IOPC Report on Metropolitan Police Officers' Conduct: Charing Cross Police Station Debate
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Nadia Whittome
Main Page: Nadia Whittome (Labour - Nottingham East)Department Debates - View all Nadia Whittome's debates with the Ministry of Justice
IOPC Report on Metropolitan Police Officers' Conduct: Charing Cross Police Station
Nadia Whittome Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Kit Malthouse
I have previously expressed sincere regret for the results in the criminal justice system on rape. I hope the hon. Lady will recognise that some of our actions—not least Operation Soteria, which is showing good signs of making progress in this area—will give people more confidence in getting a result. However, the incidence of reported rape in this country continues to rise as more and more people come forward to report that appalling crime, and we must ensure that they are confident of getting justice through the criminal justice system. That is what the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), and I are dedicated to.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
The IOPC’s report was truly damning, but it is not the only example of misogyny in the Met police that has come to light in the past couple of weeks. The Met has also been made to pay compensation to a woman in Nottingham who was deceived into a relationship with an undercover officer, and it has been made to apologise to my constituent Dr Koshka Duff for misogynistic and derogatory comments made before and after a strip search. Does the Minister agree with the report’s conclusion that the incidents the IOPC investigated are
“not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’”?
Will he commit to an independent, public, statutory inquiry into institutional misogyny in the Metropolitan police?
Kit Malthouse
Given the incidents we have seen—I too was appalled by the incident to which the hon. Lady refers—it is hard not to agree with the IOPC conclusions. As I have explained in the past few minutes, several inquiries in this area are ongoing within the Met, and I think it best to wait for them to conclude before deciding on what the next steps may be.