through in the debate. First, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, mentioned the potential link to misconduct processes. If that is an issue, we need to understand why. We had an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, on a previous Committee day about potential deadlines or timelines for how long these things take; that cannot be unconnected. Whatever it is, we need to understand what it is about. There is a second very important HR issue: are we recruiting people who understand the nature of the job they are about to embark on? Are we sharing the nature of the challenges? Are we supporting them at the beginning if they have things that they are not sure about? It is important, for the reasons we have all talked about, to make sure that this happens. I am really reassured about the round table. It would be really helpful if, by Report, we had a definite route forward, because I can see there are various routes.