Transcript of public session: Sir Ronnie Flanagan, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary

Wednesday, 18 February 2004
2.00 pm

Questions by Sir William Morris

Sir William Morris: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and Sir Ronnie, good afternoon to you.

A. Good afternoon.

Sir William Morris: Can I first of all thank you very much indeed for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry and to give evidence, and for letting us have your written submission which we found extremely helpful.

I do appreciate, Sir Ronnie, that for some of our witnesses, perhaps not your good self, but some of our witnesses may find the process and the nature of these exercises rather daunting, so I thought it would be helpful if I set out briefly how we propose to conduct the hearing.

First, let me introduce myself and the other members of the panel. I am Sir Bill Morris, recently retired General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, a position that I held for 12 years, and I have been asked to chair the Inquiry.

As you can see, there are two other members of the panel. On my right is Sir Anthony Burden, who recently retired as a chief constable of the South Wales Constabulary after a long and distinguished career on the police service. On my left is Anesta Weekes QC, who is an eminent barrister, who sits as recorder and part-time chair of employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry.

Sir Ronnie, as you know, we have been asked by the Metropolitan Police Authority to conduct an independent inquiry into professional standards and employment matters in the Metropolitan Police Service. Our focus is the MPS as an organisation and not the individuals who make up the organisation. The Inquiry we are conducting is inquisitorial and not adversarial in nature.

We are very keen to enquire into the issues raised by our terms of reference so we can make appropriate recommendations for good and further best practice, rather than concentrating on making criticisms of the MPS as an organisation or particular individuals in it.

To help us in our task, we are keen to hear from all our witnesses, not just what is wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service, but to hear what is right with it – and we think that there is a lot right with it as well – but, most importantly, your suggestion in putting things right.

A transcript is being taken so that we can have a proper record of the evidence given by witnesses, and this will be posted on our website at the end of the day.

At the end of these introductory comments I will lead on the questions to you, followed by my colleagues, first Miss Weekes, followed by Sir Anthony, and any supplementary questions that I might find necessary.

At the conclusion of our questions, I will offer you the opportunity for a brief closing comment, should you wish to take it.

Let me start by saying thank you for letting us treat your report to Her Majesty's Inspectorate of the Metropolitan Police for the year 2002/2003, effectively as a written submission. We will make the document available on the website at the end of the day.

To recap, in your report you covered a whole range of issues, but we have identified the following as of importance and of particular interest to this Inquiry: people management, including recruitment and indeed retention, professional standards, including an assessment of policy and strategy, people management and performance management. You have also touched around issues of governance and you have touched on issues of leadership, among others.

We would like to ask you some questions about the material in your report and to seek your views on a range of matters that are of interest to us. But before we raise these issues, however, for the benefit of the transcript, I wonder if you would mind formally introducing yourself to the Inquiry?

A. Chairman, thank you very much. My name is Ronnie Flanagan. I am one of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, and I have responsibility for the forces in London and the east of England, so I therefore I have inspection responsibility for the London Metropolitan Police Service.

I also have other portfolio responsibilities within the Inspectorate, including the service's approach to terrorism, and I cover certain non-Home Office forces as well. I took up that appointment on 1st April two years ago, having retired as chief constable in the Police Service of Northern Ireland the previous day, 31st March 2002, in which organisation I served for some 32 years.

That is my background.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much for putting that on the record, Sir Ronnie.

You will have seen a copy of our terms of reference, I am sure, and you will know that we have been asked to examine the ways in which the MPS handles professional standards and employment matters. We have read your recent report and we have also seen the previous HMIC's report.

Perhaps I ought to just ask why – I am asking you to summarise for us the progress you feel the service has made in the last two years in relation to the issues that we were asked to consider?

A. Chairman, I think the Metropolitan Police Service in their approach to professional standards have made tremendous strides over the past few years, indeed to the point where in many aspects their approach to this area of policing I would see them as exemplifying good practice. Indeed, I have used some of the approaches adopted by the Metropolitan Police Service as examples to other police services, other police forces, as to how they should conduct their business in this area of policing.

That is not to say for a second that things are perfect. There are many imperfections in the system, not least of which – and this is, I think, common across the service, not necessarily applying only to the Metropolitan Police Service – is a tendency on behalf of officers to always take the formalised approach.

For example, I think it is very important that the Police Service is constantly alive to the opportunities to properly informally resolve complaints when they arise, and far too often I see in forces a tendency just to refer everything to professional standards so that things are formally investigated, without always taking the opportunity to informally resolve complaints when they arise.

I think currently – and, of course, these are things that we in the Inspectorate keep under ongoing scrutiny – I think currently the percentage of complaints arising which are informally resolved is something of the order of 31/32 per cent. I would certainly like to see the target in that area pushed up to at least something of the order of 35 per cent, and then perhaps progressively increased, even slightly, above that figure to something of the order of 40 per cent.

Sir William Morris: That is extremely interesting. Could I just sort of follow that up by your comments about almost a sort of immediate reference to the Directorate for Professional Standards and ask, in your inspection, did you detect a template to guide, or some sort of criteria which determine what is referred prior to the opportunity for an informal resolution of the complaints issue? Is there is such a template?

A. We certainly detected work in progress in terms of the Professional Standards Department getting round various boroughs, providing training to those engaged in policing in the boroughs, and trying to encourage the approach that I have described.

I would describe it as work in progress. I would not describe it, in any sense, as the complete model in that sense.

Sir William Morris: From your experience as HMI Inspector for a number of constabularies, how do other forces or services deal with this issue? Do they have almost automatic reference to the Directorate of Professional Standards or do they have procedures and criteria to try and resolve it first?

A. They do have procedures and criteria, but quite often individual officers adopt the attitude, "Well, I want to make sure that I am protected; I want to make sure that any retrospective examination of this will not find me wanting". Therefore there is a tendency not to take any risks, and there is a tendency too often – not always, not everywhere – but a tendency too often to engage in the formal investigative process, when perhaps it can be quite properly and satisfactorily be resolved in other ways.

Of course, the wishes of the person making the complaint must be paramount. I am not suggesting anything to the contrary. But very often the organisation can benefit, the individual officer or officers complained of can benefit, and the complaint can benefit by a much more speedily resolved process.

Sir William Morris: So it is almost a sort of defensive mechanical where process takes primacy over outcomes.

A. Yes. I think I have to say, it has to be understood why that is the case, because we cannot go in the other direction and have sloppiness; we cannot go in the other direction and have things not properly recorded and not properly and rigorously investigated when it is totally appropriate that they should be so. So there is a balance to be struck.

Sir William Morris: Precisely why I used the word "defensive mechanism", precisely why I used the word, recognising the point you made earlier. That is very enlightening, and I thank you for that.

Perhaps, before we move on, if I could ask you just to share with us what, in your view, are the key issues that now need to be focused on for the future, in the light of your report and the observations that you have made?

A. In 2002, the Metropolitan Police Service relaunched their approach in this area under the banner, under the headline, if you like, "integrity is not negotiable", and I think that is an important value that must be adhered to. Integrity should not be negotiable. The Met, just a short time before that, were facing a particular problem or problems that the Commissioner was determined to address, that of corrupt officers in the organisation. When you ask me what is important, I think engaging in proactive practices is important, being prepared to tackle corruption with absolute rigour. It is not in the sort of category to which I referred earlier in the general sense of dealing with complaints. That is not something that can be informally resolved. In that sense, I think that is an area where the Metropolitan Police Service really engaged this problem and engaged it in ways that brought about practices that could be commended to others.

I think care needs to be taken when you embark on a process such as that to meet a particular problem that you are facing at that time, that it does not create a mindset that that is a process that always has to be followed to the nth degree. Again, it is tremendously important to keep reminding ourselves of the need for balance in these approaches and the need for proportionality in these approaches.

So I think, in relation to the Metropolitan Police Service, that ongoing scrutiny needs to be maintained to ensure that what was created as a practice and a policy and an appropriate procedure is constantly reviewed to ensure that in a current sense it remains an appropriate and proportionate response to what is being encountered.

Sir William Morris: Thank you.

We have read a lot of documents and some of the statements of the compardimes(?) in terms of us living with the paper for the last few weeks, so the term "integrity is not negotiable" is not new and we are comfortable with that. At least service without integrity has got nothing left. But leadership is not negotiable either. You have to continue to strive and to build. And we note that in your report there is a fair section which addresses the issue of leadership.

I just want to remind you by asking for paragraph 3.10 to be flagged up on the screen – it is on page 31 of your report, Sir Ronnie – and just to make one or two observations and seek your comments here.

One of the issues – and we heard about some of the efficiencies this morning – is resource, and the allocation we were invited to observe that, even from the Home Office subvention, settlement has not been totally concluded, and that seems to be a recurring problem, a year-on/year-off problem. But that is not new. And I said earlier, in response to that this morning, that the best way of persuading others to be responsive to a resource allocation is to be able to demonstrate that the existing resource is being competently and resourcefully deployed.

Your observation there makes good reading from a whole range of perspectives. Operationally, it makes good reading in terms of co-ordination, but it certainly, at first sight – and it has not been tested so I take it at its face value – seems to have a lot of merit in the context of a resource allocation. You have said, and I quote, that:

"... the Mayor of London and others, citing the potential benefits of a more integrated policing structure across the capital, and often making comparison with the New York experience."

Perhaps I ought to just record here that what you are saying, or have said, is that the Metropolitan Police Service is only one of other services, policing services, for the capital city. You have made reference to the British Transport Police, the Royal Parks Police, and of course the City of London Police and the Met. So we have a plethora of services.

But whilst the Mayor has been quite clear about integration and consolidation, we were looking for your punch, which has not quite landed, apart from drawing attention. So I wondered whether you wanted to sort of give us any further expose.

A. It has not landed because, quite frankly, there has not been empirical research. And this is now part of a wider debate in terms of the Government's recent paper, which opens the debate but does not quite specifically come to any conclusions. It just wants to have this discussed in terms of the potential of regionalisation in other parts of the country.

There has not been empirical research to prove that that approach would actually improve effectiveness and efficiency, and that is why the arrangements for policing governance in London are absolutely unique, with the Mayor's office, with the MPA, with the MPS and the other bodies to which you have referred.

I think what is absolutely crucial is that there is at least the closest collaboration between all of these entities, and we, during inspection, saw a high degree of that collaboration. So that is why the inspection report at that time does not come to a firm conclusion. We similarly would not be in a position, at this point in time, to come to a firm conclusion. Simply not enough time has passed and not enough scientific empirical research has been conducted to show that one approach would actually improve efficiency and effectiveness when compared with the current approach. So it is a constantly evolving situation, and it is just not appropriate at this time. Nobody would be in a position to give other than a personal view on what might happen if you engaged, for example, in amalgamations of these various bodies.

Sir William Morris: Given that the debate is not new and it has been trawled across governments, in-tray, out-tray, ashtray, I do not know, is it your view that the empirical research should now be done?

A. It certainly is, and I think that is the very intention of opening the debate in the recent Green Paper on that issue. I certainly detect, from an inspectorate point of view, across the country that willingness to engage in that debate, and I certainly also detect that here in London.

Sir William Morris: Thank you for that.

You mentioned governance earlier on, and it is your reference to that that I wish to turn next. You recognised, I think, that the stakeholding community for the Metropolitan Police Authority has got bigger and bigger and bigger; it is growing. I think the Commissioner has said he is probably the most accountable police officer anywhere in the world because the community has extended in terms of the added from the Home Office to the office of the Mayor, and the MPA, the JLA, and of course he has got the boroughs, and the other agencies that you have touched on. So governance, structures and accountability, is fairly significant.

From the report, Sir Ronnie, it is obvious that the job of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is perhaps the most challenging police job in the UK, and some would probably say in the world. We put it to him that he has to deliver strategic executive managerial leadership. He has got a budget, after all, of £2.5 billion. He has got approximately 44,000 to 46,000 officers and staff for which he is responsible. So managing the resource of the Met is a big job in its own right. But he is not in business just to manage resource, he is in business to police London in all its entirety. So he has to give strategic operational and executive leadership in policing London. So these are two big roles that he must carry.

Of course his part, his beat, so to speak, is changing. The profile has changed, as we know. It is a totally different profile of London citizens, as emerged today. And the issues which command law and order attention is a changing one as well. We have still got the old ones but we have got some new sophisticated ones, like international terrorism, for example. We see what is happening in terms of the airlines industry, sky marshalls. Never heard of them 12 months ago, but they are an issue that the Commissioner has to address today. So it is changing.

In the light of these two big responsibilities that the Commissioner's office carries, do you think the roles are in themselves competing roles?

A. I would not necessarily say they are competing roles, but certainly it is a position of immense responsibility, and you have only touched upon national and indeed international responsibilities that fall to the Metropolitan Police Service as well as policing London in itself. So it is an immense responsibility.

For example, when we looked at the structure of the organisation, one of the things we commented upon was that we understood and indeed commended the Commissioner for the bold move in removing what were known as areas; that was a tier, if you like, above the boroughs. The whole point of that was to devolve policing downward and ensure that each borough was capable of delivering a tailor-made policing service which suited the needs of the people in that borough.

One of the things we suggested in our report was that it was not a case of the area structure serving no purpose. So what there should be, if you like, was almost a gap analysis to ensure that with the removal of the area tier, the area structure, that analysis should make sure that any gaps that were left were properly filled in terms of structure. That has been carried out and is also ongoing in terms of the Metropolitan response to the inspection report.

So yes, it is an immense responsibility, but I do not see those two areas of responsibility, as you have described, as competing. I see it certainly as problematic, but I see the possibility of making them complementary if the structure supports the Commissioner and his team in allowing those functions to be discharged in a complementary way. It is certainly not an easy task, and I am not suggesting that for a second. I think the Commissioner has to be most highly commended for the remarkable success that it achieves in bringing about that.

Sir William Morris: My statement about competing was not a definitive statement, it was seeking your view as to whether you thought, in the light of your experience, and having carried out the inspection, both in terms of what needs to be done and the managerial requirements of the organisation, whether you felt that they were competing.

A. I think it is true to say, if you looked at the composition of, let us call it the top team – Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, four Assistant Commissioners, ten Deputy Assistant Commissioners, 22 Commanders – that is actually significantly trimmed down from the command structure which would have existed, let us say, ten years ago. And when consider the responsibilities that you have described, and when you consider the numbers of officers; I mean, in the past year the Metropolitan Police Service has recruited the equivalent of a provincial force in terms of numbers. A remarkable achievement, but an achievement that brings with it its own problems in terms of the strategic approach to growth that is necessary, and it is again something that I addressed in the inspection report.

So I think it is important that it is kept continuously under review, the question of resilience of command and whether it is appropriate. I know these are discussions that do go on between the Commissioner and members of the Metropolitan Police Authority: should we consider additional positions at various levels just to ensure that there is absolute resilience and absolute leadership? Because leadership is crucial, if I may say so, in achieving the necessary approach to areas of policing that you are examining within your terms of reference. It is critical.

Sir William Morris: Yes. Thank you for that, Sir Ronnie. Let us accept that those two roles are not competing. They are separate and distinct nevertheless. No competition, but different roles require different skills, different attributes, different concepts of leadership in overall terms, and have to deliver not mutually exclusive but different outcomes, naturally so. And it is not at the margins; it is quite significant in terms of the quantity, value, what we are talking about, whether it is people or budget.

Do you think that that model, with its two roles, irrespective of whether they compete or not, but these two roles, residing in the hands of a single person, needs now to be reviewed in the light of the complexities of the 21st century that we just explored at the margins a few minutes ago? Is it time now that we reviewed these two major, major, major roles? Is it fair to ask one person to carry this major, major burden?

A. I think provided the structure that supports that person is in place, and all the expertise in the various areas that you have described. You mentioned, quite properly, the very important issue of resourcing and the quite massive amount of public monies that have to be properly accounted for. One of the things, again, we noted in the inspection report is the question of devolution of budgets within the Metropolitan Police Service, and there are a number of pilot schemes, a number of pilot areas to pioneer this. But we had felt in various inspection reports that not sufficient progress was being made in that area.

Ironically, in our most recent report, we were also pointing out the need for great care, not to just devolve all these responsibilities without making sure the proper infrastructure was in place to ensure that those responsibilities were properly discharged. So that if you were going to give that degree of autonomy to the boroughs, then the proper experts had to be in place on those boroughs. The proper mechanisms and procedures and technological infrastructure had to be in place as well.

I do not necessarily think the approach is to split the responsibilities, although I certainly would not rule out that consideration. I think the approach should be to keep under continuous review the supporting structure that is in place, because there are advantages, I think, in terms of leadership, and we constantly, in the Inspectorate, for various areas of policing activity, use this phrase: it is important to have a champion for that area. It is important to have a champion in respect of celebrating diversity. It is important to have champions for various other areas of activity.

A debate goes on in the service sometimes, "But we are all champions", or, "Do we need one champion?" I mention that only to say that sometimes, in terms of leadership, it is very important to have that one figurehead, a person who can exemplify the values of the organisation, the mission of the organisation.

Certainly during our inspection, we found that in focus groups in the various boroughs that we visited and the various departments that we visited that the Commissioner's vision for policing London was very well understood. So he had clearly taken a lot of time and effort but had clearly been successful in articulating his vision, the corporate style of policing that he wanted for London, and it was impressively widespreadly understood and accepted in the organisation.

Not easy when – again, I come back to your very vivid description of the scale of the organisation and the scale of difficulty that we are describing here.

Sir William Morris: I am with you on all you say about the importance of structure. It is not a one-person's band; it could not possibly be that. The supporting structure is relevant whether or not it is maintained as it is or whether there is another model of supporting structure. Infrastructure, structure and resource allocation will not change. The argument is about not the competition, we have resolved that issue, but the best use of resource, and to have a more focused approach on one or either roles, seeking to do the two.

But in the context of today's world, and whether you look to the private sector, and indeed the public sector, there are models around which indicate that the need to have a very clear focus on the management of the institution, or indeed the service delivery of the institution, does require a streamlined approach.

In the private sector, for example, the role of the chairperson and chief executive are: one, does the sort of thing that you talk about articulate in the vision, making sure that the culture is understood, interfaced, whatever, with external others; and the other, if you like, look after the shop. Looking after the shop is important in that sense. So not for today, but, you know, nothing stands still. I mean, the Police Service that we are looking at is different, it has evolved. Nothing stands still.

Could you perhaps see an alternative model, Sir Ronnie, where the role is split between, say, the Commissioner, with the responsibility for leading and providing the strategic and operational policing direction, which would then free up time for a closer affinity with the different group of officers – "smell the sawdust", as I would put it from where I am coming from; you know, smelling the sawdust. Very, very important bringing it down to that level, because you will infuse a lot of confidence in the people when they see you with them, in that sense.

So we have that directional and operational "champion", using your words. But we would also have a champion whose title would be unimportant. I am not wedded to "chief executive" no more than I am wedded to "chief operating officer". I am just wedded to the principle of someone minding the shop.

You have given some very good reasons, which I will take you to in a minute, why minding the shop has got to have much greater attention. You have drawn our attention to a whole raft of issues which your inspection has brought to light, and I can only conclude that minding the shop, from whatever perspective you accommodate, needs greater attention.

I am asking whether you would subscribe to a point in time where an alternative model of looking at this inspirational operational leader, doing the champion thing at every level, and an equally inspirational minding the shop leader, and call him or her what you wish, whether chief executive or chief operating officer. But I just believe that from what we have seen so far, that the burden which these two roles carry may well be mitigating against each other, if not necessarily competing.

A. I mean, there are a number of approaches. Quite often we look at approaches in other countries, and it is quite proper, indeed crucial, that we do. But it is equally crucial we do not just lift something that works in the United States and seek to apply it without adapting it to our needs. For example, in some forces of the United States, the chief officer would have a chief of staff. I think you cannot – in the Metropolitan Police Service, a lot of responsibility falls to the assistant commissioner of territorial policing for looking after the shop, as you have described it, Chairman.

I think the thrust of devolving as much autonomy as can be evolved to the 32 boroughs is an approach to make sure that the shop is looked after appropriately in ways that the people that live in each of the boroughs have a very strong influence in ensuring that they get the policing that suits their needs. So yes, I certainly would not rule out examination of other approaches, but I tend to think the more effective approach is making sure that a sufficiently robust, sufficiently resilient programme and structure of support is in place, rather than it being a position of finding another one new post at the top.

I think we would need to be very careful, because everything is systematic, and you need to be careful that you do not alter one part of the system without fully assessing its impact on the system as a whole.

Sir William Morris: Let me give you some of your own evidence, but in passing let me just say that we have not reached a conclusion – there is no conclusion here – and we have not looked at any international experience which brings to us raise the question. We have just looked at the enormity of the task, and we recognise that you can be probably trained for one but not necessarily the other. To be trained for both is a pretty long order.

So devolution, as good as it is, in terms of resource allocation, is no guarantee whatsoever that you are going to get the managerial competency at strategic executive level that is required to manage a £2.5 billion project, if you are being distracted by the May Day march down Trafalgar Square and whether BA have sky pilots or not.

Let me give you some of your own evidence. Can I take you to your report, Sir Ronnie, and ask our technologist across the way here to take us to paragraph 2.3 on page 15.

You will identify those words, or you can see those words as your own, where you talk about:

"The MPS does not yet have a medium-term corporate strategy for the next three to five years that integrates financial and operational planning issues. This is a significant omission for an organisation of the size and complexity of the MPS ..."

I will take you to the others and then we can sort of see them in their entirety, rather than individually. The next one I want to take you to is paragraph 2.29 on page 21. There you say in the first sentence:

"Overall, Her Majesty's Inspector was struck by the sheer abundance of data produced by the MPS combined with the relative lack of incisive analytical products and a distinct lack of costing information."

I do not know what the capital budget is, but the capital budget must be pretty big. If we do not sort of have costing information then that must, by any standard of measurement, be deemed as a weakness. I will put it no higher than that at the moment. The other one which I think is perhaps worth a reference is paragraph 5.35 on page 56. This is the internal audit, observation of what the internal audit has said. It says:

"In summary, while I am satisfied that efforts continue to be made to correct identified weaknesses, I can only offer a 50 per cent reassurance on the adequacy of control and the effectiveness of the systems within the MPS."

If this was a private company, if the internal audit is only 50 per cent satisfied –

A. Are there other areas you are going to point me to, Chairman?

Sir William Morris: Yes, if you bear with me, there is one more. 6.12. This deals with this whole question of devolved management and devolved resources. It says:

"A number of budgets have been devolved to enhance local freedom within corporate parameters. The directorate has produced a catalogue of hardware and software applications which can be purchased by devolved budget-holders in order to provide this element of central control. However, Her Majesty's Inspector was concerned to find that the directorate does not hold records of the equipment which has been purchased in order to check compliance with both corporate policy and also legal requirements surrounding the use of licensing of computer software. He therefore suggests that as a matter of urgency an audit is conducted of all locally managed hardware and software to ensure compliance with these requirements."

I see that as more expression of weakness within the context of management's control. We do not know what we have got but we have devolved. But more importantly, the lack of being able to identify what we have got is not without its consequences, because one of the consequences is that we are no longer in compliance, as it says, in terms of the corporate policy:

"... all legal requirements surrounding the use of licensing of computer software ..."

So one asks: where is the risk management in that? There clearly is not a risk management process in being because a risk management process would have picked that out. So we do not even know the degree of risk to which the MPS was exposed as a result of weakness in the management structure.

In the light of your own evidence, I am asking you to reflect again as to whether or not you think that the burden overall is not too great for one person to carry in terms of managerial control and operational delivery. These are just anecdotes, contracts overall, and if I went through your report – well, it is your report so you know more about it than I do.

I will just make the point in terms of the importance of managing the organisation in order that it gives efficiency and the resource to deliver what the MPS is in business for, which is to sort of detect crime and keep London safe.

A. Yes. In some of those areas to which you have drawn attention, Chairman, are in different aspects of policing. The paragraph to which you referred which outlined the secondment of someone from the Audit Commission, that was in the whole area of territorial policing and performance management, and all the data that was gathered in relation to that but not sufficiently streamlined and not sufficiently operationalised, in our view.

In relation to those specific areas that I mentioned in that address, resource management, there are people – there are individuals at a very high level in the organisation already with that specific responsibility. Yes, they report to the Commissioner, but provided people with the right expertise are selected and appointed, and provided they have the right infrastructure of support, then the fact that an inspection throws up areas for improvement, that is the very purpose of an inspection.

I think what is important thereafter is the response of the organisation being inspected through those recommendations, and certainly the recommendations have been seized, have been grasped and are being worked upon. I think that is what is important.

The Met used to have the office of receiver, and I certainly do not think the argument is made for going back to that specific role. There are people with those sorts of specific responsibilities at a very high level in the organisation, and they are very professional people. No organisation is perfect. It is our job, if you like, to find out where the imperfections lie and to make recommendations so that those imperfections are addressed. I am still not convinced, Chairman, the process of rectifying that imperfection is going to be brought about by splitting the role in two, as you have described.

Sir William Morris: Yes. I take your point entirely, and I agree with you about what the process of inspection is about and the rectification of any sort of deficiency in the process is admirable. But some would argue that on certain critical areas about compliance and the risk and all that, it should never happen in the first place. The structure should be sufficiently robust to be protected.

A. That is what we would always hope for. But, I mean, if that was an ideal world there will be no need for inspection. The truth is, it is not an ideal world, and that is not in any sense to be complacent about shortcomings to be discovered, but it is the reality of life that there will be shortcomings.

Sir William Morris: I cannot wait to see your report in four years' time.

Just moving on, Sir Ronnie. I just want to take you to page 94 of your report, because you make a very compelling case for what I would call joined up management. You note here that the professional standard director has no oversight of the civil staff disciplinary matters, but that there is only one aspect of the management structure which is not quite joined up, and I think those words are presented in your report there, as the graph indicates.

What we have got is the whole question of handling people issues in different directorates under different sort of responsibility. In summary, we have got the handling of employment, tribunal cases in the professional standards directorate. I will need that explained to me over a quiet period some time in the future. Human resources where fairness at work is dealt with, that is separate. Then, of course, we have got diversity, which sits in glorious isolation organisationally. Do not get me wrong, I am not suggesting that diversity does not permeate and find its way into the system, but all the evidence and experience available to me is that a lot of these portfolios are interconnecting portfolios which support each other.

I said this morning that diversity was not a sort of commodity which is exportable. You cannot sort of bring it down there and leave it. It is not a mobile commodity in that sense. It permeates the organisation.

In the light of what you have observed and said, would you like to comment on that structure, on whether it is likely to lead to what I called the joined up management which you articulated in your report?

A. I think improvements can be made. One of the pieces of work currently engaged in by the Inspectorate, a national piece of work, is a thematic inspection on what we might call "civilianisation". I know that is not the proper term because we are all civilians, but that will be published probably in June of this year.

One of the areas it will look at is the whole question of how everyone involved in the Police Service is properly valued, whether they be police officers or members of police staff. One of the things that we will examine is what was being suggested there, the question of there being such disparate approaches in areas such as discipline for members who are police officers and colleagues who are members of police staff who are not sworn officers but describe them as that.

I think not only in relation to the Metropolitan Police Service, but I think in relation to the service generally, improvement can be brought about in that area. It is something that is very much being examined in the course of this Inspectorate thematic inspection. Again, I use the word "civilianisation", just for ease of understanding. It is not, certainly, the right term to use. I think much more can be done in this area, yes, in the Met, but in the service at large.

Sir William Morris: Thank you for the term "civilianisation" because it links into a point that has been canvassed to us, because it has been suggested to us that the current system of managing staff relationships and police officers – which I suspect was in the mind of the author of that statement – is antiquated and long-winded and should be scrapped, and that with some exceptions – and I emphasise that – the ordinary employment law applicable in employment relations should apply to police officers. My colleagues and myself would welcome your view on that suggestion.

A. I think there certainly should be harmonisation of approach, and so far as it can be achieved, there should be a similar approach taken to members of police staff and police officers.

That is not going to be easily achieved because the office of police constable means that police officers are servants of the Crown, and there are differences, and undoubtedly the Police Federation and the representative bodies would argue strongly that there are very good reasons why that should properly bring about different approaches.

I think, in the 21st century, the Police Service increasingly should be a service provided by men and women who comprise that body, whether they be police officers or whether they be members of police staff. Those are exactly the issues, again referred to earlier, being considered, which would result in recommendations for change in this forthcoming report, which is due for publication in June.

I think it would be wrong for them to pre-empt – because research has been carried out, fieldwork has been carried out, analysis is only now beginning of that work, and I think it would be wrong to pre-empt conclusions that will be arrived at. But certainly it is an area where I think much improvement is required and much improvement can be achieved.

Sir William Morris: So there is work in progress on this?

A. Yes, indeed.

Sir William Morris: Yes. Can you foresee a model where the culture and the status and all that is embedded in it, from the Crown servant concept – can you foresee a model where that is protected and ringfenced? Because it is very much culture – it is about public service and specially orientated to the Police Service.

Can you see that culture being protected while at the same time giving the rights, some would say, and some would say responsibility and opportunity, for police officers to have the employment law protection which has been canvassed? Can you see the two things enshrined and embedded without any loss?

A. I think that is achievable. Certainly it would be a gain rather than a loss. Steps have already been taken to improve and streamline the disciplinary process and very importantly speeded up. I think much more can be done, and I think it can be done in the context of preserving the office of constable, but at the same time, while ensuring that that comes with the proper legs that go with that, that it does not confer any undue rights or privileges vis-a-vis other colleagues in the service who simply do not happen to be sworn officers.

Sir William Morris: Yes. Just one last question, Sir Ronnie. We have been asked to also look at best practice, and we could not miss the opportunity with your wide experience within other forces to ask whether there are any other good examples of best practice in forces that deal with professional standard and employment matters that we at the Inquiry could benefit from, if you could draw those to our attention.

A. I hope you will understand the sensitivity with which I approach this. The Inspectorate are just coming to a conclusion of what we have described as a baseline assessment of all forces in England and Wales, and that looks at every aspect of activity in which forces engage, including their approach to professional standards. That has not as yet been moderated nationally. We have not fed it back to individual authorities and individual chief officer teams to give them an opportunity to comment upon it and give us an opportunity to take those comments into account.

All of that, again – and I do not mean to keep referring to work in progress – will lead, again, to a conclusion as to strengths exhibited by individual forces and areas of improvement that have been identified in respect of individual forces.

I am saying that to say I think, again, it would be wrong for me to publicly engage in conclusions that have yet to be moderated and that people have not yet had the opportunity to comment upon. But yes, there are areas of good practice. I would suggest, Chairman, rather than necessarily identifying individual forces until this process is complete, that that is possibly something that could be pursued. Certainly the Association of Chief Police Officers have this very much in mind, and do a lot of good work nationally in disseminating good practice where it is seen.

The Chief Constable of Sussex leads in terms of that core work in that regard, and I have no doubt that he or, for example, the Deputy Chief Constable of Suffolk, who also works closely in that area, could have useful material to provide you.

But certainly we in the Inspectorate are very quickly moving that position. We have it now in terms of the research we have conducted, but it has to be validated and moderated, and people have to have the opportunity to comment upon it before we can publish it.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed, Sir Ronnie. We have found your response and contribution extremely enlightening to our Inquiry, and we do recognise the sensitivity of the last point that you made and that will be respected in our deliberations.

That concludes my series of questions. I want, in a minute, to invite Miss Weekes to put some questions to you, but I thought it might be an appropriate point for the stenographer's benefit if we take just a five-minute break, and then we will resume in about five or six minutes and we can carry on from there.

I just want again, on behalf of my colleagues, to say thank you very much indeed for your help.

A. Thank you very much.

Sir William Morris: We will adjourn for about five minutes.

3.00 pm
(A short break)
3.10 pm

Sir William Morris: Welcome back. I will hand you straight over to Miss Weekes, who has some questions she would like to put to you.

Questions by Miss Weekes

Miss Weekes: Good afternoon. Can I go back to one or two of your introductory remarks given to the Chairman which has interested me very much, and they were the remarks that related to informal resolution of workplace conflict.

You identified that in your experience overall you were not particularly looking at the Metropolitan Police only, I think overall in your inspectorate life there is a tendency to take formal process instead of resolving things informally, and that you would quite like to see a target of say 35 per cent resolution informally.

Because our Inquiry is about people management, not just about people management but a central issue is about people management, and it is about resolution of disputes before they become difficult, before they ruin relationships, because an efficient police force is a happy one, we hope, and it is one where officers feel proud of their jobs, and that is obviously filtered into the display that the public see, can I ask you just a little bit about your experience personally in the North Ireland Constabulary, when you were chief there, and the Inspectorate?

I know that policies and what should happen after an Inspectorate report is very much for the Commissioner and his advisers, but I am drawing on your experience and expertise. What is it that makes for good informal resolution? Is it the personality of the person doing the resolution or is it something else that needs to be in place to get to grips with good informal resolution? Are you able to help me on this?

A. Well, first of all, I think what there has to be in place is a culture that is not a blame culture. I think there has to be in place a culture whereby honest mistakes made in good faith will be understood and will be tolerated to a degree, but whereby grossly negligent mistakes or wilful mistakes are areas where there is zero tolerance. I think there has to be that balance.

I think people, if they are in a working environment where they are actually encouraged to take some risks but sensible risks, if the whole ethos is the quality of service which they are delivering, I think if that is the culture in which people are working, and therefore they feel confident to say, "I have made an honest mistake, I want to apologise to the person in respect of whom I have made this mistake", whereby they do not feel, "If I admit this now my job is gone, my livelihood is gone" or "I will face the full rigour". It is very important, again – to go back to what we said earlier – to get the balance. This sort of approach does not apply in many cases. If I am talking about 35 per cent, there will be 65 per cent of cases where it is not appropriate.

I think, first of all, it is important that the organisation provides the right culture, and then enabling people, through that feeling of confidence, feel that they have the proper training and they know that this is an appropriate approach to take, and that they are willing to accept that responsibility in the initial stages.

I am not sure if this was the thrust of an earlier part of the question, but in terms of the status of an inspection report and what a force does, certainly my experience as chief constable is that even though constitutionally and legally I could ignore an HMI's recommendations, it is so compelling that you would have to have very, very strong grounds on which to ignore and on which to fail to implement an HMI's recommendations.

So it is a very compelling pressure that recommendations in a report are fully taken on board, because we then seek from the authority as well as the force what the authority's view is on an action plan that has been put together to implement the recommendations that have been made.

Miss Weekes: Can I just ask a follow-up question? Many line managers and many managers within the Metropolitan Police will say, "You know, we are rather sick of training, we have just done hours of it. We have got policies in place on diversity, we have policies in place in all issues of trying to get it right about people management, and we really have come to a stumbling block", which is perhaps partly why this Inquiry has been set up.

So there is a tremendous keenness upon the Metropolitan Police to get it right. There is a tremendous keenness not just because of this Inquiry, but there has been, for a number of years, in the documentation I have read that managers and ordinary policemen and women want improvement, they want a better work environment, and they have been trying.

Can you help me with where you have had experience of the personality, character traits, criteria, for a good line manager?

A. I have a personal experience of – let me give you an example that is not that hypothetical, I am hypothesising, but based on ...

Miss Weekes: Yes.

A. Where an officer successfully pursued a tribunal case and was compensated as a result, I personally experienced incidences whereby officers in such positions were then treated totally differently thereafter, in a way that was designed to avoid any suggestion of victimisation but was actually subconsciously bringing about a degree of victimisation. In other words, other officers, in engaging in dialogue or whatever with an officer in such circumstances, might always want another witness present to make sure that it could not be alleged that I said something inappropriate or did anything inappropriate. That is a mind-set I have personally encountered in the Police Service. I think we have to get away from that.

It used to be, I think, the case in the Police Service, certainly in my experience – and perhaps I should only talk from my experience – that we exhibited in the service a feeling we were all police officers and we are all the same. It does not matter whether we are black, white, male, female, big, small, Protestant, Catholic, we are all police officers and police officers are all the same. It is only perhaps within the last ten years that we realised actually we are all different, and thank God we are all different. What sort of world would it be if we were all the same?

Therefore the whole approach should be to celebrate individual dignity, to celebrate cultural diversity, to see it for the richness it brings, to create a working environment where women should feel no need to submerge their femininity in order to feel comfortable or be successful in the pursuit of a police career; where people of any ethnic origin, any colour, any religion, any political belief, should feel no need, in order just to be comfortable, to submerge those feelings to be part of the critical mass.

I think what is important is that the service has realised that we must move towards a position where people should be confident in their own background, tradition, race, whatever sexual orientation, that they do not need to hide it; nor do they need to flaunt it. I think if we can create that culture and realise and accept that we are all different and be so grateful for the fact that we are all different and truly celebrate, I think that is the journey we are on. I think we have a long way to go, but I think at least the service has recognised it is a journey that has to be made.

Miss Weekes: I think that is right. Can I move on, on the same topic really, to other issues that affect people management, bureaucracy. There is a short but rather important paragraph in your report about bureaucracy. For those who can see it, it is at page 139, at the bottom of the page. You say this, for those in the audience who want to follow:

"Her Majesty's Inspector was pleased to note the desire to improve operational efficiency through the reduction of bureaucracy. This is about a lot more than simply reducing unnecessary paperwork and requires a fundamental consideration of the need for change in policy and practice. In June 2000, the Commissioner formed a bureaucracy taskforce and at the same time the 'clearing the decks' initiative was introduced to review and rationalise 17 areas of operational practice, such as the police response to shoplifting offences or abandoned vehicles."

I move on to 3.38:

"Whilst the Commissioner has made it clear that the MPS will aggressively pursue the reduction of unnecessary bureaucracy, progress against the initial action plan appears to have stalled somewhat, perhaps understandably post September 11."

I will just stop there. What do you mean by "bureaucracy"? Most of us know what it means, but I think it is very important that the writer of the report, which is you, says what you mean by that word.

A. The bureaucratic burden that is placed on officers that distracts them from getting on with their day job, if you like. The report went on to point out what was just about to take place and then what has taken place, i.e. work commissioned by the Home Secretary to create a taskforce nationally on the reduction of bureaucracy. It has reported and made its recommendations, and there is now in place an implementation team that is headed by the Chief Constable of Staffordshire.

Progress is being made, but certainly as Inspectorate, when we engage in focus groups with men and women at the sharp end of service delivery, they still say there is much, much too great a burden of bureaucracy upon them. So that if they deal, for example, with a simple shoplifting case, the paperwork that has to be completed, the time that is spent in the station dealing with this, is such that we even find evidence sometimes of people not dealing with offences because of the obstruction that that brings about, and it virtually writes them off for the rest of that shift.

So tackling taskforce bureaucracy nationally has reported, and that is in hand nationally, but it will take some time to bear real fruit.

I think there is another issue in relation to that paragraph. It is something, for example, as we embarked on the inspection, that the Deputy Commissioner and I had a conversation about, in which he said, "Look, I do not want to be arrogant about this but I think we in the Met are pretty good at responding to a crisis and we fix a problem. What we are not good at is making sure the problem stays fixed. So whatever it is, sometimes we return to it in three years and the lessons seem to have been forgotten".

That is something we referred to in our feedback both to the authority and the Commissioner and his team. What is important always is post-implementation action plans and constant referral back to make sure that if lessons were learned, they continue to be learned and are not forgotten.

So that if this initiative was launched in the year 2000 and it has immediate impact – and you will see some of the figures I have quoted – because we, as an inspectorate, in respect of every force, have to describe what are known as efficiency plans.

They have to bring about a 2 per cent efficiency, and they can be in real cost savings or it can be in non-cashable savings. In effect they are required either to do more in the service delivery for the same amount of money or to do the same amount of service delivery for a less amount of expenditure.

Those sort of figures that I have quoted there came about as a result of us looking annually at individual forces' efficiency planning. But it is important that an initiative like that launched in the year 2000, bringing about instant results, just does not slip because other priorities come on stream, such as the September 11th incident, and therefore that is why we recommended to the Metropolitan Police Service always having in place post-implementation arrangements to monitor and check that continuous learning takes place.

Miss Weekes: Am I right in saying that if you have less bureaucracy, you will have more time for proper people management?

A. I think it is crucial. I think the greater the bureaucratic burden, the less time there is for proper engagement.

Miss Weekes: The Staffordshire Constabulary, you said –

A. Only because the chief constable has that national portfolio, and he heads that implementation team that is making sure the recommendations for the taskforce are carried out.

Miss Weekes: I am very grateful for that. It is obvious that we ought to look at that.

Following on from bureaucracy, perhaps equally relevant are the number of statutes, acts of Parliament, regulations, guidance and policy documents that the officers, again, have to deal with. So if your comments on bureaucracy are right, they are probably also equal to the number of statutory provisions and procedures that they have to follow?

A. Absolutely.

Miss Weekes: Would you agree that some officers have the view that when they have to deal with the public, there is obviously bureaucracy about how they must conduct themselves which are probably correct, but equally, for certainly processes, it is just as bad. So they are faced with these two burdens, are they not?

A. I think that is absolutely accurate.

Miss Weekes: But they have got to police at the same time.

A. Yes, indeed. And these can only be considered as abstractions from full effective policing.

Miss Weekes: Of course there must be a bottom line in order to protect integrity and in order to protect the quality of service given to the public. You mentioned policies at page 142, paragraph 4.11, and you say this:

"In line with the revised people strategy and the new corporate policy development process, around 500 HR policies are currently subject to review. This is obviously a huge task and high priority areas have been identified and will be addressed first. The role of the recently established evaluation unit will be crucial in assessing the effectiveness of HR policy and practice and the identification of good practice."

Most members of the public may think that 500 is quite a lot, is it not? Do you really need 500?

A. I think not, and that was the very purpose of this evaluation unit. It links in to post-implementation, to have a unit specifically designed to keep the policy under continuous review. That is why I highlighted it in the report, that 500 is quite phenomenal to me, so I guess it would be to the public as well.

Miss Weekes: So when officers complain, it is probably a legitimate complaint?

A. I think so, but there is that balance – and you referred to it – that there is a bottom line that there has to be maintained the proper integrity of the approach as well.

Miss Weekes: Appraisals, if I can move to that. You deal with it at paragraph 4.49. There is no doubt that you need a good system so that officers can appreciate where they are going wrong, where they can improve and what their promotional prospects may be. So the appraisal is undoubtedly crucial.

A point which is a good point in favour of the Metropolitan Police are the two, I think, encouraging aspects that you have flagged up:

"Her Majesty's Inspector welcomes what appears to be improved arrangements for monitoring the timely completion and quality of appraisal practice. Borough personnel managers will have responsibility for ensuring timely completion and local inspection arrangements should also include examination of this area. There will be an element of central monitoring from the HR directorate to ensure compliance and a consistent approach across the boroughs."

You have also added, I think, that there are room in two areas for improvement. I am going to refer to them under 4.46 and 4.48:

"The credibility of appraisal processes in the MPS is poor and effective implementation of the new performance development review will be crucial."

Just help us a little about that point.

A. Again, I would stress that this is not something peculiar to the Metropolitan Police Service. This is something that we find across the board.

The Met have been to the fore in the application of a new national competency framework, and application of that new competency framework, I think, has great potential. The whole question of appraisals, performance, development, review to be improved, I think, again, it is an example of work in progress.

But if you look, for example, at our finding that some of the units in CID at 88 per cent of appraisals outstanding, it is an implication that the system had lost credibility, individual members were not completing them and were not being pushed by their supervisors to complete them properly. There were not proper objectives agreed. There were not proper development plans included in them. All of this was recognised nationally. For once I think it is an area where we are seeing improvement and real improvement.

It is critical because if the organisation wants to achieve its overall objective, it can only do so in policing through the people who carry out policing, and therefore their individual objectives and then the team objectives and the overall organisational objectives have to be harmonised. It serves many purposes. It can be used to identify training needs, but it is crucial that the organisation does not simply pay lip service to them. It is crucial that it is taken seriously.

So what we found during our inspection was an improving situation, but it is one that we as inspectorate are keeping under very close continuous scrutiny.

Miss Weekes: The personal development reviews, if you can just briefly touch on that, that is new, is it not, to the Metropolitan Police Service? Have they always had them?

A. No. This is a whole area with the service. The service has been struggling and they have looked at organisations in other sectors. They have looked at other police forces, they have looked at the private sector, and certainly there has not been any ideal model found that can be just lifted and transplanted to the Police Service. This is, I think, a very much improved process. For the first time, for example, we in the Inspectorate have been engaged this year in this process with chief constables. Previously chief constables were not subject to this process; they now are. I think that is important that it applies on all levels of the organisation.

Miss Weekes: And this performance development review clearly is designed to ensure fair treatment of each officer across diversity.

A. That is a very important matter. For example, in agreeing objectives and personal development plans for chief constables, there is a requirement upon them to identify one objective that relates to diversity. That is how seriously it is taken.

Miss Weekes: Can I move on to training, and at your paragraph 4.28, if we could just go back slightly, I want to put in context that when you looked at training – it will come up in a moment – you looked at training in respect of the probationers and diversity training. But you looked at training purely to examine training as a part of the wider consideration of the impact of growth on the organisation. I think it was right to put it within its context.

A. It is very important to put that in context because it has to be said that other thematic inspections conducted by the Inspectorate, training matters and, after that, diversity matters, were such that there had been a very heavy inspection focused on the Met in those specific areas. So this particular inspection report that we are considering now has to be set in the context of those two other very specifically focused inspection reports, each of which included the Metropolitan Police Service.

Miss Weekes: I put it in its context because what you have appreciated is that there has been a significant influx of new recruits in the Met going to the borough commands, and that there has been, obviously, a balance, or a difficulty with balancing in training. You identify that, I think, extremely well in your paragraph 4.31. I think I would like to turn to it because it is something that I think we will need to look at. At 4.31, you say:

"It was evident on some boroughs that a lack of local trainers, limited availability of staff to train due to operational commitments and the sheer volume of centrally mandated training made delivery impossible."

That is a very sad indictment, is it not, because –

A. It has to be set in the context that the Metropolitan Police in this period recruited the equivalent of a provincial police force.

Miss Weekes: And you actually say that, do you not?

A. Absolutely, and it is one of, I think, the very important planks in this section. What was not in place in advance of that growth, bearing in mind the Metropolitan Police for quite a number of years have been an organisation that was shrinking in size, had become used to having to deal with that, so suddenly it is expanding very rapidly in size and it had massive impacts for the training centre at Hendon.

Not only that, once the recruits were through the initial training and came out to the boroughs, as referred to in that paragraph, for example where in an ideal world they would engage with tutor constables on a one-to-one basis, in some of the boroughs the ratio was more like one tutor to eight probational constables. So that had a massive impact, quite apart from the whole series of logistical impacts as well. We were arriving in boroughs to find they had no lockers, to find there were not enough radios for them.

Certainly, at that initial stage of growth, we, during the inspection, thought it was very important that that had to be grasped. There had to be a really rigorous strategic plan to cope with that growth because what was not being put in place simultaneously was all the supporting infrastructure. That has been taken on board since the inspection, but again it is an example of work in progress.

I had many discussions during the inspection with members of the authority who had realised this, who had realised that it is not just enough to increase the number of police officers; there must be that very strongly supporting infrastructure to cope with that growth. It has impacted, I would say, in all the areas that you are considering. If officers were coming through and then hitting the streets, if during the training – for example, in focus groups of trainees that we held, they were being dealt with in large class numbers and they were not getting the opportunity for individual role play that would be desirable. Then, when we came out onto the boroughs, there was not that one-to-one tutoring, there was not enough capacity for, let us call it, police street training, training on the job, so to speak. So those were all very important difficulties that we encountered at the time of that inspection.

Again, to put that in context, when there was such a desire, such a public desire, and such a continuing public desire, that the organisation should grow to a more appropriate size, it is hard to see how everything could have been necessarily place. It would have certainly significantly slowed up the expansion to have everything done perfectly in terms of putting that infrastructure in place first. But it was something that we highlighted and something, again, I can report to you, that the Metropolitan Police Service have taken on board.

Miss Weekes: Training in personnel issues and personal development is obviously crucially important for the environment or workplace environment. If it is not an appropriate question to put to you – if it is, I know you will tell me – what is the baseline training that is required for officers? What you identify in 4.32 is this – and I think I ought to read it:

"Quite clearly, the existing operational demands [that is officers need to be on the street policing], combined with a need to train large numbers of recruits and a heavy national and centrally mandated training programme, mean the organisation has little capacity for non-essential training. Some hard decisions need to be made at a corporate level to better manage these tensions."

You have fairly said that the Metropolitan Police Service have recognised that, and in a sense, by the time we have come to report, they may have dealt with it: more trainers, who knows?

A. It would be wrong to say they will have dealt with it. Again, I would have to describe it as work in progress.

Miss Weekes: Work in progress. Well I was perhaps being too optimistic. Thank you for warning me. We have to recognise that there are operational demands and that police officers need to do the job of policing, but at the same time, if we are to improve the work environment – and a lot of training does have to do with personnel issues and how they relate to each other, and of course the public – what is the balance, what is the bottom line?

A. Well, the bottom line is that – I go back to the culture of the organisation. If, as public servants, we are to treat the public with the respect that they deserve, if we are truly to celebrate individual dignity and cultural diversity, we will only ever be able to do that if we do it internally. So the bottom line has to be about the importance of management, the important role of supervisors where they see inappropriate behaviour or hear inappropriate language, that it is tackled there and then, that it is not ignored, that people realise that inappropriate language and behaviour will not be tolerated, that there are mechanisms whereby either if people witness it or people are victims of it, there are channels of reporting it that do not necessarily involve line management because sometimes line management can be the very people involved in it.

So I think the bottom line has to be about the culture of the organisation, where people coming into that organisation are properly recruited, and we have seen, sadly, too recently, evidence of where that has failed.

Once, when they are recruited, they do get the appropriate initial training, and when they come out into the organisation, that they see practices and policies and behaviours that they would be proud to accept, rather than the opposite.

Miss Weekes: I am not going to touch on recruitment perhaps at the Hendon stage because I know my colleague would like to deal with that.

Some persons would say you are being entirely optimistic to expect that people working in the police force are going to challenge their line managers on the spot about inappropriate behaviour because they are going to be worried, are they not, about what their colleagues will think of them; whether it might block promotion; whether raising a gender issue is going to make a woman seem not part of the gang; whether raising a race issue will ostracise that person. It is quite difficult, is it not, to see how practically that will work?

A. I clearly did not make myself clear. I was talking in two directions that there is a very important responsibility upon supervisors to make it absolutely clear that as soon as this arises, it will be dealt with there and then.

In terms of either witnesses of this behaviour or victims of this behaviour, the organisation has to have in place reporting mechanisms that allow them to bypass the line management for the very reasons that you identify.

Miss Weekes: I think it was worth repeating that. I am very grateful.

Just two other points and then I think I will be finished. Staff associations, just one small point. You have identified the 14 staff associations, and you have given the Met credit because it is a sign of health and diversity if you are taking on board a number of different aspects from different sorts of people, different approaches, different lives, different culture. One of the things you do say is this:

"Whilst in general the association has reported good relations and adequate consultation arrangements, there were concerns that sometimes this is not meaningful, with insufficient time to enable them to consult members."

I think you will say that is really a matter of organisation for the Met to take that on board?

A. Yes. I think sometimes – it perhaps is not surprising in a organisation of this scale and size of the Metropolitan Police Service that sometimes consultation arises almost as – if not an after-thought, something that has just occurred at the last moment, and there sometimes is not a true realisation that the representative bodies elect people to represent them. But having elected them, they expect them to come back to the people who elected them into those positions in the first place. So it does take time, and not always did we find that the organisation properly recognises that time.

I think great care needs to be taken that an organisation does not use its representatives of staff associations just to "consult them", in inverted commas, or in a token way. I think it has to be a question of real consultation, with due time to give those representatives the opportunity to go back to the buddy corporate, obtain views, and then report those views meaningfully.

Miss Weekes: I have one final point which I think will lead into matters that Sir Anthony would like to raise, and it is recruitment and retention.

Many people within the police force and outside it would like to see more women in higher positions. You commented upon the recruitment retention of ethnic minorities and women. It is paragraph 4.13. Perhaps we will just try and get that up for you so that you can remind yourself of what you have dealt with. I am particularly just interested in the two paragraphs – it is 4.15 in fact. You say this:

"The recruitment, retention and progression of female and ethnic minority officers is a priority for the organisation ... There was a 95 per cent rise in female recruitment ..."

That in fact is something to congratulate the Met about. Were you surprised that that was that high?

A. I am pleased that it was that high, and I have to confess that I was surprised but very pleased.

Miss Weekes:

"... a 95 per cent rise in female recruitment, 542 officers during 2001/02, against an overall rate of increase of 104 per cent. The target to achieve a level of 5 per cent of visible ethnic minority officers against overall strength was narrowly missed."

Again something to be congratulated about because you say "narrowly missed".

A. 4.84, as opposed to 5 per cent.

Miss Weekes: Yes, so it is a narrow miss.

"However, the overall trend was positive with a rise of 214 per cent of visible ethnic minority recruits during 2001/02 compared to the previous year."

Just finally this:

"The achievement of targets set to monitor the progression of ethnic minority officers and civil staff was poor."

There has been a downturn in civil staff, but I think we should put it in the context that there was a moratorium on recruitment for civil staff following September 11th, is that right, and you have flagged that up in your report?

A. That is right, and I think it is important to point out that context.

Miss Weekes: But it has been lifted?

A. It has been lifted.

Miss Weekes: And it will progress towards what it should be.

There is a present dilemma, is there not, about officers carrying out work that would usually be carried out by civil staff? I think you have also flagged that up in your report. That can produce a tension between civil staff and officers. I think you have identified that tactfully in your report. There is not any obvious reform as yet for that, until of course you improve the number of civil staff; am I right?

A. That is one aspect. But the other aspect is this thematic inspection to which I referred earlier, which will be published in June, and it is focusing very strongly on exactly those sorts of issues.

There is some good news in terms of the Met recruiting members of the wider police family, community support officers, et cetera, and there are better percentages being achieved there. One of the things I pointed out in this report was that any good practice there, any good lessons to be learned for the wider force, and any lessons to be learned in terms of police officers, should be learned and applied. But much higher percentages were being achieved in respect of, for example, community support officers, and indeed in members of police staff.

You will see expressions in that report such as "civilian colleagues" or "civil staff". What has now been agreed with the representative unions is that the expression should be "police officers" and "police staff". So in terms of those members of police staff, much more positive percentages were and are being achieved.

Miss Weekes: My final question. Police staff, police officers, have traditionally had a distinction with the move to, as it were, merge them a little more, perhaps with an employment law contract that is similar for both. Would that improve the work relationship between both, because sometimes there are conflicts and there are differences which perhaps should not be so?

A. This thematic inspection to which I referred – I should say, I am conducting this, I am leading in this inspection so I have detailed knowledge of it – but I did indicate earlier that I did not think it was right publicly because we are only beginning the analysis. But it is fair to say that a very strongly emerging thing – again, we are not talking particularly about the Met; we are talking about the service at large – is an ongoing strong feeling of us and them; an ongoing strong feeling that members of police staff do not feel properly valued; of tensions in areas where a member of police staff is supervising police officers, and other areas where members of police staff do not feel that they have the same opportunities for development, for career progression, as their colleagues who are police officers have.

You have highlighted very strongly for progression as well as – it is not just about recruitment. There is no point improving percentages in terms of recruitment if we are only deferring dissatisfaction through not ensuring that people have every opportunity to progress as well. There is a lot of American experience in that, where police forces and other public bodies have, on the face of it, statistically made great progress in recruiting only to find that opportunities were not provided to attend training courses, to be appointed to specialist branches, to achieve promotion, so it is very important.

I think there was a lot of work done, and a lot of it centred in the Met under the title of "Dismantling barriers", and we now have a specific action plan nationally entitled "Breaking through", which is an action plan for the service at large, including, of course, the Metropolitan Police Service, to address recruitment, retention and progression. I think it is very important that those three aspects are considered as all part of the whole.

Miss Weekes: When can we expect your report?

A. June.

Miss Weekes: Thank you very much for your help.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed, Sir Ronnie.

I will now pass to you Sir Anthony, a voice that I am sure you have heard many times in the past.

Questions by Sir Anthony Burden

Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you. Sir Ronnie, can I just ask you about Hendon and your comments about Hendon? You refer to very high wastage rates, and it is very commendable that the Metropolitan Police are recruiting so many officers, but your report indicates that currently the wastage rate from Hendon, that is young recruits who are resigning whilst at Hendon, is 11.79 per cent and minority ethnic officers, 13.17 per cent.

Firstly, if we can just put this into perspective. You comment that this is significantly above the provincial average. Is there a provincial average figure available, to your knowledge?

A. I tried to get that today before I arrived. I do not have that to hand but it will be available to you within days. The Met is the only Police Service with its own training.

Sir Anthony Burden: With its own training centre, absolutely, yes. But from your personal experience and mine, I would suggest wastage rates from provincial centres are in the low single figures.

A. That is right.

Sir Anthony Burden: So the gap is, as you say, quite significant.

A. I have to stress, those figures were figures at the time. We have gone through periods where the figures have been worse than that and where the disparity between the Met and the provinces I would say would be even greater at that time.

Sir William Morris: That is interesting. From your inspection and your visit to Hendon, are you able to put forward any reasons for this high wastage rate?

A. I can give one reason, which is ironic to a degree, and it was in relation to the Met's commendable desire to make recruitment easier. For example, in the initial test – PIRT, as it is called, initial probationary test for acceptance – the Met, for a period, created a category of people worthy of further consideration, who had, I think, scored 168 and above, rather than the usual pass mark of 180. Their thinking was, "We have these folks for quite a long period in training, and any shortcomings that they exhibit, provided we are satisfied, they can hopefully be made up during training".

They produced figures for me whereby, in terms of colleagues from visible minority ethnic groups, they were in a higher proportion in this particular category, and therefore, when they came in to Hendon, sadly, quite a proportion of them did not actually make it through until they either left or failed. Those figures include both those who leave and those who fail.

So that for a period – ironically, it was an attempt to address a problem, not only in relation to race by any means, but to those who had a strong desire to be police officers but who were just falling below the normally acceptable mark. It happened that there was a much higher proportion of such candidates who were from visible minority ethnic groups.

That accounted for that for a period. That process has been discontinued. I think, bearing in mind what I said earlier, it is important not only to improve recruitment figures, but to ensure that we also maintain that through retention and opportunities to progress. I think it is important that initiatives that were perhaps attempted in the best faith are properly valued and altered or abandoned when it is appropriate to do that. So that was one of the reasons that we encountered during that period.

Sir Anthony Burden: Can I ask you some specific questions on that, please? Is there any suggestion that recruits, or some of the recruits that left Hendon and resigned from the service, they did so because of the way they were treated?

A. I have no doubt that that featured, and therefore what is very important in that context is very rigorous exit interviews, if you like, and that is one of the things we suggested that they must be sure they have got that in place, and in place in a way that identified problems that people have encountered and then addresses those problems that people encountered. I have no doubt that what you have described played a part. What I cannot do is quantify that.

Sir Anthony Burden: No, I appreciate that. Having gone there and done a thorough inspection, along the same lines, then, about the treatment of officers, is there anything about the culture of Hendon which concerned you?

A. I think – and it is not just about Hendon. I think there are very valuable, let us call them, experiments at this stage going on in the service generally. You have seen an example in Lancashire, and the Met have seen this as well, non-residential training courses, whereby the thrust is to give people the opportunity to train as police officers in their own communities and in their own environment.

So I think there is always a risk, and I would not particularise this to Hendon, but in terms of the policing culture where people are in there and living together and only going home at weekends, there is always a risk of inappropriate cultures developing.

Sir Anthony Burden: Inappropriate cultures?

A. Inappropriate. There is always that risk. I think we have to be constantly on guard against that.

The early feedback from some of these pilot schemes going on – I mentioned one in Lancashire – is very positive.

Sir Anthony Burden: Can I just follow that up? You have given some very frank answers there. Is there anything that suggests that young recruits from visible ethnic minority backgrounds were treated badly?

A. I certainly would not rule that out in isolated cases, but I would not say it was a thorough ongoing culture. We have seen the reprehensible examples in other training centres of recent date, and I think that was a very important wake-up call for the service. I cannot point to any evidence of that at Hendon, and it would be wrong for me to suggest that, but equally, I think none of us can be complacent and say, "Oh, that does not happen". Clearly we saw very vivid evidence of that happening, and what is important is that we learn the lesson – we were having that held up in front of us – and make sure it is eliminated.

Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you for that. It is obviously something that we intend to pursue further. Can I move on to professional standards and your inspection around that area? What is your view about the staffing levels of the professional standards directorate in terms of the number of people doing that job? Are they adequate to deal with the volume that is expected?

A. The volume has been increasing in terms of complaints, yes, that is very much to be welcomed. So therefore I think, at present levels, both of internal aspects that have to be addressed and the complaints from members of the public, I think probably the numbers of officers are adequate at the moment.

Sir Anthony Burden: They are.

A. Again, I go back to the scale, the size of the Metropolitan Police Service as an organisation, therefore it is something of an order not experienced in other forces. That is the difficulty. You will see spaced throughout the report reference to "most similar forces", and the Inspectorate tries to plan forces in ways that comparisons are meaningful.

It is very difficult to do that with the Metropolitan Police Service. We have had discussions, should they actually be compared with other capital cities. It is more appropriate to compare policing in London with policing in Paris or New York. We certainly have West Midlands and Greater Manchester, but nothing quite comes close to the scale of the Metropolitan Police. So comparisons are difficult but not impossible.

Sir Anthony Burden: You comment that there is some concern about the lack of police training. That is interview technique training, I think, for officers undertaking internal investigations. Obviously these are sensitive investigations. Are you happy that the quality of the officers undertaking the investigations and the training they are getting is adequate to do this very sensitive job?

A. Well, I pointed out that – I think it is planning and preparation, I think it is engagement. It is a nationally accepted model for how an interview should be conducted in a very structured way. There is the proper planning and preparation for it in advance. There is the engagement and explanation to the person being interviewed. There is the account that it is important to accurately get.

There is then a proper way of bringing about closure, and there is finally a valuation. I think that is the new mnemonic that PEACE(?) stands for. We did identify that not all officers engaged in this important piece of work had been trained in that model and that is why it is pointed out in the report.

Sir Anthony Burden: But in all other aspects of training and the quality of the officers doing the work, you have got no concerns there?

A. No, we found that quality to be very high. There comes the question we discussed earlier of proportionality, and it is crucial in any ongoing investigation to review that question of proportionality on a regular basis, and what might have been proportional last week may – either on the absence of evidence that they expected to get or the receipt of evidence that is new evidence – might cause you to alter that.

I think the risk is that once we go through this formal process, the risk is that it is almost like a non-return valve. I think we have to constantly keep it under review to make sure that proportionality is maintained.

Sir Anthony Burden: You refer in the report to concerns over timeliness of complaint investigations. The average time taken to complete an investigation has gone up from 112 days in 1998/99 to 166 days in 2001/2002. Obviously that is of concern.

A. back down to about 121. Obviously jumping up to 160 was unacceptable. I go back to the pressures that the officers complained of, I go back to the attitude of the complainant. It is just undue delays is unacceptable.

Sir Anthony Burden: Was a reason put forward to you for the increase in delays?

A. I think at that time it was a question of volume at that particular time. The volume had increased. Hopefully we can maintain that decrease in volume.

Sir Anthony Burden: Can I just take you back to an issue right at the very start? You spoke about defensiveness in the way that people responded to complaints and the fact that they moved to the formal process, as opposed to trying to resolve it informally. That is very much the theme that we heard concerns the Commissioner this morning. And also from another submission we have had – you will excuse me if I paraphrase it; I will not read it out entirely – what it says, in simple terms, is exactly what you have said: that because of concerns over counter-allegations, in relation to minority ethnic staff, that supervisors are reluctant to supervise because of fear of an allegation that they are being racist by doing so. Therefore, rather than challenging minor misconduct, they let it go until it just builds up and builds up and builds up, and it results in a formal disciplinary investigation.

The Metropolitan Police Authority refer to it in their submission as the Metropolitan Police being a "pressure cooker waiting for things to blow". Just taking that one step on – and I welcome your views, please, as to whether you came across any evidence of this. My concerns about that are around the organisational discrimination that that might create because all of us have transgressed at some time and we need to be put back on the rails, and if we were, then we went on and had successes in our careers.

If that is not challenged and an officer does not have a chance to put things right, then that might well impact on that individual's ability to get promoted later on, or to get appointed to a specialist department. So it is a big issue in itself, but leads to an even bigger issue of discrimination.

You have sat down with focus groups that obviously contain black and Asian officers, officers from minority ethnic backgrounds. Was this something that is of real concern to officers, that they see this happening, that they see a lack of bite at junior supervision levels of getting to grips with issues and maybe having the skills and just the confidence to do that?

A. Those are the sorts of things that did crop up from time to time in focus groups. I honestly do not recognise the quote. I do not know from where it comes.

Sir Anthony Burden: It is a submission we have. It is not yours.

A. But I can see it. You said can I give you hard evidence. I cannot give you instances but certainly in focus groups of officers that feeling did come through.

I almost relate it to what I said about people engaged in quite proper tribunal lectures, who then are successful in that and who are then treated totally differently. The people treating them differently are trying to protect themselves but they do not realise that, in treating people differently, that is not respect for individual dignity. Even if it is subconscious, it is the opposite. I could not agree more with what you said.

Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you very much indeed.

Sir William Morris: Thank you. Sir Ronnie, we are nearly at the end of your very helpful contribution to our Inquiry. But before we conclude, could I just put one last burning question that I have to you?

Are there any national figures in respect of the unit cost for training a police officer up to the point when he or she goes onto the probationary stage?

A. I think those are available from Centrex. I can arrange to have those provided.

Sir William Morris: That would be very helpful.

A. I think there is also unit cost available for recruitment, for example. I will certainly take steps to do that.

Sir William Morris: Thank you so much for the answers, but thank you overall for your contribution to our Inquiry.

We have finished the questions that we wanted to ask you, but you will recall in my opening comment, Sir Ronnie, I said we would offer you and all our witnesses an opportunity for a brief closing comment. If you do have such a comment, then I invite you to make it now.

A. Thank you very much, gentlemen. The only thing that occurs is that I would like to say how important I think this work is that you are engaged in, and while it is a piece of work commissioned by the Metropolitan Police Authority, and while the recommendations will relate to the Metropolitan Police Service, I would like to say that I would see them as of national importance.

It has been my commitment to staff associations in the Met that any recommendations flowing from your work that have national importance, I would say that it was my responsibility to refer it to the Home Secretary to see that they have national application and not just application to the Metropolitan Police Service.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much. That is very generous and we really do appreciate your contribution.

Can I just say a final word. As with all our witnesses, it may be necessary once we have listened to the initial contribution that we may want to explore a few more questions, either in writing or by invitation back. If we find a need to do that, Sir Ronnie, we will try to do our best to do so in a way that causes the least inconvenience to yourself or indeed anybody else. But for the moment, on behalf of the panel, I just want to take the opportunity to say a final thank you for your help and your contribution to our Inquiry.

A. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Sir William Morris: Could I ask the members of the public please to remain seated while the witness and ourselves will leave the room. If you co-operate with that, we will very much appreciate it. Thank you.

4.15 pm
The Inquiry adjourned until 10.30 am on Thursday, 19th February 2004

Skip Navigation \| Accessible

Accessibility About the Inquiry Contacts Search
Home News Schedule Transcripts Evidence Report Links
Transcripts > HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (18 Feb 04)
QuickSearch See also On this website: Evidence: Sir Ronnie Flanagan	Previous Next	Views Print Accessible Actions Send
	Archive note Important note: This is an archive of the website that was formerly at www.morrisinquiry.gov.uk. It is being hosted on the MPA website for archival purposes only and may contain out-of-date information. Page summary This resource is from the Transcripts section. This section contains a transcript of the public session with Sir Ronnie Flanagan, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, on 18 February 2004. Sections available here: Transcript of public session: Sir Ronnie Flanagan, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary Questions by Sir William Morris Questions by Miss Weekes Questions by Sir Anthony Burden Alternative versions This transcript is also available with original line and page numbering. Content Transcript of public session: Sir Ronnie Flanagan, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary Wednesday, 18 February 2004 2.00 pm Questions by Sir William Morris Sir William Morris: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and Sir Ronnie, good afternoon to you. A. Good afternoon. Sir William Morris: Can I first of all thank you very much indeed for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry and to give evidence, and for letting us have your written submission which we found extremely helpful. I do appreciate, Sir Ronnie, that for some of our witnesses, perhaps not your good self, but some of our witnesses may find the process and the nature of these exercises rather daunting, so I thought it would be helpful if I set out briefly how we propose to conduct the hearing. First, let me introduce myself and the other members of the panel. I am Sir Bill Morris, recently retired General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, a position that I held for 12 years, and I have been asked to chair the Inquiry. As you can see, there are two other members of the panel. On my right is Sir Anthony Burden, who recently retired as a chief constable of the South Wales Constabulary after a long and distinguished career on the police service. On my left is Anesta Weekes QC, who is an eminent barrister, who sits as recorder and part-time chair of employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry. Sir Ronnie, as you know, we have been asked by the Metropolitan Police Authority to conduct an independent inquiry into professional standards and employment matters in the Metropolitan Police Service. Our focus is the MPS as an organisation and not the individuals who make up the organisation. The Inquiry we are conducting is inquisitorial and not adversarial in nature. We are very keen to enquire into the issues raised by our terms of reference so we can make appropriate recommendations for good and further best practice, rather than concentrating on making criticisms of the MPS as an organisation or particular individuals in it. To help us in our task, we are keen to hear from all our witnesses, not just what is wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service, but to hear what is right with it – and we think that there is a lot right with it as well – but, most importantly, your suggestion in putting things right. A transcript is being taken so that we can have a proper record of the evidence given by witnesses, and this will be posted on our website at the end of the day. At the end of these introductory comments I will lead on the questions to you, followed by my colleagues, first Miss Weekes, followed by Sir Anthony, and any supplementary questions that I might find necessary. At the conclusion of our questions, I will offer you the opportunity for a brief closing comment, should you wish to take it. Let me start by saying thank you for letting us treat your report to Her Majesty's Inspectorate of the Metropolitan Police for the year 2002/2003, effectively as a written submission. We will make the document available on the website at the end of the day. To recap, in your report you covered a whole range of issues, but we have identified the following as of importance and of particular interest to this Inquiry: people management, including recruitment and indeed retention, professional standards, including an assessment of policy and strategy, people management and performance management. You have also touched around issues of governance and you have touched on issues of leadership, among others. We would like to ask you some questions about the material in your report and to seek your views on a range of matters that are of interest to us. But before we raise these issues, however, for the benefit of the transcript, I wonder if you would mind formally introducing yourself to the Inquiry? A. Chairman, thank you very much. My name is Ronnie Flanagan. I am one of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, and I have responsibility for the forces in London and the east of England, so I therefore I have inspection responsibility for the London Metropolitan Police Service. I also have other portfolio responsibilities within the Inspectorate, including the service's approach to terrorism, and I cover certain non-Home Office forces as well. I took up that appointment on 1st April two years ago, having retired as chief constable in the Police Service of Northern Ireland the previous day, 31st March 2002, in which organisation I served for some 32 years. That is my background. Sir William Morris: Thank you very much for putting that on the record, Sir Ronnie. You will have seen a copy of our terms of reference, I am sure, and you will know that we have been asked to examine the ways in which the MPS handles professional standards and employment matters. We have read your recent report and we have also seen the previous HMIC's report. Perhaps I ought to just ask why – I am asking you to summarise for us the progress you feel the service has made in the last two years in relation to the issues that we were asked to consider? A. Chairman, I think the Metropolitan Police Service in their approach to professional standards have made tremendous strides over the past few years, indeed to the point where in many aspects their approach to this area of policing I would see them as exemplifying good practice. Indeed, I have used some of the approaches adopted by the Metropolitan Police Service as examples to other police services, other police forces, as to how they should conduct their business in this area of policing. That is not to say for a second that things are perfect. There are many imperfections in the system, not least of which – and this is, I think, common across the service, not necessarily applying only to the Metropolitan Police Service – is a tendency on behalf of officers to always take the formalised approach. For example, I think it is very important that the Police Service is constantly alive to the opportunities to properly informally resolve complaints when they arise, and far too often I see in forces a tendency just to refer everything to professional standards so that things are formally investigated, without always taking the opportunity to informally resolve complaints when they arise. I think currently – and, of course, these are things that we in the Inspectorate keep under ongoing scrutiny – I think currently the percentage of complaints arising which are informally resolved is something of the order of 31/32 per cent. I would certainly like to see the target in that area pushed up to at least something of the order of 35 per cent, and then perhaps progressively increased, even slightly, above that figure to something of the order of 40 per cent. Sir William Morris: That is extremely interesting. Could I just sort of follow that up by your comments about almost a sort of immediate reference to the Directorate for Professional Standards and ask, in your inspection, did you detect a template to guide, or some sort of criteria which determine what is referred prior to the opportunity for an informal resolution of the complaints issue? Is there is such a template? A. We certainly detected work in progress in terms of the Professional Standards Department getting round various boroughs, providing training to those engaged in policing in the boroughs, and trying to encourage the approach that I have described. I would describe it as work in progress. I would not describe it, in any sense, as the complete model in that sense. Sir William Morris: From your experience as HMI Inspector for a number of constabularies, how do other forces or services deal with this issue? Do they have almost automatic reference to the Directorate of Professional Standards or do they have procedures and criteria to try and resolve it first? A. They do have procedures and criteria, but quite often individual officers adopt the attitude, "Well, I want to make sure that I am protected; I want to make sure that any retrospective examination of this will not find me wanting". Therefore there is a tendency not to take any risks, and there is a tendency too often – not always, not everywhere – but a tendency too often to engage in the formal investigative process, when perhaps it can be quite properly and satisfactorily be resolved in other ways. Of course, the wishes of the person making the complaint must be paramount. I am not suggesting anything to the contrary. But very often the organisation can benefit, the individual officer or officers complained of can benefit, and the complaint can benefit by a much more speedily resolved process. Sir William Morris: So it is almost a sort of defensive mechanical where process takes primacy over outcomes. A. Yes. I think I have to say, it has to be understood why that is the case, because we cannot go in the other direction and have sloppiness; we cannot go in the other direction and have things not properly recorded and not properly and rigorously investigated when it is totally appropriate that they should be so. So there is a balance to be struck. Sir William Morris: Precisely why I used the word "defensive mechanism", precisely why I used the word, recognising the point you made earlier. That is very enlightening, and I thank you for that. Perhaps, before we move on, if I could ask you just to share with us what, in your view, are the key issues that now need to be focused on for the future, in the light of your report and the observations that you have made? A. In 2002, the Metropolitan Police Service relaunched their approach in this area under the banner, under the headline, if you like, "integrity is not negotiable", and I think that is an important value that must be adhered to. Integrity should not be negotiable. The Met, just a short time before that, were facing a particular problem or problems that the Commissioner was determined to address, that of corrupt officers in the organisation. When you ask me what is important, I think engaging in proactive practices is important, being prepared to tackle corruption with absolute rigour. It is not in the sort of category to which I referred earlier in the general sense of dealing with complaints. That is not something that can be informally resolved. In that sense, I think that is an area where the Metropolitan Police Service really engaged this problem and engaged it in ways that brought about practices that could be commended to others. I think care needs to be taken when you embark on a process such as that to meet a particular problem that you are facing at that time, that it does not create a mindset that that is a process that always has to be followed to the nth degree. Again, it is tremendously important to keep reminding ourselves of the need for balance in these approaches and the need for proportionality in these approaches. So I think, in relation to the Metropolitan Police Service, that ongoing scrutiny needs to be maintained to ensure that what was created as a practice and a policy and an appropriate procedure is constantly reviewed to ensure that in a current sense it remains an appropriate and proportionate response to what is being encountered. Sir William Morris: Thank you. We have read a lot of documents and some of the statements of the compardimes(?) in terms of us living with the paper for the last few weeks, so the term "integrity is not negotiable" is not new and we are comfortable with that. At least service without integrity has got nothing left. But leadership is not negotiable either. You have to continue to strive and to build. And we note that in your report there is a fair section which addresses the issue of leadership. I just want to remind you by asking for paragraph 3.10 to be flagged up on the screen – it is on page 31 of your report, Sir Ronnie – and just to make one or two observations and seek your comments here. One of the issues – and we heard about some of the efficiencies this morning – is resource, and the allocation we were invited to observe that, even from the Home Office subvention, settlement has not been totally concluded, and that seems to be a recurring problem, a year-on/year-off problem. But that is not new. And I said earlier, in response to that this morning, that the best way of persuading others to be responsive to a resource allocation is to be able to demonstrate that the existing resource is being competently and resourcefully deployed. Your observation there makes good reading from a whole range of perspectives. Operationally, it makes good reading in terms of co-ordination, but it certainly, at first sight – and it has not been tested so I take it at its face value – seems to have a lot of merit in the context of a resource allocation. You have said, and I quote, that: "... the Mayor of London and others, citing the potential benefits of a more integrated policing structure across the capital, and often making comparison with the New York experience." Perhaps I ought to just record here that what you are saying, or have said, is that the Metropolitan Police Service is only one of other services, policing services, for the capital city. You have made reference to the British Transport Police, the Royal Parks Police, and of course the City of London Police and the Met. So we have a plethora of services. But whilst the Mayor has been quite clear about integration and consolidation, we were looking for your punch, which has not quite landed, apart from drawing attention. So I wondered whether you wanted to sort of give us any further expose. A. It has not landed because, quite frankly, there has not been empirical research. And this is now part of a wider debate in terms of the Government's recent paper, which opens the debate but does not quite specifically come to any conclusions. It just wants to have this discussed in terms of the potential of regionalisation in other parts of the country. There has not been empirical research to prove that that approach would actually improve effectiveness and efficiency, and that is why the arrangements for policing governance in London are absolutely unique, with the Mayor's office, with the MPA, with the MPS and the other bodies to which you have referred. I think what is absolutely crucial is that there is at least the closest collaboration between all of these entities, and we, during inspection, saw a high degree of that collaboration. So that is why the inspection report at that time does not come to a firm conclusion. We similarly would not be in a position, at this point in time, to come to a firm conclusion. Simply not enough time has passed and not enough scientific empirical research has been conducted to show that one approach would actually improve efficiency and effectiveness when compared with the current approach. So it is a constantly evolving situation, and it is just not appropriate at this time. Nobody would be in a position to give other than a personal view on what might happen if you engaged, for example, in amalgamations of these various bodies. Sir William Morris: Given that the debate is not new and it has been trawled across governments, in-tray, out-tray, ashtray, I do not know, is it your view that the empirical research should now be done? A. It certainly is, and I think that is the very intention of opening the debate in the recent Green Paper on that issue. I certainly detect, from an inspectorate point of view, across the country that willingness to engage in that debate, and I certainly also detect that here in London. Sir William Morris: Thank you for that. You mentioned governance earlier on, and it is your reference to that that I wish to turn next. You recognised, I think, that the stakeholding community for the Metropolitan Police Authority has got bigger and bigger and bigger; it is growing. I think the Commissioner has said he is probably the most accountable police officer anywhere in the world because the community has extended in terms of the added from the Home Office to the office of the Mayor, and the MPA, the JLA, and of course he has got the boroughs, and the other agencies that you have touched on. So governance, structures and accountability, is fairly significant. From the report, Sir Ronnie, it is obvious that the job of Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is perhaps the most challenging police job in the UK, and some would probably say in the world. We put it to him that he has to deliver strategic executive managerial leadership. He has got a budget, after all, of £2.5 billion. He has got approximately 44,000 to 46,000 officers and staff for which he is responsible. So managing the resource of the Met is a big job in its own right. But he is not in business just to manage resource, he is in business to police London in all its entirety. So he has to give strategic operational and executive leadership in policing London. So these are two big roles that he must carry. Of course his part, his beat, so to speak, is changing. The profile has changed, as we know. It is a totally different profile of London citizens, as emerged today. And the issues which command law and order attention is a changing one as well. We have still got the old ones but we have got some new sophisticated ones, like international terrorism, for example. We see what is happening in terms of the airlines industry, sky marshalls. Never heard of them 12 months ago, but they are an issue that the Commissioner has to address today. So it is changing. In the light of these two big responsibilities that the Commissioner's office carries, do you think the roles are in themselves competing roles? A. I would not necessarily say they are competing roles, but certainly it is a position of immense responsibility, and you have only touched upon national and indeed international responsibilities that fall to the Metropolitan Police Service as well as policing London in itself. So it is an immense responsibility. For example, when we looked at the structure of the organisation, one of the things we commented upon was that we understood and indeed commended the Commissioner for the bold move in removing what were known as areas; that was a tier, if you like, above the boroughs. The whole point of that was to devolve policing downward and ensure that each borough was capable of delivering a tailor-made policing service which suited the needs of the people in that borough. One of the things we suggested in our report was that it was not a case of the area structure serving no purpose. So what there should be, if you like, was almost a gap analysis to ensure that with the removal of the area tier, the area structure, that analysis should make sure that any gaps that were left were properly filled in terms of structure. That has been carried out and is also ongoing in terms of the Metropolitan response to the inspection report. So yes, it is an immense responsibility, but I do not see those two areas of responsibility, as you have described, as competing. I see it certainly as problematic, but I see the possibility of making them complementary if the structure supports the Commissioner and his team in allowing those functions to be discharged in a complementary way. It is certainly not an easy task, and I am not suggesting that for a second. I think the Commissioner has to be most highly commended for the remarkable success that it achieves in bringing about that. Sir William Morris: My statement about competing was not a definitive statement, it was seeking your view as to whether you thought, in the light of your experience, and having carried out the inspection, both in terms of what needs to be done and the managerial requirements of the organisation, whether you felt that they were competing. A. I think it is true to say, if you looked at the composition of, let us call it the top team – Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, four Assistant Commissioners, ten Deputy Assistant Commissioners, 22 Commanders – that is actually significantly trimmed down from the command structure which would have existed, let us say, ten years ago. And when consider the responsibilities that you have described, and when you consider the numbers of officers; I mean, in the past year the Metropolitan Police Service has recruited the equivalent of a provincial force in terms of numbers. A remarkable achievement, but an achievement that brings with it its own problems in terms of the strategic approach to growth that is necessary, and it is again something that I addressed in the inspection report. So I think it is important that it is kept continuously under review, the question of resilience of command and whether it is appropriate. I know these are discussions that do go on between the Commissioner and members of the Metropolitan Police Authority: should we consider additional positions at various levels just to ensure that there is absolute resilience and absolute leadership? Because leadership is crucial, if I may say so, in achieving the necessary approach to areas of policing that you are examining within your terms of reference. It is critical. Sir William Morris: Yes. Thank you for that, Sir Ronnie. Let us accept that those two roles are not competing. They are separate and distinct nevertheless. No competition, but different roles require different skills, different attributes, different concepts of leadership in overall terms, and have to deliver not mutually exclusive but different outcomes, naturally so. And it is not at the margins; it is quite significant in terms of the quantity, value, what we are talking about, whether it is people or budget. Do you think that that model, with its two roles, irrespective of whether they compete or not, but these two roles, residing in the hands of a single person, needs now to be reviewed in the light of the complexities of the 21st century that we just explored at the margins a few minutes ago? Is it time now that we reviewed these two major, major, major roles? Is it fair to ask one person to carry this major, major burden? A. I think provided the structure that supports that person is in place, and all the expertise in the various areas that you have described. You mentioned, quite properly, the very important issue of resourcing and the quite massive amount of public monies that have to be properly accounted for. One of the things, again, we noted in the inspection report is the question of devolution of budgets within the Metropolitan Police Service, and there are a number of pilot schemes, a number of pilot areas to pioneer this. But we had felt in various inspection reports that not sufficient progress was being made in that area. Ironically, in our most recent report, we were also pointing out the need for great care, not to just devolve all these responsibilities without making sure the proper infrastructure was in place to ensure that those responsibilities were properly discharged. So that if you were going to give that degree of autonomy to the boroughs, then the proper experts had to be in place on those boroughs. The proper mechanisms and procedures and technological infrastructure had to be in place as well. I do not necessarily think the approach is to split the responsibilities, although I certainly would not rule out that consideration. I think the approach should be to keep under continuous review the supporting structure that is in place, because there are advantages, I think, in terms of leadership, and we constantly, in the Inspectorate, for various areas of policing activity, use this phrase: it is important to have a champion for that area. It is important to have a champion in respect of celebrating diversity. It is important to have champions for various other areas of activity. A debate goes on in the service sometimes, "But we are all champions", or, "Do we need one champion?" I mention that only to say that sometimes, in terms of leadership, it is very important to have that one figurehead, a person who can exemplify the values of the organisation, the mission of the organisation. Certainly during our inspection, we found that in focus groups in the various boroughs that we visited and the various departments that we visited that the Commissioner's vision for policing London was very well understood. So he had clearly taken a lot of time and effort but had clearly been successful in articulating his vision, the corporate style of policing that he wanted for London, and it was impressively widespreadly understood and accepted in the organisation. Not easy when – again, I come back to your very vivid description of the scale of the organisation and the scale of difficulty that we are describing here. Sir William Morris: I am with you on all you say about the importance of structure. It is not a one-person's band; it could not possibly be that. The supporting structure is relevant whether or not it is maintained as it is or whether there is another model of supporting structure. Infrastructure, structure and resource allocation will not change. The argument is about not the competition, we have resolved that issue, but the best use of resource, and to have a more focused approach on one or either roles, seeking to do the two. But in the context of today's world, and whether you look to the private sector, and indeed the public sector, there are models around which indicate that the need to have a very clear focus on the management of the institution, or indeed the service delivery of the institution, does require a streamlined approach. In the private sector, for example, the role of the chairperson and chief executive are: one, does the sort of thing that you talk about articulate in the vision, making sure that the culture is understood, interfaced, whatever, with external others; and the other, if you like, look after the shop. Looking after the shop is important in that sense. So not for today, but, you know, nothing stands still. I mean, the Police Service that we are looking at is different, it has evolved. Nothing stands still. Could you perhaps see an alternative model, Sir Ronnie, where the role is split between, say, the Commissioner, with the responsibility for leading and providing the strategic and operational policing direction, which would then free up time for a closer affinity with the different group of officers – "smell the sawdust", as I would put it from where I am coming from; you know, smelling the sawdust. Very, very important bringing it down to that level, because you will infuse a lot of confidence in the people when they see you with them, in that sense. So we have that directional and operational "champion", using your words. But we would also have a champion whose title would be unimportant. I am not wedded to "chief executive" no more than I am wedded to "chief operating officer". I am just wedded to the principle of someone minding the shop. You have given some very good reasons, which I will take you to in a minute, why minding the shop has got to have much greater attention. You have drawn our attention to a whole raft of issues which your inspection has brought to light, and I can only conclude that minding the shop, from whatever perspective you accommodate, needs greater attention. I am asking whether you would subscribe to a point in time where an alternative model of looking at this inspirational operational leader, doing the champion thing at every level, and an equally inspirational minding the shop leader, and call him or her what you wish, whether chief executive or chief operating officer. But I just believe that from what we have seen so far, that the burden which these two roles carry may well be mitigating against each other, if not necessarily competing. A. I mean, there are a number of approaches. Quite often we look at approaches in other countries, and it is quite proper, indeed crucial, that we do. But it is equally crucial we do not just lift something that works in the United States and seek to apply it without adapting it to our needs. For example, in some forces of the United States, the chief officer would have a chief of staff. I think you cannot – in the Metropolitan Police Service, a lot of responsibility falls to the assistant commissioner of territorial policing for looking after the shop, as you have described it, Chairman. I think the thrust of devolving as much autonomy as can be evolved to the 32 boroughs is an approach to make sure that the shop is looked after appropriately in ways that the people that live in each of the boroughs have a very strong influence in ensuring that they get the policing that suits their needs. So yes, I certainly would not rule out examination of other approaches, but I tend to think the more effective approach is making sure that a sufficiently robust, sufficiently resilient programme and structure of support is in place, rather than it being a position of finding another one new post at the top. I think we would need to be very careful, because everything is systematic, and you need to be careful that you do not alter one part of the system without fully assessing its impact on the system as a whole. Sir William Morris: Let me give you some of your own evidence, but in passing let me just say that we have not reached a conclusion – there is no conclusion here – and we have not looked at any international experience which brings to us raise the question. We have just looked at the enormity of the task, and we recognise that you can be probably trained for one but not necessarily the other. To be trained for both is a pretty long order. So devolution, as good as it is, in terms of resource allocation, is no guarantee whatsoever that you are going to get the managerial competency at strategic executive level that is required to manage a £2.5 billion project, if you are being distracted by the May Day march down Trafalgar Square and whether BA have sky pilots or not. Let me give you some of your own evidence. Can I take you to your report, Sir Ronnie, and ask our technologist across the way here to take us to paragraph 2.3 on page 15. You will identify those words, or you can see those words as your own, where you talk about: "The MPS does not yet have a medium-term corporate strategy for the next three to five years that integrates financial and operational planning issues. This is a significant omission for an organisation of the size and complexity of the MPS ..." I will take you to the others and then we can sort of see them in their entirety, rather than individually. The next one I want to take you to is paragraph 2.29 on page 21. There you say in the first sentence: "Overall, Her Majesty's Inspector was struck by the sheer abundance of data produced by the MPS combined with the relative lack of incisive analytical products and a distinct lack of costing information." I do not know what the capital budget is, but the capital budget must be pretty big. If we do not sort of have costing information then that must, by any standard of measurement, be deemed as a weakness. I will put it no higher than that at the moment. The other one which I think is perhaps worth a reference is paragraph 5.35 on page 56. This is the internal audit, observation of what the internal audit has said. It says: "In summary, while I am satisfied that efforts continue to be made to correct identified weaknesses, I can only offer a 50 per cent reassurance on the adequacy of control and the effectiveness of the systems within the MPS." If this was a private company, if the internal audit is only 50 per cent satisfied – A. Are there other areas you are going to point me to, Chairman? Sir William Morris: Yes, if you bear with me, there is one more. 6.12. This deals with this whole question of devolved management and devolved resources. It says: "A number of budgets have been devolved to enhance local freedom within corporate parameters. The directorate has produced a catalogue of hardware and software applications which can be purchased by devolved budget-holders in order to provide this element of central control. However, Her Majesty's Inspector was concerned to find that the directorate does not hold records of the equipment which has been purchased in order to check compliance with both corporate policy and also legal requirements surrounding the use of licensing of computer software. He therefore suggests that as a matter of urgency an audit is conducted of all locally managed hardware and software to ensure compliance with these requirements." I see that as more expression of weakness within the context of management's control. We do not know what we have got but we have devolved. But more importantly, the lack of being able to identify what we have got is not without its consequences, because one of the consequences is that we are no longer in compliance, as it says, in terms of the corporate policy: "... all legal requirements surrounding the use of licensing of computer software ..." So one asks: where is the risk management in that? There clearly is not a risk management process in being because a risk management process would have picked that out. So we do not even know the degree of risk to which the MPS was exposed as a result of weakness in the management structure. In the light of your own evidence, I am asking you to reflect again as to whether or not you think that the burden overall is not too great for one person to carry in terms of managerial control and operational delivery. These are just anecdotes, contracts overall, and if I went through your report – well, it is your report so you know more about it than I do. I will just make the point in terms of the importance of managing the organisation in order that it gives efficiency and the resource to deliver what the MPS is in business for, which is to sort of detect crime and keep London safe. A. Yes. In some of those areas to which you have drawn attention, Chairman, are in different aspects of policing. The paragraph to which you referred which outlined the secondment of someone from the Audit Commission, that was in the whole area of territorial policing and performance management, and all the data that was gathered in relation to that but not sufficiently streamlined and not sufficiently operationalised, in our view. In relation to those specific areas that I mentioned in that address, resource management, there are people – there are individuals at a very high level in the organisation already with that specific responsibility. Yes, they report to the Commissioner, but provided people with the right expertise are selected and appointed, and provided they have the right infrastructure of support, then the fact that an inspection throws up areas for improvement, that is the very purpose of an inspection. I think what is important thereafter is the response of the organisation being inspected through those recommendations, and certainly the recommendations have been seized, have been grasped and are being worked upon. I think that is what is important. The Met used to have the office of receiver, and I certainly do not think the argument is made for going back to that specific role. There are people with those sorts of specific responsibilities at a very high level in the organisation, and they are very professional people. No organisation is perfect. It is our job, if you like, to find out where the imperfections lie and to make recommendations so that those imperfections are addressed. I am still not convinced, Chairman, the process of rectifying that imperfection is going to be brought about by splitting the role in two, as you have described. Sir William Morris: Yes. I take your point entirely, and I agree with you about what the process of inspection is about and the rectification of any sort of deficiency in the process is admirable. But some would argue that on certain critical areas about compliance and the risk and all that, it should never happen in the first place. The structure should be sufficiently robust to be protected. A. That is what we would always hope for. But, I mean, if that was an ideal world there will be no need for inspection. The truth is, it is not an ideal world, and that is not in any sense to be complacent about shortcomings to be discovered, but it is the reality of life that there will be shortcomings. Sir William Morris: I cannot wait to see your report in four years' time. Just moving on, Sir Ronnie. I just want to take you to page 94 of your report, because you make a very compelling case for what I would call joined up management. You note here that the professional standard director has no oversight of the civil staff disciplinary matters, but that there is only one aspect of the management structure which is not quite joined up, and I think those words are presented in your report there, as the graph indicates. What we have got is the whole question of handling people issues in different directorates under different sort of responsibility. In summary, we have got the handling of employment, tribunal cases in the professional standards directorate. I will need that explained to me over a quiet period some time in the future. Human resources where fairness at work is dealt with, that is separate. Then, of course, we have got diversity, which sits in glorious isolation organisationally. Do not get me wrong, I am not suggesting that diversity does not permeate and find its way into the system, but all the evidence and experience available to me is that a lot of these portfolios are interconnecting portfolios which support each other. I said this morning that diversity was not a sort of commodity which is exportable. You cannot sort of bring it down there and leave it. It is not a mobile commodity in that sense. It permeates the organisation. In the light of what you have observed and said, would you like to comment on that structure, on whether it is likely to lead to what I called the joined up management which you articulated in your report? A. I think improvements can be made. One of the pieces of work currently engaged in by the Inspectorate, a national piece of work, is a thematic inspection on what we might call "civilianisation". I know that is not the proper term because we are all civilians, but that will be published probably in June of this year. One of the areas it will look at is the whole question of how everyone involved in the Police Service is properly valued, whether they be police officers or members of police staff. One of the things that we will examine is what was being suggested there, the question of there being such disparate approaches in areas such as discipline for members who are police officers and colleagues who are members of police staff who are not sworn officers but describe them as that. I think not only in relation to the Metropolitan Police Service, but I think in relation to the service generally, improvement can be brought about in that area. It is something that is very much being examined in the course of this Inspectorate thematic inspection. Again, I use the word "civilianisation", just for ease of understanding. It is not, certainly, the right term to use. I think much more can be done in this area, yes, in the Met, but in the service at large. Sir William Morris: Thank you for the term "civilianisation" because it links into a point that has been canvassed to us, because it has been suggested to us that the current system of managing staff relationships and police officers – which I suspect was in the mind of the author of that statement – is antiquated and long-winded and should be scrapped, and that with some exceptions – and I emphasise that – the ordinary employment law applicable in employment relations should apply to police officers. My colleagues and myself would welcome your view on that suggestion. A. I think there certainly should be harmonisation of approach, and so far as it can be achieved, there should be a similar approach taken to members of police staff and police officers. That is not going to be easily achieved because the office of police constable means that police officers are servants of the Crown, and there are differences, and undoubtedly the Police Federation and the representative bodies would argue strongly that there are very good reasons why that should properly bring about different approaches. I think, in the 21st century, the Police Service increasingly should be a service provided by men and women who comprise that body, whether they be police officers or whether they be members of police staff. Those are exactly the issues, again referred to earlier, being considered, which would result in recommendations for change in this forthcoming report, which is due for publication in June. I think it would be wrong for them to pre-empt – because research has been carried out, fieldwork has been carried out, analysis is only now beginning of that work, and I think it would be wrong to pre-empt conclusions that will be arrived at. But certainly it is an area where I think much improvement is required and much improvement can be achieved. Sir William Morris: So there is work in progress on this? A. Yes, indeed. Sir William Morris: Yes. Can you foresee a model where the culture and the status and all that is embedded in it, from the Crown servant concept – can you foresee a model where that is protected and ringfenced? Because it is very much culture – it is about public service and specially orientated to the Police Service. Can you see that culture being protected while at the same time giving the rights, some would say, and some would say responsibility and opportunity, for police officers to have the employment law protection which has been canvassed? Can you see the two things enshrined and embedded without any loss? A. I think that is achievable. Certainly it would be a gain rather than a loss. Steps have already been taken to improve and streamline the disciplinary process and very importantly speeded up. I think much more can be done, and I think it can be done in the context of preserving the office of constable, but at the same time, while ensuring that that comes with the proper legs that go with that, that it does not confer any undue rights or privileges vis-a-vis other colleagues in the service who simply do not happen to be sworn officers. Sir William Morris: Yes. Just one last question, Sir Ronnie. We have been asked to also look at best practice, and we could not miss the opportunity with your wide experience within other forces to ask whether there are any other good examples of best practice in forces that deal with professional standard and employment matters that we at the Inquiry could benefit from, if you could draw those to our attention. A. I hope you will understand the sensitivity with which I approach this. The Inspectorate are just coming to a conclusion of what we have described as a baseline assessment of all forces in England and Wales, and that looks at every aspect of activity in which forces engage, including their approach to professional standards. That has not as yet been moderated nationally. We have not fed it back to individual authorities and individual chief officer teams to give them an opportunity to comment upon it and give us an opportunity to take those comments into account. All of that, again – and I do not mean to keep referring to work in progress – will lead, again, to a conclusion as to strengths exhibited by individual forces and areas of improvement that have been identified in respect of individual forces. I am saying that to say I think, again, it would be wrong for me to publicly engage in conclusions that have yet to be moderated and that people have not yet had the opportunity to comment upon. But yes, there are areas of good practice. I would suggest, Chairman, rather than necessarily identifying individual forces until this process is complete, that that is possibly something that could be pursued. Certainly the Association of Chief Police Officers have this very much in mind, and do a lot of good work nationally in disseminating good practice where it is seen. The Chief Constable of Sussex leads in terms of that core work in that regard, and I have no doubt that he or, for example, the Deputy Chief Constable of Suffolk, who also works closely in that area, could have useful material to provide you. But certainly we in the Inspectorate are very quickly moving that position. We have it now in terms of the research we have conducted, but it has to be validated and moderated, and people have to have the opportunity to comment upon it before we can publish it. Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed, Sir Ronnie. We have found your response and contribution extremely enlightening to our Inquiry, and we do recognise the sensitivity of the last point that you made and that will be respected in our deliberations. That concludes my series of questions. I want, in a minute, to invite Miss Weekes to put some questions to you, but I thought it might be an appropriate point for the stenographer's benefit if we take just a five-minute break, and then we will resume in about five or six minutes and we can carry on from there. I just want again, on behalf of my colleagues, to say thank you very much indeed for your help. A. Thank you very much. Sir William Morris: We will adjourn for about five minutes. 3.00 pm (A short break) 3.10 pm Sir William Morris: Welcome back. I will hand you straight over to Miss Weekes, who has some questions she would like to put to you. Questions by Miss Weekes Miss Weekes: Good afternoon. Can I go back to one or two of your introductory remarks given to the Chairman which has interested me very much, and they were the remarks that related to informal resolution of workplace conflict. You identified that in your experience overall you were not particularly looking at the Metropolitan Police only, I think overall in your inspectorate life there is a tendency to take formal process instead of resolving things informally, and that you would quite like to see a target of say 35 per cent resolution informally. Because our Inquiry is about people management, not just about people management but a central issue is about people management, and it is about resolution of disputes before they become difficult, before they ruin relationships, because an efficient police force is a happy one, we hope, and it is one where officers feel proud of their jobs, and that is obviously filtered into the display that the public see, can I ask you just a little bit about your experience personally in the North Ireland Constabulary, when you were chief there, and the Inspectorate? I know that policies and what should happen after an Inspectorate report is very much for the Commissioner and his advisers, but I am drawing on your experience and expertise. What is it that makes for good informal resolution? Is it the personality of the person doing the resolution or is it something else that needs to be in place to get to grips with good informal resolution? Are you able to help me on this? A. Well, first of all, I think what there has to be in place is a culture that is not a blame culture. I think there has to be in place a culture whereby honest mistakes made in good faith will be understood and will be tolerated to a degree, but whereby grossly negligent mistakes or wilful mistakes are areas where there is zero tolerance. I think there has to be that balance. I think people, if they are in a working environment where they are actually encouraged to take some risks but sensible risks, if the whole ethos is the quality of service which they are delivering, I think if that is the culture in which people are working, and therefore they feel confident to say, "I have made an honest mistake, I want to apologise to the person in respect of whom I have made this mistake", whereby they do not feel, "If I admit this now my job is gone, my livelihood is gone" or "I will face the full rigour". It is very important, again – to go back to what we said earlier – to get the balance. This sort of approach does not apply in many cases. If I am talking about 35 per cent, there will be 65 per cent of cases where it is not appropriate. I think, first of all, it is important that the organisation provides the right culture, and then enabling people, through that feeling of confidence, feel that they have the proper training and they know that this is an appropriate approach to take, and that they are willing to accept that responsibility in the initial stages. I am not sure if this was the thrust of an earlier part of the question, but in terms of the status of an inspection report and what a force does, certainly my experience as chief constable is that even though constitutionally and legally I could ignore an HMI's recommendations, it is so compelling that you would have to have very, very strong grounds on which to ignore and on which to fail to implement an HMI's recommendations. So it is a very compelling pressure that recommendations in a report are fully taken on board, because we then seek from the authority as well as the force what the authority's view is on an action plan that has been put together to implement the recommendations that have been made. Miss Weekes: Can I just ask a follow-up question? Many line managers and many managers within the Metropolitan Police will say, "You know, we are rather sick of training, we have just done hours of it. We have got policies in place on diversity, we have policies in place in all issues of trying to get it right about people management, and we really have come to a stumbling block", which is perhaps partly why this Inquiry has been set up. So there is a tremendous keenness upon the Metropolitan Police to get it right. There is a tremendous keenness not just because of this Inquiry, but there has been, for a number of years, in the documentation I have read that managers and ordinary policemen and women want improvement, they want a better work environment, and they have been trying. Can you help me with where you have had experience of the personality, character traits, criteria, for a good line manager? A. I have a personal experience of – let me give you an example that is not that hypothetical, I am hypothesising, but based on ... Miss Weekes: Yes. A. Where an officer successfully pursued a tribunal case and was compensated as a result, I personally experienced incidences whereby officers in such positions were then treated totally differently thereafter, in a way that was designed to avoid any suggestion of victimisation but was actually subconsciously bringing about a degree of victimisation. In other words, other officers, in engaging in dialogue or whatever with an officer in such circumstances, might always want another witness present to make sure that it could not be alleged that I said something inappropriate or did anything inappropriate. That is a mind-set I have personally encountered in the Police Service. I think we have to get away from that. It used to be, I think, the case in the Police Service, certainly in my experience – and perhaps I should only talk from my experience – that we exhibited in the service a feeling we were all police officers and we are all the same. It does not matter whether we are black, white, male, female, big, small, Protestant, Catholic, we are all police officers and police officers are all the same. It is only perhaps within the last ten years that we realised actually we are all different, and thank God we are all different. What sort of world would it be if we were all the same? Therefore the whole approach should be to celebrate individual dignity, to celebrate cultural diversity, to see it for the richness it brings, to create a working environment where women should feel no need to submerge their femininity in order to feel comfortable or be successful in the pursuit of a police career; where people of any ethnic origin, any colour, any religion, any political belief, should feel no need, in order just to be comfortable, to submerge those feelings to be part of the critical mass. I think what is important is that the service has realised that we must move towards a position where people should be confident in their own background, tradition, race, whatever sexual orientation, that they do not need to hide it; nor do they need to flaunt it. I think if we can create that culture and realise and accept that we are all different and be so grateful for the fact that we are all different and truly celebrate, I think that is the journey we are on. I think we have a long way to go, but I think at least the service has recognised it is a journey that has to be made. Miss Weekes: I think that is right. Can I move on, on the same topic really, to other issues that affect people management, bureaucracy. There is a short but rather important paragraph in your report about bureaucracy. For those who can see it, it is at page 139, at the bottom of the page. You say this, for those in the audience who want to follow: "Her Majesty's Inspector was pleased to note the desire to improve operational efficiency through the reduction of bureaucracy. This is about a lot more than simply reducing unnecessary paperwork and requires a fundamental consideration of the need for change in policy and practice. In June 2000, the Commissioner formed a bureaucracy taskforce and at the same time the 'clearing the decks' initiative was introduced to review and rationalise 17 areas of operational practice, such as the police response to shoplifting offences or abandoned vehicles." I move on to 3.38: "Whilst the Commissioner has made it clear that the MPS will aggressively pursue the reduction of unnecessary bureaucracy, progress against the initial action plan appears to have stalled somewhat, perhaps understandably post September 11." I will just stop there. What do you mean by "bureaucracy"? Most of us know what it means, but I think it is very important that the writer of the report, which is you, says what you mean by that word. A. The bureaucratic burden that is placed on officers that distracts them from getting on with their day job, if you like. The report went on to point out what was just about to take place and then what has taken place, i.e. work commissioned by the Home Secretary to create a taskforce nationally on the reduction of bureaucracy. It has reported and made its recommendations, and there is now in place an implementation team that is headed by the Chief Constable of Staffordshire. Progress is being made, but certainly as Inspectorate, when we engage in focus groups with men and women at the sharp end of service delivery, they still say there is much, much too great a burden of bureaucracy upon them. So that if they deal, for example, with a simple shoplifting case, the paperwork that has to be completed, the time that is spent in the station dealing with this, is such that we even find evidence sometimes of people not dealing with offences because of the obstruction that that brings about, and it virtually writes them off for the rest of that shift. So tackling taskforce bureaucracy nationally has reported, and that is in hand nationally, but it will take some time to bear real fruit. I think there is another issue in relation to that paragraph. It is something, for example, as we embarked on the inspection, that the Deputy Commissioner and I had a conversation about, in which he said, "Look, I do not want to be arrogant about this but I think we in the Met are pretty good at responding to a crisis and we fix a problem. What we are not good at is making sure the problem stays fixed. So whatever it is, sometimes we return to it in three years and the lessons seem to have been forgotten". That is something we referred to in our feedback both to the authority and the Commissioner and his team. What is important always is post-implementation action plans and constant referral back to make sure that if lessons were learned, they continue to be learned and are not forgotten. So that if this initiative was launched in the year 2000 and it has immediate impact – and you will see some of the figures I have quoted – because we, as an inspectorate, in respect of every force, have to describe what are known as efficiency plans. They have to bring about a 2 per cent efficiency, and they can be in real cost savings or it can be in non-cashable savings. In effect they are required either to do more in the service delivery for the same amount of money or to do the same amount of service delivery for a less amount of expenditure. Those sort of figures that I have quoted there came about as a result of us looking annually at individual forces' efficiency planning. But it is important that an initiative like that launched in the year 2000, bringing about instant results, just does not slip because other priorities come on stream, such as the September 11th incident, and therefore that is why we recommended to the Metropolitan Police Service always having in place post-implementation arrangements to monitor and check that continuous learning takes place. Miss Weekes: Am I right in saying that if you have less bureaucracy, you will have more time for proper people management? A. I think it is crucial. I think the greater the bureaucratic burden, the less time there is for proper engagement. Miss Weekes: The Staffordshire Constabulary, you said – A. Only because the chief constable has that national portfolio, and he heads that implementation team that is making sure the recommendations for the taskforce are carried out. Miss Weekes: I am very grateful for that. It is obvious that we ought to look at that. Following on from bureaucracy, perhaps equally relevant are the number of statutes, acts of Parliament, regulations, guidance and policy documents that the officers, again, have to deal with. So if your comments on bureaucracy are right, they are probably also equal to the number of statutory provisions and procedures that they have to follow? A. Absolutely. Miss Weekes: Would you agree that some officers have the view that when they have to deal with the public, there is obviously bureaucracy about how they must conduct themselves which are probably correct, but equally, for certainly processes, it is just as bad. So they are faced with these two burdens, are they not? A. I think that is absolutely accurate. Miss Weekes: But they have got to police at the same time. A. Yes, indeed. And these can only be considered as abstractions from full effective policing. Miss Weekes: Of course there must be a bottom line in order to protect integrity and in order to protect the quality of service given to the public. You mentioned policies at page 142, paragraph 4.11, and you say this: "In line with the revised people strategy and the new corporate policy development process, around 500 HR policies are currently subject to review. This is obviously a huge task and high priority areas have been identified and will be addressed first. The role of the recently established evaluation unit will be crucial in assessing the effectiveness of HR policy and practice and the identification of good practice." Most members of the public may think that 500 is quite a lot, is it not? Do you really need 500? A. I think not, and that was the very purpose of this evaluation unit. It links in to post-implementation, to have a unit specifically designed to keep the policy under continuous review. That is why I highlighted it in the report, that 500 is quite phenomenal to me, so I guess it would be to the public as well. Miss Weekes: So when officers complain, it is probably a legitimate complaint? A. I think so, but there is that balance – and you referred to it – that there is a bottom line that there has to be maintained the proper integrity of the approach as well. Miss Weekes: Appraisals, if I can move to that. You deal with it at paragraph 4.49. There is no doubt that you need a good system so that officers can appreciate where they are going wrong, where they can improve and what their promotional prospects may be. So the appraisal is undoubtedly crucial. A point which is a good point in favour of the Metropolitan Police are the two, I think, encouraging aspects that you have flagged up: "Her Majesty's Inspector welcomes what appears to be improved arrangements for monitoring the timely completion and quality of appraisal practice. Borough personnel managers will have responsibility for ensuring timely completion and local inspection arrangements should also include examination of this area. There will be an element of central monitoring from the HR directorate to ensure compliance and a consistent approach across the boroughs." You have also added, I think, that there are room in two areas for improvement. I am going to refer to them under 4.46 and 4.48: "The credibility of appraisal processes in the MPS is poor and effective implementation of the new performance development review will be crucial." Just help us a little about that point. A. Again, I would stress that this is not something peculiar to the Metropolitan Police Service. This is something that we find across the board. The Met have been to the fore in the application of a new national competency framework, and application of that new competency framework, I think, has great potential. The whole question of appraisals, performance, development, review to be improved, I think, again, it is an example of work in progress. But if you look, for example, at our finding that some of the units in CID at 88 per cent of appraisals outstanding, it is an implication that the system had lost credibility, individual members were not completing them and were not being pushed by their supervisors to complete them properly. There were not proper objectives agreed. There were not proper development plans included in them. All of this was recognised nationally. For once I think it is an area where we are seeing improvement and real improvement. It is critical because if the organisation wants to achieve its overall objective, it can only do so in policing through the people who carry out policing, and therefore their individual objectives and then the team objectives and the overall organisational objectives have to be harmonised. It serves many purposes. It can be used to identify training needs, but it is crucial that the organisation does not simply pay lip service to them. It is crucial that it is taken seriously. So what we found during our inspection was an improving situation, but it is one that we as inspectorate are keeping under very close continuous scrutiny. Miss Weekes: The personal development reviews, if you can just briefly touch on that, that is new, is it not, to the Metropolitan Police Service? Have they always had them? A. No. This is a whole area with the service. The service has been struggling and they have looked at organisations in other sectors. They have looked at other police forces, they have looked at the private sector, and certainly there has not been any ideal model found that can be just lifted and transplanted to the Police Service. This is, I think, a very much improved process. For the first time, for example, we in the Inspectorate have been engaged this year in this process with chief constables. Previously chief constables were not subject to this process; they now are. I think that is important that it applies on all levels of the organisation. Miss Weekes: And this performance development review clearly is designed to ensure fair treatment of each officer across diversity. A. That is a very important matter. For example, in agreeing objectives and personal development plans for chief constables, there is a requirement upon them to identify one objective that relates to diversity. That is how seriously it is taken. Miss Weekes: Can I move on to training, and at your paragraph 4.28, if we could just go back slightly, I want to put in context that when you looked at training – it will come up in a moment – you looked at training in respect of the probationers and diversity training. But you looked at training purely to examine training as a part of the wider consideration of the impact of growth on the organisation. I think it was right to put it within its context. A. It is very important to put that in context because it has to be said that other thematic inspections conducted by the Inspectorate, training matters and, after that, diversity matters, were such that there had been a very heavy inspection focused on the Met in those specific areas. So this particular inspection report that we are considering now has to be set in the context of those two other very specifically focused inspection reports, each of which included the Metropolitan Police Service. Miss Weekes: I put it in its context because what you have appreciated is that there has been a significant influx of new recruits in the Met going to the borough commands, and that there has been, obviously, a balance, or a difficulty with balancing in training. You identify that, I think, extremely well in your paragraph 4.31. I think I would like to turn to it because it is something that I think we will need to look at. At 4.31, you say: "It was evident on some boroughs that a lack of local trainers, limited availability of staff to train due to operational commitments and the sheer volume of centrally mandated training made delivery impossible." That is a very sad indictment, is it not, because – A. It has to be set in the context that the Metropolitan Police in this period recruited the equivalent of a provincial police force. Miss Weekes: And you actually say that, do you not? A. Absolutely, and it is one of, I think, the very important planks in this section. What was not in place in advance of that growth, bearing in mind the Metropolitan Police for quite a number of years have been an organisation that was shrinking in size, had become used to having to deal with that, so suddenly it is expanding very rapidly in size and it had massive impacts for the training centre at Hendon. Not only that, once the recruits were through the initial training and came out to the boroughs, as referred to in that paragraph, for example where in an ideal world they would engage with tutor constables on a one-to-one basis, in some of the boroughs the ratio was more like one tutor to eight probational constables. So that had a massive impact, quite apart from the whole series of logistical impacts as well. We were arriving in boroughs to find they had no lockers, to find there were not enough radios for them. Certainly, at that initial stage of growth, we, during the inspection, thought it was very important that that had to be grasped. There had to be a really rigorous strategic plan to cope with that growth because what was not being put in place simultaneously was all the supporting infrastructure. That has been taken on board since the inspection, but again it is an example of work in progress. I had many discussions during the inspection with members of the authority who had realised this, who had realised that it is not just enough to increase the number of police officers; there must be that very strongly supporting infrastructure to cope with that growth. It has impacted, I would say, in all the areas that you are considering. If officers were coming through and then hitting the streets, if during the training – for example, in focus groups of trainees that we held, they were being dealt with in large class numbers and they were not getting the opportunity for individual role play that would be desirable. Then, when we came out onto the boroughs, there was not that one-to-one tutoring, there was not enough capacity for, let us call it, police street training, training on the job, so to speak. So those were all very important difficulties that we encountered at the time of that inspection. Again, to put that in context, when there was such a desire, such a public desire, and such a continuing public desire, that the organisation should grow to a more appropriate size, it is hard to see how everything could have been necessarily place. It would have certainly significantly slowed up the expansion to have everything done perfectly in terms of putting that infrastructure in place first. But it was something that we highlighted and something, again, I can report to you, that the Metropolitan Police Service have taken on board. Miss Weekes: Training in personnel issues and personal development is obviously crucially important for the environment or workplace environment. If it is not an appropriate question to put to you – if it is, I know you will tell me – what is the baseline training that is required for officers? What you identify in 4.32 is this – and I think I ought to read it: "Quite clearly, the existing operational demands [that is officers need to be on the street policing], combined with a need to train large numbers of recruits and a heavy national and centrally mandated training programme, mean the organisation has little capacity for non-essential training. Some hard decisions need to be made at a corporate level to better manage these tensions." You have fairly said that the Metropolitan Police Service have recognised that, and in a sense, by the time we have come to report, they may have dealt with it: more trainers, who knows? A. It would be wrong to say they will have dealt with it. Again, I would have to describe it as work in progress. Miss Weekes: Work in progress. Well I was perhaps being too optimistic. Thank you for warning me. We have to recognise that there are operational demands and that police officers need to do the job of policing, but at the same time, if we are to improve the work environment – and a lot of training does have to do with personnel issues and how they relate to each other, and of course the public – what is the balance, what is the bottom line? A. Well, the bottom line is that – I go back to the culture of the organisation. If, as public servants, we are to treat the public with the respect that they deserve, if we are truly to celebrate individual dignity and cultural diversity, we will only ever be able to do that if we do it internally. So the bottom line has to be about the importance of management, the important role of supervisors where they see inappropriate behaviour or hear inappropriate language, that it is tackled there and then, that it is not ignored, that people realise that inappropriate language and behaviour will not be tolerated, that there are mechanisms whereby either if people witness it or people are victims of it, there are channels of reporting it that do not necessarily involve line management because sometimes line management can be the very people involved in it. So I think the bottom line has to be about the culture of the organisation, where people coming into that organisation are properly recruited, and we have seen, sadly, too recently, evidence of where that has failed. Once, when they are recruited, they do get the appropriate initial training, and when they come out into the organisation, that they see practices and policies and behaviours that they would be proud to accept, rather than the opposite. Miss Weekes: I am not going to touch on recruitment perhaps at the Hendon stage because I know my colleague would like to deal with that. Some persons would say you are being entirely optimistic to expect that people working in the police force are going to challenge their line managers on the spot about inappropriate behaviour because they are going to be worried, are they not, about what their colleagues will think of them; whether it might block promotion; whether raising a gender issue is going to make a woman seem not part of the gang; whether raising a race issue will ostracise that person. It is quite difficult, is it not, to see how practically that will work? A. I clearly did not make myself clear. I was talking in two directions that there is a very important responsibility upon supervisors to make it absolutely clear that as soon as this arises, it will be dealt with there and then. In terms of either witnesses of this behaviour or victims of this behaviour, the organisation has to have in place reporting mechanisms that allow them to bypass the line management for the very reasons that you identify. Miss Weekes: I think it was worth repeating that. I am very grateful. Just two other points and then I think I will be finished. Staff associations, just one small point. You have identified the 14 staff associations, and you have given the Met credit because it is a sign of health and diversity if you are taking on board a number of different aspects from different sorts of people, different approaches, different lives, different culture. One of the things you do say is this: "Whilst in general the association has reported good relations and adequate consultation arrangements, there were concerns that sometimes this is not meaningful, with insufficient time to enable them to consult members." I think you will say that is really a matter of organisation for the Met to take that on board? A. Yes. I think sometimes – it perhaps is not surprising in a organisation of this scale and size of the Metropolitan Police Service that sometimes consultation arises almost as – if not an after-thought, something that has just occurred at the last moment, and there sometimes is not a true realisation that the representative bodies elect people to represent them. But having elected them, they expect them to come back to the people who elected them into those positions in the first place. So it does take time, and not always did we find that the organisation properly recognises that time. I think great care needs to be taken that an organisation does not use its representatives of staff associations just to "consult them", in inverted commas, or in a token way. I think it has to be a question of real consultation, with due time to give those representatives the opportunity to go back to the buddy corporate, obtain views, and then report those views meaningfully. Miss Weekes: I have one final point which I think will lead into matters that Sir Anthony would like to raise, and it is recruitment and retention. Many people within the police force and outside it would like to see more women in higher positions. You commented upon the recruitment retention of ethnic minorities and women. It is paragraph 4.13. Perhaps we will just try and get that up for you so that you can remind yourself of what you have dealt with. I am particularly just interested in the two paragraphs – it is 4.15 in fact. You say this: "The recruitment, retention and progression of female and ethnic minority officers is a priority for the organisation ... There was a 95 per cent rise in female recruitment ..." That in fact is something to congratulate the Met about. Were you surprised that that was that high? A. I am pleased that it was that high, and I have to confess that I was surprised but very pleased. Miss Weekes: "... a 95 per cent rise in female recruitment, 542 officers during 2001/02, against an overall rate of increase of 104 per cent. The target to achieve a level of 5 per cent of visible ethnic minority officers against overall strength was narrowly missed." Again something to be congratulated about because you say "narrowly missed". A. 4.84, as opposed to 5 per cent. Miss Weekes: Yes, so it is a narrow miss. "However, the overall trend was positive with a rise of 214 per cent of visible ethnic minority recruits during 2001/02 compared to the previous year." Just finally this: "The achievement of targets set to monitor the progression of ethnic minority officers and civil staff was poor." There has been a downturn in civil staff, but I think we should put it in the context that there was a moratorium on recruitment for civil staff following September 11th, is that right, and you have flagged that up in your report? A. That is right, and I think it is important to point out that context. Miss Weekes: But it has been lifted? A. It has been lifted. Miss Weekes: And it will progress towards what it should be. There is a present dilemma, is there not, about officers carrying out work that would usually be carried out by civil staff? I think you have also flagged that up in your report. That can produce a tension between civil staff and officers. I think you have identified that tactfully in your report. There is not any obvious reform as yet for that, until of course you improve the number of civil staff; am I right? A. That is one aspect. But the other aspect is this thematic inspection to which I referred earlier, which will be published in June, and it is focusing very strongly on exactly those sorts of issues. There is some good news in terms of the Met recruiting members of the wider police family, community support officers, et cetera, and there are better percentages being achieved there. One of the things I pointed out in this report was that any good practice there, any good lessons to be learned for the wider force, and any lessons to be learned in terms of police officers, should be learned and applied. But much higher percentages were being achieved in respect of, for example, community support officers, and indeed in members of police staff. You will see expressions in that report such as "civilian colleagues" or "civil staff". What has now been agreed with the representative unions is that the expression should be "police officers" and "police staff". So in terms of those members of police staff, much more positive percentages were and are being achieved. Miss Weekes: My final question. Police staff, police officers, have traditionally had a distinction with the move to, as it were, merge them a little more, perhaps with an employment law contract that is similar for both. Would that improve the work relationship between both, because sometimes there are conflicts and there are differences which perhaps should not be so? A. This thematic inspection to which I referred – I should say, I am conducting this, I am leading in this inspection so I have detailed knowledge of it – but I did indicate earlier that I did not think it was right publicly because we are only beginning the analysis. But it is fair to say that a very strongly emerging thing – again, we are not talking particularly about the Met; we are talking about the service at large – is an ongoing strong feeling of us and them; an ongoing strong feeling that members of police staff do not feel properly valued; of tensions in areas where a member of police staff is supervising police officers, and other areas where members of police staff do not feel that they have the same opportunities for development, for career progression, as their colleagues who are police officers have. You have highlighted very strongly for progression as well as – it is not just about recruitment. There is no point improving percentages in terms of recruitment if we are only deferring dissatisfaction through not ensuring that people have every opportunity to progress as well. There is a lot of American experience in that, where police forces and other public bodies have, on the face of it, statistically made great progress in recruiting only to find that opportunities were not provided to attend training courses, to be appointed to specialist branches, to achieve promotion, so it is very important. I think there was a lot of work done, and a lot of it centred in the Met under the title of "Dismantling barriers", and we now have a specific action plan nationally entitled "Breaking through", which is an action plan for the service at large, including, of course, the Metropolitan Police Service, to address recruitment, retention and progression. I think it is very important that those three aspects are considered as all part of the whole. Miss Weekes: When can we expect your report? A. June. Miss Weekes: Thank you very much for your help. Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed, Sir Ronnie. I will now pass to you Sir Anthony, a voice that I am sure you have heard many times in the past. Questions by Sir Anthony Burden Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you. Sir Ronnie, can I just ask you about Hendon and your comments about Hendon? You refer to very high wastage rates, and it is very commendable that the Metropolitan Police are recruiting so many officers, but your report indicates that currently the wastage rate from Hendon, that is young recruits who are resigning whilst at Hendon, is 11.79 per cent and minority ethnic officers, 13.17 per cent. Firstly, if we can just put this into perspective. You comment that this is significantly above the provincial average. Is there a provincial average figure available, to your knowledge? A. I tried to get that today before I arrived. I do not have that to hand but it will be available to you within days. The Met is the only Police Service with its own training. Sir Anthony Burden: With its own training centre, absolutely, yes. But from your personal experience and mine, I would suggest wastage rates from provincial centres are in the low single figures. A. That is right. Sir Anthony Burden: So the gap is, as you say, quite significant. A. I have to stress, those figures were figures at the time. We have gone through periods where the figures have been worse than that and where the disparity between the Met and the provinces I would say would be even greater at that time. Sir William Morris: That is interesting. From your inspection and your visit to Hendon, are you able to put forward any reasons for this high wastage rate? A. I can give one reason, which is ironic to a degree, and it was in relation to the Met's commendable desire to make recruitment easier. For example, in the initial test – PIRT, as it is called, initial probationary test for acceptance – the Met, for a period, created a category of people worthy of further consideration, who had, I think, scored 168 and above, rather than the usual pass mark of 180. Their thinking was, "We have these folks for quite a long period in training, and any shortcomings that they exhibit, provided we are satisfied, they can hopefully be made up during training". They produced figures for me whereby, in terms of colleagues from visible minority ethnic groups, they were in a higher proportion in this particular category, and therefore, when they came in to Hendon, sadly, quite a proportion of them did not actually make it through until they either left or failed. Those figures include both those who leave and those who fail. So that for a period – ironically, it was an attempt to address a problem, not only in relation to race by any means, but to those who had a strong desire to be police officers but who were just falling below the normally acceptable mark. It happened that there was a much higher proportion of such candidates who were from visible minority ethnic groups. That accounted for that for a period. That process has been discontinued. I think, bearing in mind what I said earlier, it is important not only to improve recruitment figures, but to ensure that we also maintain that through retention and opportunities to progress. I think it is important that initiatives that were perhaps attempted in the best faith are properly valued and altered or abandoned when it is appropriate to do that. So that was one of the reasons that we encountered during that period. Sir Anthony Burden: Can I ask you some specific questions on that, please? Is there any suggestion that recruits, or some of the recruits that left Hendon and resigned from the service, they did so because of the way they were treated? A. I have no doubt that that featured, and therefore what is very important in that context is very rigorous exit interviews, if you like, and that is one of the things we suggested that they must be sure they have got that in place, and in place in a way that identified problems that people have encountered and then addresses those problems that people encountered. I have no doubt that what you have described played a part. What I cannot do is quantify that. Sir Anthony Burden: No, I appreciate that. Having gone there and done a thorough inspection, along the same lines, then, about the treatment of officers, is there anything about the culture of Hendon which concerned you? A. I think – and it is not just about Hendon. I think there are very valuable, let us call them, experiments at this stage going on in the service generally. You have seen an example in Lancashire, and the Met have seen this as well, non-residential training courses, whereby the thrust is to give people the opportunity to train as police officers in their own communities and in their own environment. So I think there is always a risk, and I would not particularise this to Hendon, but in terms of the policing culture where people are in there and living together and only going home at weekends, there is always a risk of inappropriate cultures developing. Sir Anthony Burden: Inappropriate cultures? A. Inappropriate. There is always that risk. I think we have to be constantly on guard against that. The early feedback from some of these pilot schemes going on – I mentioned one in Lancashire – is very positive. Sir Anthony Burden: Can I just follow that up? You have given some very frank answers there. Is there anything that suggests that young recruits from visible ethnic minority backgrounds were treated badly? A. I certainly would not rule that out in isolated cases, but I would not say it was a thorough ongoing culture. We have seen the reprehensible examples in other training centres of recent date, and I think that was a very important wake-up call for the service. I cannot point to any evidence of that at Hendon, and it would be wrong for me to suggest that, but equally, I think none of us can be complacent and say, "Oh, that does not happen". Clearly we saw very vivid evidence of that happening, and what is important is that we learn the lesson – we were having that held up in front of us – and make sure it is eliminated. Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you for that. It is obviously something that we intend to pursue further. Can I move on to professional standards and your inspection around that area? What is your view about the staffing levels of the professional standards directorate in terms of the number of people doing that job? Are they adequate to deal with the volume that is expected? A. The volume has been increasing in terms of complaints, yes, that is very much to be welcomed. So therefore I think, at present levels, both of internal aspects that have to be addressed and the complaints from members of the public, I think probably the numbers of officers are adequate at the moment. Sir Anthony Burden: They are. A. Again, I go back to the scale, the size of the Metropolitan Police Service as an organisation, therefore it is something of an order not experienced in other forces. That is the difficulty. You will see spaced throughout the report reference to "most similar forces", and the Inspectorate tries to plan forces in ways that comparisons are meaningful. It is very difficult to do that with the Metropolitan Police Service. We have had discussions, should they actually be compared with other capital cities. It is more appropriate to compare policing in London with policing in Paris or New York. We certainly have West Midlands and Greater Manchester, but nothing quite comes close to the scale of the Metropolitan Police. So comparisons are difficult but not impossible. Sir Anthony Burden: You comment that there is some concern about the lack of police training. That is interview technique training, I think, for officers undertaking internal investigations. Obviously these are sensitive investigations. Are you happy that the quality of the officers undertaking the investigations and the training they are getting is adequate to do this very sensitive job? A. Well, I pointed out that – I think it is planning and preparation, I think it is engagement. It is a nationally accepted model for how an interview should be conducted in a very structured way. There is the proper planning and preparation for it in advance. There is the engagement and explanation to the person being interviewed. There is the account that it is important to accurately get. There is then a proper way of bringing about closure, and there is finally a valuation. I think that is the new mnemonic that PEACE(?) stands for. We did identify that not all officers engaged in this important piece of work had been trained in that model and that is why it is pointed out in the report. Sir Anthony Burden: But in all other aspects of training and the quality of the officers doing the work, you have got no concerns there? A. No, we found that quality to be very high. There comes the question we discussed earlier of proportionality, and it is crucial in any ongoing investigation to review that question of proportionality on a regular basis, and what might have been proportional last week may – either on the absence of evidence that they expected to get or the receipt of evidence that is new evidence – might cause you to alter that. I think the risk is that once we go through this formal process, the risk is that it is almost like a non-return valve. I think we have to constantly keep it under review to make sure that proportionality is maintained. Sir Anthony Burden: You refer in the report to concerns over timeliness of complaint investigations. The average time taken to complete an investigation has gone up from 112 days in 1998/99 to 166 days in 2001/2002. Obviously that is of concern. A. back down to about 121. Obviously jumping up to 160 was unacceptable. I go back to the pressures that the officers complained of, I go back to the attitude of the complainant. It is just undue delays is unacceptable. Sir Anthony Burden: Was a reason put forward to you for the increase in delays? A. I think at that time it was a question of volume at that particular time. The volume had increased. Hopefully we can maintain that decrease in volume. Sir Anthony Burden: Can I just take you back to an issue right at the very start? You spoke about defensiveness in the way that people responded to complaints and the fact that they moved to the formal process, as opposed to trying to resolve it informally. That is very much the theme that we heard concerns the Commissioner this morning. And also from another submission we have had – you will excuse me if I paraphrase it; I will not read it out entirely – what it says, in simple terms, is exactly what you have said: that because of concerns over counter-allegations, in relation to minority ethnic staff, that supervisors are reluctant to supervise because of fear of an allegation that they are being racist by doing so. Therefore, rather than challenging minor misconduct, they let it go until it just builds up and builds up and builds up, and it results in a formal disciplinary investigation. The Metropolitan Police Authority refer to it in their submission as the Metropolitan Police being a "pressure cooker waiting for things to blow". Just taking that one step on – and I welcome your views, please, as to whether you came across any evidence of this. My concerns about that are around the organisational discrimination that that might create because all of us have transgressed at some time and we need to be put back on the rails, and if we were, then we went on and had successes in our careers. If that is not challenged and an officer does not have a chance to put things right, then that might well impact on that individual's ability to get promoted later on, or to get appointed to a specialist department. So it is a big issue in itself, but leads to an even bigger issue of discrimination. You have sat down with focus groups that obviously contain black and Asian officers, officers from minority ethnic backgrounds. Was this something that is of real concern to officers, that they see this happening, that they see a lack of bite at junior supervision levels of getting to grips with issues and maybe having the skills and just the confidence to do that? A. Those are the sorts of things that did crop up from time to time in focus groups. I honestly do not recognise the quote. I do not know from where it comes. Sir Anthony Burden: It is a submission we have. It is not yours. A. But I can see it. You said can I give you hard evidence. I cannot give you instances but certainly in focus groups of officers that feeling did come through. I almost relate it to what I said about people engaged in quite proper tribunal lectures, who then are successful in that and who are then treated totally differently. The people treating them differently are trying to protect themselves but they do not realise that, in treating people differently, that is not respect for individual dignity. Even if it is subconscious, it is the opposite. I could not agree more with what you said. Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you very much indeed. Sir William Morris: Thank you. Sir Ronnie, we are nearly at the end of your very helpful contribution to our Inquiry. But before we conclude, could I just put one last burning question that I have to you? Are there any national figures in respect of the unit cost for training a police officer up to the point when he or she goes onto the probationary stage? A. I think those are available from Centrex. I can arrange to have those provided. Sir William Morris: That would be very helpful. A. I think there is also unit cost available for recruitment, for example. I will certainly take steps to do that. Sir William Morris: Thank you so much for the answers, but thank you overall for your contribution to our Inquiry. We have finished the questions that we wanted to ask you, but you will recall in my opening comment, Sir Ronnie, I said we would offer you and all our witnesses an opportunity for a brief closing comment. If you do have such a comment, then I invite you to make it now. A. Thank you very much, gentlemen. The only thing that occurs is that I would like to say how important I think this work is that you are engaged in, and while it is a piece of work commissioned by the Metropolitan Police Authority, and while the recommendations will relate to the Metropolitan Police Service, I would like to say that I would see them as of national importance. It has been my commitment to staff associations in the Met that any recommendations flowing from your work that have national importance, I would say that it was my responsibility to refer it to the Home Secretary to see that they have national application and not just application to the Metropolitan Police Service. Sir William Morris: Thank you very much. That is very generous and we really do appreciate your contribution. Can I just say a final word. As with all our witnesses, it may be necessary once we have listened to the initial contribution that we may want to explore a few more questions, either in writing or by invitation back. If we find a need to do that, Sir Ronnie, we will try to do our best to do so in a way that causes the least inconvenience to yourself or indeed anybody else. But for the moment, on behalf of the panel, I just want to take the opportunity to say a final thank you for your help and your contribution to our Inquiry. A. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Sir William Morris: Could I ask the members of the public please to remain seated while the witness and ourselves will leave the room. If you co-operate with that, we will very much appreciate it. Thank you. 4.15 pm The Inquiry adjourned until 10.30 am on Thursday, 19th February 2004 Internal links On this website: Evidence: Sir Ronnie Flanagan Evidence provided by and documents referred to by Sir Ronnie Flanagan in his appearance at the Inquiry.