1
 1   (2.15 pm)
 2   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  We will commence where we left off with
 3       Miss Weekes' questions.
 4   MISS WEEKES:  Thank you.  I think we were dealing before the
 5       luncheon adjournment with the topic or the subject
 6       matter of how the Metropolitan Police treat their own
 7       when there is a matter of complaint, discipline,
 8       misconduct, and you were very kindly taking me through
 9       your views on delay and what you would like us to bear
10       in mind when we come to make recommendations about
11       delay.  You had gone through two aspects of delay, one
12       related to the role played by the Crown Prosecution
13       Service, and your views about what could be dealt with
14       there, and I think you had finished the second -- had
15       you finished the second point?
16   MR ROBERTS:  Yes, I had.
17   MISS WEEKES:  Can I take you then to the next point, if
18       there was another point that you wanted to speak about,
19       on delay?
20   MR ROBERTS:  I think the third element where I have some
21       concerns -- and it is probably more in our province than
22       yours -- is around the delays in actually convening the
23       misconduct boards themselves.  A problem that we face,
24       particularly in cases where we have a number of officers
25       and a number of private witnesses, is actually managing
 
     2
 1       to get all the witnesses and the lawyers to the accused
 2       officers available on a given date.
 3           Again, I think there are two areas of difficulty:
 4       one is around the fact that it is a relatively small
 5       pool of lawyers who specialise in these sort of
 6       proceedings, so the availability of the right lawyers
 7       can be limited on occasion, and the second is around our
 8       ability to actually compel hearings to take place.
 9           There are cases where a range of tactics are
10       available to officers to make sure that a case is
11       delayed as long as possible.
12   MISS WEEKES:  I think we ought to hear what they are,
13       because this is quite an important area.
14   MR ROBERTS:  There is provision for cases to be heard in the
15       absence of the officer.  There is a very extreme
16       solution to go to, and it is not something that we go to
17       willingly.  One has not taken place during my time in
18       this post, they are very infrequent.  But the routes by
19       which it is possible to delay is considerable.  The
20       officers can go sick in advance and prevent a hearing
21       taking place; officers can actually go sick on the day
22       of the hearing, officers can go sick during a hearing
23       and have it delayed.
24           On occasions where --
25   MISS WEEKES:  I think you mean going sick as not necessarily
 
     3
 1       being genuine sickness; sometimes it is, sometimes it is
 2       not.
 3   MR ROBERTS:  I am not qualified to say whether they are
 4       genuinely sick or not, but sometimes it does seem to be
 5       remarkably convenient.  When we end up in a conflict of,
 6       "Is this officer genuinely too sick to face the board or
 7       is he not?", or she, we then have a process, but
 8       a process that again can introduce weeks of delay, of
 9       independent doctors examining them; there is a process
10       for then resolving conflict when the two doctors do not
11       agree.  But every one of those things can be used as
12       a means of getting delay.
13           Of course for those officers who believe that they
14       will be found guilty and face dismissal, or require them
15       to resign, they are being paid throughout this process,
16       so there is no disadvantage in dragging the process out.
17       In effect, the very officers that the public have
18       a right to expect will leave the service have the
19       greatest incentive for extending the process of the
20       misconduct hearing, and that is a problem for us.
21           An additional problem is around, as I say, the
22       availability of counsel, and I think it is now our
23       province to say, "It is simply not acceptable that you
24       can only use this counsel".  I do not believe a Crown
25       Court judge would accept that a case had to be delayed
 
     4
 1       for six months because counsel was not available; we
 2       have been in the position on occasions of delaying cases
 3       for that length of time.
 4   MISS WEEKES:  I can tell you from extremely good experience
 5       that that is not a reason to delay a case, the
 6       availability of counsel, paid for out of the public
 7       budget.
 8   MR ROBERTS:  A final area which can --
 9   MISS WEEKES:  Just before you get to the final area, can
10       I ask you about an aspect of what you just said?
11       Because there are a number of aspects of it.  I am
12       interested in your lack of power to compel the date of
13       the hearing and to compel that the officer attends; am
14       I right?
15   MR ROBERTS:  Yes.
16   MISS WEEKES:  You have neither of those two powers?
17   MR ROBERTS:  In practice, no.
18   MISS WEEKES:  So you do not mirror other professional 
19       organisations where the fact that an officer does not
20       turn up or does not reply by a deadline can constitute
21       another breach of regulations.
22   MR ROBERTS:  If they fail to respond ...
23   MISS WEEKES:  Do you have deadlines for when, for example --
24   MR ROBERTS:  Yes, we do, but I would have to take advice on
25       that.  I am not at all clear that we would have a power
 
     5
 1       to regard that as a separate offence.  Can you help on
 2       that?
 3   MR HAGON:  I do not think there would be a power as
 4       a separate offence, but I am wracking my memory here,
 5       I do not think that is how it actually manifests itself,
 6       in reality.  Applications are made to us to adjourn the
 7       matter for a whole raft of different reasons, one of
 8       which, which is prayed in aid considerably, is, of
 9       course, that the defending counsel and solicitors have
10       not had sufficient time to prepare their client's
11       defence.
12   MISS WEEKES:  That might be right; it might not be.
13   MR HAGON:  It may be right, indeed.  The two other minor
14       elements I would perhaps add to Steve's evidence is that
15       I have noticed in recent times increasing usage of
16       Queen's Counsel in the misconduct procedures, and, of
17       course, Queen's Counsel are difficult to actually get
18       hold of, because of the demand for their services, and
19       then virtually every single misconduct case now starts 
20       with abuse of process arguments.  Sometimes those abuse
21       of process arguments go on for three weeks.
22   MISS WEEKES:  Perhaps I can take one aspect of that, because
23       I think the matters you throw up are obviously
24       important, but we recognise, and I know you do, the
25       right of an individual who may lose his job to have the
 
     6
 1       representative of his choice, including the status of
 2       the representative of his choice, but perhaps the
 3       matters you have thrown up allow me to ask you this: who
 4       is in charge of the process and the running of a conduct
 5       hearing?
 6   MR HAGON:  We are in charge of the actual process itself,
 7       but as you rightly point out, Miss Weekes, there is the
 8       question of dealing with the representations that are
 9       made on behalf of the officer for delay, to enable
10       various things to occur, such as the provision of that
11       favoured Queen's Counsel or favoured counsel.
12           It is fair to say that in the majority of cases we
13       try and acquiesce to that.  The effect of that, though,
14       quite clearly, is delay.
15   MISS WEEKES:  Well, do you have sufficient discretion to
16       deal with those sorts of requests, so that you are
17       moving the process on but you have not denied the
18       officer due process and fairness?  Do you think you have
19       sufficient discretionary powers?
20   MR HAGON:  I think the discretionary powers are there.  The
21       difficulty is knowing when properly to use them, because
22       it is fair to say that the guidance around this is
23       sparse, to say the least, and one has to rely on
24       fairness and the application of common sense in most of
25       these cases.
 
     7
 1   MISS WEEKES:  Because, of course, the conduct proceedings is
 2       a mirror of tribunal/court proceedings because of the
 3       consequences and because you must ensure that your final
 4       decision is set against proper fair procedures, but in
 5       every other walk of life there comes a time that the
 6       tribunal, whether they be a judge or whoever they are,
 7       the decision-maker, makes a decision.  One adjournment,
 8       one application, second application; there is
 9       a decision.  So without prejudging what you have said,
10       it seems to me that your comments must surround the
11       decision-maker who is in charge of the process.  You
12       either tell us as a Panel that you lack the power, or
13       you say it has not always been exercised robustly
14       enough; which one is it?
15   MR HAGON:  When on occasion it is used robustly, of course
16       a further inevitable delay comes as a consequence,
17       because our decisions are subjected then to judicial
18       review, which inevitably puts extraordinary delay into
19       it.
20           So it is a difficult one, and I do not pretend to
21       know all the answers here.
22   MR ROBERTS:  That is actually why I mentioned at the start
23       that I think an element of the case management is within
24       our own management, and it is something we need to
25       improve upon, but the overall result, if I may just
 
     8
 1       finish, is that we have cases running now which were
 2       instituted three, four, five years ago.
 3   MISS WEEKES:  And they are still not dealt with?
 4   MR ROBERTS:  Still not resolved, which by any standard is
 5       not right.
 6   MISS WEEKES:  All I can say to close this aspect is that
 7       that is of crucial importance to us, but we would like
 8       some assistance from you in terms of the aspects you
 9       have outlined, with some evidence, because it is the
10       first time in a sense we have been able to draw out
11       these rather difficult sensitive but important matters,
12       and if we are going to consider it and make
13       recommendation, we want to know more about conduct
14       proceedings, and we want to know more about the
15       interplay of the officer, his or her lawyer, and your
16       role.  So I think, and I am sure the Chairman would
17       agree, we would probably want a little bit more from
18       you, so we know where we are with that, and we know who
19       else we should speak to about it.  So I will leave that,
20       I think, for the moment, bearing in mind what you have
21       helpfully told me.
22           Anything else on delay, before I move to the next
23       point?
24   MR ROBERTS:  I do not think so.
25   MISS WEEKES:  Because whatever statutory background or
 
     9
 1       reforms you have, there will always be a conduct
 2       process, so we would want to know what you would like us
 3       to do about the matters that you have flagged up in
 4       respect of the hearing.
 5           Can I move to an example of delay?  It falls within
 6       the Virdi report.  Our terms of reference require us to
 7       make some judgment about what you will tell us you have
 8       done so far to implement the recommendations from the
 9       Virdi report.  I think you are both aware that that is
10       within our terms of reference.
11   MR ROBERTS:  Yes.
12   MISS WEEKES:  One aspect of the Virdi report touched upon
13       press coverage of high-profile cases.  This undoubtedly
14       will fall squarely within the remit of the press
15       department, and you are not the press department; may
16       I say that straight away.
17           But again, it does have to do with what professional
18       standards look like if in fact, for example, very
19       sensitive details about the profile of the officer, or
20       what he or she is alleged to have done, get into the
21       press domain within hours of an announcement that there
22       is a problem.
23           Is that a good thing?
24   MR ROBERTS:  No, it is not.  I think it needs to be said
25       right from the outset that the Metropolitan Police has
 
    10
 1       a problem with information leakage.  In part it is
 2       an inevitable problem, as a result of trying to consult
 3       widely about the most appropriate course of action,
 4       which means far more people being included in the
 5       sensitive information; in part, it is about wider access
 6       to information via our growing IT network; and in part,
 7       it is about organisations outside the
 8       Metropolitan Police having a very strong interest in and
 9       being prepared to pay significant money for sensitive
10       information; in fact, it is one of the issues that is
11       highlighted in our strategic intelligence assessment.
12       Not specifically in relation to high-profile cases, but
13       in relation to the leakage of valued or valuable
14       information more generally.
15   MISS WEEKES:  Yes.
16   MR ROBERTS:  In any critical incident, in any high-profile
17       case, we will have an advisor from the press department
18       who will help us to formulate our response to the press,
19       whether that is a statement that is offered to the
20       press, or a statement that is held in readiness for
21       press enquiries, and that is the only official way in
22       which we will communicate with the press, and we take
23       very careful advice from our media advisors, and indeed
24       on occasions from lawyers, about what can and cannot be
25       legitimately said; that will sometimes include where we
 
    11
 1       have asked for, or the claimant has asked for
 2       a confidentiality agreement in any form of settlement.
 3       There will be occasions on which we have asked for
 4       confidentiality, and that confidentiality is binding on
 5       us as well as them.
 6           But as I say, we take a very dim view, and actually
 7       are taking some fairly major steps in highlighting both
 8       our vulnerability and the penalties to people who leak
 9       information, of leaking information.
10   MISS WEEKES:  Well, thank you for the very frank assessment
11       that you make that there is indeed a problem to be dealt
12       with, but I wonder if you can assist: at this stage, in
13       2004, can you be confident that there will not be
14       a repeat of what happened to Sergeant Virdi?
15   MR ROBERTS:  No, I cannot, hand on heart, sit here and say
16       if we had that case tomorrow, information would not
17       leak.  Neither can I say, hand on heart, that we would
18       be able to trace the source of that leak.
19   MISS WEEKES:  Yes.  I think it is fair -- let us look at
20       what the recommendation was in relation to what
21       happened.  We know that his name was leaked, his
22       ethnicity was leaked, and details about what he did were
23       leaked.
24           Page 80 -- thank you, it is right there for me.  On
25       your screen, to the right, number 8.  We have to ask you
 
    12
 1       what steps have been taken to have implemented the
 2       recommendations from the Virdi report, and this is one
 3       of them.  Again, I appreciate you are not the press
 4       department, but I want to hear it from you, because you
 5       are an important department:
 6           "A press strategy should be adopted that: explains
 7       how to deal effectively with race-specific and
 8       high-profile cases, using the learning from critical
 9       incident training; includes the principles contained in
10       the National Union of Journalists guidelines on race
11       reporting; does not compromise the principles of natural
12       justice."
13           A pretty sensible recommendation.
14   MR ROBERTS:  Entirely.
15   MISS WEEKES:  Well, what has been done about it since?
16   MR ROBERTS:  In terms of the department of public affairs
17       actually providing the broad strategy, I am afraid you
18       will have to ask them, but in any critical incident gold
19       group we would have a press advisor there, who provides
20       us with exactly that advice in relation to the specific
21       case we are dealing with.  We look to them as experts,
22       in the same way as we would look to lawyers as experts;
23       they are specialists.
24   MISS WEEKES:  If you were lucky and you did find the person
25       that leaked that sort of sensitive information that
 
    13
 1       might compromise the investigation, the innocence, if it
 2       is right, of the officer, what would you do to that
 3       person?  What are the sanctions?
 4   MR ROBERTS:  The sanctions would be potentially both
 5       criminal and disciplinary.  We have dealt with people
 6       for leaking information in both disciplinary ways which
 7       have resulted in them being dismissed -- with them
 8       leaving the service, let us put it like that, and in
 9       ways in which they have ended up in front of a criminal
10       court.
11   MISS WEEKES:  Did any investigation in respect of
12       Sergeant Virdi disclose or throw up any leads as to who
13       was responsible for that leak?
14   MR ROBERTS:  I am sorry, I do not know.
15   MISS WEEKES:  Finally on how officers are treated during the
16       time of a complaint or otherwise, following on again
17       from the Chairman's question, is there now an agreed
18       method of all the things that need to be done for that
19       officer during the time he awaits a decision about a
20       complaint?  Is there any agreed -- it does not have to
21       be a policy, but is there a protocol, is there an agreed
22       approach to what is required?  What is the minimum
23       treatment that he is entitled to?
24   MR ROBERTS:  We do not have anything that specifies what the
25       minimum treatment is.  It is largely left to the officer
 
    14
 1       who is generally of inspector rank or above to actually
 2       tailor what is required to the person individually.  It
 3       is intended to be a bespoke service.
 4           The other element that I think needs mentioning is
 5       the similar service, and in many ways parallel service,
 6       that the Police Federation or the staff associations
 7       will provide to officers, and in particular, in the case
 8       of the Police Federation, it is not unusual for me to
 9       have meetings with Federation representatives in respect
10       of particular individuals where they will come directly
11       to me and say, "Look, things are not going right here.
12       Can you have a look at what is going on, can we make
13       sure that the officer I am representing is receiving the
14       right information, that the case is being progressed
15       properly?", and that is something that I will personally
16       do, and I know that Commander Hagon does the same.
17           So that is actually a very immediate and very
18       effective route, when a Federation representative feels
19       that things are going wrong, and it is one they are not
20       slow to use, and that I would encourage them to use.  If
21       things are going wrong, we need to know that they are
22       going wrong, so we can put them right.
23   MISS WEEKES:  But would I be right in saying that it is
24       actually left to the individual officer who is in charge
25       of that investigation as to how often he communicates
 
    15
 1       and tells the officer what is going on?
 2   MR ROBERTS:  Yes, it is.
 3   MISS WEEKES:  How often he deals with any matter of finance
 4       or family difficulty, how often he might have to deal
 5       with conflict between other officers?
 6   MR ROBERTS:  Well, the investigating officer would not deal
 7       with that, the welfare officer would deal with that.
 8   MISS WEEKES:  So it is dependent on the welfare officer?
 9   MR ROBERTS:  It does have to be separated, because they are
10       very distinct roles.  It is probably not the case that
11       somebody who is accused of an offence would welcome the
12       investigator of that offence, the person who is
13       gathering evidence to prosecute him, actually dealing
14       with welfare matters.
15   MISS WEEKES:  I understand that, my mistake.  So the welfare
16       officer really is the person that -- you are just going
17       to have to be lucky if you have got a good one.
18   MR ROBERTS:  Or to put it another way, you have to be very
19       unlucky if you have a bad one.
20   MISS WEEKES:  Right.  You are quite confident that actually
21       they are pretty good, and it normally works?
22   MR ROBERTS:  I would not claim it is perfect.  I think the
23       safety route is via the Federation representative,
24       because I know that they so often do come to see me,
25       they get pretty rapid access to me, and start to get the
 
    16
 1       situation put right.
 2   MR HAGON:  I would have to say, from my experience, that the
 3       Federation representatives do a very good job in forging
 4       that link between local management, DPS investigatory
 5       people and the officer that is being investigated, in
 6       the main.
 7   MISS WEEKES:  You have never had complaints from officers
 8       about the Federation?
 9   MR HAGON:  Yes, I have, but they are in a minority by far,
10       and I think you will have the Chairman of the Police
11       Federation giving evidence at some juncture in the
12       future; Glenn Smyth, say.
13   MISS WEEKES:  What is the nature of the complaints you have
14       received about the Federation?
15   MR HAGON:  I am just trying to remember.  I think it is
16       probably the paucity of contact and information being
17       given by that conduit, if you like, and that could have
18       been -- I cannot recollect now the reasons for that, but
19       it could be, you know, volume of work, illness or indeed
20       movement from that particular post without handing over
21       to the Federation representative that is due to take up
22       that particular post.
23   MISS WEEKES:  Because, of course, the Federation do not fund
24       everybody who requests funding for their cases, do they?
25   MR HAGON:  I would say --
 
    17
 1   MISS WEEKES:  Naturally.
 2   MR HAGON:  In my experience, when it comes to internal
 3       matters or complaints made against police, then in the
 4       majority of cases the Police Federation do support their
 5       officers.
 6   MISS WEEKES:  That leads me to a cost point you made.
 7       Employment tribunals are lengthy, and they do not always
 8       produce resolution.  One of the things I think you have
 9       mentioned in your submission, and correct me if I am
10       wrong, is that there appears to be nothing to stop
11       a case which on the face of it has very little merit
12       from proceeding to an employment tribunal, and therefore
13       the Metropolitan Police Service would have to defend
14       that case.
15           There is no sanction as to cost for the individual
16       who wants to pursue what you think is an unmeritorious
17       case; do I have your point correct?
18   MR ROBERTS:  There is no sanction for the individual who is
19       supported by their trade union, their staff association
20       or the Police Federation.  I think the situation of
21       individual applicants before ETs is quite different.
22   MISS WEEKES:  All right, let us deal with the one where
23       there is the representation from the Federation.  What
24       is it that you suggest could reform that position?  What
25       is your complaint?
 
    18
 1   MR ROBERTS:  I think the issue for me is that were we -- and
 2       the context I raised this in was in terms of were we to
 3       go to an employment law based contract for police
 4       officers, were that to enable any sort of automatic
 5       appeal route to an employment tribunal, without there
 6       being some attached risk to it, then we would simply
 7       displace misconduct hearings into employment tribunals,
 8       with no benefit to anybody again except for the lawyers.
 9   MISS WEEKES:  I understand now your point.  So what is the
10       reform?  If we go to an employment based terms and
11       conditions of contract and methods of dealing with
12       individual officers, would you wish to be able to see
13       a change in statutory processes attached to employment
14       tribunals that would bring about a sanction?
15   MR ROBERTS:  I think that is --
16   MISS WEEKES:  For cost, is that what you want?
17   MR ROBERTS:  I think there needs to be an injection of risk
18       if we are to deter people from automatically appealing
19       any decision without risk to themselves, in exactly the
20       same way as the civil law generally does.
21   MISS WEEKES:  Well, a huge question of fairness comes in
22       here, does it not?
23   MR ROBERTS:  There is a huge question of fairness to the
24       public purse as well as to the individual, yes.
25   MISS WEEKES:  And the right of an individual to take his or
 
    19
 1       her case to a tribunal to which everyone else is
 2       available to go.
 3   MR ROBERTS:  In exactly the same way as with the civil law,
 4       everybody has the right, but they also have to take into
 5       account the possible risks.
 6   MISS WEEKES:  So you would want to encourage the Department
 7       of Trade and Industry and the Home Secretary to
 8       encourage employment tribunals to award costs against
 9       people?
10   MR ROBERTS:  Not generally, but if we are talking about a
11       root and branch reform of the employment of police
12       officers and police staff, I think that is perhaps one
13       of the special areas that we would want to have
14       examined.  We are certainly not qualified to say what
15       the outcome should be.  I mean, you personally have far
16       more expertise around this than I do, but if we simply 
17       go down the route of saying, "Well, it can all be dealt
18       with in an employment tribunal", then I think we are
19       already building a new fault into what we are saying
20       should be a new system, and that would be absurd.
21   MISS WEEKES:  You see it as a fault?
22   MR ROBERTS:  I see it as a fault that there is an automatic
23       risk-free route of appeal, yes.
24   MISS WEEKES:  The ethos of employment tribunals is that you
25       have your case decided by the employment tribunal, and
 
    20
 1       that there is no issue of costs unless your case is a
 2       vexatious one; you agree with that, that makes common
 3       sense, does it not?  Do you want to change that?
 4   MR ROBERTS:  I do not want to change it for employment
 5       tribunals generally, no, I do not.  I do not think that
 6       would be -- it is simply not within my remit or my
 7       experience to have a view.  But I do think that we need
 8       to have -- or there will inevitably need to be an appeal
 9       mechanism from whatever disciplinary process replaces
10       the ones that we have got, but it must be one which
11       injects a risk to moderate that tendency, which I am
12       sure will arise, of an automatic appeal.
13   MR HAGON:  I suppose this is a complex and contentious
14       suggestion, and it may be of no great merit, but the
15       reality is that in the pursuit of civil law there is the
16       part 36 provision which is there to, if you like,
17       provide a mediation process so as to minimise the amount
18       of public money that is then spent on a full blown
19       hearing.
20           What we are suggesting is that perhaps there might
21       be some merit in that type of approach being applied to
22       employment tribunals.
23           So, for example, a case may well have some merit, we
24       might acknowledge that, that the case has merit; we
25       might wish to make some financial recompense to the
 
    21
 1       claimant.  If the claimant does not wish to take forward
 2       what is a reasonable offer made on behalf of the
 3       Commissioner, but wants, quite frankly, to trawl these
 4       matters in an employment tribunal lasting weeks at 
 5       enormous public cost, is that right?  Or should there be
 6       some sort of disincentive for that to occur; in other
 7       words, we have lodged that amount of money with the
 8       tribunal, and there is the potential for the claimant to
 9       actually lose that if the tribunal chairman comes to
10       that conclusion.
11   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Let me just understand: you do not want
12       a general change for everybody else, which is covered by
13       the same statute. 
14   MR ROBERTS:  No.
15   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  But you are suggesting that if we move
16       to an employment law for unfair dismissal, say, you
17       would wish to see written in some sort of sanction for
18       police officers; is that what you are saying?
19   MR ROBERTS:  You are using the term "sanction"; I would use
20       the term "an injection of risk".
21   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Well, put it how you like, it would be
22       a sanction and it would be a monetary sanction.
23   MR ROBERTS:  Yes.
24   MISS WEEKES:  Can I finish off by asking you about fast
25       track?  In the new Act that will come about in April,
 
    22
 1       there will be a provision for an officer to be dealt
 2       with for a very serious case of misconduct fairly
 3       immediately, where you do not have to wait for the CPS
 4       to decide that he is charged, and that he is charged,
 5       and that his criminal case has been finished; is that
 6       correct?
 7   MR ROBERTS:  That is correct.
 8   MISS WEEKES:  How is this going to work?
 9   MR ROBERTS:  It actually mirrors a procedure that we already
10       have.  It makes it slightly easier, in that at the
11       moment, in the Metropolitan Police anyway, such a case
12       has to be heard by the Commissioner in person, it cannot
13       be delegated.
14   MISS WEEKES:  Right.
15   MR ROBERTS:  We have only used that procedure once, since
16       its inception.
17   MISS WEEKES:  And it has been around for how long?
18   MR ROBERTS:  Two years.
19   MR HAGON:  Twice we have used it.
20   MR ROBERTS:  I beg your pardon, twice, I am told.  Sorry,
21       only once to my knowledge, and in the one case that I am
22       aware of, the criminal case has yet to be concluded, so
23       we need to be slightly cautious about what is said.
24   MISS WEEKES:  I do not want examples, I want to perhaps talk
25       about the process.  So how long has it been around, and
 
    23
 1       there have been two examples?
 2   MR ROBERTS:  It must be two or three years.  Frankly,
 3       I think it has been underused.
 4   MISS WEEKES:  Why is that?
 5   MR ROBERTS:  Partly because it was seen originally as a very
 6       exceptional procedure, only for the most extreme cases.
 7       Now if you look at the legislation, it really does not
 8       need to be that exceptional a case, and I think --
 9       I mean, I used the example earlier on of the bank
10       employee who has got their hand in the till.
11           Well, the police equivalent of that, as far as I am
12       concerned, is more than adequate to justify using that
13       special procedure.  If it is something which is gross
14       misconduct but is fundamentally against what somebody is
15       employed to do, then we ought to be using it, and it is
16       part of what I have undertaken to the Commissioner that
17       I will do in my new post, that we will be looking to put
18       cases before him on a regular basis, if they are
19       merited, and we can already identify several cases that
20       we have in the pipeline to do it.
21           Post April 1st it will be much easier, because
22       firstly we had the view that it was only to be used in
23       exceptional cases, which I think was wrong; secondly,
24       the Commissioner is an extremely busy man, and the
25       ability to ask him to write off, effectively, half a day
 
    24
 1       to deal with such a case is pretty limited.  The view
 2       was, we could not do it very often.  And similarly, the
 3       Deputy Commissioner also has a role which cannot be
 4       delegated which precedes the actual hearing.
 5           I am confident now that this Commissioner would wish
 6       to use this procedure, and we will be putting cases
 7       before him.  When it becomes possible to use assistant
 8       commissioners rather than the Commissioner himself to
 9       deal with it, we will then have rather more people
10       available to do it, and we will be making more use of
11       it.
12   MISS WEEKES:  And when are we going to have assistant
13       commissioners?
14   MR ROBERTS:  1st April.  It comes in with the new
15       regulations.
16   MISS WEEKES:  So in a sense, we really do have to wait to
17       see whether that will speed things up.
18   MR ROBERTS:  Yes, but I have to say, I think the
19       Metropolitan Police has missed an opportunity to use
20       that procedure that already exists more than it has
21       been.
22   MR HAGON:  In our defence, I would have to say it was the
23       sheer business of the Commissioner that acted as a real
24       disincentive.  I mean, the analogy is, we have
25       an organisation the size of the Royal Navy here, and it
 
    25
 1       is like using the First Sea Lord to fire a rating, who
 2       has been found committing a very, very serious offence.
 3       That cannot be right.
 4           The reform programme has actually dealt with that,
 5       at least in part, but nevertheless, there is still
 6       a fair bit of work to set up the structures to enable,
 7       you know, a very senior officer, assistant commissioner,
 8       chief constable status, to actually do that, so it is
 9       fast track in comparison to what we have in the
10       conventional misconduct arena; I do not think perhaps
11       the chief executive of Sainsburys or whatever would
12       regard that as being fast track, somehow.
13   MISS WEEKES:  I want to ask you this finally about fast
14       track: are you confident that the categories of cases
15       that should be fast tracked are the ones which will
16       protect you from a judicial review challenge?
17   MR ROBERTS:  We would like to see fast track able to be
18       applied to behaviour other than simply imprisonable
19       offences.
20   MISS WEEKES:  You are talking about breach of code of
21       conduct?
22   MR ROBERTS:  I am talking about gross breaches of code of
23       conduct.  I mean, I get across my desk on a fairly
24       regular basis allegations of outrageous behaviour, where
25       in any other organisation they would be sacked
 
    26
 1       straightforwardly.  If that was demonstrably true,
 2       people would have left our employment by the end of the
 3       day, if not the end of the week, and yet it will still,
 4       under the fast track procedure, take us weeks, sometimes
 5       months, to achieve that, and still under the new fast
 6       track procedure even only in cases where it is
 7       imprisonable offences.
 8           If I have somebody being grossly racially offensive,
 9       I do not want him or her here by the end of the day, and
10       if they want to take us to a civil court or to
11       an employment tribunal afterwards, so be it.
12   MISS WEEKES:  That is always a matter for them, of course.
13   MR ROBERTS:  That is a matter for them.
14   MISS WEEKES:  Thank you very much, both of you, for your
15       assistance.
16   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Thank you very much.  Can I ask
17       Sir Anthony to put some questions to you?
18                 Questions by SIR ANTHONY BURDEN
19   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Mr Roberts, like rabbits caught in the
20       headlights syndrome, said the Chairman of your
21       Police Authority, when attempting to deal with conflict
22       situations involving black and ethnic minority officers;
23       correct or not?
24   MR ROBERTS:  I think it is probably more colourful language
25       than is merited.  I think I said earlier that the
 
    27
 1       department of professional standards really only gets to
 2       deal with the bad news cases where things have gone
 3       wrong.  We never get to hear of the cases that have gone
 4       right because they have been resolved by proper,
 5       sensible, robust management.
 6   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  I mean, can I ask your view: has the
 7       organisation, in your opinion, got the confidence to
 8       debate issues around minority ethnic staff and conflict
 9       in a non-defensive way?
10   MR ROBERTS:  I think the fact that I am sitting here having
11       given you the evidence that I have given you
12       demonstrates that we are.  The fact that we engage the
13       staff associations and the minority staff associations
14       on a regular basis demonstrates that we are.  I do not
15       think we have got there yet.
16   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Can I just take you back to something
17       which you raised this morning, if I may?  Page 15.  You
18       said then about organisational and individual learning,
19       that what you have to learn has to encompass diversity.
20           You gave an example, you can read it on the screen
21       there, about the potential policy of introducing drug
22       testing pre-attestation, that is when an officer swears
23       an oath to uphold the law, for those who do not know
24       what that is, and this would be done for recruits coming
25       into Hendon.  I mean, that is not a Metropolitan
 
    28
 1       initiative, that is an ACPO -- let me put it this way,
 2       it is an initiative which has been discussed in ACPO for
 3       some time.
 4   MR ROBERTS:  And which has been introduced in West Midlands
 5       and other forces, I believe.
 6   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  You are absolutely right.  Please help
 7       me understand what you said next, because you said:
 8           "Now one of the issues that has been raised by our
 9       own lay advisors, and by the MPA, the professional
10       standards committee, is whether or not that sort of
11       testing might have a disproportionate impact on some
12       ethnic minorities rather than white officers."
13   MR ROBERTS:  The issue that was raised by the MPA member
14       related specifically to cannabis use.  If you test for
15       a range of drugs, cocaine and heroin are eliminated from
16       the system very quickly, whereas cannabis can remain --
17       or traces of cannabis use, rather, can remain in your
18       system for weeks and indeed months.
19   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Why might that have a disproportionate
20       impact on some ethnic minorities, rather than white
21       recruits?
22   MR ROBERTS:  The concern of the member who raised it was
23       that she felt that might have a disproportionate impact
24       on black entrants.  I have to say, I do not have any
25       evidence that it would, but that was the concern that
 
    29
 1       was raised.
 2   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Might I suggest that the very fact that
 3       that sort of debate takes place suggests a defensive
 4       culture, that what you are about here is trying to
 5       ensure that recruits coming into the police service are
 6       not addicted to drugs.
 7   MR ROBERTS:  Absolutely, but I do not think --
 8   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  But you get locked in immediately, it
 9       seems, into a debate around race and culture.
10   MR ROBERTS:  I think we need to be locked into a debate
11       about race and culture all the time.  It had not
12       occurred to me personally, or to anybody else in the
13       project, that there might be a disproportionality issue
14       here.  Now in advance of introducing a new policy,
15       I think it is as well to spot where the potential
16       difficulties are going to be, before you do it rather
17       than after doing it.  I do not think it is a matter of
18       defensiveness, I think it is a matter of plotting out
19       where the dangers are, where the risks are, before you
20       do something.
21   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  You have listed the people who were
22       involved in that discussion, and I am sure it is not
23       exhaustive, but can I ask you, have you sought the views
24       of representative bodies, the BPA and the Federation,
25       about this sort of policy and their concerns around
 
    30
 1       this?
 2   MR ROBERTS:  The drug testing policy has been consulted with
 3       all the staff associations, yes.
 4   MR HAGON:  In fact, sir, they actually sit on the board that
 5       is considering it; the chairman of the Metropolitan
 6       Federation, the Superintendents Association and a member
 7       of the Samurai group.
 8   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Can I then bring you on to look at some
 9       of the statistics that you provide in your submission,
10       and you firstly mention that there is a higher number of
11       public complaints received from black complainants and
12       other members of minority ethnic communities than would
13       be expected if the results were by chance, and also
14       a higher number of complaints were recorded against
15       black officers than if the numbers were the result of
16       chance, and there is some further research going on into
17       that, I think, to try and analyse those figures in more
18       depth.
19   MR ROBERTS:  There is some further research that is planned,
20       we have agreed a joint funding with the Home Office, but
21       that research has yet to be commissioned.
22   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Okay.  What I would like to look at in
23       more detail this afternoon is what you go on to say.
24       You say that black and Asian officers are more likely to
25       be the subject of internal investigation than other
 
    31
 1       officers.
 2           Then what the Chairman discussed with you this
 3       morning very helpfully was your personal views, and
 4       I think you were very candid and forthright in what you
 5       said.  But just to reiterate that, so that we know
 6       exactly what we are talking about here:
 7           "There is a fear of allegations of racism and in
 8       consequence, when faced with minor misbehaviour by an
 9       ethnic minority officer, they will either retreat into
10       the formal disciplinary process, with all the protection
11       that the rules provide, or will turn a blind eye to the
12       minor matters and only intervene at some later stage
13       where more serious misbehaviour has occurred and formal
14       investigation is the only possible course."
15           Of course you were given the opportunity to enlarge
16       on your views this morning.  Can I just take you back,
17       because you may or may not be aware of this, but similar
18       reference was made in a report by Lord Ouseley on behalf
19       of Focus Consultancy; I think we can bring that up on
20       the screen.  This was a review of the
21       Metropolitan Police diversity strategy in October 2000,
22       three and a half years ago.  The report refers to:
23           "Staff dissatisfaction caused by lack of management
24       sensitivity and slowness to resolve matters of concern
25       that inevitably led to intractable confrontational
 
    32
 1       situations.  Also, inadequacy and incompetence and
 2       outdated management practices, and the challenge of
 3       dealing with failures of effective people management."
 4           The Virdi report at the end of 2001 refers to
 5       a blame culture:
 6           "The need to seek an early apology, and the need to
 7       support staff who admit to honest mistakes."
 8           Now I think that was a debate that you had with my
 9       colleague, Miss Weekes, this morning and this afternoon,
10       but it seems to me that much of that is still in the
11       policy formulation stage, and I have to say, here we
12       are, three and a half years on from Lord Ouseley,
13       two years on from Virdi, and it does not seem in some
14       areas that much has changed.
15   MR ROBERTS:  I think that is probably a little unfair.  If
16       you look at what has changed, the Fairness at Work
17       procedure, relatively recent introduction but it appears
18       to be working; it appears to be doing precisely what we
19       said we wanted to do, get back to good management at the
20       frontline, get independent mediation in there.
21           If you look at the RUNGE programme, as part of the
22       Commissioner's leadership programme, targeted amongst
23       other things at precisely that problem.  If you look at
24       the range of management training that we give to
25       inspectors and above, again, targeted on that programme.
 
    33
 1       If you look at what we are trying to do to recruit
 2       ethnic minority officers and staff, and to help them to
 3       advance through the ranks quicker, again, directed at
 4       that problem.  If you look at what we are doing in terms
 5       of female officers, and enabling them better to get into
 6       the detective departments, again, aimed at precisely
 7       that problem.
 8           So there is no silver bullet, if you like.  If it
 9       was easy, we would have solved it.  But there are
10       a whole range of things that have been devised and
11       introduced in response to the identification of the
12       problem by Herman Ouseley.  No, we have not solved the
13       problem yet; no, we are not going to solve the problem
14       entirely probably within my service, but I think it will
15       be very difficult to look anywhere else, either in the
16       public or private sector, and find an organisation that
17       have solved it there either.
18   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Another comment that the
19       Police Authority made, and again it is a very colourful
20       comment, suggested that the Metropolitan Police is
21       policy-rich and implementation-poor.  You might like to
22       comment on that.
23   MR ROBERTS:  There are a number of issues there.  The first
24       is that it is easy to point to the several thousand
25       so-called policies of the Metropolitan Police that we
 
    34
 1       are rapidly decommissioning, many of which were moribund
 2       anyway.  I think the second element is: how do you get
 3       policy and strategy from the top of the organisation
 4       down to the frontline; a very, very difficult issue in
 5       any organisation.
 6           I think there what you can probably point to most
 7       dramatically is what the Commissioner does personally in
 8       terms of his mission, vision and values events, where he
 9       will spend several hours laying out to staff of all
10       ranks, police staff and police officers of all ranks,
11       that this is where he wants the organisation going, this
12       is what is important to him, these are the appropriate
13       values of the service.
14           Perhaps more importantly, at the end of the session,
15       which can go on for quite some considerable time,
16       anybody in the audience is able to ask directly the head
17       of the organisation what he feels about this or that
18       issue, this or that policy.  I mean, I have been at
19       several of those events and they are serious, straight
20       talking events.
21           The questioners do not pull their punches, and
22       neither does the Commissioner, and it is a real firm,
23       frank exchange of views.  When people come away from
24       them, they know what is required of them, they know
25       where the Commissioner stands, and I have been there on
 
    35
 1       a number of occasions where issues of race will come up,
 2       and he does not mince his words, quite rightly.  There
 3       is no place in the Met for racists.
 4   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  I have absolutely no question about the
 5       Commissioner's resolve to deal with these issues, but
 6       the implementation-poor bit could well mean that people
 7       receive the message from the Commissioner but go away
 8       and do nothing about it, and there are no follow-up
 9       procedures to ensure that those issues are policed; that
10       the policies the Commissioner wants put in place are
11       actually activated.
12           I have to put something to you, and that is that any
13       organisation reeling from a report like the Virdi
14       report, I would have thought would have prioritised the
15       recommendations of the report so that trying to regain
16       the trust and confidence of staff is seen as being very
17       important to the organisation.
18   MR ROBERTS:  I think it has prioritised it, and the evidence
19       it has actually worked is the fact that we have rapidly
20       declining levels of public complaint and declining
21       levels of ETs, both in terms of numbers and in terms of
22       the award of damages against us when we have lost those
23       ETs.
24           If you look at the actual data at the end of it,
25       that tells you that something must be going right.
 
    36
 1       Fewer internal investigations, fewer ETs, more
 2       successful ETs, fewer public complaints, at a time when
 3       public confidence in the police is actually rising
 4       rather than falling; that paints a picture that
 5       something is going right.
 6   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  But can I just put this to you?  You
 7       may say that is the cynical view of someone who is
 8       getting old and who has been in the service too long,
 9       but complaint numbers also drop if the public becomes
10       cynical about the ability of the organisation to deal
11       with it, so they do not bother complaining.  If you have
12       not got supervisors out there challenging inappropriate
13       behaviour, and many of those who have been challenged,
14       I guess, are those that then take that to employment
15       tribunal, but if those challenges are not taking place
16       in the first place, then being cynical, could that be
17       one of the reasons why employment tribunal numbers are
18       dropping?
19   MR ROBERTS:  If we just take the public complaints bit
20       first, that is why I mentioned the fact that public
21       confidence in the police is rising, at a time when
22       public complaints are falling.  Now causation and
23       correlation do not necessarily come together, but that
24       does paint a picture of a public which has trust in the
25       organisation, and therefore if it trusts the
 
    37
 1       organisation to investigate itself when there is
 2       a problem, you would expect complaints to be rising, if
 3       there was a problem that was increasing, so in the
 4       public arena I am fairly confident that we have got the
 5       right answer.
 6           In terms of internal complaints, I think to a large
 7       extent the same thing applies.  I do not think people
 8       would desist from lodging an employment appeal case if
 9       they did not think the organisation was taking them
10       seriously.  That is the very route to deal with the
11       problem, if they think the organisation is not taking
12       them seriously, and as we mentioned earlier, the risk to
13       the individual in financial terms is very limited
14       indeed.
15           So the very fact that numbers are falling is a good
16       clue that we are getting something right.  It does not
17       mean we are getting everything right, and I would not
18       claim that it does.
19   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  No, okay, and I am grateful we are
20       going to have a chance to test that on the ground later
21       on, so that would be very helpful to us, and I am
22       grateful for your comments.
23           Can I take you on then, one step further on from
24       your honest and frank admission in your submission about
25       the impact of not challenging misbehaviour, and how that
 
    38
 1       then leads to protracted discipline processes?
 2           I want to just take you on to what I think might be
 3       the next logical conclusion which further compounds the
 4       lack of trust and confidence, in that if you do not
 5       challenge behaviour at that time, if you do not give
 6       people a chance to change their behaviour, and as
 7       a consequence continue on their career, and hopefully
 8       succeed in their careers, then you stand a real risk of
 9       damaging opportunity at a later stage, and if this is
10       going to impact disproportionately on black and minority
11       ethnic officers, then it is going to impact in a way
12       which will create some organisational discrimination in
13       that they are going to find themselves not eligible for
14       promotion and specialist department appointments.
15   MR ROBERTS:  You are absolutely right.  That is why it is so
16       important that we do not let our staff down by not
17       dealing with them properly and robustly when they need
18       to be dealt with robustly.
19           As a young PC and DC, when I got something wrong,
20       I expected to get pulled in by my Detective Inspector
21       and told in no uncertain terms that I had got something
22       wrong, and I am the better for it.  I would expect
23       a detective inspector now to do exactly the same thing,
24       irrespective of the gender, colour or sexual orientation
25       of one of his officers.
 
    39
 1   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  So it comes down to this, does it not:
 2       no one is questioning the Commissioner's commitment to
 3       improvement and change.  Nobody is suggesting that the
 4       finger can be pointed at any particular rank or any
 5       particular part of the management structure within the
 6       organisation.  But somewhere in that organisational
 7       hierarchy there are weaknesses possibly created by lack
 8       of training, lack of awareness, where people just are
 9       not doing their supervision job as they should be.
10   MR ROBERTS:  I think they are not doing it as well as they
11       should be.  I think it is a bit too easy to retreat into
12       the almost traditional inspectorate answer of, "You need
13       more training on this".  I am not convinced it is
14       training, I think it is about confidence, about a
15       culture that is changing but is not changing as fast as
16       any of us would like.
17   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Right.  Go on, please.
18   MR ROBERTS:  I think we get into that by actually providing
19       some of the counter-balancing elements.  Ethnic minority
20       officers now are able to have mentors that will help
21       them through some of the minefield.  I personally mentor
22       one officer who has recently been promoted.  I do not
23       give him an advantage in terms of competing in the
24       promotion stakes, but he has access to me to reflect on
25       what he ought to be doing, to reflect on his career
 
    40
 1       choices, to come and tell me, "I did something wrong
 2       there, I do not know what I should have done, what do
 3       you think I should have done?", that sort of approach.
 4           So there are counter-balancing things that we can
 5       put in to compensate for the defects in this stage of
 6       our evolution, and that is the way I would want to put
 7       it.  I think it is about an oversensitivity to race and
 8       gender issues, rather than a lack of awareness.
 9   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Yes.  Created by what, do you think?
10   MR ROBERTS:  Created by the fact that we as an organisation
11       have recognised that we have to take it very seriously.
12       The impact of the MacPherson Inquiry was huge, and
13       I think even for those who did not realise it before, it
14       made it just so clear that if we do not tackle race
15       problems in particular, we cannot carry on delivering
16       effective operational policing.
17           Policing by consent falls by the board if you do not
18       have a service that is able to deal fairly internally
19       with its staff, and thereby fairly externally with the
20       public.  It is not a matter of fairness, it is a matter
21       of delivering good policing, and because we have become
22       so acutely aware of that, I guess in some ways the
23       pendulum has swung slightly too far and we have become
24       oversensitive.
25   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Right.  Do you feel that the
 
    41
 1       representatives of minority groups that you have present
 2       in your staff, and there is some tremendous quality
 3       there, whether that be women, minority ethnic officers
 4       and staff, or from whatever minority group, that the
 5       organisation is listening, is really, really listening
 6       sufficiently to those people to prevent the sort of
 7       minefields that are from time to time facing you?
 8   MR ROBERTS:  I think we are, but I think we are listening
 9       and what they are saying competes with a lot of noise
10       from elsewhere as well, so we may not always hear it as
11       well as we should do, and I think there is an inevitable
12       element that just because somebody is saying something,
13       it is not necessarily true.
14   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  No, sure.
15   MR ROBERTS:  So listening but not necessarily hearing as
16       well as we would like to.
17   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Thank you.
18   MR HAGON:  Sir Anthony, can I just make a very brief point
19       here?  There is the possibility that the perception is
20       given by the evidence given here that there is some
21       fundamental problem with leadership within our great
22       organisation.  It contains 44,000 people, and I have to
23       say that the vast majority of those have some superb
24       leadership skills, and day in, day out actually perform
25       to the highest possible levels of leadership and
 
    42
 1       integrity, and I think that is a point worth making,
 2       that were that not the case then we would not need just
 3       two ACPO ranks in DPS, we would need a whole legion of
 4       them to actually address all of the problems, and
 5       I think I would just like to make that point to the
 6       Panel.
 7   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  But I am sure you would appreciate that
 8       the disproportionate damage that is done to your great
 9       organisation every time something goes wrong actually
10       does take great chunks out of the confidence of the
11       organisation to do well, and that is why I think we are
12       sitting here.
13   MR ROBERTS:  Yes.
14   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  It really is important that we try to
15       come to terms with these issues, so that we can help
16       with some recommendations which are useful.
17           Can I just ask you: in relation to the PCA guidance
18       on investigating allegations of racially discriminatory
19       behaviour, has that been implemented fully?
20   MR ROBERTS:  Yes -- no, not quite fully.  We are bringing it
21       in, but some of the skills around restorative justice,
22       we have not got enough of them yet.  The pilot that we
23       set up in relation to criminal restorative justice
24       processes, we are using the people from there to help us
25       with those skills, but it is not a quickly acquired
 
    43
 1       skill, restorative justice facilitating.
 2   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  In fact, I think it is the first
 3       recommendation, if not the second, that officers dealing
 4       with these allegations must use the PEACE principles,
 5       that is the interview skills.  Sir Ronnie Flanagan
 6       mentioned in his HMI report, about to be published, that
 7       not all investigating officers have had PEACE training.
 8       Is that something that will be put right fairly quickly?
 9   MR ROBERTS:  Not quite all have; almost all have now.  It
10       has been a long programme of professionalising the DPS
11       investigative officers.
12   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Right, thank you for that.  In the MPA
13       submission as well, they talk about legal advice.  I do
14       not know whether you have read what they have said
15       there.
16   MR ROBERTS:  Yes, I have.
17   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  I will read it:
18           "There is a widely held view that decision-making is
19       driven by legal advice and that the legal advice tends
20       to be overly defensive and insensitive to wider issues
21       of community relations.  It is not clear to the
22       Authority that the client function of the MPS is robust
23       and mature enough to be able to challenge legal advice
24       and make a considered judgment about what is best for
25       the service."
 
    44
 1           What they are saying, quite simply, is that
 2       decision-making is legally driven; is that an accurate
 3       statement?
 4   MR ROBERTS:  No, it is not.  I think the point that is worth
 5       making is that if the lawyers get it wrong it is my
 6       fault, because I am the client, I ask for the advice,
 7       and if the advice they give us is the wrong advice, then
 8       that is my problem, not theirs, and I think it is
 9       very -- perhaps a good way to illustrate it is some
10       legal advice not in relation to an ET or a civil action.
11           In the immediate aftermath of the Secret Policeman
12       programme, there was a possibility and a concern driven
13       by our strategic intelligence assessment that we might
14       have a similar problem at Hendon.  Now we had identified
15       Hendon as a potential problem way in advance of the
16       Secret Policeman programme, I have to say, and we had
17       already put some measures in place to try and improve
18       the situation there.  But I was quite clear that in
19       order to find out whether we had a problem, and if so
20       how much, we needed to do some covert testing at Hendon.
21           Now the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act
22       requires that if we are going to use covert human
23       intelligence sources, covert tape recording, covert
24       video recording, you need to satisfy certain legal
25       conditions.
 
    45
 1           Some years ago, the Met developed what it called the
 2       executive authority procedure.  The executive authority
 3       procedure recognised the fact that RIPA would not allow
 4       us legally to use those sort of facilities in cases of
 5       sexism and bullying, and came up with -- I can only
 6       really describe it as a legalistic cloak for doing what
 7       we wanted to do anyway.
 8           When I came into post, I looked at that and whilst
 9       the objective was very attractive, I regarded using the
10       executive authority procedure as, in effect, noble cause
11       corruption; doing something that is illegal for the best
12       of purposes.  Nonsense, that is not what we are in the
13       game of doing.  We are the Directorate of Professional
14       Standards, we actually ought to comply with the law, not
15       break it.
16           But having decided that we needed to do something at
17       Hendon, we engaged with the lawyers, saying, "This is
18       what we want to achieve, now you tell us, and if need be
19       get counsel's advice, about how we can, yes, stretch the
20       limits, go to within the absolute limits of legality,
21       but stay legal, on what we want to do".
22           Over a period of about a week, we managed to get the
23       advice to build the intelligence case that allowed me
24       personally to authorise within RIPA what needed to be
25       done, so actually what we did was set the objective for
 
    46
 1       the lawyers and ask them to come back and tell us how to
 2       do what we needed to do.  Now that to me is a real model
 3       of how to use lawyers properly.
 4           I think the second thing that I need to say in
 5       relation to the lawyers is that I ask my investigators
 6       to find out facts and evidence.  I then need lawyers to
 7       tell me whether those facts and evidence amount to
 8       a defence of the case or not, because if we ought to be
 9       defending a case, we should not be settling a case.  So
10       they can give me an objective legal view on, "Is this
11       the right and lawful way to go forward?"
12           What it is wrong of me to ask them to do is to weigh
13       into the balance the reputational risks of proceeding
14       with something.  They are no more qualified to do that
15       than I am.  I rely on them for technical advice, not for
16       political, with a small P, advice.  That is my job, not
17       their job.
18   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  To summarise that, you are confident
19       that in the Metropolitan Police, managers manage and
20       lawyers advise?
21   MR ROBERTS:  That is the way it ought to be.  And I am
22       responsible for about 80 per cent of their work.
23   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  In your area, absolutely.  You have
24       mentioned Hendon there, and I was going to come on to
25       Hendon -- I do not know, you have sort of pre-empted my
 
    47
 1       first question -- by asking you, are you aware of
 2       concerns at Hendon?
 3   MR ROBERTS:  Yes.
 4   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Now we have been faced with evidence
 5       again from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary
 6       that shows that at Hendon there is wastage overall of
 7       recruits in excess of 11 per cent; minority ethnic
 8       recruits in excess of 13 per cent, which is wholly
 9       disproportionate with the rest of the country, as you
10       would be aware.
11   MR ROBERTS:  Yes.
12   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  I have had an opportunity to ask other
13       witnesses before as to whether there were any issues
14       that ought to be of concern to this Panel within our
15       terms of reference, but could I ask you the same
16       question?  You have very helpfully given a lead-in to
17       that, suggesting there are concerns there; perhaps if
18       you could elaborate on what you feel is happening at
19       Hendon that might impact on what we are trying to
20       achieve.
21   MR ROBERTS:  We highlighted, by looking back at the
22       intelligence that we collect routinely, a whole area of
23       concerns around employment tribunals, around people
24       arrested, around misbehaviour at Hendon, that together
25       painted a picture that did not look attractive.
 
    48
 1           What we also highlighted was the fact that the
 2       profile of when in their service people are attracting
 3       complaints seems to have changed over recent years.  It
 4       has actually moved towards the younger end.
 5           One of our concerns, which is related to Hendon but
 6       not directly, was that as we get more and more young
 7       officers coming into the service, the dominant culture
 8       in the service gets younger, and there is a concern that
 9       as that dominant culture becomes younger, the attitude
10       to things like illegal drugs and various forms of
11       behaviour in the service as a whole might change.
12           So if you combine what appears to be a slightly
13       different attitude amongst youngsters coming into the
14       service with what there appeared to be, which was to be
15       a much higher than average hot spot of unethical and
16       criminal behaviour at the training school, and
17       incidences of racism, that whole picture was very
18       unattractive.
19           Now obviously you cannot just say it is unattractive 
20       and do nothing about it, so we have put in a whole
21       series of pieces of work around that.  The wrongdoing
22       policy and the -- I beg your pardon, I might have misled
23       you here.  The right line and the wrongdoing policy were
24       both launched at Hendon, very specifically at Hendon, to
25       put that focus there.
 
    49
 1           It is such a simple issue.  The right line only had
 2       a Met extension on it, which is no good if you are a
 3       probationer at Hendon or you have a mobile phone, so we
 4       made things like that available to them.  My officers go
 5       down to the recruits at Hendon and talk to them about
 6       what the ethical expectations are of their behaviour --
 7       not just in Hendon, but for the remainder of their
 8       service.
 9           We are in the process of devising the ethical
10       expectation statement that goes out to probationers
11       before they start.  We have a much more intrusive
12       management system there than has been in the past,
13       looking at inappropriate pictures, articles that are
14       left up on notice boards and that sort of thing; (a) to
15       make sure they are removed if they do appear, but (b) to
16       make it absolutely clear that they should not appear in
17       the first place.  So it is about trying to change the
18       climate of what is going on there, to set the standard,
19       to enforce that standard, and to make sure that anything
20       that does go wrong is actually dealt with very promptly
21       and very robustly.
22   MR HAGON:  And we have taken the personnel security group,
23       that is vetting, into professional standards now, rather
24       than sitting as it was within human resources, so that
25       is our first line of defence, as it were.
 
    50
 1   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Right.  Because this is a public
 2       hearing, can you just explain what that unit does, in
 3       terms of vetting recruits?
 4   MR HAGON:  Yes, it actually takes all of the applications --
 5       and, of course, in recent times, that has been
 6       an extraordinary volume of work -- and then vets those
 7       candidates so that it makes the judgment, as it were, as
 8       to whether or not they are suitable candidates for the
 9       Metropolitan Police Service, and it is fair to say --
10       and it is not being critical about people that were
11       there, or the management of it, but they were perhaps
12       overwhelmed by the volume, and under enormous pressure
13       to put people through that process, and it may well be
14       that some of those people who have got through the
15       process in recent times, in a cold, clinical and 
16       objective look at that process, should not in fact have
17       got through.
18           That may be one of the reasons why, in recent times,
19       the rate of wastage throughout the 20 weeks has been as
20       high as you have alluded that it is.
21   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  You understand the importance of this
22       for us, because Hendon is the gateway to your culture.
23       From what you said, that seems to intimate that the
24       majority of the problems you have found have been around
25       the behaviour of students against students?
 
    51
 1   MR ROBERTS:  No, it is not.  It has been spread throughout
 2       both students and staff.
 3   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  I just missed your last --
 4   MR ROBERTS:  It is not exclusively related to the recruits.
 5       There have also been problems amongst the staff, so we
 6       need to address it on two fronts, not just one.
 7   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  And the robust approach that you are
 8       taking to the problems that you found there, if staff
 9       members are found to be involved, I can only assume that
10       as well as other sanctions, they are removed from that
11       recruit environment immediately?
12   MR ROBERTS:  Indeed they are.
13   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Obviously the Hendon issue we will
14       pursue in other ways as well, but thank you for your
15       frankness around that.
16           I think my colleagues and I feel it is important
17       that you get a chance to respond to this: you have
18       already intimated you have read Mr Hardwick's evidence
19       to us yesterday, and it is just really about the
20       functioning of your department, you might say not, it
21       might be more of a local issue, but he commented that
22       whilst on patrol, having a look at the Met, he came
23       across a young officer who had been the subject of
24       a discipline investigation.  Not surprisingly, this had
25       had a massive impact on him and his family.  It had been
 
    52
 1       going on for 14 months, I think, only to find that
 2       a decision had been made -- let me just get this right,
 3       because I do not want to mislead you on this.
 4   MR ROBERTS:  I think I know the passage you are referring
 5       to, I remember it very well.
 6   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Yes.  He described a situation where a
 7       complaint had been made against him -- this is the young
 8       officer.  He said that the complaint was the worst thing
 9       that had happened in his career, it had affected his
10       family and personal life, it had gone on for 14 months;
11       at the end of that 14 months, he discovered that the
12       complaint had actually been withdrawn five months
13       earlier, but no one had seen fit to tell him about it.
14   MR ROBERTS:  There is no excuse for that.
15   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Can you help us, where in the
16       organisation is that sort of error likely to have
17       occurred?
18   MR ROBERTS:  The likelihood is it has occurred -- and it is
19       within my Directorate, I take responsibility for that.
20       It will have occurred in one of the local borough
21       support offices, where somebody has slipped up and not
22       informed that officer, and there can be no excuse for
23       it.
24   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  We are not here to crow over things
25       like that, we desperately want to help put it right.  Is
 
    53
 1       it about the admin processes faced with volume of work,
 2       is it that the admin processes are not very efficient,
 3       or is it about human error?
 4   MR ROBERTS:  It is almost certainly about the admin
 5       processes -- they have a huge volume of work to deal
 6       with, and inevitably sometimes there will be slips.
 7       Although it is worth making the point that where we have
 8       found members of our own staff who have fallen short of
 9       the standards that we expect, they do not stay with us.
10       We do not accept sloppy behaviour from our staff.
11   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Human error occurs wherever, but are
12       you satisfied, as the person in charge of all of your
13       business, that the admin processes -- and Miss Weekes
14       referred to suspension earlier.  Obviously, with the
15       number of staff you are dealing with, suspension reviews
16       and tracking officers who are subject to suspension, and
17       doing all that needs to be done to keep them advised of
18       progress in a case, et cetera, that all requires some
19       fundamental system behind to flag and bring forward at
20       certain stages.
21           Are you happy that the processes in place are as
22       efficient as they can be?
23   MR ROBERTS:  Particularly in relation to suspension, yes,
24       I am, because there are a relatively small number;
25       I have a member of staff full-time devoted to that
 
    54
 1       process, the checking up -- and I review them personally
 2       every month.
 3   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  But at the various stages in an
 4       investigation -- here we have one, this is the end of
 5       it -- the officer needs to be told and notice is
 6       withdrawn, I guess.
 7   MR ROBERTS:  It should have been, yes.
 8   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  You have given your explanation, but in
 9       terms of the processes supporting this sort of minor
10       complaint, you are as happy as you can be that if people
11       do their job properly within your Directorate,
12       everything will be covered?
13   MR ROBERTS:  If everybody does their job perfectly, nothing
14       will go wrong.  The reality is that I employ people who
15       sometimes make mistakes, and they have a very high
16       volume of work.
17   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  It is the processes I am --
18   MR ROBERTS:  The processes, I think, are sound.
19   MR HAGON:  I have to say they will improve, and I have
20       already mentioned this, when the Centurion system comes,
21       because that in fact regularises the conduct of
22       communicating with people, both complainant and
23       officers, both regularly and clearly at the conclusion,
24       and does so electronically, it has the provision of
25       doing that on our IT infrastructure, so that will make
 
    55
 1       things much better.
 2   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  And that is due to be implemented when?
 3   MR HAGON:  Well, I lead the team that is doing it.  We
 4       should have that up and running by June.
 5   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  June of this year?
 6   MR HAGON:  Yes.
 7   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Thank you.  It might be helpful, and
 8       I am not looking for screeds of technical data, because
 9       that would lose me completely, but half a sheet that
10       tells me what that system will do, for the information
11       of the Panel, would be very helpful please.
12   MR HAGON:  We will drop you a note about that.
13   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  Thank you.
14           Finally from me, can I just pick up one point that
15       the Chairman addressed with you this morning, and that
16       is employment tribunals being within your Directorate,
17       and your very, I think, helpful answer that it is not
18       about where these things are, it is the linkages between
19       directorates, and people talking to each other.
20           There is just one other aspect I would like to pick
21       up on that, and that is around the message it gives to
22       staff that tribunals are actually dealt with within your
23       Directorate, that that might lead to a view that that
24       sort of brings a confrontational hard edge approach,
25       because it is vis-a-vis discipline, misconduct,
 
    56
 1       employment tribunals rather than a real commitment --
 2       and I am not questioning the commitment -- but rather
 3       than a real commitment to resolve.
 4           In other words, it is not the hard end -- it
 5       suddenly falls in with corruption and all this terrible
 6       stuff you are dealing with, which really desperately
 7       needs to be handled, and handled very, very well, but it
 8       is staff perception, "My goodness, this is going to be
 9       a confrontational process", because there it is, and
10       that is where it lies.
11   MR ROBERTS:  I have to say I had not ever considered it from
12       that point of view.  I am not greatly wedded to the
13       employment tribunal unit sitting in my Directorate or
14       within HR.  I think what matters is what it does.
15   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  I agree.
16   MR ROBERTS:  It really does not matter where it sits.  It
17       matters how it functions.
18   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  But it might matter to the people --
19   MR ROBERTS:  It might matter to the people on the
20       complaining end, yes, it might.  I think that is
21       a powerful point.
22   MR HAGON:  I think though, sir, when it comes to what is the
23       reality behind that perception, the people that are
24       engaged in employment tribunals do find, you know,
25       helpful and expert staff when they do have cause to have
 
    57
 1       dealings with Esme Crowther and her people.
 2   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  I am not in a position to make
 3       a judgment about the quality of the staff, it is really
 4       purely around the perception of staff seeing where it is
 5       located.  You know, this is not about resolution, this
 6       is getting serious now.
 7   MR ROBERTS:  Yes, okay.
 8   SIR ANTHONY BURDEN:  That is it.  Thank you very much
 9       indeed.
10   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Right, well, thank you very much
11       indeed, Mr Roberts.  I need to seek your help in
12       clarifying one or two points that you have touched on
13       during the course of the afternoon, but before I explore
14       those with you, I am intending to just take about a five
15       or ten minute break for the benefit of the people
16       working so hard.
17   (3.37 pm) 
18                         (A short break)
19   (3.48 pm)
20             Further questions by SIR WILLIAM MORRIS
21   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Mr Roberts, as I said before we took
22       our short rest, I have one or two points of
23       clarification, and they are, in fact, points of
24       clarification, as I said.
25           First of all, in response to Sir Anthony's request
 
    58
 1       about change introduced, you mentioned the Fairness at
 2       Work policy as one of, if you like, the new initiatives
 3       taken, and innovative policy change.
 4           Can you help me here: is Fairness at Work
 5       an exclusive Met policy or is it universal throughout
 6       the police service?
 7   MR ROBERTS:  I do not believe it is universal throughout the
 8       police service, although I know there are a number of
 9       other police forces that use it.  It was mentioned
10       actually in the best practice that Miss Weekes put up on
11       the screen.  I cannot remember which force it was
12       though.
13   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  So it is true to say that this policy
14       was probably conceived out of the debate and discussion
15       that ACPO has in their forum?
16   MR ROBERTS:  I am afraid I cannot help you.  Mr Hogan-Howe
17       will be able to.
18   MR HAGON:  We actually created it in-house, Chairman, and we
19       used an outside consultant that linked in with Home
20       Office work on this issue that was going on nationally,
21       and created the Fairness at Work; it was tailored for
22       the Metropolitan Police Service.
23   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Fine.  The other point which I just
24       need some clarification on, perhaps I had not quite
25       heard: we know we have some new regulations coming in in
 
    59
 1       April which will enable process of discipline to be
 2       speeded up.  Did I understand you to say that vested in
 3       the Commissioner's office the powers to dismiss now
 4       exist, and the only constraint is one of time, because
 5       he is a very busy person, and in fact to place
 6       additional burden on his diary would not be perhaps the
 7       best use of his time, because he might have to allocate
 8       half a day, I think it was; am I right?  Can you clarify
 9       that for me?
10   MR ROBERTS:  There are two points there.  One is the
11       constraints of the fast track procedure; time is the
12       major constraint, but it is not the only constraint.
13       There are a series of conditions that have to be met
14       before that procedure can be used.
15   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Yes, but assuming that those conditions
16       are met, you still come up with the time problem?
17   MR ROBERTS:  Time is the principal constraint, and in the
18       past it has been regarded as a wholly exceptional
19       procedure, but I think that is wrong.  You did just say
20       that the introduction of the IPCC should speed up --
21   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  I am making that assumption, that it
22       might speed it up, in April.
23   MR ROBERTS:  I hope you are right; I will put it no higher
24       than that.
25   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  I have drawn that conclusion from your
 
    60
 1       own response, so if I am wrong on that, we are both
 2       wrong.
 3           Is there an area of activity that the Commissioner
 4       might perform on the basis of his authority that is not
 5       being done as a result of a time constraint?
 6   MR ROBERTS:  Not that I can think of, sir, but I am afraid
 7       you would need to ask him.
 8   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  The other point I would just like to be
 9       clear about is that you have talked about the history,
10       culture and tradition of the Met, and we all sign up to
11       that, and you have talked about the leadership and the
12       quality within the organisation; what was not certainly
13       clear to myself, and there is perhaps a debate to be had
14       around it, is could you explain for me whether we are
15       talking about operational leadership, or whether we are
16       talking about managerial leadership, strategic
17       managerial leadership or strategic operational
18       leadership, because some would argue that there is a
19       qualitative difference, and a debate can be had around
20       those two.  So I just want to be clear: when you talk
21       about the qualitative leadership within the Met, which
22       we are not disputing, we just want to have
23       an understanding whether it is the operational
24       leadership you are talking about or the managerial
25       leadership.
 
    61
 1   MR ROBERTS:  I think it is both actually, sir.  I do not
 2       think you can have effective operational leadership that
 3       delivers the results that the Met has been delivering
 4       over recent years without that being combined with very
 5       fine managerial leadership.  They are two sides of the
 6       same coin, in effect.  You do not get success without
 7       both.  We are getting success, so that is fairly good
 8       evidence to me that we have got both.
 9   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Is that your sincerely held belief?
10   MR ROBERTS:  It is.
11   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Are you suggesting that every police
12       officer is a good manager and every manager is a good
13       police officer?
14   MR ROBERTS:  Of course not.  No system is perfect and not
15       every one of the 44,000 people in the
16       Metropolitan Police is perfect.  It is not as good as we
17       would like it to be.  But if you look at the results
18       that the organisation is delivering, it cannot be that
19       bad.  I think what we are looking at are relatively
20       isolated cases where things have not gone as we would
21       wish them to, rather than a general malaise of poor
22       leadership and poor management.
23   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Well, can I invite you to look at the
24       HMIC's report, in terms of what they have said about
25       some managerial competencies around issues of -- well,
 
    62
 1       let us take the internal audit report.  The internal
 2       auditor could not be certain of more than a 50 per cent
 3       accuracy, for example.
 4           The audit of IT, for example, nobody knows
 5       exactly -- the whole concept of IT was purchased to give
 6       local delegation and local operational development.  The
 7       only problem was, nobody knows how many, where they are,
 8       the issue of compliance, legal compliance, and
 9       contractual compliance.
10           Those were just two examples; there are many other
11       examples where the only conclusion that can be drawn,
12       not by me, or any of my colleagues, but what the HMIC
13       inspector has found is fundamental weak managerial
14       leadership.
15   MR ROBERTS:  I think the real test of whether you have got
16       adequate leadership -- not perfect leadership,
17       I certainly would not claim that -- is looking at the
18       results you get out of an organisation, and the results
19       that our organisation has been delivering to the public
20       of London is a safer city with less crime, dramatically 
21       reduced street crime.  We have protected the capital
22       against terrorism.  We have dramatically reduced
23       burglary, it is at its lowest level for many years, and
24       that is actually what the public care about.  It is
25       regrettable that we do not know how many computers we
 
    63
 1       might have in one place or another, and we need to
 2       tighten up on that sort of thing, but actually what
 3       Londoners pay for is a safer London and that is what we 
 4       have to carry on delivering.
 5   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  What you have just described to me is
 6       an absolute first-rate operational strategic leadership,
 7       and nobody questions anything you say.  But that raises
 8       a question in my mind, at what cost?
 9   MR ROBERTS:  I think that is a perfectly reasonable
10       question, but --
11   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Because you are saying to me, London is
12       happy.
13   MR ROBERTS:  No, I did not say London is happy, sir. 
14   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  They are getting what they are paying
15       for; well, I am telling you, I have more than a passing
16       interest in what is being paid in London.  The
17       propensity for London to contribute for the fine
18       policing it has is not an inexhaustible one.
19   MR ROBERTS:  No.
20   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  So my point is that if we are leading
21       and delivering excellence in operational delivery, we
22       have to ask at what cost.
23   MR ROBERTS:  And I think that is a reasonable question for
24       the Police Authority, it is a reasonable question to ask
25       them what they are doing to help us to manage our
 
    64
 1       resources better, and to get adequate resources, but
 2       I come back again: is the level of the managerial
 3       leadership adequate to deliver results?  Yes, it is.
 4       The cost, no, Londoners are not happy with how much they
 5       are paying.  I am a council taxpayer, and I am not happy
 6       with what I am paying.  There is always scope in an
 7       organisation of our size to get better, and I think both
 8       the Police Authority and HMIC can and in the future will
 9       point us the way to get better in all sorts of areas.
10   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  But it is not exclusively an issue for
11       the Police Authority.  The Police Authority have a role
12       and a function in the budget making, the
13       Police Authority have a role in seeking reports from the
14       Commissioner, but the Police Authority does not actually
15       manage the budget and spend the £2.5 billion.
16   MR ROBERTS:  No.
17   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  So, with the greatest respect, it is
18       a question for the Metropolitan Police Service,
19       a fundamental managerial question for the Metropolitan
20       Police Service, in terms of managing the allocated
21       resource, because if it is managed efficiently you might
22       even find that you can improve the quality of the
23       service that you give now, as good as it is.
24   MR ROBERTS:  I am sure that is right.  It is a question
25       I think you are perhaps better directing towards the
 
    65
 1       director of resources, who is in effect the
 2       Commissioner's business manager, who oversees all of the
 3       resources issues.  I am really not qualified to talk
 4       about the effectiveness and the efficiency of our
 5       spending on buildings, plant and equipment.
 6   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  I commend the HMIC's report to you.
 7       I do not have the references here, because I did not
 8       anticipate this particular issue coming up because I did
 9       explore some of them with the Commissioner, and I got to
10       the point of posing the question, which I will not pose
11       to you -- but I got to the point of asking whether
12       a different model might not be appropriate.  With the
13       two different strands of managerial competence in
14       leadership, one strategic operational executive is
15       delivered by one person, and the other strategic
16       managerial executive is delivered by another person.
17       But that is not a question to you.
18   MR HAGON:  I think it is important to realise, Chairman,
19       that year on year, each and every one of us that run
20       directorates and the like have been caused and charged
21       with actually making substantial savings, efficiency
22       savings, on a year on year basis, and this Directorate
23       has paid more than its contribution to that, because all
24       of the money that we have, we know we can reduce that
25       expenditure, we can actually give it to frontline
 
    66
 1       policing, and over the course of the last two to three
 2       years we have given back millions of pounds to, you
 3       know, Keith Luck and the corporate purse.
 4   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  That is interesting.  How do you know
 5       that it is more?  I mean, you might have had too much in
 6       the first place.
 7   MR HAGON:  Well, one can only use history as a sort of
 8       benchmark for that, and it is substantially reduced on
 9       a year on year basis, because of increasingly
10       sophisticated financial prudence.
11   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Let me just pick up another point,
12       because I want to contain my points to the points that
13       you raised earlier.  We have talked about Hendon, and
14       Sir Anthony told you what the percentage drop-out rate
15       was by ethnic profile.  We have heard evidence that
16       there is in fact a quantified unit cost per trainee, up
17       to the point of the probation starting.  Can I ask, and
18       it is another managerial question, but Hendon was
19       raised, whether you are able to tell me, or tell my
20       colleagues and myself, what is the unit cost for
21       a trainee at Hendon up to the point of going into the
22       probationary stage of the training?
23   MR ROBERTS:  I would not have that figure, sir, I am sorry.
24   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Because, you see, that is
25       a fundamentally important question, a managerial and
 
    67
 1       finance question.  That is management, because we are
 2       training the trainees, we have got them to a point, and
 3       we are losing, what, 13 per cent?
 4   MR ROBERTS:  I agree with you, sir, that it is
 5       a fundamentally important question, but not for me.
 6   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  I am only mentioning it in the context
 7       of Hendon and asking whether you are able to tell us,
 8       because we are talking about management and all that,
 9       and the best use of resources.  We are training these
10       trainees and losing about 13 per cent at a critical
11       stage; do you not think we really ought to know how much
12       it is costing us, the loss?
13   MR ROBERTS:  Indeed I do.
14   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Because we can then improve and
15       mitigate the loss.
16   MR ROBERTS:  If I may, though, I think there is a much more
17       important issue; if we are losing hard won recruits from
18       ethnic minorities because we are not treating them
19       properly, because they do not feel welcomed and valued
20       in the organisation, the damage in financial terms is
21       relatively minor compared to the damage that we are
22       doing to our own organisation by not keeping them, and
23       to the confidence of the public and particularly the
24       communities they go back to by not treating them
25       properly, and I think the financial loss pales into
 
    68
 1       insignificance when you compare it with that.
 2   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  They are in fact two separate
 3       questions, because the question would have been valid if
 4       they were all British and white and whatever, so it is
 5       not a race issue that I am putting to you.  I am putting
 6       to you an ordinary managerial economic issue about unit
 7       cost of a prime expenditure source in running the
 8       Metropolitan Police, that is training our trainees.
 9   MR HAGON:  If Assistant Commissioner Bernie Hogan-Howe could
10       not answer that question, sir, I would be most
11       surprised.
12   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  I will send him notice of it.  I would
13       be very surprised as well.
14           My final question: it was suggested to us that the
15       vetting of recruits has been sort of now embedded, so to
16       speak, in Hendon, and there is a rich seam of
17       expectation to be harvested in the future from that.
18       And your comment a minute ago is very pertinent in terms
19       of the collateral damage that it does to the force's
20       reputation if we are not treating our recruits properly,
21       our black recruits at Hendon properly, and they leave
22       and go back into their community.  Colossal damage, and
23       I agree with you.
24           But I am surprised, going back to an answer you gave
25       me this morning, because when I said to you, "Where is
 
    69
 1       the diversity dimension in your Directorate?", your
 2       response was very reassuring, because you said,
 3       "Diversity is everywhere"; that is what you said, the
 4       transcript will show.  Well, can you tell me where the
 5       diversity in terms of the policy operates at Hendon?
 6   MR ROBERTS:  Again, it threads through the -- the recruits
 7       themselves receive diversity training as part of their
 8       basic recruitment training.  The instructors, I believe,
 9       receive not just the basic diversity training but some
10       fairly advanced work as well.  And I believe there are
11       some special arrangements for ethnic minority recruits, 
12       but I cannot be absolutely sure on that, sir.
13   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  I think we need to be sure about these
14       things, because I started off this morning painting
15       a picture of your Directorate with ET, HR, Fairness at
16       Work, and, of course, diversity standing where it is,
17       and the other functions which are performed, like legal
18       and accidents, and I suggested to you that that was not
19       joined-up management, to get the best.
20           I then, as an expression of that, said, "Well, where
21       is diversity?"  I showed you a chart where diversity was
22       not mentioned.  You said it was everywhere, and
23       I automatically felt, well, let us test that.  The fact
24       of the matter is that diversity, as we understood it
25       from Mr Allen, when he gave evidence to us, does not
 
    70
 1       operate at Hendon.  That is what he said.  I asked the
 2       specific question, and diversity is not at Hendon,
 3       because it comes under HR.
 4           What I tried to suggest to you this morning is that
 5       there is no golden thread running through the different
 6       structures and the different directorates and the
 7       different areas of responsibility and accountability on
 8       the people issues; we have seen no clear evidence to say
 9       that the golden thread is running through the different
10       directorates and areas of responsibility on the people
11       issues, because if it was, then we would not have got
12       two different answers about diversity at Hendon.
13   MR ROBERTS:  Well, what I have told you is from what is
14       within my knowledge.  I know where it runs through what
15       I deal with.  I think you are better speaking to
16       Assistant Commissioner Hogan-Howe around how it relates
17       to Hendon.  The most obvious example is that the last
18       head of the Hendon training school was Shabir Hussain,
19       so right at the very top of the Hendon training school
20       you have a representative of an ethnic minority as
21       a real role model to the recruits, but that is what is
22       within my knowledge; you are actually probably better
23       addressing that particular area of questioning to HR.
24   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Yes, I will, but I did address you on
25       the issue this morning, and your response to me is
 
    71
 1       diversity is everywhere, and I am entitled to take that
 2       as a fact.  Well, diversity is not everywhere, and
 3       I would expect and we would expect that an issue which
 4       is a flagship policy, where the Commissioner takes
 5       a personal responsibility, every single person who
 6       manages, manages, and you do not get higher than your
 7       managerial portfolio.  Every single person who manages
 8       ought to be able to answer correctly and advise us and
 9       help us factually about where an issue like diversity
10       is.  But it is not a personal sort of comment in terms
11       of not being able; I suggest again that the structure
12       does not facilitate that sort of policy development, and
13       consequently, the heads of departments and directorates
14       are not able to pull this golden thread through in
15       respect of delivering the very good things and the very
16       good policies, and my colleague and I complemented your
17       colleague, Mr Allen, when he came before us about his
18       diversity strategy.  But if it does not run through all
19       the policies then we are selling ourselves a little bit
20       short.  We are doing the work, but we are not harvesting
21       the rewards, and that is what I want to be sure of,
22       because we have some comments that ultimately, in terms
23       of our recommendation, must be enlightened and factual
24       if we say anything.
25           That, I think, concludes the points of further
 
    72
 1       clarification that I wanted to put to you and your
 2       colleague.  I just wanted to remind you that when I made
 3       the opening introduction this morning, I said you would
 4       be offered an opportunity to make some concluding
 5       remarks, if you so wished; if you do, this is the time
 6       to make it.
 7   MR ROBERTS:  If I may, sir, I would just like to take the
 8       opportunity to put on record and pay tribute to the
 9       officers who work for me and who worked for my two
10       predecessors.  Not many people thank them for the work
11       they do.  It is difficult, it is often unpalatable.  It
12       is almost always deeply unpopular.  But they do it to
13       the best of their ability; I do not believe that they
14       operate in a racist manner.  I am quite sure that they
15       do not.
16           But what they have delivered for Londoners and for
17       the Met are reducing levels of complaint, increased
18       public confidence, and we believe a much stronger
19       defence against the sort of corruption that is always
20       beating at our doors.  That is not my achievement, that
21       is the achievement of my predecessors.  But I would like
22       that to be on record, if I may, sir, and thank you for
23       your time.
24   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Thank you very much indeed.  Before
25       concluding, can I finally say that as with all our
 
    73
 1       witnesses, it may be once that we have heard others'
 2       evidence, we will perhaps ask a few more questions of
 3       your good selves, either in writing or perhaps invite
 4       you back for another discussion.
 5           If we need to do so, then naturally, we will do so
 6       in a manner which encompasses the least inconvenience
 7       for your good selves, but for the time being, all that
 8       I want to say on behalf of my colleagues and myself is
 9       thanks to both of you for coming along, and for
10       responding to our questions, and indeed for the
11       contribution that you are making to our work.  Thank you
12       very much indeed.
13   MR ROBERTS:  Thank you for your time, sir.
14   SIR WILLIAM MORRIS:  Just for the benefit of the press and
15       the public, the Inquiry is now adjourned until
16       29th March.  Thank you very much.  If you can remain
17       seated while the witness leaves the room?
18   (4.15 pm)
19                (Hearing adjourned until 10.30 am
20                   on Monday, 29th March 2004)
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