Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 44
Third Report - The Macpherson Report: Twenty-two years on
Published 30 Jul 2021
Paragraph 268
Addressed to Home Office
Home Affairs Committee The Macpherson Report: twenty-two years on All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
It is completely unacceptable that forces’ data on ethnic disparity in police misconduct has been inconsistent and incomplete to the point where it cannot be understood or acted upon. We are appalled that it has not been possible for us even to assess the extent of racial disparities in the misconduct system fully due to inadequacies The Macpherson Report: Twenty-two years on 183 in data gathering by forces. We welcome the recent agreement between the Home Office and NPCC to gather more comprehensive, comparable information this year. However it is unacceptable that it has taken a full six years after HMICFRS warned about the problem for the Home Office and the majority of individual police forces to manage to establish effective, comparable ways of collecting data. Remarkably, the IOPC had not deemed it necessary to gather information by ethnicity in advance of us raising the issue with them. This combined failure by the Home Office, national policing organisations and police forces to conduct rigorous and systematic analysis of misconduct data for so long demonstrates the complacency regarding this issue across the police service.
From: Home Affairs Committee, Third Report - The Macpherson Report: Twenty-two years on (HC 139), paragraph 268, 30 July 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 26 May 2022 (deadline 30 September 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's work and acknowledges that "there is more to be done" on trust and confidence in policing, while declining to set recruitment targets or establish a new Race Equality Commissioner.
- On recruitment, the Government does not agree that setting diversity recruitment targets "is the right lever", citing differing local populations, and says it believes the existing framework is "the most effective way" of driving change.
- On proposed changes to the Equality Act 2010, Ministers say "more evidence" of the benefit of the Metropolitan Police proposals would be required before a proposal to make temporary amendments "would be considered".
- On stop and search, it commits to a new framework for scrutinising use of police powers "by summer 2023". On the Committee's call for a new independent study, it says it wishes to allow Inclusive Britain actions to be implemented "before we consider further commissioning research".
- It does not consider a new Race Equality Commissioner for policing "necessary", pointing to existing oversight through the National Policing Board, HMICFRS and Police and Crime Commissioners.