Police Integrity

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for giving me a copy of her statement. This is an important issue, and many of the measures that she has outlined are sensible in principle. However, I shall press her for more detail on how they will work in practice, and there are a couple of areas where I believe that she has not gone far enough.

The whole House will wish to recognise and show support for the international reputation of British policing, which is respected globally for low levels of corruption, high standards of integrity and our tradition of policing by consent. As the Home Secretary said, the vast majority of police officers join the force to help the public and keep people safe from crime and harm, and they take great risks when they do so. We think of the two police officers who were shot down when answering a routine 999 call in Greater Manchester, but also of officers who go the extra mile every day to help the public—perhaps stepping in to rescue people and save their lives; perhaps sitting with bereaved parents whose teenager has been killed in a traffic accident.

Police officers themselves are deeply concerned about serious cases that undermine confidence in policing: hacking, the Hillsborough tragedy, the problems with undercover officers, and cases in which policing has failed to protect the public or to deliver justice. That is why the vast majority of police officers also want action to be taken against officers who let their force and the public down, as well as action to improve standards.

Many of the Home Secretary’s measures are sensible. We support the implementation of the Leveson recommendations, and also the introduction of greater transparency. We support the establishment of a code of ethics and higher professional standards, and we support stronger action when those are breached. We have also argued for stronger action in relation to retired officers when things go wrong. The Stevens commission on the future of policing has taken evidence on issues involving codes of ethics, national registers, the role of the College of Policing and proposals for striking police officers off, and is likely to make new proposals in that regard.

However, can the Home Secretary clarify what she means? Will there be a national professional register that all police officers must be on, will there be standards that they must meet, and will they be struck off from the register if they do not meet those standards? If so, by whom will they be struck off? Will it be the IPCC or the College of Policing, and will that be underpinned by legislation? Or does the Home Secretary simply propose to put together a list of officers who have already been sacked by their local forces?

I do not believe that the Home Secretary is going far enough on the IPCC. As she will know, I have argued for the last 12 months that it does not have enough powers and resources to deliver for the public. I welcomed the action that she took and the legislation, which we supported, to strengthen powers, but her reforms of the IPCC still seem to be incremental. Increased resources are welcome, but will she tell us how much there will be and where it will come from? Is she top-slicing the budgets of police forces across the country, and if so, by how much? How many extra police officers does she think those forces will lose as a result?

During the passage of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, Ministers argued that more cases should be dealt with by individual forces rather than by the IPCC. In the Act the Home Secretary downgraded the IPCC’s capacity, halving the minimum number of commissioners. Now she seems to be saying that more cases should be dealt with by the IPCC rather than by individual forces. Has she changed her view since the passage of the Act, and can she clarify her proposals?

I am also not convinced that the Home Secretary is doing enough to strengthen the powers and the culture of the IPCC to restore public confidence and ensure that lessons are learned. Nothing is being done about the confused and overlapping bodies that are supposed to act when policing goes wrong. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, the IPCC, individual police and crime commissioners, police and crime panels and, now, the College of Policing all have a role, but it is still unclear who does what, and as a result, who should act when things go wrong and ensure that lessons are learned. I therefore think that the Home Secretary has not been sufficiently radical. May I urge her to look again at the possibility of replacing the IPCC altogether with a new police standards authority, along with a new, coherent framework of standards and accountability?

Finally, I hope that the Home Secretary agrees that the best way to ensure rising police standards is to have well-motivated, professional police officers who are keen to do a good job and serve the public. She will know that there is a massive problem with low morale among police officers, who do not feel valued, and I am keen to hear how she intends to address that.

Police officers do a vital job every day on our behalf, and our duty in this House is to make sure that they get the support they need and to have a proper framework of accountability to keep standards high. The Secretary of State’s statement is welcome and responds to many of the concerns that we have raised, but I urge her to look at the proposals again as I remain concerned that they do not go far enough and will not be sufficient to deliver what the police and public need.

[Mrs May]

I welcome the shadow Home Secretary’s support on a number of the issues I have addressed today, most significantly the implementation of the Leveson report recommendations, the code of ethics and action on retired officers. She asked two key questions. First, on the national register, the College of Policing will look at how best to address the issue in terms of its general work with police officers and others on standards and development. I expect that there will at least be a list of those officers who have been struck off, and whom one would not expect other police forces, here in the UK or elsewhere, to take on. It is for the College of Policing to decide the form in which to publish that list, and it will consider that matter very shortly.

Secondly, the right hon. Lady said there were a lot of overlapping organisations, and she mentioned the HMIC and the IPCC. HMIC does not investigate individual complaints against individual officers; that is the job of the IPCC. HMIC has a different role. It looks at the efficiency and effectiveness of police forces; it looks across the force, not at individual complaints. Those two bodies do two different jobs.

The right hon. Lady referred to the changes and comments we made during the passage of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. We have indeed put more low-level complaints to the individual forces, but the point I am making today is that we want to ensure the IPCC can handle all the serious and sensitive allegations made against police officers. Last year, just 330 out of 2,100 such cases were independently investigated or supervised and managed by the IPCC. I think it should be able to look at all the serious and sensitive allegations against police officers, which is why we are looking to transfer resources from police standards departments in police forces to the IPCC. We will look at any manpower or funding implications and ensure that the IPCC has sufficient resources to be able to deal with all the cases we feel it should be dealing with.

The right hon. Lady asked why we do not just scrap the IPCC and set it up again with a different name. Today, I have set out the key issues of substance that will make a difference to the ability of the IPCC to do its work. The question that she has to answer is whether she is interested merely in rebranding something, or whether she is genuinely interested in agreeing with me on what the IPCC needs to be able to do its job properly.