Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 84
Third Report - The Macpherson Report: Twenty-two years on
Published 30 Jul 2021
Paragraph 581
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)
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”.
From: Home Affairs Committee, Third Report - The Macpherson Report: Twenty-two years on (HC 139), paragraph 581, 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.