Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 92
Third Report - The Macpherson Report: Twenty-two years on
Published 30 Jul 2021
Paragraph 605
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)
However, it has been far too long since the inspectorate conducted a thematic review on race. There is an urgent need for HMICFRS to address race directly in its inspections. HMICFRS should always include specific questions about race and the workforce (including recruitment and disciplinary procedures, and officer and staff attitudes to race) and workplace operations in its PEEL legitimacy inspection framework. Further, given that matters of race remain a problem across the police service, we can identify no logical reason as to why HMICFRS have discontinued regular thematic reviews of race and policing. In order to provide scrutiny of the service and to evidence its own commitment to the issue we therefore recommend that these reviews are reinstated as a matter of priority and that the first such review should take place no later than 2022.
From: Home Affairs Committee, Third Report - The Macpherson Report: Twenty-two years on (HC 139), paragraph 605, 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.