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David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con): I start by thanking the Home Secretary for giving me unusually early sight of the report and the statement. That is not just the normal courtesy we show on such occasions; his action reflects the fact that this is a question of public safety, and that will be recognised in my response.
I wholeheartedly endorse the Home Secretary's remarks about the dignity shown by the families of Holly and Jessica. I am sure that that is true for everybody in the House.
I welcome almost everything that the Home Secretary said today and I also welcome the report of Sir Michael Bichard. It is exhaustive and I agree with most of it. I consider his decision to reconvene in six months' time to review progress not just a good idea but something that should become standard practice for reports such as this in future.
The report makes it clear that Cambridgeshire criminal records bureau was so focused on the introduction of new systems that it failed to carry out crucial checks into Ian Huntley's background. We must ensure that such failures never happen again, and much that the Home Secretary said about that will do just that. However, Sir Michael says that even if Cambridgeshire had got it right, Ian Huntley's record would still have been missed because of other failures in the system, most notably in Humberside police.
In my view, there were two failures in Humberside policing. One relates to information technology, but the other relates to the handling of the Huntley case. Even before any weeding took place, Ian Huntley's record of behaviour should have led police to act. Consider the following: there was an allegation of unlawful sex with a 15-year-old in August 1995; there was an allegation of unlawful sex with another 15-year-old in May 1996; and there was an allegation of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old, also in May 1996. That was not an IT failure; it was a failure of policing.
Those offences were known at exactly the same time, before there was any opportunity for them to be weeded by Humberside police, so it is no wonder that PC Harding in his report, which is reproduced on page 52, in section 1.229 of the Bichard report, said:
"It is quite clear that Huntley is a serial sex attacker and is at liberty to continue his activities."
Sir Michael says that no one thing could have prevented what happened. In fact, if the police had acted on that sequence of events, Ian Huntley would presumably have been locked up. Incidentally, that failure preceded the current chief constable's arrival in post. His failures relate to the failures of the IT system and the consequences that flow from that. In view of the fact that the Home Secretary has, in effect, today initiated a quasi-judicial process under the Police Reform Act 2002 in respect of David Westwood, which I do not wish to prejudice, I shall say no more today about his direct role.
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The report states that social services should report incidents of sex with minors to the police. I agree. However, the report also says that there are "exceptional circumstances" when the police should not be notified. What exactly are those exceptional circumstances? When an adult is engaged in a sexual relationship with a child, I believe that there are no circumstances where the police should not be informed. We now know that, in 1995, social services knew of an allegation that Huntley was having sex with a 15-year-old girl, but apparently—it is not entirely clear—chose not to inform the police. That was at exactly the same time as the cases that I cited a moment ago. The social services were not, and could not be, in possession of all the facts relating to public safety. Therefore, they should not make that decision. So will the Home Secretary review that specific aspect and consider the option of making the requirement to notify the police of such offences absolute?
Much of the report focuses properly on the failure of information handling, primarily by Humberside police but also by the Cambridge criminal records bureau, and generic failures by the Police Information Technology Organisation, the Association of Chief Police Officers, Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and the Home Office. The report properly criticises Humberside police's IT practices, and it criticises the lack of a national police IT system. It calls for the introduction of such a system as soon as possible. It does not say whether the problems of Humberside are replicated in other forces, although I suspect that they may be. Neither does the report deal with a problem that we all know about: Whitehall in general and the Home Office in particular have a very poor track record of implementing computer systems.
I welcome the Home Secretary's comments on the police local exchange system—the PLX system. I also welcome his announcement about the police national computer system—the so-called Impact system—but may I make two suggestions? First, will he commission Sir Michael Bichard in the next six months to review all the IT systems in the 43 forces, to establish the extent of the problem? Secondly, to minimise the risk of another computer disaster, will the forces use either the best practice that he identifies, or the already operational Scottish system, as the basis for the new national system?
The failure to implement a system should have been identified much sooner. Sir Michael Bichard states in his report:
"HMIC could and should have been more proactive. Information systems are of obvious importance to policing, and they could have been inspected effectively with relative ease."
Has the Home Secretary any proposal to reform or improve the capability of Her Majesty's inspectorate in that respect?
Sir Michael recommends a registration system for all those working with children. Will the Home Secretary tell us whether such a system would apply to people who work in charities and voluntary groups—volunteers, rather than employees—because they often add great value and enjoyment to children's lives? Although child protection is clearly paramount, there is a balance of justice to be established. A series of false allegations can
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effectively destroy a career, as was recently the case with a teacher, ironically, in Humberside—the Jonathan Dunning-Davies case that I have discussed privately with the Home Secretary before.
"appeal process for applicants who were refused registration."
Sir Michael is absolutely right, but how does the Home Secretary believe that the appeals system would work? Would people know who is making the allegation against them, and if not, how could it be challenged? Who would decide what information is held on record, and how could that be challenged? Would the process be judicial? I recognise that those are difficult issues, but they need to be addressed. The Home Secretary, I know, recognises the burden that would be placed on the police. Humberside police, to take the example that we are dealing with, will process 50,000 information requests this year. That implies about 2 million for England and Wales. How does he intend to progress that issue?
I also welcome the Home Secretary's proposals for a code on the Data Protection Act 1998. Of course, the Bichard report properly dismissed the Humberside policy authority's excuses in that respect, but this is not the only case of serious misunderstandings with that Act, so I welcome his review and the writing of a statutory code.
It is not just Humberside and Cambridgeshire police who should read the report today. Every police force and social services department in the country should read and learn the lessons of the report because, if we fail, it will be a catastrophe measured in human tragedies.
Mr. Blunkett: I welcome the shadow Home Secretary's measured tones and approach, which are appropriate on this occasion, and in reciprocation, I wish to share with him and the Liberal Democrats the opportunity to get such aspects right in the months ahead. The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the fact that it was not simply that an information system went wrong, but that a recording did not take place so a record was not available. It was inevitable that such a failure would lead to critical information being missed. I take the point entirely in relation to the information that the right hon. Gentleman gave me earlier today about a local case, which I shall come to in a minute.
Regrettably, the system of "weeding out", as it is described in Sir Michael's report, is almost a bizarre experience in Humberside. I draw hon. Members' attention—if they are prepared to look through the report—to paragraph 2.58, which describes a system in Humberside that was so dysfunctional that there was no clarity whatsoever in what was meant by the words "delete", "weed" or "eliminate", or in the way in which officers were to go about their business of deciding what should be held or deleted from the system.
Of course, that led to the situation, which the right hon. Gentleman described, whereby incidents in which Ian Huntley was involved with young girls before those tragic events were missed time after time. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that the examples that he gave predated David Westwood's appointment as either deputy or subsequently chief constable. Regrettably,
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there were 11 incidents in total. Nine of them were of a sexual nature and all of them related to incidents—some in a very short time, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred—that should clearly have been picked up by those involved, as well as by the systems, which were clearly inadequate or not in place.
Obviously, it is absolutely crucial that we learn the lessons. The right hon. Gentleman asked me what was meant by the phrase "exceptional cases", where automatic referral by social services or other agencies to the police would not take place. Clearly, those incidents would not have been exceptional, so the kind of incident that Huntley was involved in while in Humberside should have been, and must be in any future circumstance, referred to the police and the information held properly, not deleted.
The exceptions that Michael Bichard was referring to take us back to the sex offenders and sex offences legislation, when we had a delicate debate about how to deal with those around the age of 15 and 16 who are experimenting with their sexuality and, as we retained the law as it was, how to implement it sensitively and not be run ragged by those organisations that wanted us to change it dramatically. So we are back to the use of common sense.
Regrettably—I think the right hon. Gentleman referred to this, and we are mindful of it—if common sense had prevailed, of course, we would not be here this afternoon discussing the report. Common sense would have led people to understand the relationship between one act and another, and to put two and two together. So those incidents were not exceptions and there can be no absolute guarantee of anything, but we can pick up the lessons in the report and use them effectively.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the new systems. He is right to say that the Government do not have a good record on the implementation of national information technology. That is partly why there was such a reluctance to get engaged at an earlier stage and to implement the national intelligence model before putting the national computer in place. That decision was taken by a board consisting of the three partners—the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Police Authorities and the Government—back in 2000.
At the time of the White paper in 2001, I allocated £11 million to the initial establishment of such a system, again under the old tripartite approach, operated and led not by the Home Office, but by the services themselves. We have now taken responsibility, which, as I said, we need to do. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, who was in the Home Office, will recall the necessity of sometimes knocking heads together. When 43 forces operate entirely different information technology systems, in a world that demands something very different, there must be a national system.
The right hon. Gentleman asked me two specific questions, one of which was on the follow-through and whether Sir Michael Bichard should be engaged to do that job. I have spoken to Sir Michael. Other than reviewing what he has done, he is not keen to get engaged in being the arbiter on, or even the arm for, implementation. The right hon. Gentleman also asked the sensible question about what will happen if Sir
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Michael does not want that job. It will, of course, be the job of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary, and we need to work with Sir Keith Povey to ensure that it can draw on and use outside expertise in the assessment and review of information technology systems at a local level, where the inspectors—understandably in terms of their histories—might not have access to that expertise themselves.We also need to learn from Scotland, which, with two very large police forces and six very small ones, managed to get its act together simultaneously with the introduction of the national intelligence model. There is much to learn from that, which we should do.
Registration systems are a difficult matter. My right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Education and Skills and the Minister for Children will look at the recommendation of enhanced disclosure for all staff working in schools and similar educational establishments. We are extremely sympathetic to achieving that. There is, however, a danger, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, of wrongdoings as a result of accusations that are made against people.
Although we will examine a non-bureaucratic light-touch way of providing an appeal, we must also exercise judgment on how people are dealt with in those circumstances. I am reluctant to have a system in which people have to register in advance of any thought of taking a job in order simply to work with children. When they do work with children, whether they are employed or volunteers in the voluntary and community sector, they have to be checked out through the Criminal Records Bureau. The question that arises again is whether it should be a normal or enhanced disclosure.
Let me confirm the right hon. Gentleman's sensible conclusion to his contribution. The report is not for Humberside and Cambridgeshire forces alone; it goes right across the board for services dealing with children at local and national levels, for the Government and local government, and for the police and social services. Above all, it is to be taken seriously and implemented by all of us who care about ensuring that never again will we have to stand here dealing with the tragic death of a Jessica or a Holly.
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