Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 5
5
Deferred
Operation Midland failures reveal urgent need for robust police complaints system accountability.
Conclusion
The sorry story of Operation Midland and subsequent inquiries into how it was conducted demonstrates why a robust complaints and conduct system is necessary if the public is to be confident that police officers behave properly and will be held to account and suitably sanctioned if they do not. Lady Brittan’s account of how she— the wife of a wrongly suspected man not herself suspected of any crime—was treated is salutary. Those investigating potential police misconduct should be ashamed of leaving any vulnerable person feeling as if they are, themselves, a suspect. The families of the now-deceased Lord Brittan and Lord Bramall, as well as the former MP Harvey Proctor, have been left feeling that no-one has been sanctioned for the mistakes identified by Sir Richard Henriques in the Operation Midland inquiry Police Conduct and Complaints 47 and its aftermath. That is a result that satisfies no-one and does nothing to improve confidence that officers will be held to account when an investigation goes quite so badly wrong. (Paragraph 34) Structure and operation of the police complaints process
Government Response Summary
The government largely highlighted its past actions, such as 2020 reforms to strengthen accountability and improvements to data collection. It stated its intention to provide a full and detailed response, including concrete actions, to the Committee's separate report on Macpherson in May.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
The 1999 Macpherson Report left an indelible mark on policing following the terrible murder of Stephen Lawrence. Over the past two decades, since the report’s publication, significant progress has been made to address Sir William Macpherson’s findings. The way the police approach racist crimes has also changed beyond recognition since the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. Over the past few years, this Government has built on that progress. Police accountability has been strengthened with reforms introduced to the police discipline and complaints systems in 2020. Significant improvements have been made to Home Office data collections to enable greater scrutiny of police activity 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. We also recognise that across England and Wales, police officers and staff work hard each day to deliver fairness in policing to support ethnic minority victims of crime, to tackle hate crime and ultimately keep our communities safe. The Home Office welcomes the Home Affairs Committee’s inquiry and subsequent report, ‘The MacPherson Report: twenty-two years on’. The recent events in policing continue to highlight how essential the issues raised in the report are. The independent Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) report last year made a number of recommendations in relation to crime and policing, including improving trust and confidence by strengthening the systems of scrutiny, accountability and transparency. Both reports made recommendations on the same issues, including recruitment and the use of police powers. The Home Office wishes to respond to the Home Affairs Committee with a full and detailed account, including a series of measures that translate into concrete action. In doing so, we allowed for the Inclusive Britain Action Plan to be published on the 17 March 2022 so that we could outline and build upon the action in this space as part of our response. We are regretful that this has meant our response to the Home Affairs Committee has taken longer than we would normally expect. The Home Office remains dedicated to doing everything in its power to build trust in policing across all communities. Any delay to our response to the Committee is not due to a lack of action in Government. The Home Office intends to respond to the Committee on The MacPherson Report: twenty-two years on, in May.