Daniel Morgan Independent Panel Report

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I was not thinking so much about the warrant card in tracking, but if I get sacked as a Minister tomorrow because I have done so badly at this Statement, the minute I get sacked I can no longer get into the Home Office. I have been thinking of all sorts of practical solutions to this. I think it is a very serious question for the police to answer, given that there are 2,000 cards out there; it is not just 200, it is 2,000. I totally accept the noble Lord’s point about finding innovative solutions.

On the repeat vetting, the Government expect the College of Policing to consider the findings from this inspection and other relevant inquiries and then to update its guidance appropriately, as the noble Lord said. We will now consider next steps, following the wider vetting inspection being carried out by the inspectorate. We want to make clear that the Met must take immediate steps to safeguard its workforce and, as a result, the wider public.

On the noble Lord’s first point about whether there is any satisfaction in the Metropolitan Police about this report, it would take a strange person to find any satisfaction in this report.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, back in 2000, when I was first elected to the London Assembly, the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, appointed me to the Metropolitan Police Authority under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Harris. At that point, the case of Daniel Morgan was a 13 year-old scandal, and now it is a 35 year-old scandal—and still no one has been arrested, charged or whatever. We ought, if only in Daniel Morgan’s memory, to try to create a situation where the police can be more respected.

I mention the vetting procedures, because obviously you need to vet new recruits extremely carefully and carry on vetting during the lifetime of police officers. But there is also the whole training issue: you have to train officers to be responsible and honest and to have a duty of candour, which was one of the recommendations. There has to be zero tolerance of the sort of misogyny, sexism and racism that we have seen repetitively over the past few years. On a final point, I do not trust the current commissioner to achieve these things, so the faster we get a new commissioner, the better.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I have touched on the new commissioner, and I expect that appointment to be very soon indeed. On the duty of candour, as the noble Baroness might have heard me say, last year we introduced a duty of co-operation, which is very strict in its application and can result in sanction or, indeed, sacking for those who do not abide by it.

Vetting has come up in every single instance when I have stood up to talk about the Metropolitan Police over the last few months. On the number, in 2018 there was a backlog of 16,000 people waiting to be vetted. That number is now 671, so in terms of throughput that is an encouraging figure. Forty files were reviewed by the inspectorate to see whether the checks recommended by the College of Policing, through its authorised professional practice on vetting, had been completed, and they had in every single case.

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, talked about people working in more sensitive posts, and I think I gave a response to that. I have also talked about the ongoing work commissioned by the Home Secretary, and the work by Dame Elish and the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, which touches on the points that the noble Baroness talked about. That does not take away from the point that vetting comes up time and again, and it is clearly an area that needs to be investigated and addressed.