Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 84
84
Accepted
Paragraph: 581
Police forces and PCCs show insufficient progress on key race equality areas
Recommendation
Twenty-two years on, police forces need to take responsibility for the lack of progress in vital areas raised by the Macpherson report. Individual forces and Chief Constables have considerable scope within their own organisations and communities to increase BME recruitment, establish fair misconduct processes, and build trust with local communities over stop and search policies. Police and Crime Commissioners also have considerable scope to hold their Chief Constables and forces to account, or to pursue measures like BME recruitment targets or additional oversight arrangements involving local Black and minority ethnic communities. Yet whilst policing has changed in many ways for the better in the last two decades, in these key areas affecting race equality too little progress has been made. Many Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners are not doing enough to tackle the problems or to recognise the additional work still needed to achieve the objective William Macpherson set out twenty-two years ago of “the elimination of racist prejudice and disadvantage and the demonstration of fairness in all aspects of policing”.
Government Response Summary
The government outlines significant progress made since the Macpherson report, including strengthened police accountability, improved data collection, and a drive to recruit diverse officers. It refers to the 'Inclusive Britain' report for further measures to improve accountability and tackle disparities.
Paragraph Reference:
581
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The Macpherson Report left an indelible mark on policing. Over the past two decades, since the report’s publication, significant progress has been made to address Sir William Macpherson’s findings. As a result, the way the police approach racially motivated crimes has changed beyond recognition since the terrible murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. Over the past few years, this Government has built on that progress. Police accountability has been strengthened with the reforms introduced to the police discipline and complaints systems in 2020 and significant improvements have been made to Home Office data collections to enable greater scrutiny of police activity broken down by ethnic group. Most significantly, the Government has made attracting more officers from a wide range of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds a core ambition of its drive to recruit an extra 20,000 officers. The Home Office welcomes the Home Affairs Committee’s work to gather evidence on this progress and its report recognises that important improvements have taken place in policing. We also acknowledge that there is more to be done to improve the trust and confidence in policing from black and ethnic minority groups, and across all communities. The Government published its response to the report by the independent Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (‘CRED’). The Government’s response to the CRED’s findings, Inclusive Britain, sets out a ground-breaking action plan to tackle negative disparities, promote unity and build a fairer Britain for all. The CRED report made 24 recommendations. The Government have considered and responded in detail to each one. In some cases, we have gone further than the report envisaged, to ensure that our action plan is as wide-reaching as possible and builds a fairer and more inclusive society in the long-term. Both reports made recommendations on the same issues, including recruitment and the use of police powers. We thank the Home Affairs Committee for their patience in awaiting the Inclusive Britain response published on 17 March 2022. This allowed the Home Office to provide a more full and detailed account of the important issues raised by the Committee. It is critical that we maintain public confidence in policing and as part of the Inclusive Britain response. the Home Office, with policing partners, will deliver a series of measures to improve accountability and tackle negative disparities.