Metropolitan Police: Stephen Port Murders Inquest

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I welcome shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper back to the Front Bench.

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

It is good to be back, if sadly on such a difficult issue. All our hearts will be with the family and friends of Anthony Walgate, Gabriel Kovari, Daniel Whitworth and Jack Taylor, because these were vile murders by a man who targeted young gay men. They were all found close to each other and close to his house. It is incomprehensible that the dots were not joined.

The jurors’ verdict that fundamental failings in the police investigation probably contributed to three deaths is extremely serious. Three young men might otherwise have been alive today. The jurors heard damning evidence about lack of basic checks, lack of professional curiosity, serious workforce pressures, long delays on digital forensics and serious failures in leadership. Crucially, the victims’ families have raised serious concerns about homophobia blighting the investigation and the way that they as partners and relatives were treated, though the jurors were directed not to consider that.

Rightly, the Met has recognised failings and is making changes. We await the coroner’s prevention of future deaths report. Given the seriousness of the issue, however, does the Minister not agree that a further independent inquiry will be required to get to the truth of how and why it was possible for things to go so badly wrong? Does he accept that the families need answers, which they do not have right now, on how far homophobia, prejudice or unconscious bias affected the investigation?

The Home Office response is too weak, given the seriousness of the case. The Minister and the Home Secretary have a responsibility to be relentless in pursuit of the truth to ensure that the families get the answers that they need and deserve. The IOPC will look at individuals, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services at homicide procedures and Louise Casey at the Met culture, but none of them is addressing the full scale of what went wrong in this case—whether homophobia was involved, and what changes are needed not just in the Met but in police forces across the country to make sure that this can never happen again. May I please urge the Minister to take another look at this case?

[Kit Malthouse]

Obviously I recognise the deep concern about these investigations, not least in regard to—the right hon. Lady, whom I welcome to her new position, drew attention to this—the seemingly incomprehensible nature of the dots not being drawn together. I have to say that that has often been a problem not just for the Metropolitan police but for other police forces, when seemingly obvious patterns of behaviour have failed to be linked together in other types of crime. We saw it previously in the Met in the case of John Worboys, a serial rapist whose pattern of offending was never pieced together. However, I am reassured that they have made significant changes structurally, aligning their homicide teams with their basic borough command units so that there can be better co-ordination, and making sure that there is better analysis of patterns of offending to establish at an early stage whether there are a linked series of crimes.

As for the right hon. Lady’s primary question about the independent inquiry, as I have said, the Deputy Mayor has commissioned Her Majesty’s inspectorate to look at the investigative practices, while the Met have themselves commissioned Dame Louise Casey to look at their culture internally and the IOPC is considering whether to reopen any investigations. In the light of those three steps, we will obviously have to keep the situation under review, but for the moment we want to see how they conclude.