Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 18
Sixth Report - Police Conduct and Complaints
Published 1 Mar 2022
Paragraph 103
Addressed to Home Office
Home Affairs Committee Police conduct and complaints All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The example of its taking seven years to clear one police officer of misconduct is exceptional, but demonstrates why the IOPC must focus its efforts on concluding investigations as quickly as possible. Quite aside from the effect on an individual’s morale, the removal from officers under investigation from front-line duties for lengthy periods may add to strain on police resources. The IOPC must also take care that its power to reinvestigate cases already concluded locally is used sparingly and when there is a clear public interest in undertaking further inquiry.
From: Home Affairs Committee, Sixth Report - Police Conduct and Complaints (HC 140), paragraph 103, 1 March 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 28 April 2022 (deadline 1 May 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government welcomes the Committee's recognition of progress and agrees that improving the police complaints and discipline systems is ongoing, but it declines the Committee's call for an early assessment of PCC involvement and says it will look at the IOPC's governance as part of a periodic review.
- On appointing an independent IOPC chair, the Government does not commit to the change. It agrees the governance structure "should be looked at" in the first periodic review of the IOPC, which it expects "to start early in 2022/23".
- On an early assessment of PCC involvement in complaints, it says "we cannot now agree" because the PCC review concluded before the report. It will "in due course" assess the impact of the February 2020 complaints reforms.
- On bi-annual monitoring of how local policing bodies hold forces to account for implementing IOPC recommendations, and on joined-up reporting of IOPC, HMICFRS and Coroners' recommendations, it says it "will consider" with the IOPC how to go further.
- It commits to update the police super-complaints website to say designated bodies should collaborate with non-designated organisations. It says it will respond to the Macpherson report in May.