Draft Policing and Crime Act 2017 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2018

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 General Committees

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

The explanatory notes say that the 2017 Act allows for the extension of the police disciplinary regime to former police officers in certain circumstances. We know that that has been a device used by police officers who are suspected of breaking the law or the regulations in some way to conveniently retire and escape retribution.

I have a constituency case that has been going on since 1987. Mr Daniel Morgan was attacked and killed with an axe during an investigation he was carrying out into alleged police corruption involving a Maltese drug gang. The investigation has been going on since 1987, and the publication of a report is promised this year, as it was last year and many other years before.

I think I am one of the few Members of the House who has read the Operation Tiberius report, which I believe should be read by all Members. It is a remarkable account of corruption in the Metropolitan police and lists names of errant police with their ranks, addresses and numbers, and the villains with whom they co-operated in plotting and covering up crime. They operated in masonic lodges because they would have been exposed had they operated in more public circumstances. The document has never been published, although it was leaked in substantial form to The Independent newspaper. However, two of us who were members of the Select Committee on Home Affairs were allowed to see it under very strict circumstances.

There is a great deal of concern about police activity and we have every reason to be worried when we read of a case of a retired police constable who is holding information on an hon. Member that he discovered in a legitimate police search some 10 years ago. The activity was not illegal, but the information was then published 10 years later after the officer retired.

[The Chair]

Order. Mr Flynn, for the assistance of the Committee and the Chair, will you relate your remarks to the regulations before the Committee? I think that would be most helpful.

[Paul Flynn]

I am particularly referring to the part of the regulations that relates to the extension of the police disciplinary regime to former police officers in certain circumstances. That retired officer used allegations and alleged evidence against a Member of this House regarding an act that was not illegal in order to damn the reputation of that Member. Will this change mean that that person can be pursued for an action which was very detrimental to the reputation of one of our hon. Members?