Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 11
11
Not Addressed
Mandate Home Office and National Policing Board to monitor confidence gap and report annual actions
Recommendation
The Home Office and the National Policing Board should monitor the confidence gap in each force and should set out each year what action is being taken nationally to ensure that confidence among BME communities increases in order to restore legitimacy. (Paragraph 74) Racist incidents and victims of crime
Government Response Summary
The government extensively discusses the use of Body Worn Video (BWV) to improve accountability and transparency, outlining efforts to improve guidance, facilitate footage sharing with scrutiny panels, and enhance officer communication training. However, the response does not address the recommendation for the Home Office and National Policing Board to monitor the confidence gap or set out annual national actions for BME communities.
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
Body Worn Video (BWV) is a vital tool to improve accountability and transparency in policing. It allows greater scrutiny of interactions with the public, which both increases officer accountability for their conduct and protection for the officer. Over 80,000 cameras are now in use across all 43 forces. The Home Office asked the College to improve their stop and search guidance to cover BWV use, supervisory review and sharing of footage with scrutiny panels. This was published in July 2020 and since then most forces have adopted this guidance and are demonstrating best practice. We understand that a number of forces conduct reviews of BWV internally and with their community scrutiny panels. Good practice is shared to ensure compliance with data protection legislation, and the College has updated their APP to reflect guidance on this. Forces have been innovative in using technology throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure scrutiny has continued. The Home Office supports increased scrutiny of BWV footage in stop and search encounters, and we will explore whether we could go further in applying this scrutiny to other police powers. As we set out in Inclusive Britain, we will identify and seek opportunities to remove unnecessary barriers that prevent use of BWV and will explore how best to facilitate the sharing of BWV footage with local scrutiny panels, in order to improve the scrutiny of police decision-making and improve the understanding of legitimate police use of powers such as stop and search. We will work with police forces that have best practice in this area to explore the full extent of what can be achieved and ensure that this best practise is shared. This will enable communities to see how officers in their forces behave and enable both individual and organisational feedback on good and poor performance. As recommended by HMICFRS, forces should ensure officers and staff receive training on effective communication skills, in line with the National Policing Guidelines on Conflict Management; this should be provided in addition to existing training on conflict management and de-escalation.