Metropolitan Police: Strip-search of Schoolgirl

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As I said earlier, we await the outcome of the investigation, and we will learn whatever lessons need to be learnt from it. While my hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities said that we cannot prevent all bad things from happening, we can try. What is clear from this case is that the complaint mechanism and the safeguarding practices involved did surface the issue and bring it to light, and have allowed us to examine this appalling—[Interruption.] Hold on. They have allowed us to examine this appalling incident in more detail and to try to learn the lessons, so that as—I assume from what she said—Child Q hopes, we are able to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I have huge admiration for my right hon. Friend, and I know that he takes these things very seriously, but can he understand the revulsion felt by women to hear that a girl has been strip-searched at her school—and had to remove her sanitary towel—by the very people whom we trust to look after us? What action will he take to make it clear that there needs to be cultural change in the Metropolitan police so that no serving constable could ever think that that was an appropriate course of action?

[Kit Malthouse]

The revulsion is not confined to women. There are many men, including me, who obviously find it a distressing incident to contemplate. I very often find it helpful in these circumstances to put one of my own relatives in a similar situation to bring home the impact. I am not at all denying the fact that it was distressing and appalling and that it should not have happened, as the Metropolitan police have said themselves.

The hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) referred to a number of incidents that have prompted concerns about the culture in the Met, and she, I hope, will be pleased to know that I had a meeting last week with Dame Louise Casey who has obviously been detailed by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to look at the culture across the whole of the Metropolitan police. Her work will dovetail neatly with the work of the Angiolini review, which is looking, in its first stage, at the circumstances surrounding the employment of Wayne Couzens. Following that, stage 2 will look more widely at culture and policing. There is no doubt that there is work to be done here, and we are determined to do that work.