Police Conduct and David Carrick

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his response; it was entirely appropriate. As his colleague in the other place said:

“This is one of the most egregious cases of police misconduct in the history of the Met, perhaps in the history of British policing.”


I struggle with the term “misconduct” when we are talking sustained, sadistic rape and serious sexual assault. In a matter of a few weeks, we have had awful disclosures of racism and misogyny in the uniformed services on whom we depend in London, both the fire service and the police, which indeed raises questions about culture and recruitment. I will ask the Minister a specific question: why was the data and intelligence on this police officer and others not collected? Given that the police depend on collecting data and intelligence to stop crime—particularly terrorism—why are they not collecting data and intelligence on themselves? Why were these complaints not collated, so that somebody could notice that this police officer was out of control and behaving in a completely horrible and inappropriate fashion? It seems that there is a huge gap in management and operations.

I agree with the Minister that the commissioner is deeply committed to dealing with this deeply rooted misogynistic culture, but why is the commissioner against independent scrutiny and support of the progress to deal with these huge culture changes? Why has he not announced that there will be no more recruitment or appraisal of officers without independent input to ensure that that scrutiny has its eyes open to the risks and does not have its eyes closed by the culture that already exists in the Met?

Finally, Dame Vera Baird, the former Victims’ Commissioner, said it would be appropriate for his pension pot to be taken away because he was a serious offender. She asked:

“What does it matter if he was on duty or not?”


He used his status as a police officer to perpetuate these awful crimes, so, apart from the fact that there must be some question mark over his pension pot, she said:

“I hope his victims will be compensated without having to go to court.”

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness that “misconduct” is not the right word for this; this is serious and violent crime. She is 100% right on that.

I cannot answer the questions in detail as to why the Met failed in its responsibilities on the collection and assessment of data, but the noble Baroness is absolutely right that there were serial failures, which unfortunately were repeated very often. I will add go into some detail: Carrick was the subject of five complaints from members of the public between 2002 and 2008, none of which was of a sexual nature. He came to the Metropolitan Police Service’s attention nine times prior to October 2021 for off-duty matters; the earliest was in 2000, prior to his police service. He was not charged with a criminal offence on any of those occasions, but his case history clearly revealed a pattern of behaviour which should have raised concerns, regardless of the outcome of individual incidents.

The Metropolitan Police’s processes did not properly identify the risk and he was granted clearance when he was vetted on joining the Metropolitan Police in 2001, and again in 2017—that was six years later than when he should have been re-vetted after 10 years’ service. There is no excuse for any of that; these are just unfortunate and simple facts. I am confident that Sir Mark, as the noble Baroness reiterated, is the right man to root this out and to sort it out, and I have no doubt that he will. I cannot answer the specific questions as to why he is reluctant to do certain other things, but I can ask him and perhaps report back.

I apologise for this long answer. The noble Baroness also asked me about his pension. The forfeiture of a police officer’s pension is a matter for the Pension Supervising Authority, and, for officers in the Metropolitan Police Service, that is the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime—MOPAC.