This week, on the very day that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission reported that black people are 15% of police stop and search victims whilst numbering only 3% of the population, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police asked the Home Secretary to protect his force against lawsuits. Typically, lawsuits against the police are for excessive use of their powers. The ECHR’s figures – and recent experience – suggest that such excesses continue. Clearly redress should be available and Stephenson’s pleas should fall on deaf ears.
If there is one group of people who ought to be accessible to being called to account, it is the police. They have extraordinary powers. They can stop you on the street and search your clothes in public. They can break into your house, use force to throw you into custody, rifle through your most private possessions; detain you without a charge for many days and penetrate your body orifices in pursuit of evidence of some suspected crime.
 This week, newspapers reported Tony Blair’s former Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, in his new book, relating that the Metropolitan Police had virtually paralysed No 10 during the cash for peerages investigation. Certainly they seemed to play fast and loose with their powers of arrest. Officers appeared at her home to seize the mild, Christian and totally civilised Ruth Turner at 6am in the morning. This is a tactic justifiable for the arrest of a criminal likely to run away if he knows the police are coming, or to ensure that somebody who might resist arrest is taken by surprise. These are hardly criteria that fitted her situation. Rather their use seems a totally unnecessary invasion of her home and integrity, for which the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, today demanding protection from civil actions for wrongdoing, should be ashamed.
Although police are valued and relied upon by the public as the “thin blue line” between them and criminal interference with their daily lives, many people have experienced  police using their powers  indiscriminately . Police sometimes also use their powers very specifically, too  –  to pursue the prejudices that a force still overwhelmingly male and white continues to  harbour.
Both in my career at the Bar and as an MP I have seen plenty of good police and some bad police, the latter usually manifested in a determination to show they are the boss to different tranches of the population at different times.  For example, there were the two devout (black) Christian clergy from Suffolk whose taxi cut across a police car in Tottenham and was immediately stopped by the white police officers. When they failed to apologise and told the police they needed to go, they were arrested for “breach of the peace” and fitted up with allegations that they made vile gestures, smelt of drink and that they and the (black) taxi driver ( who was a stranger to them) all shouted. Reasonable cross examination, in court, demolished that pack of lies, founded, as it was, on the, then, antipathy of white police to any black Tottenham men who got in their way. Civil action for damages for such abysmal disregard of ordinary people’s rights ought to follow, not least of all to discourage repetition.
Then, there was the northern woman who called police to her violent husband who ran away when he heard their siren. Police left, he came back in an even worse mood, she called police again and he ran away again. This time officers told her that they had had enough of her wild goose chases and she, full of the stress of her husband’s threats, shouted at them. They arrested her, the victim of domestic violence, when they should have followed him to the pub and arrested him. Why did they arrest her? Because they were put out and thought they could take it out, with impunity, on this powerless woman.  The civil court would  tell them otherwise.  
Remember the G20 protests, the “kettling” of protesters who were fully entitled to be where they were and to go where they wished . Many were detained as if they were under arrest, for long hours, kept from their families, stopped from going anywhere, even to the toilet. These tactics were not the will of the government of which I was a member at the time.  They certainly shocked me.
One man, as we know, died. We also know that police made up a story that they were subject to missile throwing while they tried to revive him. Thus did they try to cover their backs and only mobile phone film gave us the truth about what happened between him and them. The CPS cannot prosecute, but this family ought to have the right to sue, if they want to mark their loved one’s uncalled for death in that way.
The allegations of Sir Paul Stephenson’s that actions against the police are all about lawyers mischievously money-grubbing, while most payouts are £5000 to £10000 and thus what he calls “technical breaches” are worrying. There are firms who specialise in actions against the police, as there are specialists in most areas of law. Lawyers make money from law.  Police lawyers make money from using law to defend police.  Payouts of £5 – £10000 can mean that somebody had been detained for two or three hours without lawful cause, or assaulted but with no serious damage. Few civilians would regard those as “technical breaches” and most would be glad that there is a cadre of solicitors prepared to take on this work. Civil actions against the police are all the more important while the Government fails to appoint new leadership to the Independent Police Complaints Commission notwithstanding  the departure of its Chair to greener pastures and the criticisms that have been levelled at it in DeMenezies and other cases.
Power is a multi-faceted aphrodisiac. It generates not only love of power but a righteous belief that it should be unchallenged. Who are the powerless to show the powerful any truths at all? We remember the Miners’ Strike of 1983-4 and the way the police abused what Thatcher called “The Enemy Within”. I remember the Orgreave Riot trial where detectives scripted uniformed police to frame miners with riot, who had done little but attend a picket. A conviction for riot attracted a life sentence, in those days. 
Does anything change? Clearly not corruption generated by power and Sir Paul Stephenson this week makes clear that the owners of such power would like to be free to risk being corrupted absolutely.

The criminal justice professionals who contributed to the saga of “Sarah”, as the Guardian named her in Saturday’s interview, the Powys women imprisoned for retracting her rape complaint against her husband, have serious questions to answer.

It is a catastrophic case not only for the already victimised woman who has been criminalised, imprisoned and, for the time being, robbed of her children, and for the public, since a man the authorities were satisfied had raped her and believed had perverted the course of justice, is free. It will also terrify the many other rape complainants, who are abused by partners or ex-partners, and often, as in this case, during a long course of domestic violence. These women already have to struggle for support to get out of their situation and will now worry  that asking for help may be more dangerous than staying to suffer. Complaints may start to fall again, reversing years of work which have been done, ironically, by the very criminal justice agencies, whose bad apples caused this tragedy.

Police and CPS could refer the case to their own complaints divisions in the public interest, and the Lord Chief Justice should consider more training both for the Judge who granted bail and for the one who sentenced her to prison. However, a joint inquiry into how this debacle occurred and how to ensure no future repetition would be the best way forward.
The questions are simple.

First, why did any judge grant bail to a man charged with six counts of raping his wife?  
Police and CPS agreed that there was evidence to charge “Ray” her husband, who was remanded in custody but 3 weeks  later he was freed on bail by a judge, a decision that gave him the opportunity to pressure Sarah into withdrawing her case.

One reason to refuse bail is the seriousness of the charge of rape. Another is that the defendant is likely to interfere with witnesses. There could hardly be a case in which that risk was likelier. Sarah says that Ray had violently and sexually abused her for nine years. She was so within his control that she was not allowed to keep her own purse or her driving licence or banker’s card. When she told him she was calling the police he told their child that Sarah was having him taken away. In 3 weeks on remand, he wrote 4 times to his children telling them that prison was horrible. He thus showed every sign of pressuring her to drop the case and, since he had controlled her for nine years, had every chance of succeeding. To bail him on condition that he should not contact her was asking for trouble. It reflects the low recognition amongst senior judiciary that domestic violence is a power and control process which does not end, but usually gets worse, when the victim takes action to escape.

The second question is why did the police not investigate and charge Ray when he broke bail and perverted the course of justice, at least twice, by contacting Sarah and telling her to withdraw her complaint?
The CID officer to whom Sarah first tried to withdraw said “From the moment he got bail, he got to you”. Ray had indeed “got to her” As soon as he was free, he had called her, texted her, asked her to take their children to see him; told her that prison was vile; cried at the thought of going back there and told her she would have to tell the police that she wanted to stop the case. Arresting Ray, at this stage and charging him at least with a breach of bail should have got him back into custody and freed Sarah from further pressure but nothing was done either to investigate him or to give her more protection against him.

CPS decided to continue the case without Sarah and soon she telephoned police again to say not merely that she wanted to withdraw but that her allegations were untrue. No rape had ever happened. It seems that nobody believed her. Later when she told the senior policeman that her allegations were all true, he told her that he knew and that when she had denied them
 “I thought it was only a matter of time before you came to me and said yes they did happen”
The Guardian relates that Ray sent his sister to tell her that it “would be helpful” if she said she had lied. She handed her the phone and drove Sarah to the police station. Police colluded in a withdrawal statement that they knew to be untrue and, having failed for a second time to tackle Ray’s pressure, arrested Sarah for succumbing to it. It is extraordinary that they behaved in that way when they strongly believed that Ray had raped her. Clearly, they could not charge her with lying in her withdrawal statement in saying that her rapes had not happened unless they could prove that the rapes were true.

In every case the CPS has to determine whether the evidence gives a more than 50% chance of a successful prosecution and whether proceeding is in the public interest. Question three needs little explanation. It is: How could any CPS solicitor decide that it was in the public interest to prosecute Sarah?
Equally, why did no prosecutor think it right to prosecute Ray and his sister for forcing the retraction?

None of the accounts of this case make any reference to a jury trial   so I assume that Sarah pleaded guilty. If that is so, the final question, to her solicitors is why? In the Guardian article she describes how the rapes were “savage” and that she called the police to save her life believing that Ray was going to kill her. By the time of her final withdrawal her relationship, was “half back on” presumably with all of its former characteristics of oppression. What jury would convict a woman in such a position? Duress or necessity were potential defences. If the solicitor thought she would get a shorter sentence for a guilty plea he was seriously mistaken, but this woman’s pathetic story could not have made a sensible judge be harsher to her had she pleaded not guilty and told it all in the witness box, where she would probably have had it all confirmed, to the court, by the police.
It is clear that police, prosecution and Judge did not take this woman’s long-term victimisation seriously enough. They weighed too lightly the oppressive power this spouse would have over her after years of abuse. Yet again, a complaint of rape and domestic violence brings re-victimisation for the woman. To someone who is raped by a person well-known to the victim this case makes clear that nobody in the criminal justice system will protect them from pressure to withdraw their complaint but everyone will blame them if they have to give way.  Many women, as a consequence, will never escape to seek help for fear of having the tables turned by an antagonistic justice system. This is a real disservice at a time when the legendarily low rape conviction rate has started to rise.

The Tory-led government, under pressure from Israel, intends to end the citizen right to initiate a prosecution for war crime. Clause 151 of the Police and Social Responsibility Bill will require the DPP’s consent before a warrant for arrest can be issued, however strong the evidence. This citizen right, as many senior judges have said, is a vital safeguard against inertia or partiality by the authorities. It is all the more important with international war crimes when Government may not want to prosecute the most serious criminal if it upsets a country, like Israel, with which they have diplomatic links.
Though much of our criminal law covers only acts done in England and Wales or committed by British people, there is “universal jurisdiction” over war crimes such as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions Act 1957 or torture. We have, in common with many other countries, the  duty of seeking out the culprits and prosecuting them here, if they can’t be extradited. In 2005, the UK successfully prosecuted an Afghan warlord, Zardad for torture offences committed in his own country. Universal jurisdiction exists to ensure that there is no hiding place anywhere in the signatory countries for perpetrators of grave crime.
In England and Wales, anyone, not just police, can apply to a magistrate for a warrant to bring a suspect to court for any crime. However, he can only apply. The magistrate will decide whether to issue a warrant and will do so if, and only if, there is “prima facie” evidence of the offence being committed by the person named. Many serious offences can’t go beyond this stage without the Attorney-General’s consent but in recognition that arrest sometimes have to be made in a hurry, a warrant for arrest can be issued before the Attorney General is asked. A war crime suspect flying into the UK at short notice, has to be arrested while he is here.
So an individual with a complaint of war crime can make an application but will only succeed in getting a warrant for arrest if he has sufficient evidence to convince a magistrate of the crime and there is too much need for haste to get the Attorney-General’s sanction first.
The Tories argue that some applications are political stunts and the embarrassment is deterring important foreign government figures from attending diplomatic talks in the UK. But this is wrong. First of all, members of all foreign Governments have diplomatic immunity from any prosecution, as long as they are in office and so can’t be subject to this process. Secondly, any groundless application would be speedily rejected by a magistrate and would probably get less publicity than the average banner demonstration. It is the fact that twice in the last five years magistrates have been sufficiently satisfied by evidence to issue warrants for the arrest of high- ranking Israelis that has generated publicity and embarrassment. But how right it is that it should be so and how wrong it is that the government should give way to pressure to scrap this citizens’ rights precisely because it is capable of working well,
 There have been about a dozen applications in the past decade.  Peter Tatchell applied for a warrant against Henry Kissinger in 2002, but failed for want of evidence. Lawyers for Palestinians were granted a warrant for Major General Doron Almog in 2005. He was the former head of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip. Apparently having been tipped off, he didn’t get off his plane at Heathrow and flew straight home. In 2009, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate issued a warrant to victims of Operation Cast Lead for Tzipy Livny, a key Minister at the time of the Gaza bombardment but by then in Opposition. She did not come to the UK and the warrant was withdrawn. Applications against Mugabe and Mofaz, the then Israeli Defence Minister were refused in 2004 because they had diplomatic immunity.
The successful applicants would all say that they had taken their allegations to the police for investigation but with no result. Each had material with which to approach a Magistrate and each needed to act quickly when the alleged culprit came to the UK. And so they would make the further key point for keeping the right that the police don’t take on these expensive overseas investigations and have to be galvanised by the initiative of the victims or the victims’ supporters. It is an important point that war crimes investigations are no longer allocated to a specialist police division but are in the hands of the Counter Terrorist Division of the Met Police where they are clearly not able to take priority over preventive counter terrorism.
Clearly, if only the state can make a decision on whether a warrant can be issued, foreign policy interests are likely to be uppermost.
The structure of the clause allows a private citizen to apply but prohibits the issue of a warrant without the DPP’s consent. The  Code for Crown Prosecutors requires the Crown Prosecution Service when considering any prosecution firstly to decide whether there is enough evidence for a  51% chance of success and secondly if it is in the public interest to prosecute. Joshua Rosenberg recently wondered, in a Guardian piece, if it might be against the public interest to prosecute someone, despite the evidence of war crime, if it would offend an ally. Lord Pannick may have been agreeing, in a recent Lords debate when he said that a private citizen’s application can “undermine the relationship between this country and an ally” The DPP who will have to decide whether to give consent, is totally independent but he will not be able to avoid  material of this kind being brought to him by the government and becoming a part of his consideration of the public interest.
In truth, the abolition of the right to issue a summons amounts to a rejection of the principle of universal jurisdiction and of our international obligations. If the UK only prosecutes war criminals from countries which are our enemies and never from any with whom we have diplomatic links, where is the universality? Far from ensuring that there is no hiding place, the UK will become one for selected international villains.
This right happens to have been used against Israelis sometimes in the past few years, but it is a British right for all the people in the United Kingdom against any criminal wrongdoer who the police won’t pursue. It is, as Lord Diplock said in a case in 1978:-
“a constitutional safeguard against capricious, corrupt or biased failure by those in authority to prosecute offenders against the criminal law”
The Labour government was put under similar pressure to remove it and for a while gave way, but Gerald Kauffman MP related in his speech on the Second Reading of this Bill that he persuaded the last Prime Minister to reverse his position. Its abolition would have no bearing on the Middle East peace process and Israeli pressure to the contrary must be taken with a large pinch of salt.
The proposed legislation presents problems of its own. Clause 151 will leave the right of private prosecution intact in the relatively unlikely event that the war crime is alleged to have taken place in the UK whilst requiring the DPP’s consent, not for the application by the individual but for the issue of a warrant by the magistrate, for crimes committed overseas.  Thus somebody who suffered torture in Rwanda and now has asylum in the UK will not be able to obtain a warrant, on his own, even if his torturer lives next door. (A number of Rwandan war criminals are believed to live in North London.)
Ken Clarke, in announcing these proposals, said that he had an “unwavering “commitment to universal jurisdiction but that prosecutions should be based on “solid evidence likely to lead to a successful prosecution” and not on “the basis of evidence that would be insufficient to sustain a prosecution”. The first point to make is that the evidence required for the issue of a warrant is the same whether it is for an international war crime or for any other crime. The second point is that the requirement is rightly lower than that for a prosecution. Many arrests are made on the basis of evidence sufficient to show a prima facie case but far from sufficient to get the defendant to court. People are arrested so that they can be put onto identification parades, or so that they can be interviewed, or so that DNA can be taken from them, precisely with a view to assembling evidence not available on arrest to satisfy the” full code” test for the CPS. It is probably the minority of cases which have a 51% likelihood of conviction at the time of arrest and none will have been assessed as to whether the prosecution is in the public interest.
Contrary to Ken Clarke’s implication, clause 151 does not change the standard of evidence required for a magistrate to issue a war crime warrant. It will remain the same as that for the issue of any other warrant and much lower than the test for a prosecution. So, what can the DPP do? How does he decide whether to consent or not? And who is actually issuing the warrant? The magistrate’s test will be met in most cases where a warrant is sought while the full code test will not. Is it really acceptable that the DPP should be able to tell a magistrate that notwithstanding that the standard of evidence he is required to look for is met, he may not do his duty and issue a warrant? I do not think that any DPP will feel comfortable with that.
 That is if any DPP has the time to analyse the position and to take a stance. As section 25 of the Prosecution of Offenders Act makes clear there is sometimes a need for an urgent arrest in a case which normally needs the Attorney General’s consent for prosecution. That section empowers such an arrest without that consent where there isn’t time to get papers to the Attorney. The same must follow in a clause 151 case. It will not be practical in the typical circumstance of a suspected war criminal arriving unexpectedly into the UK to get sufficient information in place to permit the DPP to make his decision and in the absence of positive consent no warrant can be issued, even if the magistrate is convinced that the evidential standard is met. This probably means that no privately initiated arrest will ever take place in such a case.
As Kate Allen of Amnesty puts it
“Unless a way of guaranteeing a means of preventing suspects fleeing can be built into the proposals, then the UK will have undermined the fight for international justice and handed war criminals a free ticket to escape the law”
So is there any reason, beyond a triumph of political expediency over principle to justify the erosion of this right?  There should be no concern that applications are frivolous. On the evidence they have not been and it is the issue of a warrant that matters. However, any fear of abuse of the process could be removed if the Bill required that an application could only be made by someone who has an interest in the case, an interest akin to that required before a party can apply for a judicial review. That would ensure the exclusion of empty political stunts without eroding the true rights of somebody who has been genuinely injured or wronged by the recipient of the warrant.
As a last resort it would be possible to distinguish war crimes cases from all other private prosecutions by lifting the standard of evidence required before a warrant can be issued to something nearer to the full code test though still short of it. However the evidential standard is less the issue here than the public interest and any such increase in standard would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut granted that the requirement before a prosecution can follow the arrest are increasingly stringent anyway.
What one hopes is that the public authorities, not well-resourced to prosecute war crimes, can be motivated through the determination of a victim who has evidence sufficient to convince a magistrate of a prima facie case. All the known applicants in the last decade have tried, in their turn, going to the police and asking for the investigation of a foreign statesman, submitting some evidence in support. All have failed to galvanise action and the right of a private prosecution has, in two cases at least, helped them to validate what they say through the sanction of a warrant from a magistrate. The District Judges/Magistrates who hear such cases are highly qualified and will not be misled. How much harder it will be for the police, CPS and Attorney General to decline to sanction a prosecution thereafter if such a person has been convinced to issue process.
The public interest is all too easily defined through the prism of political expediency. We must preserve the right of ordinary people to make the point that it has other dimensions.