Metropolitan Police: Stephen Port Murders Inquest

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

As I said, much of my work over the past two years has been devoted to bringing the focus of the whole of UK policing and, in particular, its leadership on to murder as a specific issue. That means improving processes, improving forensics, improving their investigation techniques and improving their prior identification. Crucially, it means improving the leadership, and that is what I was doing last Thursday with the police chiefs from across the country.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for his response to the questions. Having read some of the details of this case in the news recently, I was, like others in this Chamber, very shocked. I am anxious to understand why normal procedures do not seem to have been followed. Can the Minister affirm that, in every case, regardless of the crime and the motivation, the inquiry and the evidence procedure is the same, and that there are no levels of importance in the allocation of cases in any of our police forces in the United Kingdom?

[Kit Malthouse]

That is definitely the consistency that we seek, but there is a category of deaths that have thus far needed some focus, which is unexplained deaths. For example, the circumstances of this case are that these deaths were originally classified as unexplained or non-suspicious. Since then, I understand that the Metropolitan police have put in a step-by-step guide for officers to make sure that, in contemplating these deaths, no stone goes unturned in trying to connect them, and that they are forensic and curious about whether they could be linked. In the very obvious way that many of us have read about in the papers, these murders were in fact linked, whether by geography or by causation. I hope that that will improve the investigation of the cases and that we will see that consistency that the hon. Gentleman seeks across the whole country.