Metropolitan Police: Casey Review

Neale Hanvey Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

On improving standards, I have launched a review of the dismissals process. We wait for that to conclude, and on the back of that we will take action, legislative if necessary, to change the standards and the process by which chief constables and senior leaders in policing apply those standards in recruitment. It is important that we look at the evidence from that consultation, and we will be announcing measures in due course.

[Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)]

Institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia are bad enough, but the deliberate operational decision to deprioritise women’s safety and child protection is serious and unforgivable. I asked the Home Secretary about safeguarding in response to her statement on David Carrick, and on 9 February I wrote to the Prime Minister asking him to look at establishing an independent safeguarding regulator, because this is a much bigger problem than the police. We have policy capture by proponents of queer theory that undermines the very activities that are of concern: women’s safety and child protection. Is it not time that we had an independent regulator that, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) suggested, can tackle those problems across all public bodies?

[Suella Braverman]

It is precisely because I take violence against women and girls seriously that I added it to the strategic policing requirement, so that it is set out as a national threat for forces to respond to alongside the other threats listed there. I am very proud of the range of tools and powers that the Government have introduced, such as stalking prevention orders, sexual harm and sexual risk orders, and forced marriage and female genital mutilation protection orders—a whole range of legislative measures that are empowering the police to respond more robustly to victims of abuse and domestic abuse.