Transcript of public session: Commander S Allen, Diversity Directorate, MPS

Thursday, 19 February 2004
2.00 pm

Sir William Morris: Good afternoon to you, Mr Allen. Welcome to the Inquiry. Can I start by saying thank you very much indeed for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry this afternoon and to give us evidence. Of course, we thank you for letting us have your written submission, which we have found extremely helpful.

I do appreciate that for some of our witnesses, perhaps not your good self, but some of our witnesses sometimes may find the process and the nature of our proceedings a little bit daunting, so I thought it would be helpful if I very briefly set out how we intend to proceed with the hearing this afternoon.

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 post I held for some 12 years. As you can see, there are two other members of the panel. First, on my right is Sir Anthony Burden who recently retired as Chief Constable of the South Wales Constabulary after a very long and distinguished career in the Police Service. On my left is Anesta Weekes QC, who is an eminent barrister and sits as a recorder and a part-time chair person of the employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry.

Mr Allen, as you know, we have been tasked by the Metropolitan Police Authority to conduct an independent Inquiry into professional standards and employment matters in the Metropolitan Police Service. Let me emphasise that 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 or character.

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

To help us, we are very keen to hear from all our witnesses not just what is wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service but what is right with it, but most importantly, your suggestions in putting it right if you think there is anything wrong.

Let me say to you that a transcript is being taken so that we can have a proper record of the evidence given by all our witnesses. This will be posted on our website later today.

At the end of these introductory remarks I will lead on the questions to you, followed by my colleagues. First Miss Weekes will ask you questions, to be followed by Sir Anthony Burden, and then 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.

In your written submission, which will be posted on the Inquiry's website following today's evidence, you have set out the following information. First, what the Diversity Directorate does and its current responsibilities. Next is operational changes such as critical incident management. And you have talked about the communication of diversity message within the MPS. You have talked about the diversity and organisation of improvement team and the development of the various initiatives; the governance and policy development; working with human relations and, of course, employment tribunals.

We would like to ask you some questions about the material in your submission and seek your views on a range of matters that are of interest to us. But first, and before we raise these issues, we believe that it would be helpful for the benefit of the transcript if you would introduce yourself formally to the Inquiry.

A. Yes. Members of the panel, I am Commander Steve Allen. I have the privilege of heading the Metropolitan Police Diversity Directorate and I joined the Metropolitan Police a week next Monday. Sorry, a year next Monday. It feels like a week.

Questions by Sir William Morris

Sir William Morris: How time flies.

You have the responsibility of leading the Diversity Directorate in the Metropolitan Police Service. But, of course, diversity is a very wide theme. It can mean different things to different people. It would be helpful if we could invite you to define your understanding of the term diversity.

A. Well, I think there are several layers to it, sir. I think for me, though, it starts with individual people, and, in a sense, it lets us into a bit of history about where the Police Service has come with diversity and a kind of early understanding about putting people into categories and believing that if we taught people how to treat people who fitted into certain categories then everything would be all right, and an emerging understanding over the years that life is a lot more complex than that.

For me, fundamentally, I suppose, diversity is about where is truth, where is reality. The lessons of my life are that I, and I am sure many others, grow up believing that we are the holders of wisdom and truth, and that those around us are closer and further away from the truth depending on the extent to which they agree with us. What I have learnt over the years is that, of course, truth is somewhere in the middle of all of us, and that I only have a partial grasp on it, and that if I am going to find where that lies then I need to rely entirely on other people to help me along that path.

So diversity for me is about enriching our understanding of the world. In a policing context it is about delivering operational policing in a way that delivers safe and confident communities, communities who believe they are – and are – part of the processes by which that community becomes safer and more confident, and, I suppose, the word at the base of it all for me is respect.

Sir William Morris: I note, and you have indicated, the time you have spent so far with the Metropolitan Police Service. You had some career time in Avon and Somerset; yes?

A. Yes, sir.

Sir William Morris: Have they got a diversity policy in Avon and Somerset, that service?

A. Yes, they have a diversity strategy, a small unit at the centre. But of course that unit is a tenth of the size of the Met so everything is scaled down accordingly, apart from the commitment.

Sir William Morris: Yes, of course. Can you share with us the sort of experience qualitatively, because you have identified the quantitative difference between Avon and Somerset and the Metropolitan Police. Could you share with us the experience of implementation, how that impacts, that particular Police Service, to the Met. Because geographically, in terms of the terrain, they are different, there are some differences.

A. There are some differences geographically. I think you cannot step away from the differences in size as being fundamental to the whole question of implementation and outcome. In Avon and Somerset, it strikes me now, having spent a year here, that change was not easy to deliver. It was easier, because lines of communication were very much shorter, much more of the business of the constabulary was done between people who knew each other and had professional relationships.

So, for example, I would guess that anyone of chief inspector rank or above I would have known right across the constabulary. Clearly, in the Metropolitan Police, that is far from being the case. I think that had an important impact on the ability to deliver change because, in a sense, you were dealing through people and not through bureaucratic processes. I think that the very scale of the Metropolitan Police puts pressure on for delivery mechanisms to become very bureaucratic.

In terms of the comparison in what has been achieved, one of the reasons I wanted to come to the Metropolitan Police was about complexity and the size of the challenge, and also I think many of us who served in forces outside the Met watched the Metropolitan Police, if you like, from the sidelines through the pages of the Police Review and through the television, and it just struck me that the enormity of the challenges here probably for me personally would move me on in my career, and personally, in a way that probably going nowhere else did.

Having arrived here, I look at the difficulties of delivering change to the organisation and I look at some of the aspects of the culture and I actually marvel at what the Met has achieved over a period of four or five years. Of course, my judgment about that is not based on having been here four or five years ago, but in the post that I am currently performing, my reinvestigation teams bring me into contact with the way in which the Metropolitan Police operated five years ago, 20 years ago, so, for example, the New Cross fire investigation, the investigation into the death of Michael Menson. So I have the opportunity to go through significant numbers of papers and get a real feel for the way in which the Met operated then.

I have to say that some of the things that the Met has achieved are certainly new to me in terms of the professionalism and the structures and processes, particularly around critical incidents, I think. And I would say that they are in advance of some of the developments in Avon and Somerset.

I think the particular subject matter of this Inquiry, sir, around relationships inside the organisation, I would say that things were probably more advanced in Avon and Somerset, and it has been one of the fascinating parts of the experience of moving, to begin to understand some of the internal dynamics of the Metropolitan Police.

Sir William Morris: I want to explore the difference a little bit further with you, because whilst there are a number of common sorts of situations, crime is crime wherever it is committed, London or Bristol or Bath or wherever, of course that is a fact. So there are many commonalities, but there are some differences as well, the profile. When I go to the West Country I drive through swathes of rural England, a different profile in terms of the make-up, particularly when you move out of the urban centres.

What I am seeking to explore is a different profile altogether: whether in pursuing and implementing a diversity policy there were any adjustments for the new environment of the Met as compared with the environment of Avon and Somerset?

A. I am not sure that I can say there were, perhaps for two reasons. One is that my delivery of diversity in Avon and Somerset was from the role of a divisional commander or a head of operations on the Central Bristol division, and I guess in the role that I have now it is the first time – I have kind of entered the world of diversity professionals, and so there are, of course, differences because of that difference in role.

I think you pointed to a couple of things, sir, that are clearly impactive, the first being the profile of the Metropolitan Police, and I very much doubt that if I had got a job in Sussex that I would have had the opportunity to sit in front of a panel such as this and have the opportunity to talk about some of the things that are important to me. So I think the profile – I think the history of the Met, and where it has brought us in terms of relationships inside the organisation, is probably the single biggest adjustment that I have personally had to make, because, as I say, I think relationships inside the Met are different for a number of reasons to those that I have experienced over the years, and I think it has taken me and is taking me a time to understand the impact of the culture and the history of the Met on some of those relationship things.

Sir William Morris: Even external to the Met, the community you police is different – the profile of the community.

A. The profile of the community is very different. For me it depends where you start. So the profile of communities in London make it impossible to understand diversity as being about putting people in boxes and dealing with, you know, black people or Muslims or the elderly community. My kind of perceptual framework around diversity and around policing is that it begins with individual relationships and individual encounters, and, in a sense, whilst the complexity of London's communities means that it kind of becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, and perhaps the sophistication that we need from our staff is greater, I think that principle means that whether you are policing in Bristol or Midsomer Norton or London, if you see that the focus is about delivering positive outcomes from individual interactions then the thinking principles are pretty much the same.

Sir William Morris: The paradigm in the Met, in terms of communicating its cultural values, is that its integrity is not negotiable. And we are all signed up to that, I think.

Is diversity negotiable?

A. The easy answer is no, for a whole range of reasons. We will not, as an organisation, deliver the things that society expects from us, so we will not deliver reduced street crime; we will not deliver effective roads policing; we will not deliver counterterrorism; and we will not tackle antisocial behaviour effectively unless we manage diversity effectively. So unless the people who we work for have trust and confidence in us as an organisation to treat them with respect, to take seriously the information that we ask them to give us, to act professionally on it, to look after them when we are in trouble, to speak honestly and to deal with them in a way that demonstrates the integrity is non-negotiable; unless we achieve those things in our relationships with our communities we will not deliver sustainable operational success. And we will not have a organisation that is capable of delivering those relationships externally unless the organisation internally adheres to the same values and the same understanding, that the Metropolitan Police can only be effective if it is made up of people with the widest range of perspectives with the widest range of experience, because we deal with such a complex society, such a complex and enormous range of incidents and situations, that unless we have people in the organisation who have the experience, knowledge, expertise to help us develop the police response to those things, then we cannot be successful.

In the short-term is drives us into crisis management. So, for me, I do not see how diversity can even begin to be negotiable because it has to be the philosophical basis on which policing is organised and operates.

Sir William Morris: I am clear about the philosophical basis that you have outlined, and you have talked about the outcome, so it is leading somewhere, but what is the overriding factor here, the policy or the outcome?

A. Sorry, when you say the overriding factor?

Sir William Morris: What is important here, is it the policy of diversity or the outcome of the policy of diversity?

A. It has to be the outcome. I think it is again – I am sure we will come to it later, sir – it is for me one of the stages of development in the police that we have had a significant focus on, developing policy and strategy and action plans and initiatives, and yet still too many people on the receiving end of policing have negative encounters; still too many of our staff inside the organisation have negative experiences. Therefore, my conclusion is that there has to be something beyond policy and strategy and structure if we are really going to get to the heart of delivering an improved service.

Sir William Morris: I do not take any issue about your answer in terms of the outcome, but can you share with us, please, how do you measure the outcome in the Met of your diversity strategy and policy?

A. Currently there are a couple of key mechanisms. The first, I suppose, is performance measures around hate crime, where currently our detection rate runs at about 22 per cent. So there are those kind of operation performance measures. There are measures of public satisfaction from surveying; measures to do with levels of complaints and grievance, things like that; and there are also measures that in truth I am not sure take us very far, which are about the extent to which parts of the organisation have – it sounds rather cynical, but have filled in action plans around diversity, so the extent to which they can say, "You gave us a diversity strategy template and we have now completed it."

So a measure would be how many, for example, of our boroughs have completed their diversity strategy template.

One of the things that is work in progress in the directorate at the moment is to try and develop a performance regime around diversity that focuses, or tries to tease out how we can measure outcomes in terms of community confidence, in terms of staff confidence, and to try to bring together all the information that exists inside the organisation into one place so that we can begin to identify good and bad diversity performance. That does present quite a number of challenges, just because, as I say, of the kind of difficulties of getting into those qualitative indicators. But that work is on-going.

As a directorate, the direction that we believe we need to be going in is being able to identify those parts of the organisation where we can take our resources and our knowledge and our expertise into those boroughs and OCUs to work alongside staff and managers there to develop processes of culture and those kind of things, and because we cannot do everywhere at one time we need to kind of prioritise that. And so the prime reason for developing those indicators is to give us (a) understanding of where the key pivot points are in terms of our interventions, and also to give us a clearer understanding about what those interventions might need to be. So the meaningful indicators, I think, are still a work in progress.

Sir William Morris: My colleagues and myself have been exploring, looking at, intrigued by the whole concept of a structure here, which obviously has a diversity dimension. Let me just paint for you the picture that we have been looking at and you can tell me if I have got it wrong.

We see the Directorate for Professional Standards where it is, and within that there are employment tribunals. We then see the HR sort of directorate, if that is what it is, and it encompasses your new policy of fairness at work, and part of our terms of reference is about the workplace.

And then we see diversity standing in its glory, or isolation – I will leave you to choose. What we have not seen is the golden thread running through, because some of us would like a little bit more enlightenment as to how you can operate a fairness at work policy when the diversity is not an integral part of that policy. We need a lot of explanation.

So let me ask you, is it a client relationship that you operate internally from your directorate to the other directorates and units within the Met on the people issues? How does it happen?

A. An interesting set of questions. Okay. The directorate, in terms of HR processes, and particularly around fairness at work, recruitment, retention and progression – you will have seen from my written evidence, sir, that within the Diversity Directorate is a team headed by Denise Milani called "DOIT". That team originally, I believe, was part of HR under the auspices of the positive action team, and subsequently moved out into the Diversity Directorate.

In terms of how the relationship works, the "DOIT" team and their colleagues in HR actually do work very close together, and I know, although I could not give you the detail, that Denise was very involved in the development of fairness at work, is part and parcel of most of the relevant meetings in HR, and also attends – in the same way that HR come to the MPA's equal opportunities and diversity board, because they clearly have a input there, we also go to the MPA human resources committee to kind of make that link.

My personal view is that the links could be closer, and I have already alluded to my view that the directorate needs to become much more outward facing rather than a part of the organisation that delivers products, if you like, but we need to be integrated into the activity of the other main business areas. We have achieved it to some extent in the policing bits of the directorate with things like community safety units, family liaison and reinvestigation teams, but I am not convinced that we have achieved it as well as we might around some of the HR things, around professional standards.

What I would say is that we do have within the critical incidents structure, and when we are looking at internal critical incidents the directorate is invariably represented on gold groups, so command groups that manage those incidents. The directorate is, as I say, invariably part of those groups, so the perspective is put in there.

But it is an interesting discussion around the need to have a diversity directorate in an organisation where diversity is the organising philosophy. I see very much – I know the Commissioner shares the view – that the Diversity Directorate has to have as his strategic ambition not to exist. So there is active consideration at the moment, as we pull together a change of emphasis and a restructuring, there is active consideration at the moment about how and when we move functions that currently sit in the directorate into the kind of mainstream business areas of the organisation.

But, you know, in terms of the relationships that exist, our activity is, although it could be more so, our activity is very much linked into most other parts of the organisation.

Sir William Morris: Do you offer the services of your directorate on important decision-making issues, or do they come to you or do you go to them? Because, as I have said, we are looking for the joined up –

A. It will be a bit of both. I mean, in terms of the policy process, new policy comes through the directorate so that we can – you know, it is probably now overtaken by the policy clearing house process, but the directorate will still have an input, a very close input, into the impact assessment around policy.

Sir William Morris: Forgive me, do they send the documents to you to be diversity approved, or what?

A. There is a range of different approaches. One of the structures, which might be a helpful way of illustrating it – I have referred in my written evidence to the governance issues around the diversity board and the diversity forum. At a tier below the diversity forum there are what are called diversity work groups. We are just again realigning those from about eight or nine into four. Those work groups have a kind of portfolio for hate crime, for personnel, for operational delivery, and there is one at the moment specifically around disability. Those work groups are responsible for developing initiatives within their portfolios, and those work groups consist of people from a whole range of places across the organisation. So, for example, in operational delivery, territorial policing are very involved because much of that is around stop search. In personnel you would obviously expect, and there is, a significant input from HR, from the ET unit, again from across the organisation.

Those work groups have work programmes. They are performance managed – or they will be from the middle of March performance managed by me, so the chairs of those work groups will have a regular monthly meeting with me to talk about progress against the work programmes. The products from those groups, be they policy, they could be initiatives, they could be policing operations around domestic violence and things like that, so a range of different products will come from the work groups into the diversity forum for discussion and consultation and amending, maybe referring back to the work groups, and from there, depending on the nature of the particular issue, they will either then go on into implementation or they will then go up to the Deputy Commissioner's diversity strategy board where again they will be discussed, consulted, sent back for revision or progressed, then into the policy making structures of the organisation or wherever appropriate.

So that is one of the formal mechanisms in which the various parts of the organisation work together to develop policy and initiatives. And, in a sense, that is the rest of the organisation coming into our structures.

But then at the same time there are examples where we get into other people's structures, so developing around training, for example in the Met, where a formal structure is pretty much now in place where key parts of the organisation have training management boards that feed into the strategic training management board. So managing training demand across the organisation.

Rather than have a training board for diversity training, people from the directorate go and sit as part of those training management boards to ensure that the work of that board properly takes account of the diversity dimension. So that would be an example of us going into the organisation.

Another very practical operational one would be for example the community safety team where I have got about seven officers in the directorate who have responsibility for developing and implementing policy and practice around hate crime and domestic violence. Each of the 32 boroughs has a community safety unit which is made up – which should be made up of detectives who have the operational responsibility for those areas of activity.

Those units on the boroughs are owned by territorial policing; they are not owned by the Diversity Directorate. So the role of my team, as I say, is about developing approaches, developing policy, and then taking those out onto the boroughs and working with community safety units on boroughs. For example, we are implementing a new approach to domestic violence at the moment so my team are out with the pilot boroughs making sure that practice and policy and training and all the rest of it is put in place.

So that would be an example of us going out into the organisation, if you like, and there are formal examples of policy where the organisation comes into us. So it is a two-way process.

In my role as a commander, as the head of the Diversity Directorate, I see one of my responsibilities as about being proactive and looking for opportunities in the organisation where I as an individual, or we as a directorate, can actually go and have some impact.

Sir William Morris: What I am trying to explore is whether there are any programmes within the Met for, rather than people having to send their material up to the board or to your directorate or whatever to be diversity vetted or proofed or whatever, where is the programme on the confidence building for them to do it themselves?

A. Sir, if I have given you the impression that that does not happen elsewhere in the organisation then I have given you a misleading impression because it does increasingly. This is the heart in the debate about change in culture, is it not, that ultimately that should be done as a perfectly natural part of the processes, and I would say that there are some parts of the Metropolitan Police where that happens and other parts where it probably does not. Some parts of the organisation, for example specialist operations, have a diversity officer who takes ownership and drives diversity development within specialist operations. He is part of their staff; he is not part of my staff. I welcome that, encourage that, and would love every building in the Metropolitan Police to follow that model.

Sir William Morris: Is it mandatory in the policy makers or is it voluntary?

A. Well, it is now mandatory, of course, throughout the policy clearing house process. Again, in terms of answering the previous question, there are now – I think it is now 300 key policy developers in the organisation who have been trained in doing impact assessment around the development of new policy, because within the work book process that we are still developing and still learning about, the consultation and the impact assessment and the rest of it is all part and parcel of the process of putting a policy up through the system.

So we have provided training to around 300 people to enable them to do that. And we are now looking, with the MPA and with others from outside the organisation, at the quality of those impact assessments to see whether or not the training has actually delivered what we wanted it to deliver. I suspect that at the moment we are going to have to go back to it as we learn.

Sir William Morris: Just finally, what is the sanction for those within the organisation who do not buy into the policy; they have had their training, they have had everything, they have had counselling, they have had the benefit of your directorate, but at the end of the day they are still not fully subscribing or not subscribing to the diversity policy. What has happened to them?

A. They are still there, sir.

Sir William Morris: Sorry?

A. They are still there. It is not a way of avoiding your question, but the answer is they are – I suppose, if there are sanctions –

Sir William Morris: But if they were accountants you would not leave them there, would you? If their discipline was accounting, they are accountants, or the doctor or the nurse, you would not leave them there. So why do you leave them there if they are not performing?

A. This is an absolutely fundamental discussion. In terms of approach – I mean, I think the issue of sanction is actually quite difficult because where someone is overtly racist, where the evidence exists to put them through the discipline process and discipline them –

Sir William Morris: It is not just about race. It is not a race issue.

A. No, I understand. It was an illustrative example, sir.

Sir William Morris: It is what you are doing for disability, or gender or whatever.

A. Absolutely. I suppose what I am saying is that there are sanctions within the disciplinary process for obvious, for overt failure to live their professional lives by the principles of diversity, if you like. But what you are, I guess, alluding to are those people who do not believe it, do not want to know, and carry on their professional activity in a way that never crosses that line.

Sir William Morris: No, what I am alluding to is that I am a manager in the Met. I have a discipline – it may be a finance discipline or it may be within the context of a research discipline, whatever. I am a manager. I know the policy. If I fail, as a cost analysis it costs the Met some money because I am responsible for the contract, I expect whoever manages me within the structure to take some measures against me, either counseling or whatever. Or ultimately it might come to more severe sanctions.

What I do not understand is if diversity is non-negotiable, and if there are managers – I know they are police officers but they have got managerial responsibility, and we have had some interesting discussion here in the last 24 hours about that – but if they are managers, either managing resource or people, whatever, if they fail in other disciplines, there are routine help, support, sanctions ultimately. What I am getting at is that you can fail in the discipline from the diversity perspective but not too much happens to you?

A. I think what I am having slight difficulty with with the question, sir, is actually being able to see very clearly what you mean by if you fail in the diversity discipline.

Sir William Morris: Let me give you an example. I am in the personnel department. It is my job to draft the adverts that goes out, and it is also my job to ensure that all the publications which are broadly representative – that is a policy decision of somebody in the Met, that the advert goes to all so that we can recruit from a wider perspective because that is what we seek to build – but I say, "Well, I am not at all happy about this group, that group, whatever the group is so I have not sent the advert to that particular point. A very basic example because diversity starts from when you recruit to when people leave.

My manager counselled me. I have done it again, it is a written warning, and I am very clever so I did not send it out. I find imaginative ways of not doing it and it becomes very obvious.

What I have not understood is what happens to me when it is blatantly obvious that I am not practising the policy. I might be talking the policy but I am not practising the policy.

What I am saying to you is that my understanding was coming across, if I fail as a manager in the finance department or in research, something happens disciplinary-wise or corrective measures, either counselling or training or help or whatever, but ultimately if I continue to fail there is a sanction.

What I am trying to establish is why are the same routine steps not taken insofar as implementing the diversity policy right at the end of application?

A. Thank you for that clarity, sir. I think where the failure is a failure to carry out a specific task or a specific responsibility, then the position is quite clear, because then all the disciplinary processes that you have outlined, individual performance management processes, unsatisfactory performance procedures. All those things apply equally where a specific task or duty is failed to be done.

The territory I thought that you were asking me to comment on is the territory that I think is very, very much more difficult, which is about how we address not a failure to carry out a duty that is imposed or a task that is required, but it is how do we address the officer who does not speak to a member of the public in a way that is respectful and professional, that is hidden from supervision, that is not complained about because the member of the public has no confidence that the service will do anything about it?

For me, that is one side of the coin – I delve into a rather difficult metaphor here – that is one bit of the diversity agenda that presents the greatest challenges. That is where, I think, our thinking needs to be about positive intervention rather than addressing that kind of behaviour through sanction.

I very, very firmly hold the view that the Met, probably the Police Service, and probably most other organisations, have tended to present the diversity agenda as being about risk. We have said to our staff – and this is a huge generalisation, I accept that – but we have said to our staff over the years, "You must get this right because if you do not you will be in trouble." And so the perception framework around the diversity agenda becomes about risk and about personal vulnerability.

My belief is that we need to turn that round so that the diversity agenda becomes about opportunity: opportunity to be more professional; opportunity to lock up more robbers; opportunity to make people feel safer; opportunity to work in a better organisation where I feel more valued, and I am given the chance to make the contribution I know I can make.

And so I think the way through that is not to develop an increasingly complex regime of sanction and kind of oversight of people's behaviour, but it is about saying, "Okay, let us rework the way that we sell this; let us rework the way that we convince our people that this is good stuff", rather than saying, "Here is your diversity strategy, here is your street crime strategy, here is your health and safety strategy, and actually the one that is important this week is your street crime strategy because that is the one you are going to be asked about."

It is that whole thing which for me starts with the moment of encounter at 2 o'clock in the morning, as I always say, on Shepherd's Bush Green. That for me is where the debate about diversity begins, and I think that is where we have to get into changing behaviour and changing understanding about what we want from those encounters, and I do not think you achieve that by ratcheting up the level of sanction in relation to that kind of thing.

I think it is a fairly sophisticated mix because it is about being utterly and completely intolerant of sexist, racist, bullying, homophobic behaviour, and understanding that there is no place in the organisation for that, and making very clear statements in terms of the way that you treat people, so that when you say that and people behave in that way they do not walk away, if you like, with words of advice and management action. But at the same time, it is creating that space in the organisation for people to move from an understanding of diversity which is about fear and threat and moving into a place that is about opportunity, professionalism and about living in a better world and working in a better organisation.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Allen. Miss Weekes will be asking you some questions in a minute or so, but for the benefit of our stenographer we usually have a short break of about five minutes. Thank you very much.

2.55 pm
(A short break)
3.00 pm

Questions by Miss Weekes

Miss Weekes: Good afternoon, Commander Allen. Could I turn to a few more detailed questions on some of the policies and the agendas which are now in place, those policies and agendas which I think you arrived at and met within the Met. So you had a year, I think, to have what I might call an overview, certainly, and you have seen most of it now work in practice for the time that you have been at the Met. It may not be very long, but long enough for you to have a view of the effect of these policies.

Can I summarise, because I think it is important for the public to know what the Met has done, certainly since the Stephen Lawrence report. What you clearly have in place is a race equality scheme, and that is a race equality scheme which functions from 2002 to 2005. The diversity board which is chaired by the Deputy Commissioner oversees that; am I right?

A. That is right.

Miss Weekes: And that has been going since maybe slightly before 2002 but certainly for that length of time. Are you able to say, just as an overview, how well that is operating, the race equality scheme?

A. What is difficult for me is to give you a kind of before and after.

Miss Weekes: That is right, that is why I said in a way what is your present overview, because it would not be fair to ask about before because you were not there.

A. I think probably one of the key developments which I believe will make a significant difference is the development around the policy clearing house. I have stated my position from the outset that I do think the policy can only take us so far, and we alluded to that just before the break. But nevertheless the mechanisms by which we make policy are a really positive and a really fundamental way of ensuring that people throughout the organisation have to take account of diversity issues. And I think the way in which that process is emerging, and the very, very helpful contribution from people outside the organisation, the MPA, CRE, in developing particularly the impact assessment, I think that is where there is a real opportunity for people through the organisation to begin to understand the impact of the things that we say we are going to do.

Already that has opened the opportunity for dialogue about those things and has, I think, made – I detect that there are conversations and discussions that now go on around the formulation of policy that did not happen before. I do not say that we have got it cracked, and there is clearly a long, long way to go, but, you know, as I look at the particular contribution of the race equality scheme, that maybe would not have been put in place otherwise.

If you look at other elements around some of the specific duties, particularly in the HR world, I think many of the things that flow and can be tied back to the race equality scheme actually we would have been doing as part of the wider diversity strategy development anyway. So for me that bit around the policy development is fundamental to the way the organisation thinks.

If we look at the impact of some of those other elements around recruiting and around retention, again I have a view that fundamental, necessary, important as those things are, underneath all that lies the fact that the people to whom we are appealing to join the Metropolitan Police actually are capable of making their own decision based on rational criteria; and that however good the initiatives and the marketing and the rest of it, unless people see an organisation with a culture in which they feel they are going to be welcomed, valued and able to make their contribution, unless they see an organisation that delivers a service in a style and prioritised in a way that the people we work for want it to be, unless they see an organisation that they can be proud of being part of, then however good our leaflets and posters, people are not going to join the organisation.

So, again, I think it is an important part of the process coming out of the race equality scheme, but I still think it takes us back to the discussion about how do we create the organisation that people are going to want to join, want to be proud to be part of and want to stay in and progress through.

Miss Weekes: I am going to come back to that perhaps in a moment. Thank you for that.

Another important development, of course, is the Race Relations Amendment Act, which the Met has fully implemented in terms of ensuring that their practices and policies promote racial equality. I just wanted to add that because, in fairness, it is clear from the documents that we have read that that is the case.

A very big commitment is the diversity strategy action plan which the Commissioner has given his personal endorsement of. In fact within it is the Commissioner's personal diversity plan. Just looking at both those Acts, the Race Relations Act, the Amendment Act, or rather your race relations diversity strategy, the diversity strategy action plan, from what you have seen from your position at the moment, is this having an effect of improving the relationship between the white majority officers and the black ethnic minority officers? I appreciate that is a difficult question, but we ought to keep that in mind if we are to suggest recommendations for improvement in the workplace relationships.

A. I do not want to be repetitive so please stop me if I do.

Miss Weekes: I do not think I will stop you. I am rather keen to hear what you have to say.

A. I really do wonder whether an action plan is capable of delivering that which you ask me about. Where I say I do not want to get repetitive, I again bring the object of the question back to individual encounters, about the quality of those encounters, about the quality and style of leadership in the MPS.

In a sense, the relationship – whether it is possible to separate out and identify a relationship between black and minority officers and white officers, again, I do not suppose it is quite that simple. But if we assume for a minute that you can talk about that kind of relationship, then that relationship to me is shaped by the way in which the organisation responds in specific moments.

Clearly it is at the very heart of your deliberations, because I think that relationship, in the experience I have of the Metropolitan Police but also my time before, is that it is about the way the organisation responds when an individual is in trouble –

Miss Weekes: Can I interrupt just for a second because you have moved on to a very important point: how does it respond? One of the things that the Commissioner has said, and indeed Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, has said, is that there is still evidence of a fear of an uncomfortableness in dealing with issues like race or gender, and the reality is that most, but not all, most officers will have a white line manager if they happen to be from an ethnic minority background. It clearly is not good for a white line manager to feel uncomfortable, whatever the issue is, because there is a job to be done. Neither is it acceptable for the minority officer to feel in any sense that he or she is not being treated fairly.

So if you are right and the existence of these two very substantial pieces of policy of themselves do not create that improvement in the working relationship when something goes wrong, what is it that you think will do that?

A. It is about addressing the two things, it is fear and it is confidence. Again, I feel certain we are likely to touch on it at some point, but my recent experience in talking to individuals who have ended up involved in long-running employment tribunals and other forms of difficulty with the organisation is that my overwhelming – I have many overwhelming feelings, but one of the feelings that comes very clearly out of that is that had someone early on in the process said, "Let us sit down, tell me how you feel, tell me why you feel it", developed an adult conversation and an open conversation about the issues, we would never have ended up three years later sat in my offices in some of the appalling circumstances we have.

So the answer, because you asked me about how you actually do that, I think there is some short-term and there is some long-term. I think the short-term – well, no, they actually both need to be short-term. There is something about training, so the supervisors, first and second line managers, have some training in mediation, conflict management.

It goes back to our approach that you can see in a number of areas, that when we train we tend to – again, generalisation – we tend to train around the technical policy aspects of any given area of work. So if you go on a course – a day's course, a two days' course – which is about grievance handling, the bulk of that course will be about: this is the policy, these are the forms, these are the steps you must take, these are the time limits. Whereas actually, in my view, we need to take the focus off those things because people can learn those things by reading the policy and looking at the forms, but we need to equip our people with the skills to actually manage some of these difficult people issues.

The second bit, and the bit that I think, in my view, holds the key to this – it does not make it easy – is the leadership culture in the organisation, because leaders in the organisation have to give the people who are confronted with some of these difficult issues – we have to give our people permission to be creative, to be human, to step away from the constraints of policy and form by defining for them differently the outcomes that we want from them. As I say, my caveat is that these are huge generalisations.

But there is a sense in which the outcomes that the organisation has looked for have been about protecting the reputation and the purse of the organisation, and so we ask the question: can we defend this case? As opposed to: has this officer been treated fairly? Organisational activity then moves us down that path depending on the answer to that question.

Miss Weekes: How would you move to put into place the two suggestions which you have given: training and the leadership culture?

A. One of my most interesting and significant challenges just at this very moment is that the diversity training school, which is about 40 trainers who have spent the last three years delivering community and race relations training to the whole Met, have just, literally in the last couple of weeks, moved from the human resources directorate into the diversity directorate. We are now very much in active discussion with them, because we are trying to work out what it would look like to develop a training package which is around critical encounters. I have alluded to it quite a lot already. But this is about recognising that individual encounters, either of themselves or cumulatively, have a strategic impact on the confidence that our communities have in the Metropolitan Police.

So you can identify particular encounters. So stop search would be one, I guess; as a victim of crime would be one; when you telephone the police station. Certainly it would be when you first say to your sergeant, "Sergeant, I am not being treated fairly" or when a new member of staff joins the organisation. These are moments of encounter where the way in which we manage that encounter can have a significant and strategic difference to the organisation.

So on that understanding we are trying to develop a kind of training approach that starts with that moment of encounter, and starts by saying, "Have we ever defined the outcomes that we want from some of these encounters?" because my instinctive feeling and my experience will teach me that we do not. So in stop search, do we actually define for our officers what we want them to deliver? If we do not, they end up defining it for themselves. And so, for example, as a young officer my successful outcomes from the stop search were to either get an arrest or not to get a complaint, and if I achieved those things then that was success.

Miss Weekes: But keeping it within the realms of dealing with workplace conflicts.

A. I think the principle is that if we can define for the people who are going to have to manage those the outcomes that we want, which are about as quickly as possible returning to a position where we get maximum value out of the members of staff involved in their contribution to policing London, as opposed to an outcome which is keep yourself out of trouble and keep the organisation out of trouble, then you start to understand what inputs they need differently. You start to talk about conflict management training, about mediation training, about other mechanisms that allow them to deliver those outcomes.

As I say, we are currently working, and we are hoping that within about three months or so we can start delivering as part of the recruit diversity training a package which is about critical encounters and about managing operational and internal encounters. How we then develop the capacity to move that into supervisors I am not sure yet, but I am absolutely certain that it needs doing.

Miss Weekes: Is this the first training course of its kind, i.e. getting line managers to address conflict management?

A. I doubt it because it is nothing new in the world, but I mean –

Miss Weekes: I meant in the Met.

A. Well, in my knowledge, but bear in mind that is only 12 months' knowledge.

Miss Weekes: Yes.

You have touched upon recruits. Certainly in the diversity programme that I have referred to, the Metropolitan Police diversity action plan, there is reference to a five-day awareness programme for recruits. Are you aware of this?

A. Yes. I have a feeling – yes, it is three days and then two days. It is not five days all together. Yes, and that programme is now delivered by the trainers who are now part of the Diversity Directorate, which presents me with the wonderful opportunity every five weeks of going and speaking to 300 recruits –

Miss Weekes: This is at Hendon?

A. This is at Hendon, yes. Again, the kind of strategic long-term intention is that the diversity trainers will bring recruit trainers to a point where they are able to deliver that part of the programme themselves. But certainly around The Secret Policeman context and some of the pressures at the moment I think there is a sense of vulnerability, and so the specialist diversity trainers are currently delivering that. But, as I say, the plan is to ease them out of that.

Miss Weekes: How long has that been going for?

A. I do not know in that specific form, I am sorry.

Miss Weekes: Is it a good programme?

A. I have not yet had the opportunity to attend it so I do not know. I am sure it could be better, as they all could be.

Miss Weekes: Well, as you have not had first-hand knowledge I will not ask anything more on that.

One of the other things I wanted to ask was the role of the specialist representative groups, of which I think there are 13. They range from the Jewish Police Association, disability, Gay Police Association, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Italian, the Police Federation. I have not named them all, but those are some of them. Are you happy with the role of these representative groups in the diversity programme? Because of course it is a two way thing, is it not, diversity?

A. Yes.

Miss Weekes: Is there room for improvement?

A. Yes, I am sure there is. I think just the very fact that some of them I have a lot of contact with and I am familiar with the people involved and others I do not probably is an indicator that there is room for improvement in all sorts of ways.

Again, we go right back to the beginning and Sir Bill's question about differences between my previous constabulary and the Metropolitan Police. One of the things that I find most refreshing and most energising about being in the Metropolitan Police is the role that these organisations play. I found that to be at the same time immensely challenging myself, thinking of my role in the organisation. And at the same time as that to be incredibly supportive in terms of the agenda that we are trying to deliver.

They play for me a very unique role that independent advisory groups do not play, they play a different role, and one that my colleagues in the service, in terms of management processes, do not play. So what they have is a unique knowledge and experience and insight of policing, because they are people who work in the Police Service, and at the same time there is a confidence and expectation in the role which is about challenging the policy process, leadership, personality of the organisation, and I think a combination of those two things puts them in a very unique position.

Miss Weekes: Just one other area, and it relates to gender issues. Sir Herman Ouseley dealt with a review for the Metropolitan Police in 2000. It might be useful if we can bring up this quote so you can see it. It is Inquiry document 57, page 13. There will be a little pause before it comes up on your screen. I do not know whether you are familiar with the review that was conducted, led by him?

A. Yes.

Miss Weekes: You are, right. If we go down towards the bottom of that page, please. It is in the middle. Can you see the paragraph that begins, "The three strands of investigation"?

A. Yes.

Miss Weekes: I am going to start reading:

"Sex discrimination is another issue that requires much more investment. There are too few women officers in senior positions, and some very talented women staff have left the organisation during the period of this review because they believe that they have not been sufficiently valued and recognised by their employers. The MPS cannot afford to lose any talented staff and considerable attention should be given to gender prejudice and women's under-representation in senior positions."

It is important to note the date of that report; it was 2000, and it is some years since.

Is the issue of gender representation and equality still an issue within the Met?

A. Yes, and I suspect it will be an issue for a long time to come. I think much has been achieved. For example, there is now a deputy assistant commissioner, Carol Howlett, who is Sir John's chief of staff, who has a Met lead for issues relating to gender. There are certainly two women deputy assistant commissioners, off the top of my head, four women commanders. For the first time ever the head of the Special Branch has been a woman. So there is progress and you can track – although I do not have the figures in front of me, my HR colleagues will bring them – you can track –

Miss Weekes: Is that progress equal for black women police staff and black police officers?

A. The point I was coming to is that this issue is not restricted to gender; this issue operates across the diversity range. At this moment in time – I was in conversation with a number of women officers just last week precisely about the experience of being a woman in the Metropolitan Police, and there is some considerable feeling that the MPS has taken its eye away from gender issues because it has been driven so hard by the race agenda, and that in a sense because the representative organisations that do exist around women, their perception would be that because they have not been outspoken, because they have not been perhaps as radical, that the organisation has felt able to not pay so much attention to the messages that they are giving.

Here in 2004, there remain women in the organisation who feel undervalued, who feel unfairly discriminated against. But I would say that there are people from every part of the spectrum – there are white men in the organisation who feel undervalued. But I think the MPS does recognise the issue. Certainly the Deputy Commissioner would regard issues around sexual harassment, overt sexism and issues facing our women as being very much on the top of his agenda in terms of where the priorities sit around diversity.

There are more women in senior positions, not enough. There are more women coming through the force in terms of progression, but not enough. There are more women joining the organisation. So I think, again, the picture that probably sums up most of my evidence this afternoon is that much has been achieved, and there is a commitment and there is a desire to make things better, but there is also a recognition that we are by no means anywhere near the end of the path.

Miss Weekes: How would you wish to see women encouraged to have a louder voice and to be more proactive about their position?

A. I think one of the things that I can do, because to an extent I see my role as being about how I can use the power that I have to give others some power in the organisation, is to provide platforms for people to tell their stories and for the issues to be raised through the mechanisms that actually bring some pressure to bear on the Met.

So just as an illustrative example, from listening to the experiences of those women officers last week, we have now agreed the federation are going to take the lead on this.

Miss Weekes: Can I just ask, out of interest, who were the women that you spoke to?

A. They were women who had had experience as applicants in employment tribunals, if that makes sense.

Miss Weekes: Were they collective across the board? Were they from a representative group?

A. No, they were a very small group. It was a discussion that developed from somewhere completely different –

Miss Weekes: I understand.

A. – so the discussion was not for that purpose.

But as a consequence of that, and as a consequence of listening to the experiences, I have now given over the – which I think will be the March or the beginning of April meeting of the diversity forum, to a discussion and a debate and an exploration of issues affecting women in the Metropolitan Police.

Of course that forum consists of people from right across the organisation, so representatives from the various parts of the organisation, and also quite a strong representation from externally; so again, MPA, CRE, independent advisers, people like that. What I am hoping is that that provides us with an opportunity then to begin again to be raising the profile around the issues, because the product from that forum feeds into the strategic board, which I have already said is chaired by the Deputy Commissioner, and starts then to identify actions and disseminate actions downwards to the working groups.

The other thing that we are doing in restructuring the directorate is for the first time we are putting together a team inside the directorate who will have a specific responsibility for developing approaches around the retention, the progression and treatment of women both inside the organisation and the specific issues that relate to delivering policing services to over half the population. So there will be a team who have a very clear mandate around developing those responses.

Miss Weekes: Perhaps the last point. You are right in terms of the material we have in front of us that a good number of women are joining the police force, but retention and promotion is perhaps a difficulty. My recent reading of the 2003 statistics for the whole of police officers in England and Wales indicates that 63 per cent of women have police civilian staff roles. Why is that?

A. Why is it?

Miss Weekes: Why are they not joining the ranks of promotion up to superintendents and beyond?

A. Sorry, 63 per cent are constables?

Miss Weekes: Are police staff. 63 per cent of the civilian staff are women, as opposed to –

A. So the question is why are they not joining as police officers?

Miss Weekes: Yes. Perhaps there is not any particular reason; perhaps it is personal choice.

A. Well, I suspect there is a whole load of complexity that starts with the way that people bring up children, and the whole issue about expectations and about gender stereotyping from the very beginning of life through the education system, through opportunity, through, I guess, as seen probably from outside, still the very kind of male dominated macho culture of the Police Service, which may well –

Miss Weekes: Are there good conditions and provisions for women who have children to be sergeants and otherwise?

A. There absolutely are, yes. I think, again, my answer comes back to, yes, I think we have as good a range, as comprehensive a range of policies around career breaks, around part-time, all those things. We have the range of policy that will stand scrutiny against anyone.

But we come back to the kind of more difficult point about how do we move the culture forward so that women feel that they are valued, women are given the opportunities to progress through the organisation, and that women feel that the organisation wants them to progress through. I am not suggesting that the opposite of those things is the case at the moment, but I think there are clearly still themes within the organisational culture that are putting women off, or are preventing women. Because it may not be about their willingness, it might be about the willingness of the organisation to push them through.

Miss Weekes: Well, I hope we will hear from some women at some point in the Inquiry.

A. I am sure you will.

Miss Weekes: Thank you very much.

Sir William Morris: Thank you. Can I invite my colleague Sir Anthony Burden to put one or two questions.

Questions by Sir Anthony Burden

Sir Anthony Burden: Mr Allen, my major concern is helping you to make it happen, because it looks as though the right person is in the job because Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary says so in his report about to be published. Although the rank of the person in charge has been reduced from Deputy Assistant Commissioner to Commander:

"... the officer appointed has the requisite skills and abilities to perform this demanding role".

That congratulates you, if you did not know it, for the work you are doing.

I guess coming into the Met many would have said, "Well, what does he know about policing London, coming from a small provincial force like Avon and Somerset?" Let us just put it on record: you were a Divisional Commander in Bristol, which is a very diverse community, a very busy city, dealing with a lot of difficult problems.

A. I wish that were true. I was a Superintendent Operations in Bristol, sir. I had the privilege of being Divisional Commander down at Bath.

Sir Anthony Burden: Well, then you were even busier in Bristol as the guy in charge of operations.

Let us just put the problem in terms of perspective that the Metropolitan Police is dealing with here. Internally we have already heard that there is conflict. We have got minority ethnic officers and staff who have lost confidence and trust in the organisation to deal effectively with issues such as complaints and staffing issues, human resource issues. We have got their white colleagues, it would appear, who lack the confidence to be able to exercise supervision among minority ethnic officers, and that has been said. In fact, you make a similar reference in your submission but it has been said more strongly by the Commissioner and one of your colleagues, to such an extent that as opposed to dealing with minor issues they are allowed to bubble over and the police authority of the Metropolitan Police refers to the organisation as a "pressure cooker", allowing things just to simmer along until it finally blows. That is internally.

Externally, I guess I would not be wrong – please correct me if I am wrong – that if you are young, black and male you stand far more chance of being stopped in a stop search than if you are white. So looking at the picture, you have been given a tremendous task to undertake, and that is why I come back to the point I made earlier, and that is assisting you to make it happen.

How do we as a panel make recommendations that build some strength in around you to get to that sort of critical mass situation where it moves automatically and does not need all the time this inertia of pushing the agenda?

A. The simple answer for me, sir, is more resource around leadership development. I, as part of my responsibilities in the directorate, own the Commissioner's leadership programme, which is a week where the content is very much around mission, vision and values, valuing people; some of those kind of philosophical themes where we do have the opportunity to start talking to people about the fundamental relationship between diversity and operational success and start to put things in that context.

By the end of that week people are thinking differently, people are enthused, people are excited about the prospect of going back to work. I caution them when I close the course how they are going to feel by 10 o'clock on Monday morning. The sense is very often – the analogy is having a bath of cold water and trying to heat it up by pouring mugfuls of hot water into it. The only way that you end up kind of heating the cold water is by pouring enough hot water in as quickly as you can; quickly enough. My sense with leadership development, we run something like five or six courses during the year, with about 50 or 60 people on them. That is not sufficient to begin to create that critical mass.

My view is that I would like to see some recommendations around a fairly radically different approach to leadership development in the MPS, not to rely on developments that are going on nationally because I am not sure whether they will deliver what the Met needs; that is partly about capacity.

We have devoted for the last three years 40 or 50 people to delivering community and race relations training around the organisation. I think if we could take that level of resource, 40 or 50 people – and it probably would not even need that – and create a centre of excellence, an academy, call it what you like, which from the moment someone says, or the moment someone picks up an application form to be a sergeant that we pick that person up as an organisation and we start to shape them.

That is not about going on a course once every year, it is about a continual process of development, a continual process of enriching their skills, enriching their people skills, basing it on some academically credible evidence so that their activity is evidence based. And it is also about the other bit of it. The other bit has to be about not just giving the people those things but demanding that if they want the privilege of leadership in this fantastic organisation that they have to consistently demonstrate that they are leading in the way that we demand they lead, and that is about value-driven leadership.

And so there is a means by which people have to continually provide the evidence of the way in which they are leading. We do ask the people they lead how they are leading and what the impact is of that. We do ask communities what they think of their local sector sergeant, and if people are not delivering then they have to lose their certificate, or whatever it is, and we have to be honest with people.

I am sure I do not need to say it, but, you know, people will behave in the organisation in the way that – people want to be valued so they will behave in a way that attracts value from those who manage and lead them. Those who manage and lead think we are exactly what the Met needs and so we will promote people behind us who do things the way that we do things. And so we need to develop leadership approaches and leadership development in a way that means those things do not happen and in a way that develops leaders who we would want our people to emulate and people who are role models, and I do not think the current arrangements deliver that.

Current arrangements deliver superb operational leadership. It is one of the things that impresses me beyond anything about making the move up here; the ability to manage crisis, the ability to operate a complex external environment is quite remarkable. But the other bit of it is about the organisational behaviour where I think we need to focus, and, as I say, current processes and systems will not deliver what we need. I think it is a big commitment, it is a big ask in terms of investment, but I think, if we are going to change the organisation, then I think we have to confront that.

Sir Anthony Burden: Is that message that sets the values for the organisation coming often enough and consistently enough from the senior management team?

A. One of the other dynamics, as a consequence of the size of the Met, it is almost impossible to talk of the Met as one homogenous organisation where if you say that applies in Bromley it also applies somewhere up the other end. I think one of the most obvious things about the Commissioner is that he is a man who speaks frequently and loudly and unrepentantly about the values that he sees underpinning policing, and the Deputy Commissioner likewise, and I think those values are there. But it is such a long way from the Commissioner's office down to a parade room in Croydon that you have to have the confidence in what sits in between to be transmitting that and explaining it and understanding it as it passes down.

To put it in a diversity context, you start at the top of the organisation talking about the need to deliver all your policing service in a way that recognises the needs, the diversity, the aspirations and the vulnerabilities of the communities you work in, and by the time it arrives in a classroom at a training school, it can be: diversity is about do not say these four words, which is what we saw on The Secret Policeman. And so it is that transmission mechanism –

Sir Anthony Burden: So it becomes defensive: how to protect yourself, rather than a positive message?

A. We go back to threat not opportunity, yes.

Sir Anthony Burden: I would like more time to explore that with you but we have not got it. But I would welcome, Chairman, if there is an opportunity from you to submit something, Mr Allen, that suggests where you feel blockages are and where we need to recommend that attention needs to be paid within the organisation, to make sure that message is delivered from the Commissioner's office onto the streets; I know you need to think about that but I certainly would welcome that and I am sure my colleagues would.

Can I go on, then, and say, how do we take the heat out of all this so that people within the organisation do not feel threatened, they do not feel threatened to discuss issues, and it is a positive culture where they try and resolve conflict and do not get into this defensive mode all the time that appears to be the situation? Do you bang heads together or ... ?

A. No. Again, it is about the people who are there leading; it is about the tone they set, about the language they use, about the way that they are seen to treat people. And so what we might be pointing to here is an early piece of work about sergeants, first level civil staff.

What I cannot see my way through is what policy approach, or what structural change, or what initiatives or posters or leaflets are going to deliver that. I think this Inquiry actually has the potential to be a significant part of that process, because I think there is a huge amount of optimism around this process reflected back to me from the people I speak to, that here is a chance for people to share their experience with you, so this is how I see the Met, this is what it has been like for me. And certainly having heard some of the experiences that I have heard over the last two or three months, there are some moving and powerful accounts of what it is like to be in the Metropolitan Police that I am sure will be put your way.

There are some moving and powerful accounts that are entirely positive as well, of course. And so I think people's view is that this is an opportunity for us as an organisation to be open, to be frank with each other, and to arrive at some kind of consensus about what the way forward might look like. There are one or two signs in the organisation that that may happen.

Sir Anthony Burden: Can I just take you back so my understanding is correct. When you mentioned posters, leaflet, et cetera, are you suggesting that maybe not right across the Metropolitan Police but in some places the message has not got beyond that?

A. My observation over the last six months since I came into this role – and I obviously get to a lot of conferences, go to various organisations and talk to a lot of diversity people – my sense is that there is a tendency to believe that you deliver diversity through initiative and policy, that that is actually what the agenda is about and that is where it stops. You know, you talk to people about what they have achieved around diversity, and what they talk about is how many schemes they have got and how many of this form and the other form, without beginning to get into that business of quality encounters and people's confidence and that kind of stuff.

I am sure there are places in the MPS where maybe that is as far as it got, and without wishing to sound remotely defensive, there are organisations out there who are held up as best practice around diversity, where my untutored view to be that they have got no further than that at an organisational understanding level.

I think my point was, really, that this is more complex and more fundamental and more about individual human relationships and understanding outcomes differently than can be addressed by having an initiative or a marketing campaign, and we need to think beyond those things.

Sir Anthony Burden: Do you think there is sufficient buy-in from grass roots level and from representative organisations within the Metropolitan Police when policies are developed that actually means that there is a high level of common sense and a real chance that those policies are going to succeed, or is it top-down or expert-driven?

A. My general impression, again, would be that it is hugely variable, and it is hugely variable, I guess, also in terms of the input from different associations. So that you could, for example, see the contribution of the BPA across a whole range of policy development and a whole range of policy processes, but maybe with some of the other staff associations that would not be so visible, which is why, I think, I personally – I know that people in the associations and I know that the organisation, as represented in the Commissioner and the Deputy, regard the creation of the Samurai Network as being a hugely significant thing because that does, if you like, allow a progression in terms of people's input.

Again, comparison inside the Met and outside the Met, my view is that staff associations are probably embedded in decision-making processes in a way here that would not be so visible elsewhere.

Sir Anthony Burden: Can I finally just deal with a specific, if I may, and that is a concern raised by Sir Ronnie Flanagan in his HMI report during a recent inspection at Hendon. He comments on wastage rates at Hendon amongst recruits as being high: 11.79 per cent overall. But just as, if not more, worrying, with minority ethnic recruits the wastage rate is 13.17 per cent, which, I think, coming from your world and mine, in provincial recruitment centre terms, is astronomically high.

I suppose I should firstly ask you, before asking your opinion, whether in relation to the recruitment of minority ethnic officers and their training at Hendon, whether you have had any role or any understanding or any chance to have a look at –

A. No, that sits within the HR structure. We are just beginning to get into the beginning of that. The DOIT team are engaged in some joint work with the training estate to look at how we might provide different levels of support.

Sir Anthony Burden: Can I deal with it in general terms, then, because obviously the specific would be unfair to ask you.

Being in charge of your directorate, have you become aware of anything which would suggest to you that the wastage rate amongst recruits in general, and minority ethnic recruits specifically, is anything to do with the way they have been treated, or anything to do with the culture either at Hendon or the culture of the organisation?

A. The answer is yes. Again, my caveat is that no one who has had a positive experience at Hendon makes an appointment to come and see me to tell me about it, and therefore in terms of the numbers and proportions and the generality of the experience, it would be unfair of me to comment.

But certainly I have had conversations with a number of people who went through Hendon five years ago and some who have been through Hendon more recently than that, and their experiences have been difficult to hear because, undoubtedly, they have been subject to less favourable treatment than others; they have had to put up with the kind of insidious barroom comment.

One issue is that up until fairly recently I do not think that as an organisation we have recognised the degree of significant pressure that members of some communities come under from their family and friends when they take a decision to join the Police Service. We take them into the residential environment at Hendon, or any other training school, and – all the pressure about initial training is about conforming, is it not? It is about bringing people to a common point, if you like. And we have not recognised the particular pressures that some of our officers have been under, and we have not therefore supported them; we have not been sensitive to those particular issues. And it is no wonder that they find – you know, if they are under pressure from outside for joining the police and then they join the service and they feel under pressure from a predominant culture which does not appear to welcome their presence inside the service, then it is no wonder that they walk away.

Sir Anthony Burden: That atmosphere, that culture which does not welcome, as you say, and what has been said to you, is the basis of the problem either around sexist, racist behaviour or just peer bullying?

A. I will try and be careful, sir, that I think of specific examples before I answer your question.

Certainly racism and certainly bullying. But, as I say, there is a caveat here that is that Commander Steve Allen is not sitting here telling you what the experience of everyone who goes through Hendon is, because clearly I cannot. And I think, in a sense, the report, which I believe you will have sight of, that Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur has done, will allow a closer insight into the sort of generalities.

Sir Anthony Burden: There is an element in Mr Ghaffur's report dealing with it?

A. I understand that recruitment was part of that.

Sir Anthony Burden: You understand the importance of this, you quite obviously do. I mean, this is the gateway into the Metropolitan Police and here a culture is built. The cornerstones of a culture is actually developed, and if that is bad culture then it is merely perpetuating the problem.

A. Absolutely, which is why, without wishing to sound egotistical in any way, shape or form, why I think the opportunity that I now have to speak to recruits when they first join the organisation is a fundamentally important one, because it gives me the opportunity – I go back to the diversity is threat or opportunity discourse – it gives me an opportunity right from the outset to present a paradigm around diversity which might begin to move us forward.

Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you, you have been very frank with me. Can I ask you, please, where the issues around Hendon, where the responsibility lies? Where is that being pursued so that we can follow it up?

A. I think it is being very actively and proactively pursued in a number of places; I guess primarily within HR, where it properly sits.

Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you very much indeed.

A. Again, if I could just say that, if I have left any room for doubt about the determination of the Metropolitan Police both to recognise the issue and already some time ago to have begun addressing it in a very forthright and robust way, then I have failed in the completeness of my evidence.

Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you very much.

Sir William Morris: Commander Allen, that concludes the series of questions that my colleagues and I wanted to put to you. But you will recall that in my opening statement I said that I would offer you the opportunity for a brief closing comment, if you so wish. Should you wish to do so, this is your moment.

A. Sir, it feels like I have been talking for an awful long time.

For me the agenda is, I think, fairly straightforward in terms of defining it, not in terms of delivering it, and anything that this Inquiry can do that assists us as an organisation in this regard would be hugely welcomed by all of us, I am sure.

The key elements for us moving forward have to be the whole discussion around leadership, and fundamentally about joining the diversity agenda with the performance agenda, and, again, anything that the Inquiry can do around that so that not only do we deliver good street crime results week on week on week but that we deliver more confident, more trusting and more capability communities year on year.

Thank you very much for your time and patience.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much. I want to make a public point. First of all, Sir Anthony had indicated that the Inquiry would welcome any supplementary contribution which you are able to offer, and via the secretariat we will seek to follow that through.

That said, the formal comments that I want to make is just to indicate to you that, as with all our witnesses, it may be that once we have heard other witnesses that we may want to ask you a few more questions, either by writing to you or asking you to come back to one of our hearings. If we find a heed to do that, we will try and do so as best we can in order to minimise any inconvenience that that might cause to you.

But for the moment all that I have to say further is just on behalf of my colleagues and myself to thank you for your contribution to this Inquiry so far. Thank you.

A. Thank you.

Sir William Morris: Can I indicate to members of the public that it is my intention now to adjourn this Inquiry until 10.30 on Monday, 23rd February.

Can I ask you just to remain seated whilst Commander Allen, as a witness, and my colleagues and myself leave the room. Thank you very much.

4.05 pm
(The Inquiry adjourned until 10.30 am on Monday, 23rd February 2004)

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	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 Stephen Allen of the MPS Diversity Directorate on 19 February 2004. Sections available here: Transcript of public session: Commander S Allen, Diversity Directorate, MPS 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: Commander S Allen, Diversity Directorate, MPS Thursday, 19 February 2004 2.00 pm Sir William Morris: Good afternoon to you, Mr Allen. Welcome to the Inquiry. Can I start by saying thank you very much indeed for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry this afternoon and to give us evidence. Of course, we thank you for letting us have your written submission, which we have found extremely helpful. I do appreciate that for some of our witnesses, perhaps not your good self, but some of our witnesses sometimes may find the process and the nature of our proceedings a little bit daunting, so I thought it would be helpful if I very briefly set out how we intend to proceed with the hearing this afternoon. 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 post I held for some 12 years. As you can see, there are two other members of the panel. First, on my right is Sir Anthony Burden who recently retired as Chief Constable of the South Wales Constabulary after a very long and distinguished career in the Police Service. On my left is Anesta Weekes QC, who is an eminent barrister and sits as a recorder and a part-time chair person of the employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry. Mr Allen, as you know, we have been tasked by the Metropolitan Police Authority to conduct an independent Inquiry into professional standards and employment matters in the Metropolitan Police Service. Let me emphasise that 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 or character. We are very keen to enquire into the issues raised by our terms of reference so that we can make appropriate recommendations for further good practice rather than concentrating on making criticism of the MPS as an organisation or particular individuals within the MPS. To help us, we are very keen to hear from all our witnesses not just what is wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service but what is right with it, but most importantly, your suggestions in putting it right if you think there is anything wrong. Let me say to you that a transcript is being taken so that we can have a proper record of the evidence given by all our witnesses. This will be posted on our website later today. At the end of these introductory remarks I will lead on the questions to you, followed by my colleagues. First Miss Weekes will ask you questions, to be followed by Sir Anthony Burden, and then 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. In your written submission, which will be posted on the Inquiry's website following today's evidence, you have set out the following information. First, what the Diversity Directorate does and its current responsibilities. Next is operational changes such as critical incident management. And you have talked about the communication of diversity message within the MPS. You have talked about the diversity and organisation of improvement team and the development of the various initiatives; the governance and policy development; working with human relations and, of course, employment tribunals. We would like to ask you some questions about the material in your submission and seek your views on a range of matters that are of interest to us. But first, and before we raise these issues, we believe that it would be helpful for the benefit of the transcript if you would introduce yourself formally to the Inquiry. A. Yes. Members of the panel, I am Commander Steve Allen. I have the privilege of heading the Metropolitan Police Diversity Directorate and I joined the Metropolitan Police a week next Monday. Sorry, a year next Monday. It feels like a week. Questions by Sir William Morris Sir William Morris: How time flies. You have the responsibility of leading the Diversity Directorate in the Metropolitan Police Service. But, of course, diversity is a very wide theme. It can mean different things to different people. It would be helpful if we could invite you to define your understanding of the term diversity. A. Well, I think there are several layers to it, sir. I think for me, though, it starts with individual people, and, in a sense, it lets us into a bit of history about where the Police Service has come with diversity and a kind of early understanding about putting people into categories and believing that if we taught people how to treat people who fitted into certain categories then everything would be all right, and an emerging understanding over the years that life is a lot more complex than that. For me, fundamentally, I suppose, diversity is about where is truth, where is reality. The lessons of my life are that I, and I am sure many others, grow up believing that we are the holders of wisdom and truth, and that those around us are closer and further away from the truth depending on the extent to which they agree with us. What I have learnt over the years is that, of course, truth is somewhere in the middle of all of us, and that I only have a partial grasp on it, and that if I am going to find where that lies then I need to rely entirely on other people to help me along that path. So diversity for me is about enriching our understanding of the world. In a policing context it is about delivering operational policing in a way that delivers safe and confident communities, communities who believe they are – and are – part of the processes by which that community becomes safer and more confident, and, I suppose, the word at the base of it all for me is respect. Sir William Morris: I note, and you have indicated, the time you have spent so far with the Metropolitan Police Service. You had some career time in Avon and Somerset; yes? A. Yes, sir. Sir William Morris: Have they got a diversity policy in Avon and Somerset, that service? A. Yes, they have a diversity strategy, a small unit at the centre. But of course that unit is a tenth of the size of the Met so everything is scaled down accordingly, apart from the commitment. Sir William Morris: Yes, of course. Can you share with us the sort of experience qualitatively, because you have identified the quantitative difference between Avon and Somerset and the Metropolitan Police. Could you share with us the experience of implementation, how that impacts, that particular Police Service, to the Met. Because geographically, in terms of the terrain, they are different, there are some differences. A. There are some differences geographically. I think you cannot step away from the differences in size as being fundamental to the whole question of implementation and outcome. In Avon and Somerset, it strikes me now, having spent a year here, that change was not easy to deliver. It was easier, because lines of communication were very much shorter, much more of the business of the constabulary was done between people who knew each other and had professional relationships. So, for example, I would guess that anyone of chief inspector rank or above I would have known right across the constabulary. Clearly, in the Metropolitan Police, that is far from being the case. I think that had an important impact on the ability to deliver change because, in a sense, you were dealing through people and not through bureaucratic processes. I think that the very scale of the Metropolitan Police puts pressure on for delivery mechanisms to become very bureaucratic. In terms of the comparison in what has been achieved, one of the reasons I wanted to come to the Metropolitan Police was about complexity and the size of the challenge, and also I think many of us who served in forces outside the Met watched the Metropolitan Police, if you like, from the sidelines through the pages of the Police Review and through the television, and it just struck me that the enormity of the challenges here probably for me personally would move me on in my career, and personally, in a way that probably going nowhere else did. Having arrived here, I look at the difficulties of delivering change to the organisation and I look at some of the aspects of the culture and I actually marvel at what the Met has achieved over a period of four or five years. Of course, my judgment about that is not based on having been here four or five years ago, but in the post that I am currently performing, my reinvestigation teams bring me into contact with the way in which the Metropolitan Police operated five years ago, 20 years ago, so, for example, the New Cross fire investigation, the investigation into the death of Michael Menson. So I have the opportunity to go through significant numbers of papers and get a real feel for the way in which the Met operated then. I have to say that some of the things that the Met has achieved are certainly new to me in terms of the professionalism and the structures and processes, particularly around critical incidents, I think. And I would say that they are in advance of some of the developments in Avon and Somerset. I think the particular subject matter of this Inquiry, sir, around relationships inside the organisation, I would say that things were probably more advanced in Avon and Somerset, and it has been one of the fascinating parts of the experience of moving, to begin to understand some of the internal dynamics of the Metropolitan Police. Sir William Morris: I want to explore the difference a little bit further with you, because whilst there are a number of common sorts of situations, crime is crime wherever it is committed, London or Bristol or Bath or wherever, of course that is a fact. So there are many commonalities, but there are some differences as well, the profile. When I go to the West Country I drive through swathes of rural England, a different profile in terms of the make-up, particularly when you move out of the urban centres. What I am seeking to explore is a different profile altogether: whether in pursuing and implementing a diversity policy there were any adjustments for the new environment of the Met as compared with the environment of Avon and Somerset? A. I am not sure that I can say there were, perhaps for two reasons. One is that my delivery of diversity in Avon and Somerset was from the role of a divisional commander or a head of operations on the Central Bristol division, and I guess in the role that I have now it is the first time – I have kind of entered the world of diversity professionals, and so there are, of course, differences because of that difference in role. I think you pointed to a couple of things, sir, that are clearly impactive, the first being the profile of the Metropolitan Police, and I very much doubt that if I had got a job in Sussex that I would have had the opportunity to sit in front of a panel such as this and have the opportunity to talk about some of the things that are important to me. So I think the profile – I think the history of the Met, and where it has brought us in terms of relationships inside the organisation, is probably the single biggest adjustment that I have personally had to make, because, as I say, I think relationships inside the Met are different for a number of reasons to those that I have experienced over the years, and I think it has taken me and is taking me a time to understand the impact of the culture and the history of the Met on some of those relationship things. Sir William Morris: Even external to the Met, the community you police is different – the profile of the community. A. The profile of the community is very different. For me it depends where you start. So the profile of communities in London make it impossible to understand diversity as being about putting people in boxes and dealing with, you know, black people or Muslims or the elderly community. My kind of perceptual framework around diversity and around policing is that it begins with individual relationships and individual encounters, and, in a sense, whilst the complexity of London's communities means that it kind of becomes bigger and bigger and bigger, and perhaps the sophistication that we need from our staff is greater, I think that principle means that whether you are policing in Bristol or Midsomer Norton or London, if you see that the focus is about delivering positive outcomes from individual interactions then the thinking principles are pretty much the same. Sir William Morris: The paradigm in the Met, in terms of communicating its cultural values, is that its integrity is not negotiable. And we are all signed up to that, I think. Is diversity negotiable? A. The easy answer is no, for a whole range of reasons. We will not, as an organisation, deliver the things that society expects from us, so we will not deliver reduced street crime; we will not deliver effective roads policing; we will not deliver counterterrorism; and we will not tackle antisocial behaviour effectively unless we manage diversity effectively. So unless the people who we work for have trust and confidence in us as an organisation to treat them with respect, to take seriously the information that we ask them to give us, to act professionally on it, to look after them when we are in trouble, to speak honestly and to deal with them in a way that demonstrates the integrity is non-negotiable; unless we achieve those things in our relationships with our communities we will not deliver sustainable operational success. And we will not have a organisation that is capable of delivering those relationships externally unless the organisation internally adheres to the same values and the same understanding, that the Metropolitan Police can only be effective if it is made up of people with the widest range of perspectives with the widest range of experience, because we deal with such a complex society, such a complex and enormous range of incidents and situations, that unless we have people in the organisation who have the experience, knowledge, expertise to help us develop the police response to those things, then we cannot be successful. In the short-term is drives us into crisis management. So, for me, I do not see how diversity can even begin to be negotiable because it has to be the philosophical basis on which policing is organised and operates. Sir William Morris: I am clear about the philosophical basis that you have outlined, and you have talked about the outcome, so it is leading somewhere, but what is the overriding factor here, the policy or the outcome? A. Sorry, when you say the overriding factor? Sir William Morris: What is important here, is it the policy of diversity or the outcome of the policy of diversity? A. It has to be the outcome. I think it is again – I am sure we will come to it later, sir – it is for me one of the stages of development in the police that we have had a significant focus on, developing policy and strategy and action plans and initiatives, and yet still too many people on the receiving end of policing have negative encounters; still too many of our staff inside the organisation have negative experiences. Therefore, my conclusion is that there has to be something beyond policy and strategy and structure if we are really going to get to the heart of delivering an improved service. Sir William Morris: I do not take any issue about your answer in terms of the outcome, but can you share with us, please, how do you measure the outcome in the Met of your diversity strategy and policy? A. Currently there are a couple of key mechanisms. The first, I suppose, is performance measures around hate crime, where currently our detection rate runs at about 22 per cent. So there are those kind of operation performance measures. There are measures of public satisfaction from surveying; measures to do with levels of complaints and grievance, things like that; and there are also measures that in truth I am not sure take us very far, which are about the extent to which parts of the organisation have – it sounds rather cynical, but have filled in action plans around diversity, so the extent to which they can say, "You gave us a diversity strategy template and we have now completed it." So a measure would be how many, for example, of our boroughs have completed their diversity strategy template. One of the things that is work in progress in the directorate at the moment is to try and develop a performance regime around diversity that focuses, or tries to tease out how we can measure outcomes in terms of community confidence, in terms of staff confidence, and to try to bring together all the information that exists inside the organisation into one place so that we can begin to identify good and bad diversity performance. That does present quite a number of challenges, just because, as I say, of the kind of difficulties of getting into those qualitative indicators. But that work is on-going. As a directorate, the direction that we believe we need to be going in is being able to identify those parts of the organisation where we can take our resources and our knowledge and our expertise into those boroughs and OCUs to work alongside staff and managers there to develop processes of culture and those kind of things, and because we cannot do everywhere at one time we need to kind of prioritise that. And so the prime reason for developing those indicators is to give us (a) understanding of where the key pivot points are in terms of our interventions, and also to give us a clearer understanding about what those interventions might need to be. So the meaningful indicators, I think, are still a work in progress. Sir William Morris: My colleagues and myself have been exploring, looking at, intrigued by the whole concept of a structure here, which obviously has a diversity dimension. Let me just paint for you the picture that we have been looking at and you can tell me if I have got it wrong. We see the Directorate for Professional Standards where it is, and within that there are employment tribunals. We then see the HR sort of directorate, if that is what it is, and it encompasses your new policy of fairness at work, and part of our terms of reference is about the workplace. And then we see diversity standing in its glory, or isolation – I will leave you to choose. What we have not seen is the golden thread running through, because some of us would like a little bit more enlightenment as to how you can operate a fairness at work policy when the diversity is not an integral part of that policy. We need a lot of explanation. So let me ask you, is it a client relationship that you operate internally from your directorate to the other directorates and units within the Met on the people issues? How does it happen? A. An interesting set of questions. Okay. The directorate, in terms of HR processes, and particularly around fairness at work, recruitment, retention and progression – you will have seen from my written evidence, sir, that within the Diversity Directorate is a team headed by Denise Milani called "DOIT". That team originally, I believe, was part of HR under the auspices of the positive action team, and subsequently moved out into the Diversity Directorate. In terms of how the relationship works, the "DOIT" team and their colleagues in HR actually do work very close together, and I know, although I could not give you the detail, that Denise was very involved in the development of fairness at work, is part and parcel of most of the relevant meetings in HR, and also attends – in the same way that HR come to the MPA's equal opportunities and diversity board, because they clearly have a input there, we also go to the MPA human resources committee to kind of make that link. My personal view is that the links could be closer, and I have already alluded to my view that the directorate needs to become much more outward facing rather than a part of the organisation that delivers products, if you like, but we need to be integrated into the activity of the other main business areas. We have achieved it to some extent in the policing bits of the directorate with things like community safety units, family liaison and reinvestigation teams, but I am not convinced that we have achieved it as well as we might around some of the HR things, around professional standards. What I would say is that we do have within the critical incidents structure, and when we are looking at internal critical incidents the directorate is invariably represented on gold groups, so command groups that manage those incidents. The directorate is, as I say, invariably part of those groups, so the perspective is put in there. But it is an interesting discussion around the need to have a diversity directorate in an organisation where diversity is the organising philosophy. I see very much – I know the Commissioner shares the view – that the Diversity Directorate has to have as his strategic ambition not to exist. So there is active consideration at the moment, as we pull together a change of emphasis and a restructuring, there is active consideration at the moment about how and when we move functions that currently sit in the directorate into the kind of mainstream business areas of the organisation. But, you know, in terms of the relationships that exist, our activity is, although it could be more so, our activity is very much linked into most other parts of the organisation. Sir William Morris: Do you offer the services of your directorate on important decision-making issues, or do they come to you or do you go to them? Because, as I have said, we are looking for the joined up – A. It will be a bit of both. I mean, in terms of the policy process, new policy comes through the directorate so that we can – you know, it is probably now overtaken by the policy clearing house process, but the directorate will still have an input, a very close input, into the impact assessment around policy. Sir William Morris: Forgive me, do they send the documents to you to be diversity approved, or what? A. There is a range of different approaches. One of the structures, which might be a helpful way of illustrating it – I have referred in my written evidence to the governance issues around the diversity board and the diversity forum. At a tier below the diversity forum there are what are called diversity work groups. We are just again realigning those from about eight or nine into four. Those work groups have a kind of portfolio for hate crime, for personnel, for operational delivery, and there is one at the moment specifically around disability. Those work groups are responsible for developing initiatives within their portfolios, and those work groups consist of people from a whole range of places across the organisation. So, for example, in operational delivery, territorial policing are very involved because much of that is around stop search. In personnel you would obviously expect, and there is, a significant input from HR, from the ET unit, again from across the organisation. Those work groups have work programmes. They are performance managed – or they will be from the middle of March performance managed by me, so the chairs of those work groups will have a regular monthly meeting with me to talk about progress against the work programmes. The products from those groups, be they policy, they could be initiatives, they could be policing operations around domestic violence and things like that, so a range of different products will come from the work groups into the diversity forum for discussion and consultation and amending, maybe referring back to the work groups, and from there, depending on the nature of the particular issue, they will either then go on into implementation or they will then go up to the Deputy Commissioner's diversity strategy board where again they will be discussed, consulted, sent back for revision or progressed, then into the policy making structures of the organisation or wherever appropriate. So that is one of the formal mechanisms in which the various parts of the organisation work together to develop policy and initiatives. And, in a sense, that is the rest of the organisation coming into our structures. But then at the same time there are examples where we get into other people's structures, so developing around training, for example in the Met, where a formal structure is pretty much now in place where key parts of the organisation have training management boards that feed into the strategic training management board. So managing training demand across the organisation. Rather than have a training board for diversity training, people from the directorate go and sit as part of those training management boards to ensure that the work of that board properly takes account of the diversity dimension. So that would be an example of us going into the organisation. Another very practical operational one would be for example the community safety team where I have got about seven officers in the directorate who have responsibility for developing and implementing policy and practice around hate crime and domestic violence. Each of the 32 boroughs has a community safety unit which is made up – which should be made up of detectives who have the operational responsibility for those areas of activity. Those units on the boroughs are owned by territorial policing; they are not owned by the Diversity Directorate. So the role of my team, as I say, is about developing approaches, developing policy, and then taking those out onto the boroughs and working with community safety units on boroughs. For example, we are implementing a new approach to domestic violence at the moment so my team are out with the pilot boroughs making sure that practice and policy and training and all the rest of it is put in place. So that would be an example of us going out into the organisation, if you like, and there are formal examples of policy where the organisation comes into us. So it is a two-way process. In my role as a commander, as the head of the Diversity Directorate, I see one of my responsibilities as about being proactive and looking for opportunities in the organisation where I as an individual, or we as a directorate, can actually go and have some impact. Sir William Morris: What I am trying to explore is whether there are any programmes within the Met for, rather than people having to send their material up to the board or to your directorate or whatever to be diversity vetted or proofed or whatever, where is the programme on the confidence building for them to do it themselves? A. Sir, if I have given you the impression that that does not happen elsewhere in the organisation then I have given you a misleading impression because it does increasingly. This is the heart in the debate about change in culture, is it not, that ultimately that should be done as a perfectly natural part of the processes, and I would say that there are some parts of the Metropolitan Police where that happens and other parts where it probably does not. Some parts of the organisation, for example specialist operations, have a diversity officer who takes ownership and drives diversity development within specialist operations. He is part of their staff; he is not part of my staff. I welcome that, encourage that, and would love every building in the Metropolitan Police to follow that model. Sir William Morris: Is it mandatory in the policy makers or is it voluntary? A. Well, it is now mandatory, of course, throughout the policy clearing house process. Again, in terms of answering the previous question, there are now – I think it is now 300 key policy developers in the organisation who have been trained in doing impact assessment around the development of new policy, because within the work book process that we are still developing and still learning about, the consultation and the impact assessment and the rest of it is all part and parcel of the process of putting a policy up through the system. So we have provided training to around 300 people to enable them to do that. And we are now looking, with the MPA and with others from outside the organisation, at the quality of those impact assessments to see whether or not the training has actually delivered what we wanted it to deliver. I suspect that at the moment we are going to have to go back to it as we learn. Sir William Morris: Just finally, what is the sanction for those within the organisation who do not buy into the policy; they have had their training, they have had everything, they have had counselling, they have had the benefit of your directorate, but at the end of the day they are still not fully subscribing or not subscribing to the diversity policy. What has happened to them? A. They are still there, sir. Sir William Morris: Sorry? A. They are still there. It is not a way of avoiding your question, but the answer is they are – I suppose, if there are sanctions – Sir William Morris: But if they were accountants you would not leave them there, would you? If their discipline was accounting, they are accountants, or the doctor or the nurse, you would not leave them there. So why do you leave them there if they are not performing? A. This is an absolutely fundamental discussion. In terms of approach – I mean, I think the issue of sanction is actually quite difficult because where someone is overtly racist, where the evidence exists to put them through the discipline process and discipline them – Sir William Morris: It is not just about race. It is not a race issue. A. No, I understand. It was an illustrative example, sir. Sir William Morris: It is what you are doing for disability, or gender or whatever. A. Absolutely. I suppose what I am saying is that there are sanctions within the disciplinary process for obvious, for overt failure to live their professional lives by the principles of diversity, if you like. But what you are, I guess, alluding to are those people who do not believe it, do not want to know, and carry on their professional activity in a way that never crosses that line. Sir William Morris: No, what I am alluding to is that I am a manager in the Met. I have a discipline – it may be a finance discipline or it may be within the context of a research discipline, whatever. I am a manager. I know the policy. If I fail, as a cost analysis it costs the Met some money because I am responsible for the contract, I expect whoever manages me within the structure to take some measures against me, either counseling or whatever. Or ultimately it might come to more severe sanctions. What I do not understand is if diversity is non-negotiable, and if there are managers – I know they are police officers but they have got managerial responsibility, and we have had some interesting discussion here in the last 24 hours about that – but if they are managers, either managing resource or people, whatever, if they fail in other disciplines, there are routine help, support, sanctions ultimately. What I am getting at is that you can fail in the discipline from the diversity perspective but not too much happens to you? A. I think what I am having slight difficulty with with the question, sir, is actually being able to see very clearly what you mean by if you fail in the diversity discipline. Sir William Morris: Let me give you an example. I am in the personnel department. It is my job to draft the adverts that goes out, and it is also my job to ensure that all the publications which are broadly representative – that is a policy decision of somebody in the Met, that the advert goes to all so that we can recruit from a wider perspective because that is what we seek to build – but I say, "Well, I am not at all happy about this group, that group, whatever the group is so I have not sent the advert to that particular point. A very basic example because diversity starts from when you recruit to when people leave. My manager counselled me. I have done it again, it is a written warning, and I am very clever so I did not send it out. I find imaginative ways of not doing it and it becomes very obvious. What I have not understood is what happens to me when it is blatantly obvious that I am not practising the policy. I might be talking the policy but I am not practising the policy. What I am saying to you is that my understanding was coming across, if I fail as a manager in the finance department or in research, something happens disciplinary-wise or corrective measures, either counselling or training or help or whatever, but ultimately if I continue to fail there is a sanction. What I am trying to establish is why are the same routine steps not taken insofar as implementing the diversity policy right at the end of application? A. Thank you for that clarity, sir. I think where the failure is a failure to carry out a specific task or a specific responsibility, then the position is quite clear, because then all the disciplinary processes that you have outlined, individual performance management processes, unsatisfactory performance procedures. All those things apply equally where a specific task or duty is failed to be done. The territory I thought that you were asking me to comment on is the territory that I think is very, very much more difficult, which is about how we address not a failure to carry out a duty that is imposed or a task that is required, but it is how do we address the officer who does not speak to a member of the public in a way that is respectful and professional, that is hidden from supervision, that is not complained about because the member of the public has no confidence that the service will do anything about it? For me, that is one side of the coin – I delve into a rather difficult metaphor here – that is one bit of the diversity agenda that presents the greatest challenges. That is where, I think, our thinking needs to be about positive intervention rather than addressing that kind of behaviour through sanction. I very, very firmly hold the view that the Met, probably the Police Service, and probably most other organisations, have tended to present the diversity agenda as being about risk. We have said to our staff – and this is a huge generalisation, I accept that – but we have said to our staff over the years, "You must get this right because if you do not you will be in trouble." And so the perception framework around the diversity agenda becomes about risk and about personal vulnerability. My belief is that we need to turn that round so that the diversity agenda becomes about opportunity: opportunity to be more professional; opportunity to lock up more robbers; opportunity to make people feel safer; opportunity to work in a better organisation where I feel more valued, and I am given the chance to make the contribution I know I can make. And so I think the way through that is not to develop an increasingly complex regime of sanction and kind of oversight of people's behaviour, but it is about saying, "Okay, let us rework the way that we sell this; let us rework the way that we convince our people that this is good stuff", rather than saying, "Here is your diversity strategy, here is your street crime strategy, here is your health and safety strategy, and actually the one that is important this week is your street crime strategy because that is the one you are going to be asked about." It is that whole thing which for me starts with the moment of encounter at 2 o'clock in the morning, as I always say, on Shepherd's Bush Green. That for me is where the debate about diversity begins, and I think that is where we have to get into changing behaviour and changing understanding about what we want from those encounters, and I do not think you achieve that by ratcheting up the level of sanction in relation to that kind of thing. I think it is a fairly sophisticated mix because it is about being utterly and completely intolerant of sexist, racist, bullying, homophobic behaviour, and understanding that there is no place in the organisation for that, and making very clear statements in terms of the way that you treat people, so that when you say that and people behave in that way they do not walk away, if you like, with words of advice and management action. But at the same time, it is creating that space in the organisation for people to move from an understanding of diversity which is about fear and threat and moving into a place that is about opportunity, professionalism and about living in a better world and working in a better organisation. Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Allen. Miss Weekes will be asking you some questions in a minute or so, but for the benefit of our stenographer we usually have a short break of about five minutes. Thank you very much. 2.55 pm (A short break) 3.00 pm Questions by Miss Weekes Miss Weekes: Good afternoon, Commander Allen. Could I turn to a few more detailed questions on some of the policies and the agendas which are now in place, those policies and agendas which I think you arrived at and met within the Met. So you had a year, I think, to have what I might call an overview, certainly, and you have seen most of it now work in practice for the time that you have been at the Met. It may not be very long, but long enough for you to have a view of the effect of these policies. Can I summarise, because I think it is important for the public to know what the Met has done, certainly since the Stephen Lawrence report. What you clearly have in place is a race equality scheme, and that is a race equality scheme which functions from 2002 to 2005. The diversity board which is chaired by the Deputy Commissioner oversees that; am I right? A. That is right. Miss Weekes: And that has been going since maybe slightly before 2002 but certainly for that length of time. Are you able to say, just as an overview, how well that is operating, the race equality scheme? A. What is difficult for me is to give you a kind of before and after. Miss Weekes: That is right, that is why I said in a way what is your present overview, because it would not be fair to ask about before because you were not there. A. I think probably one of the key developments which I believe will make a significant difference is the development around the policy clearing house. I have stated my position from the outset that I do think the policy can only take us so far, and we alluded to that just before the break. But nevertheless the mechanisms by which we make policy are a really positive and a really fundamental way of ensuring that people throughout the organisation have to take account of diversity issues. And I think the way in which that process is emerging, and the very, very helpful contribution from people outside the organisation, the MPA, CRE, in developing particularly the impact assessment, I think that is where there is a real opportunity for people through the organisation to begin to understand the impact of the things that we say we are going to do. Already that has opened the opportunity for dialogue about those things and has, I think, made – I detect that there are conversations and discussions that now go on around the formulation of policy that did not happen before. I do not say that we have got it cracked, and there is clearly a long, long way to go, but, you know, as I look at the particular contribution of the race equality scheme, that maybe would not have been put in place otherwise. If you look at other elements around some of the specific duties, particularly in the HR world, I think many of the things that flow and can be tied back to the race equality scheme actually we would have been doing as part of the wider diversity strategy development anyway. So for me that bit around the policy development is fundamental to the way the organisation thinks. If we look at the impact of some of those other elements around recruiting and around retention, again I have a view that fundamental, necessary, important as those things are, underneath all that lies the fact that the people to whom we are appealing to join the Metropolitan Police actually are capable of making their own decision based on rational criteria; and that however good the initiatives and the marketing and the rest of it, unless people see an organisation with a culture in which they feel they are going to be welcomed, valued and able to make their contribution, unless they see an organisation that delivers a service in a style and prioritised in a way that the people we work for want it to be, unless they see an organisation that they can be proud of being part of, then however good our leaflets and posters, people are not going to join the organisation. So, again, I think it is an important part of the process coming out of the race equality scheme, but I still think it takes us back to the discussion about how do we create the organisation that people are going to want to join, want to be proud to be part of and want to stay in and progress through. Miss Weekes: I am going to come back to that perhaps in a moment. Thank you for that. Another important development, of course, is the Race Relations Amendment Act, which the Met has fully implemented in terms of ensuring that their practices and policies promote racial equality. I just wanted to add that because, in fairness, it is clear from the documents that we have read that that is the case. A very big commitment is the diversity strategy action plan which the Commissioner has given his personal endorsement of. In fact within it is the Commissioner's personal diversity plan. Just looking at both those Acts, the Race Relations Act, the Amendment Act, or rather your race relations diversity strategy, the diversity strategy action plan, from what you have seen from your position at the moment, is this having an effect of improving the relationship between the white majority officers and the black ethnic minority officers? I appreciate that is a difficult question, but we ought to keep that in mind if we are to suggest recommendations for improvement in the workplace relationships. A. I do not want to be repetitive so please stop me if I do. Miss Weekes: I do not think I will stop you. I am rather keen to hear what you have to say. A. I really do wonder whether an action plan is capable of delivering that which you ask me about. Where I say I do not want to get repetitive, I again bring the object of the question back to individual encounters, about the quality of those encounters, about the quality and style of leadership in the MPS. In a sense, the relationship – whether it is possible to separate out and identify a relationship between black and minority officers and white officers, again, I do not suppose it is quite that simple. But if we assume for a minute that you can talk about that kind of relationship, then that relationship to me is shaped by the way in which the organisation responds in specific moments. Clearly it is at the very heart of your deliberations, because I think that relationship, in the experience I have of the Metropolitan Police but also my time before, is that it is about the way the organisation responds when an individual is in trouble – Miss Weekes: Can I interrupt just for a second because you have moved on to a very important point: how does it respond? One of the things that the Commissioner has said, and indeed Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, has said, is that there is still evidence of a fear of an uncomfortableness in dealing with issues like race or gender, and the reality is that most, but not all, most officers will have a white line manager if they happen to be from an ethnic minority background. It clearly is not good for a white line manager to feel uncomfortable, whatever the issue is, because there is a job to be done. Neither is it acceptable for the minority officer to feel in any sense that he or she is not being treated fairly. So if you are right and the existence of these two very substantial pieces of policy of themselves do not create that improvement in the working relationship when something goes wrong, what is it that you think will do that? A. It is about addressing the two things, it is fear and it is confidence. Again, I feel certain we are likely to touch on it at some point, but my recent experience in talking to individuals who have ended up involved in long-running employment tribunals and other forms of difficulty with the organisation is that my overwhelming – I have many overwhelming feelings, but one of the feelings that comes very clearly out of that is that had someone early on in the process said, "Let us sit down, tell me how you feel, tell me why you feel it", developed an adult conversation and an open conversation about the issues, we would never have ended up three years later sat in my offices in some of the appalling circumstances we have. So the answer, because you asked me about how you actually do that, I think there is some short-term and there is some long-term. I think the short-term – well, no, they actually both need to be short-term. There is something about training, so the supervisors, first and second line managers, have some training in mediation, conflict management. It goes back to our approach that you can see in a number of areas, that when we train we tend to – again, generalisation – we tend to train around the technical policy aspects of any given area of work. So if you go on a course – a day's course, a two days' course – which is about grievance handling, the bulk of that course will be about: this is the policy, these are the forms, these are the steps you must take, these are the time limits. Whereas actually, in my view, we need to take the focus off those things because people can learn those things by reading the policy and looking at the forms, but we need to equip our people with the skills to actually manage some of these difficult people issues. The second bit, and the bit that I think, in my view, holds the key to this – it does not make it easy – is the leadership culture in the organisation, because leaders in the organisation have to give the people who are confronted with some of these difficult issues – we have to give our people permission to be creative, to be human, to step away from the constraints of policy and form by defining for them differently the outcomes that we want from them. As I say, my caveat is that these are huge generalisations. But there is a sense in which the outcomes that the organisation has looked for have been about protecting the reputation and the purse of the organisation, and so we ask the question: can we defend this case? As opposed to: has this officer been treated fairly? Organisational activity then moves us down that path depending on the answer to that question. Miss Weekes: How would you move to put into place the two suggestions which you have given: training and the leadership culture? A. One of my most interesting and significant challenges just at this very moment is that the diversity training school, which is about 40 trainers who have spent the last three years delivering community and race relations training to the whole Met, have just, literally in the last couple of weeks, moved from the human resources directorate into the diversity directorate. We are now very much in active discussion with them, because we are trying to work out what it would look like to develop a training package which is around critical encounters. I have alluded to it quite a lot already. But this is about recognising that individual encounters, either of themselves or cumulatively, have a strategic impact on the confidence that our communities have in the Metropolitan Police. So you can identify particular encounters. So stop search would be one, I guess; as a victim of crime would be one; when you telephone the police station. Certainly it would be when you first say to your sergeant, "Sergeant, I am not being treated fairly" or when a new member of staff joins the organisation. These are moments of encounter where the way in which we manage that encounter can have a significant and strategic difference to the organisation. So on that understanding we are trying to develop a kind of training approach that starts with that moment of encounter, and starts by saying, "Have we ever defined the outcomes that we want from some of these encounters?" because my instinctive feeling and my experience will teach me that we do not. So in stop search, do we actually define for our officers what we want them to deliver? If we do not, they end up defining it for themselves. And so, for example, as a young officer my successful outcomes from the stop search were to either get an arrest or not to get a complaint, and if I achieved those things then that was success. Miss Weekes: But keeping it within the realms of dealing with workplace conflicts. A. I think the principle is that if we can define for the people who are going to have to manage those the outcomes that we want, which are about as quickly as possible returning to a position where we get maximum value out of the members of staff involved in their contribution to policing London, as opposed to an outcome which is keep yourself out of trouble and keep the organisation out of trouble, then you start to understand what inputs they need differently. You start to talk about conflict management training, about mediation training, about other mechanisms that allow them to deliver those outcomes. As I say, we are currently working, and we are hoping that within about three months or so we can start delivering as part of the recruit diversity training a package which is about critical encounters and about managing operational and internal encounters. How we then develop the capacity to move that into supervisors I am not sure yet, but I am absolutely certain that it needs doing. Miss Weekes: Is this the first training course of its kind, i.e. getting line managers to address conflict management? A. I doubt it because it is nothing new in the world, but I mean – Miss Weekes: I meant in the Met. A. Well, in my knowledge, but bear in mind that is only 12 months' knowledge. Miss Weekes: Yes. You have touched upon recruits. Certainly in the diversity programme that I have referred to, the Metropolitan Police diversity action plan, there is reference to a five-day awareness programme for recruits. Are you aware of this? A. Yes. I have a feeling – yes, it is three days and then two days. It is not five days all together. Yes, and that programme is now delivered by the trainers who are now part of the Diversity Directorate, which presents me with the wonderful opportunity every five weeks of going and speaking to 300 recruits – Miss Weekes: This is at Hendon? A. This is at Hendon, yes. Again, the kind of strategic long-term intention is that the diversity trainers will bring recruit trainers to a point where they are able to deliver that part of the programme themselves. But certainly around The Secret Policeman context and some of the pressures at the moment I think there is a sense of vulnerability, and so the specialist diversity trainers are currently delivering that. But, as I say, the plan is to ease them out of that. Miss Weekes: How long has that been going for? A. I do not know in that specific form, I am sorry. Miss Weekes: Is it a good programme? A. I have not yet had the opportunity to attend it so I do not know. I am sure it could be better, as they all could be. Miss Weekes: Well, as you have not had first-hand knowledge I will not ask anything more on that. One of the other things I wanted to ask was the role of the specialist representative groups, of which I think there are 13. They range from the Jewish Police Association, disability, Gay Police Association, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Italian, the Police Federation. I have not named them all, but those are some of them. Are you happy with the role of these representative groups in the diversity programme? Because of course it is a two way thing, is it not, diversity? A. Yes. Miss Weekes: Is there room for improvement? A. Yes, I am sure there is. I think just the very fact that some of them I have a lot of contact with and I am familiar with the people involved and others I do not probably is an indicator that there is room for improvement in all sorts of ways. Again, we go right back to the beginning and Sir Bill's question about differences between my previous constabulary and the Metropolitan Police. One of the things that I find most refreshing and most energising about being in the Metropolitan Police is the role that these organisations play. I found that to be at the same time immensely challenging myself, thinking of my role in the organisation. And at the same time as that to be incredibly supportive in terms of the agenda that we are trying to deliver. They play for me a very unique role that independent advisory groups do not play, they play a different role, and one that my colleagues in the service, in terms of management processes, do not play. So what they have is a unique knowledge and experience and insight of policing, because they are people who work in the Police Service, and at the same time there is a confidence and expectation in the role which is about challenging the policy process, leadership, personality of the organisation, and I think a combination of those two things puts them in a very unique position. Miss Weekes: Just one other area, and it relates to gender issues. Sir Herman Ouseley dealt with a review for the Metropolitan Police in 2000. It might be useful if we can bring up this quote so you can see it. It is Inquiry document 57, page 13. There will be a little pause before it comes up on your screen. I do not know whether you are familiar with the review that was conducted, led by him? A. Yes. Miss Weekes: You are, right. If we go down towards the bottom of that page, please. It is in the middle. Can you see the paragraph that begins, "The three strands of investigation"? A. Yes. Miss Weekes: I am going to start reading: "Sex discrimination is another issue that requires much more investment. There are too few women officers in senior positions, and some very talented women staff have left the organisation during the period of this review because they believe that they have not been sufficiently valued and recognised by their employers. The MPS cannot afford to lose any talented staff and considerable attention should be given to gender prejudice and women's under-representation in senior positions." It is important to note the date of that report; it was 2000, and it is some years since. Is the issue of gender representation and equality still an issue within the Met? A. Yes, and I suspect it will be an issue for a long time to come. I think much has been achieved. For example, there is now a deputy assistant commissioner, Carol Howlett, who is Sir John's chief of staff, who has a Met lead for issues relating to gender. There are certainly two women deputy assistant commissioners, off the top of my head, four women commanders. For the first time ever the head of the Special Branch has been a woman. So there is progress and you can track – although I do not have the figures in front of me, my HR colleagues will bring them – you can track – Miss Weekes: Is that progress equal for black women police staff and black police officers? A. The point I was coming to is that this issue is not restricted to gender; this issue operates across the diversity range. At this moment in time – I was in conversation with a number of women officers just last week precisely about the experience of being a woman in the Metropolitan Police, and there is some considerable feeling that the MPS has taken its eye away from gender issues because it has been driven so hard by the race agenda, and that in a sense because the representative organisations that do exist around women, their perception would be that because they have not been outspoken, because they have not been perhaps as radical, that the organisation has felt able to not pay so much attention to the messages that they are giving. Here in 2004, there remain women in the organisation who feel undervalued, who feel unfairly discriminated against. But I would say that there are people from every part of the spectrum – there are white men in the organisation who feel undervalued. But I think the MPS does recognise the issue. Certainly the Deputy Commissioner would regard issues around sexual harassment, overt sexism and issues facing our women as being very much on the top of his agenda in terms of where the priorities sit around diversity. There are more women in senior positions, not enough. There are more women coming through the force in terms of progression, but not enough. There are more women joining the organisation. So I think, again, the picture that probably sums up most of my evidence this afternoon is that much has been achieved, and there is a commitment and there is a desire to make things better, but there is also a recognition that we are by no means anywhere near the end of the path. Miss Weekes: How would you wish to see women encouraged to have a louder voice and to be more proactive about their position? A. I think one of the things that I can do, because to an extent I see my role as being about how I can use the power that I have to give others some power in the organisation, is to provide platforms for people to tell their stories and for the issues to be raised through the mechanisms that actually bring some pressure to bear on the Met. So just as an illustrative example, from listening to the experiences of those women officers last week, we have now agreed the federation are going to take the lead on this. Miss Weekes: Can I just ask, out of interest, who were the women that you spoke to? A. They were women who had had experience as applicants in employment tribunals, if that makes sense. Miss Weekes: Were they collective across the board? Were they from a representative group? A. No, they were a very small group. It was a discussion that developed from somewhere completely different – Miss Weekes: I understand. A. – so the discussion was not for that purpose. But as a consequence of that, and as a consequence of listening to the experiences, I have now given over the – which I think will be the March or the beginning of April meeting of the diversity forum, to a discussion and a debate and an exploration of issues affecting women in the Metropolitan Police. Of course that forum consists of people from right across the organisation, so representatives from the various parts of the organisation, and also quite a strong representation from externally; so again, MPA, CRE, independent advisers, people like that. What I am hoping is that that provides us with an opportunity then to begin again to be raising the profile around the issues, because the product from that forum feeds into the strategic board, which I have already said is chaired by the Deputy Commissioner, and starts then to identify actions and disseminate actions downwards to the working groups. The other thing that we are doing in restructuring the directorate is for the first time we are putting together a team inside the directorate who will have a specific responsibility for developing approaches around the retention, the progression and treatment of women both inside the organisation and the specific issues that relate to delivering policing services to over half the population. So there will be a team who have a very clear mandate around developing those responses. Miss Weekes: Perhaps the last point. You are right in terms of the material we have in front of us that a good number of women are joining the police force, but retention and promotion is perhaps a difficulty. My recent reading of the 2003 statistics for the whole of police officers in England and Wales indicates that 63 per cent of women have police civilian staff roles. Why is that? A. Why is it? Miss Weekes: Why are they not joining the ranks of promotion up to superintendents and beyond? A. Sorry, 63 per cent are constables? Miss Weekes: Are police staff. 63 per cent of the civilian staff are women, as opposed to – A. So the question is why are they not joining as police officers? Miss Weekes: Yes. Perhaps there is not any particular reason; perhaps it is personal choice. A. Well, I suspect there is a whole load of complexity that starts with the way that people bring up children, and the whole issue about expectations and about gender stereotyping from the very beginning of life through the education system, through opportunity, through, I guess, as seen probably from outside, still the very kind of male dominated macho culture of the Police Service, which may well – Miss Weekes: Are there good conditions and provisions for women who have children to be sergeants and otherwise? A. There absolutely are, yes. I think, again, my answer comes back to, yes, I think we have as good a range, as comprehensive a range of policies around career breaks, around part-time, all those things. We have the range of policy that will stand scrutiny against anyone. But we come back to the kind of more difficult point about how do we move the culture forward so that women feel that they are valued, women are given the opportunities to progress through the organisation, and that women feel that the organisation wants them to progress through. I am not suggesting that the opposite of those things is the case at the moment, but I think there are clearly still themes within the organisational culture that are putting women off, or are preventing women. Because it may not be about their willingness, it might be about the willingness of the organisation to push them through. Miss Weekes: Well, I hope we will hear from some women at some point in the Inquiry. A. I am sure you will. Miss Weekes: Thank you very much. Sir William Morris: Thank you. Can I invite my colleague Sir Anthony Burden to put one or two questions. Questions by Sir Anthony Burden Sir Anthony Burden: Mr Allen, my major concern is helping you to make it happen, because it looks as though the right person is in the job because Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary says so in his report about to be published. Although the rank of the person in charge has been reduced from Deputy Assistant Commissioner to Commander: "... the officer appointed has the requisite skills and abilities to perform this demanding role". That congratulates you, if you did not know it, for the work you are doing. I guess coming into the Met many would have said, "Well, what does he know about policing London, coming from a small provincial force like Avon and Somerset?" Let us just put it on record: you were a Divisional Commander in Bristol, which is a very diverse community, a very busy city, dealing with a lot of difficult problems. A. I wish that were true. I was a Superintendent Operations in Bristol, sir. I had the privilege of being Divisional Commander down at Bath. Sir Anthony Burden: Well, then you were even busier in Bristol as the guy in charge of operations. Let us just put the problem in terms of perspective that the Metropolitan Police is dealing with here. Internally we have already heard that there is conflict. We have got minority ethnic officers and staff who have lost confidence and trust in the organisation to deal effectively with issues such as complaints and staffing issues, human resource issues. We have got their white colleagues, it would appear, who lack the confidence to be able to exercise supervision among minority ethnic officers, and that has been said. In fact, you make a similar reference in your submission but it has been said more strongly by the Commissioner and one of your colleagues, to such an extent that as opposed to dealing with minor issues they are allowed to bubble over and the police authority of the Metropolitan Police refers to the organisation as a "pressure cooker", allowing things just to simmer along until it finally blows. That is internally. Externally, I guess I would not be wrong – please correct me if I am wrong – that if you are young, black and male you stand far more chance of being stopped in a stop search than if you are white. So looking at the picture, you have been given a tremendous task to undertake, and that is why I come back to the point I made earlier, and that is assisting you to make it happen. How do we as a panel make recommendations that build some strength in around you to get to that sort of critical mass situation where it moves automatically and does not need all the time this inertia of pushing the agenda? A. The simple answer for me, sir, is more resource around leadership development. I, as part of my responsibilities in the directorate, own the Commissioner's leadership programme, which is a week where the content is very much around mission, vision and values, valuing people; some of those kind of philosophical themes where we do have the opportunity to start talking to people about the fundamental relationship between diversity and operational success and start to put things in that context. By the end of that week people are thinking differently, people are enthused, people are excited about the prospect of going back to work. I caution them when I close the course how they are going to feel by 10 o'clock on Monday morning. The sense is very often – the analogy is having a bath of cold water and trying to heat it up by pouring mugfuls of hot water into it. The only way that you end up kind of heating the cold water is by pouring enough hot water in as quickly as you can; quickly enough. My sense with leadership development, we run something like five or six courses during the year, with about 50 or 60 people on them. That is not sufficient to begin to create that critical mass. My view is that I would like to see some recommendations around a fairly radically different approach to leadership development in the MPS, not to rely on developments that are going on nationally because I am not sure whether they will deliver what the Met needs; that is partly about capacity. We have devoted for the last three years 40 or 50 people to delivering community and race relations training around the organisation. I think if we could take that level of resource, 40 or 50 people – and it probably would not even need that – and create a centre of excellence, an academy, call it what you like, which from the moment someone says, or the moment someone picks up an application form to be a sergeant that we pick that person up as an organisation and we start to shape them. That is not about going on a course once every year, it is about a continual process of development, a continual process of enriching their skills, enriching their people skills, basing it on some academically credible evidence so that their activity is evidence based. And it is also about the other bit of it. The other bit has to be about not just giving the people those things but demanding that if they want the privilege of leadership in this fantastic organisation that they have to consistently demonstrate that they are leading in the way that we demand they lead, and that is about value-driven leadership. And so there is a means by which people have to continually provide the evidence of the way in which they are leading. We do ask the people they lead how they are leading and what the impact is of that. We do ask communities what they think of their local sector sergeant, and if people are not delivering then they have to lose their certificate, or whatever it is, and we have to be honest with people. I am sure I do not need to say it, but, you know, people will behave in the organisation in the way that – people want to be valued so they will behave in a way that attracts value from those who manage and lead them. Those who manage and lead think we are exactly what the Met needs and so we will promote people behind us who do things the way that we do things. And so we need to develop leadership approaches and leadership development in a way that means those things do not happen and in a way that develops leaders who we would want our people to emulate and people who are role models, and I do not think the current arrangements deliver that. Current arrangements deliver superb operational leadership. It is one of the things that impresses me beyond anything about making the move up here; the ability to manage crisis, the ability to operate a complex external environment is quite remarkable. But the other bit of it is about the organisational behaviour where I think we need to focus, and, as I say, current processes and systems will not deliver what we need. I think it is a big commitment, it is a big ask in terms of investment, but I think, if we are going to change the organisation, then I think we have to confront that. Sir Anthony Burden: Is that message that sets the values for the organisation coming often enough and consistently enough from the senior management team? A. One of the other dynamics, as a consequence of the size of the Met, it is almost impossible to talk of the Met as one homogenous organisation where if you say that applies in Bromley it also applies somewhere up the other end. I think one of the most obvious things about the Commissioner is that he is a man who speaks frequently and loudly and unrepentantly about the values that he sees underpinning policing, and the Deputy Commissioner likewise, and I think those values are there. But it is such a long way from the Commissioner's office down to a parade room in Croydon that you have to have the confidence in what sits in between to be transmitting that and explaining it and understanding it as it passes down. To put it in a diversity context, you start at the top of the organisation talking about the need to deliver all your policing service in a way that recognises the needs, the diversity, the aspirations and the vulnerabilities of the communities you work in, and by the time it arrives in a classroom at a training school, it can be: diversity is about do not say these four words, which is what we saw on The Secret Policeman. And so it is that transmission mechanism – Sir Anthony Burden: So it becomes defensive: how to protect yourself, rather than a positive message? A. We go back to threat not opportunity, yes. Sir Anthony Burden: I would like more time to explore that with you but we have not got it. But I would welcome, Chairman, if there is an opportunity from you to submit something, Mr Allen, that suggests where you feel blockages are and where we need to recommend that attention needs to be paid within the organisation, to make sure that message is delivered from the Commissioner's office onto the streets; I know you need to think about that but I certainly would welcome that and I am sure my colleagues would. Can I go on, then, and say, how do we take the heat out of all this so that people within the organisation do not feel threatened, they do not feel threatened to discuss issues, and it is a positive culture where they try and resolve conflict and do not get into this defensive mode all the time that appears to be the situation? Do you bang heads together or ... ? A. No. Again, it is about the people who are there leading; it is about the tone they set, about the language they use, about the way that they are seen to treat people. And so what we might be pointing to here is an early piece of work about sergeants, first level civil staff. What I cannot see my way through is what policy approach, or what structural change, or what initiatives or posters or leaflets are going to deliver that. I think this Inquiry actually has the potential to be a significant part of that process, because I think there is a huge amount of optimism around this process reflected back to me from the people I speak to, that here is a chance for people to share their experience with you, so this is how I see the Met, this is what it has been like for me. And certainly having heard some of the experiences that I have heard over the last two or three months, there are some moving and powerful accounts of what it is like to be in the Metropolitan Police that I am sure will be put your way. There are some moving and powerful accounts that are entirely positive as well, of course. And so I think people's view is that this is an opportunity for us as an organisation to be open, to be frank with each other, and to arrive at some kind of consensus about what the way forward might look like. There are one or two signs in the organisation that that may happen. Sir Anthony Burden: Can I just take you back so my understanding is correct. When you mentioned posters, leaflet, et cetera, are you suggesting that maybe not right across the Metropolitan Police but in some places the message has not got beyond that? A. My observation over the last six months since I came into this role – and I obviously get to a lot of conferences, go to various organisations and talk to a lot of diversity people – my sense is that there is a tendency to believe that you deliver diversity through initiative and policy, that that is actually what the agenda is about and that is where it stops. You know, you talk to people about what they have achieved around diversity, and what they talk about is how many schemes they have got and how many of this form and the other form, without beginning to get into that business of quality encounters and people's confidence and that kind of stuff. I am sure there are places in the MPS where maybe that is as far as it got, and without wishing to sound remotely defensive, there are organisations out there who are held up as best practice around diversity, where my untutored view to be that they have got no further than that at an organisational understanding level. I think my point was, really, that this is more complex and more fundamental and more about individual human relationships and understanding outcomes differently than can be addressed by having an initiative or a marketing campaign, and we need to think beyond those things. Sir Anthony Burden: Do you think there is sufficient buy-in from grass roots level and from representative organisations within the Metropolitan Police when policies are developed that actually means that there is a high level of common sense and a real chance that those policies are going to succeed, or is it top-down or expert-driven? A. My general impression, again, would be that it is hugely variable, and it is hugely variable, I guess, also in terms of the input from different associations. So that you could, for example, see the contribution of the BPA across a whole range of policy development and a whole range of policy processes, but maybe with some of the other staff associations that would not be so visible, which is why, I think, I personally – I know that people in the associations and I know that the organisation, as represented in the Commissioner and the Deputy, regard the creation of the Samurai Network as being a hugely significant thing because that does, if you like, allow a progression in terms of people's input. Again, comparison inside the Met and outside the Met, my view is that staff associations are probably embedded in decision-making processes in a way here that would not be so visible elsewhere. Sir Anthony Burden: Can I finally just deal with a specific, if I may, and that is a concern raised by Sir Ronnie Flanagan in his HMI report during a recent inspection at Hendon. He comments on wastage rates at Hendon amongst recruits as being high: 11.79 per cent overall. But just as, if not more, worrying, with minority ethnic recruits the wastage rate is 13.17 per cent, which, I think, coming from your world and mine, in provincial recruitment centre terms, is astronomically high. I suppose I should firstly ask you, before asking your opinion, whether in relation to the recruitment of minority ethnic officers and their training at Hendon, whether you have had any role or any understanding or any chance to have a look at – A. No, that sits within the HR structure. We are just beginning to get into the beginning of that. The DOIT team are engaged in some joint work with the training estate to look at how we might provide different levels of support. Sir Anthony Burden: Can I deal with it in general terms, then, because obviously the specific would be unfair to ask you. Being in charge of your directorate, have you become aware of anything which would suggest to you that the wastage rate amongst recruits in general, and minority ethnic recruits specifically, is anything to do with the way they have been treated, or anything to do with the culture either at Hendon or the culture of the organisation? A. The answer is yes. Again, my caveat is that no one who has had a positive experience at Hendon makes an appointment to come and see me to tell me about it, and therefore in terms of the numbers and proportions and the generality of the experience, it would be unfair of me to comment. But certainly I have had conversations with a number of people who went through Hendon five years ago and some who have been through Hendon more recently than that, and their experiences have been difficult to hear because, undoubtedly, they have been subject to less favourable treatment than others; they have had to put up with the kind of insidious barroom comment. One issue is that up until fairly recently I do not think that as an organisation we have recognised the degree of significant pressure that members of some communities come under from their family and friends when they take a decision to join the Police Service. We take them into the residential environment at Hendon, or any other training school, and – all the pressure about initial training is about conforming, is it not? It is about bringing people to a common point, if you like. And we have not recognised the particular pressures that some of our officers have been under, and we have not therefore supported them; we have not been sensitive to those particular issues. And it is no wonder that they find – you know, if they are under pressure from outside for joining the police and then they join the service and they feel under pressure from a predominant culture which does not appear to welcome their presence inside the service, then it is no wonder that they walk away. Sir Anthony Burden: That atmosphere, that culture which does not welcome, as you say, and what has been said to you, is the basis of the problem either around sexist, racist behaviour or just peer bullying? A. I will try and be careful, sir, that I think of specific examples before I answer your question. Certainly racism and certainly bullying. But, as I say, there is a caveat here that is that Commander Steve Allen is not sitting here telling you what the experience of everyone who goes through Hendon is, because clearly I cannot. And I think, in a sense, the report, which I believe you will have sight of, that Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur has done, will allow a closer insight into the sort of generalities. Sir Anthony Burden: There is an element in Mr Ghaffur's report dealing with it? A. I understand that recruitment was part of that. Sir Anthony Burden: You understand the importance of this, you quite obviously do. I mean, this is the gateway into the Metropolitan Police and here a culture is built. The cornerstones of a culture is actually developed, and if that is bad culture then it is merely perpetuating the problem. A. Absolutely, which is why, without wishing to sound egotistical in any way, shape or form, why I think the opportunity that I now have to speak to recruits when they first join the organisation is a fundamentally important one, because it gives me the opportunity – I go back to the diversity is threat or opportunity discourse – it gives me an opportunity right from the outset to present a paradigm around diversity which might begin to move us forward. Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you, you have been very frank with me. Can I ask you, please, where the issues around Hendon, where the responsibility lies? Where is that being pursued so that we can follow it up? A. I think it is being very actively and proactively pursued in a number of places; I guess primarily within HR, where it properly sits. Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you very much indeed. A. Again, if I could just say that, if I have left any room for doubt about the determination of the Metropolitan Police both to recognise the issue and already some time ago to have begun addressing it in a very forthright and robust way, then I have failed in the completeness of my evidence. Sir Anthony Burden: Thank you very much. Sir William Morris: Commander Allen, that concludes the series of questions that my colleagues and I wanted to put to you. But you will recall that in my opening statement I said that I would offer you the opportunity for a brief closing comment, if you so wish. Should you wish to do so, this is your moment. A. Sir, it feels like I have been talking for an awful long time. For me the agenda is, I think, fairly straightforward in terms of defining it, not in terms of delivering it, and anything that this Inquiry can do that assists us as an organisation in this regard would be hugely welcomed by all of us, I am sure. The key elements for us moving forward have to be the whole discussion around leadership, and fundamentally about joining the diversity agenda with the performance agenda, and, again, anything that the Inquiry can do around that so that not only do we deliver good street crime results week on week on week but that we deliver more confident, more trusting and more capability communities year on year. Thank you very much for your time and patience. Sir William Morris: Thank you very much. I want to make a public point. First of all, Sir Anthony had indicated that the Inquiry would welcome any supplementary contribution which you are able to offer, and via the secretariat we will seek to follow that through. That said, the formal comments that I want to make is just to indicate to you that, as with all our witnesses, it may be that once we have heard other witnesses that we may want to ask you a few more questions, either by writing to you or asking you to come back to one of our hearings. If we find a heed to do that, we will try and do so as best we can in order to minimise any inconvenience that that might cause to you. But for the moment all that I have to say further is just on behalf of my colleagues and myself to thank you for your contribution to this Inquiry so far. Thank you. A. Thank you. Sir William Morris: Can I indicate to members of the public that it is my intention now to adjourn this Inquiry until 10.30 on Monday, 23rd February. Can I ask you just to remain seated whilst Commander Allen, as a witness, and my colleagues and myself leave the room. Thank you very much. 4.05 pm (The Inquiry adjourned until 10.30 am on Monday, 23rd February 2004) Internal links On this website: Evidence: Stephen Allen Evidence provided by and documents referred to by Stephen Allen in his appearance at the Inquiry.
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Transcripts > Commander S Allen (19 Feb 04)
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