Home Secretary oral statement on Police accountability - Oct 23

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like to update the House on Monday's verdict in the trial of Sergeant Martyn Blake; on the Accountability Review into police use of force, and on confidence in policing.       

Chris Kaba was killed in Streatham two years ago. His parents and family of course continue to experience deep grief and distress.      

A year ago Sergeant Martyn Blake was charged with murder and on Monday, the jury returned their verdict and Sergeant Blake was acquitted. 

It is imperative that the jury's verdict is respected, and that Sergeant Blake and his family are given the time and space that they will need to recover from what will have been an immensely difficult experience for them, during both the investigation and the trial.  

For an armed police officer to be prosecuted for the actions taken in the course of their duties is very rare. So of course this case has raised considerable concerns for the public and the police.  

The decisions made on any individual case – be it by the police, the Independent Office of Police Conduct, the Crown Prosecution Service, the courts or the jury – are rightly independent of the Government – so it would not be right for me to comment further on the details in this case. 

But this case has happened against a backdrop of wider and long-standing concerns about accountability, standards and confidence.  

A backdrop in which police officers and forces have raised long-standing concerns about the way in which the accountability system currently operates, particularly in cases of specialist policing like firearms and driving, where we ask officers to do incredibly difficult and dangerous jobs to keep us safe. 

And a backdrop of fallen community confidence in policing and the criminal justice system across the country – with, as the Metropolitan Commissioner has said this week, lower confidence among black communities.     

Madam Deputy Speaker, the British policing model relies on mutual bonds of trust between the public and the police.     

For our policing model to work, it is essential that the police have the confidence of the communities they serve. 

And that officers have the confidence they need to do their vital and often extremely difficult job of keeping us all safe.    

Too often in recent times, both elements of that confidence have become frayed.  

And this Government has made it a mission to put confidence back into policing.  

So as part of that work, I want to update the House on new measures that we will take forward in response to the Accountability Review and following ongoing work to respond to issues raised by the previous Angiolini and Casey Reviews 

A package of reforms to rebuild confidence for police officers and for communities, to tackle the unacceptable delays and confusion in the system, ensuring the complexity of specialist operations is considered at an early stage, and ensuring that the highest standards are upheld and maintained.       

Twelve months ago, the previous government launched a review into the accountability systems for police use of force and police driving.    

The previous Home Secretary set out an interim response in March which the Labour Party supported and I welcome the work that my predecessor did.  

The review was not completed by the election and whilst we have continued to draw on evidence from police and civil society organisations, we were unable to say more publicly in the run up to the trial.       

So today, the Accountability Review found that the current system for holding police officers to account is not commanding the confidence of either the public or the police.   

Accountability and misconduct proceedings are too often plagued by delays stretching for years which are damaging for complainants, officers and forces alike.  

And the system has become much more complex with confusion over multiple thresholds for different investigations and lack of clarity, especially involving specialist capabilities.   

There are also wider concerns about the misconduct system –because the focus when things go wrong can end up being entirely on the decisions of the individual officer, so system failings – like poor training, unmanageable caseloads or wider force practices – are not sufficiently considered or followed up so too little changes.  

And at the same time, as we saw following the Casey and Angiolini Reviews, in cases where someone is not fit to be a police officer, it is too hard for forces to remove them and communities feel that no one is held to account.    

So the public must be able to expect that where officers exceed the lawful use of their powers or fail to meet proper standards, there will be rapid and robust processes in place to hold them to account.     

And police officers who act with integrity and bravery to keep us safe each day need to know they have strong public support. 

Because if officers lack the confidence to use their powers following their training and the law, then public safety is put at risk.     

So let me turn to the policy measures.   

First, we will take forward the three measures proposed by the previous government in March to strengthen and speed up the system.  

We will align the threshold for the referral of police officers from the Independent Office of Police Conduct to the Crown Prosecution Service to that used by the police when referring cases involving members of the public. Currently that threshold is lower for police officers, and that is not justified. 

We will allow the IOPC to send cases to the CPS where there is sufficient evidence to do so, instead of having to wait for a final investigation report. 

And we will put the IOPC victims' right to review policy on a statutory footing, to ensure that there is an appeal mechanism for bereaved families when a decision is made not to seek a charging decision.   

And then we will go further. 

When officers act in the most dangerous situations on behalf of the state, it is vital that those officers and their families are not put in further danger during any subsequent legal proceedings.     

So we will therefore introduce a presumption of anonymity for firearms officers subject to criminal trial following a police shooting in the course of their professional duties, up to the point of conviction.    

We will also ensure that the highly specialist nature of particular policing tactics and tools are reflected in relevant investigative guidance. That includes ensuring that in investigations of police driving incidents, evidence from subject matter experts and in-car video footage is considered at the earliest possible opportunity, and that more widely, an officer's compliance with their training and guidance is appropriately taken into account in investigative decision making.    

I have also established a rapid review of two specific areas where recent legal judgements have now meant we have different thresholds for criminal, misconduct and inquest investigations, adding complexity, confusion and delay to the system. In particular it will look at; 

·                     The legal test for use of force in misconduct proceedings; and  

·                     The threshold for determining short form findings of unlawful killing in inquests.     

The independent review will be conducted by Tim Godwin and the Rt Honourable Sir Adrian Fulford, and will report jointly to myself and the Lord Chancellor by the end of January. And I have asked for further work to be done on timeliness, standards and misconduct procedures as part of our wider policing reforms.   

My Right Honourable friend the Attorney General has also invited the Director of Public Prosecutions to examine the CPS guidance and processes in relation to charging police officers for offences committed in the course of their duties.    

And following calls from civil society organisations, we will ask the College of Policing to establish a national lessons learned database for deaths or serious injuries arising from police contact or police pursuits, so there is a responsibility to ensure lessons are incorporated into the development of police training and guidance when tragic incidents occur, and to prevent the repetition of such events in the future.   

To rebuild public confidence in the wider standards regime for policing we also need to ensure that there is faster progress in    responding to the findings of the Angiolini and Casey reviews on  vetting and standards.   

So we will therefore take forward in this Parliamentary session the previously agreed proposals to:   

·                     ensure that officers convicted of certain criminal offences are automatically found to have committed gross misconduct; and create a presumption of dismissal where gross misconduct is found;   

·                     we will change regulations to enable chief constables to promptly dismiss officers who fail their vetting, which has been a glaring gap in the system for  too long. 

And we will go further to ensure standards are upheld. We will:   

·                     ensure statutory underpinning for national vetting standards; and 

·                     strengthen requirements relating to the suspension of officers under investigation for domestic abuse or sexual offences    

Finally we need to ensure that there are wider measures to restore confidence in policing and the criminal justice system across all communities.  

That must include further work to take forward the Met's London Race Action Plan where action has already been taken but where the Met Commissioner and Mayor for London have both made clear that there is much more work to do. And we need to see progress from the National Police Chiefs' Council on the national Police Race Action Plan. 

And Madam Deputy Speaker this Government is determined to take forward further measures from the introduction of neighbourhood policing to new police force performance standards, to strengthen confidence in every community across the country.      

The measures I have outlined are practical steps to rebuild confidence, tackle delays, provide clarity and ensure high standards are  maintained.      

For more than two hundred years, policing by consent has been the bedrock of British policing and  this Government is determined to take the action that is necessary today both to strengthen the confidence that the public must have in the police, and to strengthen the confidence that the police must have when they are out on the street each day, doing the difficult job of keeping us all safe.     

Those are the twin goals we must all work towards and I commend this statement to the House.