Police Integrity

Jack Straw Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I expect that the College of Policing will make a real difference. I believe setting up a professional standards body for the police that will set standards and take on many of the ACPO business areas in looking at those standards, as well as dealing with the ethics of policing for the area that it covers and with the training and development of officers, will give a boost to officers in terms of their professionalism and the regard in which they are held. I am pleased that Professor Shirley Pearce, former vice-chancellor of Loughborough university, is the chairman. We also have a very energetic chief executive in Chief Constable Alex Marshall, and I am pleased that members of the police force at all ranks are part of the college, including members of police staff. It is important that it covers everybody.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

As the Home Secretary who established the IPCC in the first place, may I welcome the announcements by the Home Secretary today, which seem a sensible development of those powers? I have two questions. First, the chair of the IPCC, Dame Anne Owers, served for seven years as an extremely effective and independent chief inspector of prisons and I have confidence in her work and ability to take forward the IPCC. Since the Home Secretary has not mentioned Dame Anne, would she like to do so?

My second point concerns the relationship between the professional standards units of individual forces and the IPCC. I understand that at a time of limited resources, money has to come from somewhere and that some transfer is sensible. However, will the Home Secretary take care to ensure that professional standards units in individual forces are not so denuded that they cannot do their crucial initial work of identifying early possible bad police officers, and of investigating complaints that may start at a low level but turn into more serious matters that need to be allocated to the IPCC?

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman and, indeed, I see this as a development of the IPCC. Its role over the years has been changing and this is a necessary and important development. Dame Anne Owers has done an excellent job since becoming chairman of the IPCC. The role is changing slightly from the one she first came to, but she is addressing it with great distinction and commitment, as one would expect from her. Indeed, in her time overseeing prisons she built up a reputation for herself and her independence, and it is good that we have somebody with that reputation as chair of the IPCC.

On the transfer of services, the point is that work will be transferring from professional standards departments to the IPCC, so it therefore makes sense to transfer resources. We are not talking about not having professional standards departments at all, and a discussion will be had with forces about the level of that transfer and where the boundary appropriately falls.