Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 46
46
Accepted in Part
Professional Standards Departments lack BME representation and face institutional racism perceptions.
Recommendation
Police forces must act swiftly to address perceptions that Professional Standards Departments are marked by institutionally racist practices. In addition, forces must address unacceptable racial disproportionality in their composition: it is totally unacceptable that 63% of all Professional Standards Departments include no BME police officers at all. We welcome the work done by some forces, reported in the NPCC’s most recent review, to draw on BME advisors as well as seeking to address the lack of BME representation in PSDs, but all forces need to address this and demonstrate progress by the end of 2021. The NPCC should conduct a specific review into this issue and report within a year. (Paragraph 270) Stop and search
Government Response Summary
The government welcomes the NPCC and College of Policing's new Race Action Plan, to be published in May 2022, which will address disproportionality in misconduct cases and ensure consistent data publication. The Home Office also commits to reviewing the police misconduct system with the NPCC and IOPC, setting out terms and timelines in summer 2022.
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government
Accepted in Part
The Home Office welcomes the work of the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing in developing a new Race Action Plan for policing to address the issues of disproportionality in the police misconduct system. The new Race Action Plan, which will be published in May 2022, will set out a range of measures to improve outcomes for Black people in policing, including developing a clear plan to address the disproportionality in police misconduct cases, and ensuring misconduct data is published consistently and is fully broken down by ethnicity for all forces. In addition, the Home Office will work with the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) to review the police misconduct system to ensure that it is fair and effective in upholding the highest standards of integrity in policing. The Home Office will set out the terms of reference and timeline for this review in summer 2022. The Home Office agrees that there is a clear racial disparity in the number of officers being dismissed from police forces. However, it should be noted that the police misconduct system was reformed in 2020 to introduce legally qualified chairs to ensure the independence of decision-making at misconduct hearings. In addition, changes to the police complaints system in 2020 has also strengthened police accountability and transparency. The Home Office has also made significant improvements to its data collections to enable greater scrutiny of police activity broken down by ethnic group. The Home Office also supports the actions outlined in ‘Inclusive Britain’ to improve accountability and tackle disparities including removing unnecessary barriers that prevent increased use of body worn video, and supporting the development of a new, national framework for how the use of police powers are scrutinised at a local level.