Transcript of public session: Mr D Ratcliffe, Mr G Smyth and Ms A Earl of the Metropolitan Police Federation

See also: Letter from Glen Smyth to Sir John Stevens clarifying his oral evidence to the Inquiry
Document Reference: MPF 2 [PDF document; 43KB]

Wednesday, 31 March 2004
2.30 pm

Sir William Morris: Good afternoon, everyone. We are about to commence the afternoon session of the Inquiry. Mr Ratcliffe, can I first of all say good afternoon to you and to all your colleagues, and to say thank you for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry and to give evidence, and thank you also for letting us have your written submission, which we have found extremely helpful.

I appreciate that for some of our witnesses, a process of this nature might seem somewhat daunting, so I thought it would be helpful if I very briefly set out how we propose to conduct the hearing this afternoon.

But first, let me introduce myself and the other members of my panel. I am Sir Bill Morris, recently retired General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, but as you can see, there are two other members of the panel.

On my right is Sir Anthony Burden, who recently retired as Chief Constable of South Wales Constabulary after a long and distinguished career in the police service. On my left is Miss Anesta Weekes QC. Anesta is an eminent barrister who sits as a recorder and part-time chairperson of employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry.

Mr Ratcliffe, 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 repeat, as I have done since this Inquiry commenced: our focus is the MPS as an organisation and not the individuals who make up that organisation. The inquiry we are conducting is inquisitorial, and it is not adversarial in character or nature.

We are nevertheless keen to enquire into the issues raised in our terms of reference, so that we can make appropriate recommendation for further good practice within the Met, rather than concentrating on making criticisms of the MPS, or indeed the individuals within it.

To help us in our task, we are very keen to hear from all our witnesses not just about what is wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service, but also what is right with it; but most importantly, we are looking for all the suggestions possible to put things right, assuming anything is found to be wrong.

For the record, let me say that a transcript is being taken, so that we 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; followed by Sir Anthony Burden, and any supplementary questions that I might find necessary. At the conclusion of our questions, I will offer you the opportunity to make a brief closing comment.

You have been extremely helpful in providing us with a written submission which will be posted on the website, but your submission also set out for us a number of signposts to some of the issues. You have pointed us towards an overview of the Metropolitan Police Federation; you have indicated the consultation procedures which are in place with the Metropolitan Police Service in respect of policies, practices and, indeed, procedures.

You have indicated the application of the professional standards within the Metropolitan Police Service and how it functions, and you have highlighted the approach to employment tribunal cases and, of course, the resolution of grievances.

In addition, the Met Federation makes a number of summaries to its own proposals, to which I will indicate later on.

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

Mr Ratcliffe: Good afternoon, chairman, and members of the panel. My name is Don Ratcliffe, I am the General Secretary of the Joint Executive Committee of the Metropolitan Police Federation. I am a constable.

On my left-hand side is inspector Glen Smyth, who is the chairman of the Joint Executive Committee. We have responsibility for joint matters, and I think you heard from colleagues from the Police Federation of England and Wales this morning indicating that there are three separate rank branch boards.

If I can introduce some other colleagues: behind me to my left-hand side is Andrea Earl. Andrea is the Secretary of our Women's Sub-committee of the Metropolitan Police Federation. Andrea is a constable based at Redbridge borough, and has extensive knowledge on equality matters and flexible working within the Metropolitan Police Service.

On my right and behind me is Mark Nurthen. Mark is our lead on discipline within the Metropolitan Police Federation. He is the Deputy General Secretary of the Sergeants' Branch board, a post he has held since 2002, and Mark is also an experienced discipline friend. The term friend, of course, as you will be familiar, has a definition within the police conduct procedures. He has extensive dealings with the directorate of professional standards over policy matters, and again, you may wish to hear from him in relation to those.

There are some other colleagues who are in front of you, Sir Bill. On your right-hand side, on the far right-hand side, is Neil Cratchley. Neil Cratchley is a constable. He is Constables' Representative for Haringey borough, but is due shortly to take up the post of Deputy General Secretary of the Constables' Branch board. He is an experienced discipline friend and has considerable knowledge in grievance and Fairness at Work issues.

Bob Drew is the General Secretary of the Sergeants' Branch Board, and Bob is extremely experienced, with over 36 years' service in the Metropolitan Police Service, and was our equality leader during the development of the Fairness at Work procedure, which again you have heard about previously.

Brian Roles sits next to Bob Drew, was recently elected as the Deputy General Secretary of the Inspectors' Branch board. Brian has over 28 years' service and was, until recently, the Inspectors' Representative of Camden borough.

Then finally Dave Bennett; Dave Bennett is a long-standing Federation representative based at Dagenham borough, and again has extensive knowledge of misconduct and service confidence procedure, and is an active and experienced discipline friend.

I should also point out that Neil Cratchley, Dave Bennett and Andrea Earl are our trainers, course directors, within the Police Federation, and also have experience of training – shared training with the directorate of professional standards.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Ratcliffe, you have got a full team.

Questions by Sir William Morris

Sir William Morris: Could I start by making one or two observations in respect of your submission? In your submission, you make a number of points about what you see as lack of meaningful consultation by the Metropolitan Police Service vis-a-vis its management.

At page 6 of the submission, you state that meaningful consultation is often ignored, and the opportunity to comment is very, very limited.

My question is: do you see this lack of consultation as reflecting poor management by the MPS, or do you think it demonstrates an organisational culture regarding the treatment of police officers and staff?

Mr Ratcliffe: I think the point that we make is too often we are presented with a fait accompli, in other words the policy is very much in its final stages of formation before the document will come through to us for consultation.

What we have always argued for, and will continue to argue, is that we should be involved in the developmental stages of any policy, no matter what it is, and that means right from the word "go". In other words: what do we want, why do we want it and how are we going to do it? I think that is what I mean by that comment, that early consultation does mean that we end up with a good product at the end of the day, and that is not just early consultation with the Metropolitan Police Federation, and it is early consultation with all key stakeholders.

Sir William Morris: Sure. Perhaps you can give us some examples of the disadvantage, not just to the Federation, but to the service, as a result of this poor consultation, and what representation has been made by the Fed, your Fed, with a view to changing the practice of late or no consultation.

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes. We are, as I pointed out in our document members of various strategic committees within the organisation, it is our intention that every time we do end up as being late consultees to any process, to raise it within those particular forums.

There are a number of policies, draft policies, that have come through from the directorate of professional standards which have come through very, very recently, there is one that we were discussing yesterday, on sanction guidelines, that is very much in its formative stages.

Whilst it is a second draft that we were considering yesterday, nevertheless, had we had the opportunity of having that very early consultation, we feel that that would have been handled a lot better by the organisation, so there are a number of examples, individual examples, in these cases, involving the directorate of professional standards, where we think consultation could have been better.

It does not however stop at professional standards, because, of course, we have been in the past a member of various equality meetings, one of which has, I am afraid, withered on the vine and been absorbed into the diversity directorate, where we would be active members of discussing equality issues.

But, of course, we have not been invited to that particular meeting for quite some time, there had not been a meeting; we made enquiries in relation to what had happened to that particular committee, only to be told that it no longer existed.

Now that is the representation that we can make; how do we make it? We go through various channels that we have. I have pointed out we meet regularly with the Assistant Commissioner Human Resources; we also meet with management board, and we raise those opportunities of bad consultation wherever we possibly can – those examples, sorry, of bad consultation.

Sir William Morris: Is it fair to say, on the basis of yesterday's evidence, that whilst it might be getting marginally better, there is still some way to go in terms of improving the quality of the consultation?

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, there is some way to go towards improving that quality consultation. As I do reiterate, early consultation means that we end up with a good product, because what it means is simply because I might be writing a draft policy, that does not mean that I know everything about it.

What I should be doing is taking views of other people to formulate those into a draft document; that is what we are asking for.

Mr Smyth: I think the other thing, Sir Bill, is sufficient time for us to consult colleagues is very often not given, and I think the worst recent example of policy being developed was when we found out about the estates policy in relation to police stations, and the selling off of large numbers of police stations; we first discovered about it when it became a topic in the Financial Times. I do not think that is really the way to do business.

That was the worst example. There were reasons for that, some of which we were told were outside the control of the Commissioner, but nonetheless, that should not happen.

But it is also – I cannot emphasise enough: sufficient time to read bulky documents which are technical in nature at times, and to share those amongst colleagues. Many of our colleagues have their day jobs to do as well, and they have to try and find time to read these documents, and feed back to their various branch boards, to come back to us.

Sir William Morris: Yes. I am glad you have raised the point about consultation not just between the executive and the senior Met Fed officers, but consultation generally; can you share with us the process of your own Federation, Met Federation, consultation process?

Mr Ratcliffe: Right. We are, as you know, divided into three separate rank branch boards. Those rank branch boards meet on a quarterly basis, four meetings per year. The joint executive committee meets four times per year. So if we wanted to consult with members out of those periods in time, you can understand the difficulty that we have.

So therefore, what we have to do is the circulation of documents, either by electronic means or paper means, to get views back. That can be very, very difficult at times, bearing in mind the size of our organisation and the number of representatives that we have.

There are 352 representatives within the Metropolitan Police Federation, and as you heard earlier from colleagues from England and Wales, they are organised mainly on an operational command unit basis, so if we were to take the views of all 352, you can understand it would take some time.

Invariably what happens is we have to go to executive level, and each of the branch boards does have a separate executive to be able to take those viewpoints, but again, we would always encourage – and well, it does happen; those executives do take the view of the ordinary member into account.

But does every member of the Federation – are they consulted? Then I would have to say no, they are not, because of the timescales and the enormity of the problem that we would face.

Sir William Morris: Okay. The MPS has staked its reputation, and highly so, on among other policies, its policy on diversity, and, of course, as the leading trade union, the Federation has a significant contribution to make to deliver that particular policy.

Can you give us some examples where the Met Federation has used the diversity policy of the MPS to benefit underrepresented groups among your own membership?

Mr Ratcliffe: Right, again, as you have heard from colleagues this morning, there was a long way to go within the Police Federation.

What steps have we taken in relation to underrepresentation within the Police Federation? I could tell you, for instance, by way of example, the Constables Branch board has five members, of a committee of 60, who are from visible ethnic minority backgrounds. The Sergeants' Branch board has five women's representatives, who are not there by way of reserve position places but are there as an ordinary elected representative.

Within our own equality sub-committee of the joint executive committee, we have a number of visible ethnic minority members of that particular sub-committee, including an officer who is openly gay, and we also end up – we have, I think, three women on that particular equality sub-committee.

So I would suggest to you that we have made great strides in relation to representation within the Metropolitan Police Federation, but that is not to say that we have not got some way to go.

Sir William Morris: Sure. Your submission also makes some criticism of failure by the management in the MPS about training. By way of example, on page 24 of your submission, you say there has been very little training delivered to senior managers within the MPS in dealing with personnel matters.

What, in your view, are the consequences to your members of a failure to train, and does the Federation negotiate with the MPS on the provision of training?

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, we are consulted about training, but again, I would suggest that the consultation needs to be a lot greater.

Personnel managers are something fairly new to the police service. We have only really had them for the last ten years or so. Prior to that, it would always be a Chief Inspector who would fulfil the position of personnel manager at operational command units. We now have a dedicated member of police staff who becomes the personnel manager.

What my personal experience has shown is that the training given to some of these personnel managers was wholly inadequate for the job that they were in. I can cite you an example, for instance, of my own personnel manager at the station where I was based, who had come in from an outside organisation, had been told nothing about the organisation, was faced immediately with having to deal with an underperforming probationary constable, having not been told anything about the procedure that should be followed in accordance with the police regulations.

Now things have come on a great deal since then, but what we need is better personnel management, not just for personnel managers, but for all line managers. I think again evidence you have heard from other witnesses have indicated that of the Fairness at Work cases since the policy was introduced in May of last year, the majority of those cases involved a problem over decision-making by first line managers.

We are 500 sergeants short in the Metropolitan Police Service at the present time. We need to do something to increase the number of those sergeants; we also need to do something to assist with their training. Sergeants, when they go on their foundation course, do have some input towards personnel issues, but what we are saying is: you should not simply say that that is the sole amount of the training that they receive; they should receive ongoing training to assist them with ever evolving situations they may come across. It should be a development process.

We do not tend to see the development process throughout the whole of the organisation, and that includes all of our members who operate supervisory positions, from sergeant – well, in fact, constables are in a lot of supervisory positions these days – all the way up to chief inspector.

Mr Smyth: Can I say, Sir Bill, the manifestation of that problem is that if people do not know, have not been trained in what they are supposed to do over procedures that in fact are not difficult, are fairly straightforward, but have to be followed in a sequence, you end up with a situation where it is done badly.

I suppose it is like trying to put together some complicated flat packed furniture and not use the instructions. One or two people will be able to do that very successfully, but most people will get it wrong, time and time again. That leads to frustration, and in this case, it is frustration on those that are at the receiving end of the actions taken by supervisors, not just supervisors of course, based out of not necessarily anything to do with management, but just lack of knowledge. That is why it is so important to get these things right. Once you have caused that dissatisfaction in part of your workforce, it is very hard to make that good again.

Sir William Morris: Let me just try and explore some of the issues around training provision, because policies seem to come down pretty rapidly, shall I say. Does the Federation itself provide training for your own negotiators and senior representatives who are at, if you like, the frontline with interfacing with managers, personnel managers; you provide training for those representatives?

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, we do, Sir Bill.

As soon as a representative is elected, they will be given a course almost immediately. We had to rely a great deal on the courses being made available by the Police Federation of England and Wales; with the numbers of representatives that we had, we took a decision, a number of years ago now, to actually create our own training courses.

That has gone all the way through the system. So we have our own equality training courses; we have our own discipline training courses, and health and safety. Members will be trained up to various levels, depending on the skills of the individual, or the needs of the individual, or the needs of that particular OCU. So we have a very comprehensive training programme.

Can I just say that we would wish that perhaps the MPS were to mirror some of the training that we do give to representatives, particularly in relation to the police regulations, which, as you have heard, are the conditions of service of all our police officers.

Now, they are there. They are part of our terms and conditions of service, and you would expect everybody to be fully conversant with them. Our experience is that that is not the case. People may call them archaic, but all I would suggest to you is they may not have taken the time to read the regulations, because the regulations have only been in force since 1st April 2003. So these are fairly new regulations, and have been regularly updated over a great number of years.

That is what we are suggesting, that there should be very, very good training for management in police regulations, in much the same way as we do for our Federation representatives.

The fact is, our representatives know these regulations, they quote them to MPS management, and when they are quoted to MPS management as being effectively the law of the land, that is when people cry foul and say they are archaic and outdated. I would suggest to you that that is not the case: they are very useful. They are the terms and conditions, as I say, of police officers who do not have that employee status, and we feel that the MPS should be doing more in its training.

I did note that you received some written evidence from David Hamilton, the director of legal services, where he pointed out that training was given to personnel managers in police regulations, but, of course, if that has only just started to happen, bear in mind we have had 12 months' operation of those new regulations, I would have expected that to have happened this time last year.

Mr Smyth: Sir Bill, can I just take you back to consultation? It is an area, I think, that we did not mention, and you did not ask us about is – consultation is not just with the Metropolitan Police Service, it is also with the Metropolitan Police Authority. I have to say, I do not believe, and I am sure colleagues will agree with me, that the level of consultation we have is anywhere near the level where it should be, as is reflected in other parts of the country.

I know you are going to visit other forces, and may I suggest that you ask what the arrangements are there, because they certainly will not be reflected here.

Sir William Morris: I will come back to consultation in a minute, but whilst it is fresh in my mind, let me just probe another question about training, very much influenced by what you have just said.

The sector of the economy which forms my own personal experience in terms of training has examples where, if you like, both sides of the relationship, managers and representatives, are trained together. It is not universal by any means, but it is deemed to be, if not best, at least good practice, and it is gaining more and more acceptance.

Are there any occasions where personnel managers or other levels of management within the MPS are trained side by side with representatives of your Federation? Do you go and join training courses on a particular issue like the regulations, as you have just indicated?

Mr Ratcliffe: No, there would not necessarily be courses in the regulations, but there is shared training; for instance, our advanced discipline course does have an input from ACPO members of the MPS, who are down there in the role of the board, the discipline panel, to, if you like, hear our side of the training and, of course, conversely, two of my colleagues here have just recently come back from some training for discipline board members, MPS training for discipline board members, only last week, where they gave an input to that course from a Federation perspective.

But do we train alongside each other? We have in the past, we do not currently.

Sir William Morris: Okay. Do you see this as an area which, if developed, not just on the regulations, but in some of the working practices which are emerging – working time, flexitime – do you see any benefit on these new and emerging areas of employment relations and relationships – legislation, like discrimination legislation or what have you – of joint training with the managers with whom the Federation has to interface?

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, personally I could see that there would be a great benefit from that, particularly if it came to the interpretation.

You mentioned the working time regulations: there was a great deal of confusion within the Metropolitan Police Service as to whether or not they actually applied to us. Of course I keep saying to people, "Yes, they do, there may be certain parts of the regulations that can be disapplied, but the working time regulations have applied to police officers since 1st October 1998."

There are large parts of the organisation I could take you to where I could show you breaches of the working time regulations that are taking place today.

Mr Smyth: Sir Bill, when it became apparent that the Health and Safety at Work Act was going to be applicable to the police service, some time before it came in – in fact, it was some two years before it came into being, we were training our representatives. In fact, the training we give to them now is an accredited professional training, so we have moved on from where we were, but we offered to, certainly locally, input something on health and safety to senior officers in that part of the Met which was the old 2 area, in North London, and it was never taken up. So it is not for the want of trying, either locally and London.

Mr Ratcliffe: Another example, if I might quote, is the police regulations themselves. Up until a few years ago, if you were to look around at any police station in the Metropolitan Police area for a copy of the regulations, you could only find it with the Federation representative.

At our request, the MPS have now placed these regulations and the determinations on the intranet site, and they now sit on the HR intranet site, freely available to all members, because again, they should be capable of being read by everyone as being the terms and conditions of their service.

Mr Smyth: In fact, Sir Bill, an example of that was that because across the Met they were interpreting the regulations which govern the overtime payments to officers – what they should be paid, in particular circumstances, and they had been subject to a legal action which had cost rather a lot of money, where they had to pay out a lot to a small number of people, because they had not been paid appropriately.

It was decided that they would write a guide for OCU commanders so that the overtime could be properly administered, and they gave that task to the training school at Hendon. I happened to be there, on a training course for new reps, and I was asked, this is the Hendon police training college, if I had a copy of the police regulations so they could actually write that guide.

They did not have one there.

They were only able to write that guide or start the work at that time because I was able to supply them with my police regulations handbook, which I thought was pretty indicative of the situation that pertained then.

And there is no reason to suppose they would have been any better if we had not asked them, you know. So archaic, I think, is another word for, "We really have not bothered to study them, we have not bothered to read, it is all rather too difficult".

Sir William Morris: Yes. Let me skip to my previous point on consultation, and I might come back on this whole question of training, jointly or singularly.

I want to sort of just perhaps make a qualitative distinction between – you can tell I am from the old school of trade unionism, because I make a qualitative distinction between consultation and negotiation, and you have mentioned two stakeholders, two constituencies there; one is the MPS and one is the MPA. It is quite legitimate that you, as a Federation representing over 100,000 people, should be consulted on the issues which affect the interests of your members, and broader social policy issues as well.

What areas of policy do you expect to be consulted on by the MPA? Because I have read your submissions, and I have read the ad hoc'ry of relationships in terms of meetings and what have you, and I was not quite clear in my mind what were the legitimate expectations of a relationship between the Federation and the MPA.

Mr Ratcliffe: The policy in the main will go to the MPA for sanction, final sanction, as being the policy of the MPS. On those occasions where perhaps we have taken the exception and simply objected to the policy completely, I think we would reasonably expect to be able to put that case to the MPA. That is not necessarily the case, we do not have a speaking part at MPA meetings.

The only time that we do have that, just to correct myself, is that there is a new health and safety sub-committee that has been set up within the MPA where our health and safety leader has been invited to be a member of that particular sub-committee.

But at other MPA committees, we are not allowed to give an input in the same way as MPS staff would be allowed to give the input, so therefore, we are restricted to writing letters which can be circulated to members beforehand.

But, of course, if there are issues developing at the particular meeting, then it becomes very difficult to highlight the differences of opinion that we may have within the Metropolitan Police Federation, which, of course – to slightly correct what you said earlier – represents 29,000 members within London –

Sir William Morris: Sorry, I was thinking nationally.

Mr Ratcliffe: Of course that is the larger part of the 130,000 police officers in England and Wales.

Mr Smyth: I think one of the things that should be in place is a formalised meeting process with the Police Authority, not just with one or two members. We have only had one member of the Police Authority, since its inception, that has wanted to come to speak to the Police Federation and visit us in our offices.

I do not think that speaks hugely well. Yes, we do speak to members of the Police Authority on an individual basis, but there is no formalised meeting process. We have a formalised meeting process for meeting both the Commissioner and his management board, both formally and in minuted meetings, and that is something that should be replicated in the Police Authority. They would be better informed if they did that; that does not mean to say they would come to any different conclusion, but at least they would know what the organisation that represents the vast bulk of the police officers in the Metropolitan Police feel on particular issues.

Sir William Morris: I am not making a judgment here, but let me just give you a parallel. If I worked for one of the borough councils in London, or indeed where I live, I would not expect the council to consult me on the policies that it is going to put in in terms of roads, highways, personnel or anything.

Mr Ratcliffe: Quite the contrary, Sir Bill –

Sir William Morris: I can tell you, it does not happen!

Mr Ratcliffe: The Metropolitan Police Federation have officers in Bromley. Bromley council recently approached me as a business rate payer for that particular locality and said, "We want to consult you, as well as other business rate payers, about the new town centre development". So consultation does go on. People do change the style as consultation takes place.

Yes, it is up to us to put our case forward, which we do on a regular basis. And that is the reason why we have asked for and will strive to maintain our membership of the various strategic committees within the Metropolitan Police Service, because that is our opportunity of giving the feedback from our members direct to those particular policy forming bodies.

Sir William Morris: Right. I want to come back now to the MPS, and where that relationship lies in terms of consultation, because of course there are some things about which you are consulted, and the timing issue you have raised, but I would also expect a fair amount of negotiation.

Because consultation is: "Well, I have decided broadly speaking ...", or, "I am minded to decide this way, have you got a view?"

Whereas negotiation is slightly different: "I am minded ... and these are my proposals", and you on behalf of your members would say, "Well, I see your proposals, but I think that they are marginal, minimum, whatever", and you would get into a dialogue. Particularly when it comes to issues which affect your members' terms and conditions.

You have talked about – well, we have explored training, for example, we have talked about issues around working time, working time directives, health and safety; are you saying that at MPS' level, there is probably late consultation but no negotiation? Let me understand.

Mr Ratcliffe: What I am advocating for is precisely what you have suggested. By early consultation, it would take the form of negotiation. It allows us to have an input at the very formative stages of any policy. So often, we are presented with, as I said, the fait accompli, "This is what we are going to do, what do you think about it?" We would rather that we were involved in those developmental stages, so as we could enter into negotiation and have some meaningful consultation.

If consultation is to be meaningful, it also recognises, at the end of the day, the MPS will be the persons who are going to make the decision; what we want is for you to take our view into account in reaching that decision.

To simply give us a document and say, "Please comment on this in two to three days' time", with some of the lengthy tomes that do come out to us, I would suggest to you, is not meaningful consultation.

Meaningful consultation starts from what the problem is, and then working out how we resolve the particular problem. Now if that results in a policy being developed, so be it, but that is what we want: the meaningful dialogue, and meaningful consultation. At the end of the day, we are not going to prevent management from doing their job; what we want is our say in how that should happen, because we do happen to think, as we represent nearly 30,000 members, that we do have something to add to the whole equation.

Mr Smyth: Sir Bill, the reason why that is so important is that in a hierarchical organisation, which the police service is, not just the Met, where rank counts, they can make a decision despite the best consultation that goes against the weight of evidence and good judgment.

That is why it is so important early on.

And we can hope to persuade at an early stage of some of the pitfalls, sometimes, of where they might wish to go and perhaps point out ways where we can make a process better, more streamlined, more effective. So we can assist them to make the Metropolitan Police a much more efficient and better workplace if they did that.

It does not sit well with a hierarchical organisation, if they are just used to being able to make decisions without consulting, or real consultation. That is certainly a challenge within the police service.

Sir William Morris: Yes. I know it is difficult, but I am going to ask you to do it anyway: just set aside what you do, your role as police officers, and think of yourself, the Federation, as a trade union, which you are. In that context, how would you describe your relationship with the employers, the Metropolitan Police Service?

Mr Smyth: I wrote something down, because I thought it would be something that we would probably want to say, because if you just read some of the stuff that we said already, it sounds a pretty desperate picture, and I do not think that is actually fair, because we are all very proud to be Metropolitan Police officers, and the Metropolitan Police, along with the police service generally, does much that is excellent.

Good news, frankly, is not something that gets to the front pages very often, so what we are really highlighting are the areas where when it gets it wrong, it gets it quite badly wrong, and has an impact which is probably unintentional.

I suspect much of what goes on is not intended but happens anyway, and it is about trying to get away from that, we make mistakes less often and are a better organisation. I think the phrase that the Metropolitan Police likes to use is "employer of choice"; well, we can help them to become an employer of choice, but they have to allow us to help them.

Having said all that, we must recognise that there is much that the Metropolitan Police does which is absolutely superb, and I think we ought to take that into account as well. Our relationship with the Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioners is a good one. We can go and see them any time that we want to. Both Don and I have the Commissioner's mobile phone number and his home number, the Deputy Commissioner's mobile phone number. So consultation at that level or relationships are certainly very good.

Sir William Morris: I accept the fact that the culture is created at that level, and the general ethos of the organisation is directed at that level, but in the end, it is about taking the collective culture of the organisation, right on the frontline, where your members are, and making sure that it runs through what I call in another context the so-called golden thread.

What is the overall relationship? I hear about the phone numbers; I understand that in every organisation, we have all got people who we have, you know, real excellent relationships with. But more about the organisation rather than the two senior individuals that you have quoted: how would you describe the Federation, the Met Federation relationship with the MPS, the trade union and the employers, in general terms?

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, in general terms. Taking as to one side – in other words, the hierarchy of our organisation at Bromley, if you look at local representation, how is local representation at OCU level conducted? I would have to say it is good in parts, because, of course, one of the aspects that I have to be involved in is the agreement to various shift systems that operate throughout the MPS, again because of working time regulations and other legal reasons.

What I do know is that in some places, consultation with local representatives is very, very good. Our constitution document which I provided as an appendix to our written submission indicates that there should be regular meetings with OCU commanders and local representatives. These do not always take place in lots of locations, but, of course, in other locations, you realise that they are having much more than the statutory four meetings per year; that OCU commanders, borough commanders, are having very, very regular meetings with local representatives and involving them in the local consultation process.

On the odd occasion that you do come across where there is poor consultation, we will draw that to the attention of the Commissioner.

Sir William Morris: In the last few minutes, we have explored some important issues, and there is a picture of change in terms of issues around working time directives, training, health and safety; issues which then impact on some of the statutory issues around the discrimination agendas and provisions that have been emerging. And, as we speak, it is happening. So life is changing in respect of the world in which your members live and work and police and exist.

I want to come to one of the issues which has emerged from a number of witnesses, and indeed emerged to some extent with your National Federation earlier today; my colleagues and I have explored it in the privacy of our discussions reviewing the evidence as it comes forward to us, but we have no view, we are looking for people's thoughts and their ideas, before we form any view.

And it is the office of constable, which we have heard a fair degree of evidence on, and both Anesta and Tony might want in their questions to you to raise different aspects of it.

It has been suggested to us that the principle of ordinary employment law should apply to constable, and for example, in his written submission, the Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, said that the ordinary employment law applicable to the employment relationship should be applied to police officers whilst, and I emphasise here, maintaining the protection to officers afforded by the office of constable.

I emphasise that, the protection of the office of constable, not just the office in terms of what it enables a constable to do, in the performance of his or her dealing, but the ethos and the general culture which underpins that office.

And we have had a lot of different views about that. We would find it helpful to hear from the Metropolitan Police Service Federation, from your organisation. Because one of the arguments, as it has been explored, is the protection which it would provide in respect of certain terms and conditions, and greater access for defending yourselves in some instances: the access to tribunals about unfair dismissal issues, things like that.

And we note that nothing is static on discriminatory issues, you have that right, and there are some issues around that which will emerge, inevitably so, around the directives, as we have talked about. So it is a changing world, and one of the sort of considerations, if not now, it might be in 20 or 30 years, that will have to be considered by different officeholders is: at what point does this development bring a new dimension to the workplace relationship whilst maintaining the protection of the office and the title of the office of constable?

I know that it is a subject on which there are various views, there are fors and againsts, but we would like to hear you on that.

Mr Ratcliffe: Well, the office of constable, as you are well aware, is steeped in history. I think I speak for all of my colleagues here, we are all proud to be Metropolitan Police officers, and all that goes with that. It is a very responsible role; society invests in their police officers some powers which ordinary citizens do not have, and they are powers that have to be used correctly, and in accordance with the – in strict accordance with the law.

Police regulations have evolved over a great number of years. You know the reason why they came about, from the history of the Federation that we provided to you, and, of course, they are steeped in the police strike of 1918.

Now I would suggest to you that whilst certain parts of the employment legislation are now becoming more and more available to police officers – you have heard that some aspects of employment law are open to police officers to take to an employment tribunal. Of course, more legislation comes on-stream later on this year: the Disability Discrimination Act will apply to police officers from 1st October. So we have various aspects that are opening up to police officers, but the question I would ask is: if it is not broken, why do we want to fix it?

We do have this view that the regulations are archaic, but, of course, as I have said to you in my evidence earlier, these are fairly new regulations that were arrived at over a period of two or two and a half years' consultation.

During that time, you will probably recall that there was a mass lobby of Parliament, where quite a few of my colleagues probably would have very much welcomed the full rights of the ordinary employee to be available to them, but I am not so sure that they are freely available in a free and lawful society, that police officers can be given the full cover of employment legislation.

So therefore, I would suggest to you that if we were to be given employee status, then certain parts of the protection that is given to the ordinary employee would be withheld from our members.

What do I mean by that? Without skirting round it, my suggestion to you would be the right to withdraw our labour: I cannot ever see that ever being given to the police officer in the United Kingdom, let alone England and Wales, or let alone London.

So in those circumstances, there is a lot to think about, but all I would say, Sir Bill, is the regulations are not broke, they do not need fixing; what they need is better interpretation and training and implementation by the management of the MPS.

Mr Smyth: Sir Bill, if I was just to add to what my colleague has said, police officers, when they exercise their powers, have to be answerable for their individual actions to the courts, not just to senior officers, or in fact not to senior officers per se; they are answerable in law for every action that they take, or indeed actions that they do not take.

That independence is there very properly to prevent officers being ordered to do things which are clearly unlawful. If we were to arrive at a situation where we went to employee status, and an officer is dismissed because they had not followed some rule or order of a senior officer, you know, to try and access redress through employment tribunal, the mere notion that that would give them redress, where the regulations are in place – the police regulations and the discipline code of conduct – are there to try and ensure fairness.

There is a perception in the police service that they do not use the conduct procedures in a fair way; is there any more reason for police officers to feel confident that they would use employment law in a fair way? I think the answer to that is no. And if police officers are not to be afforded the same rights as every other citizen in terms of employee status, I think it is fair to say that you must have something else in its place.

That has been a tried and tested philosophy for decades, that in return for the fact that we are not allowed to exercise the right to withdraw our labour, then the way that our terms and conditions are negotiated are compensated for in different ways. Those different ways are the police regulations, the Police Advisory Board of England and Wales, and the Police Negotiating Board. You simply cannot tamper with one without changing all the rest.

Sir William Morris: Can I just respond to some of those points there? "If it is not broke, do not try and fix it": it is getting broke. We have just talked about the new dimensions which 10 or 15 years ago did not exist, so it is getting broke, and it is getting broke and being fixed by others without the Federation having the real influence that it could and should have in fixing it.

More and more demands will be made on your members about flexibility, working; they will be making more and more demands, the whole concept of work/life balance: there is a world out there which is rapidly changing. What is happening is that the rights and obligations in one sense will become an incremental development rather than a development which looks at the coherent whole. So that is a response to the why, "If it is not broke, why try and fix it?"

Mr Ratcliffe: Can I comment on that point then?

Sir William Morris: Let me just finish, because there is a perception here that you could not – this morning, when the national representative made the point, Mr Elliott, that you cannot have a halfway house, you have to go the whole hog if you are giving the rights, I had no illusions that he was talking about the right to withdraw labour. I have been around long enough to read the smoke when I see it.

But the reality is that what would take place would be a contract would be determined, and that contract would prescribe what is in and what is out, so you would have the opportunity to negotiate your terms of contract. If you want whatever is deemed to be in the interests of your members, then you would put that on the table and deal with it.

There is another uniformed service who – I am not making a comparison, I am just making a statement; the prison officers uniformed service work closely with your good selves. They had the right to strike, there was a bit of a hiatus, where in a peak, there was legislation, but it has been restored. So it is not beyond the wit of skilled negotiators like yourself. I remember all the debate and discussion around (inaudible), I stood and gave my round of applause.

But basically what I am saying is that when nobody has put forward a package for imposition, what has been floated is a principle, and that principle would have to take account of a whole myriad of issues; not least of which is the regulations as they are applied, and indeed rights, obligations and all the other considerations.

So that is what has been said, and I hear the arguments, in terms of personal liability; again, that is not something that cannot be negotiated, if it is legislation. You are telling me regulations are constantly being changed, so if it is an impediment to the greater good, then I am sure that will be something that could be changed.

What I want just to leave this point for me – I know you need to come back on it, and clearly you must – but the key issue is whether or not the Federation sees the principle as one which is worthy of any negotiations at all, or discussions.

Mr Ratcliffe: If I can come back on the point that I was intending to raise, which is the police regulations are regularly updated. You mentioned flexible working, and I hope that we may be able to discuss that later, but flexible working, up until ten years ago, was not permitted within the police regulations.

They were changed by the proper negotiating body, the police negotiating board, and, of course, we now have the arrangements whereby police officers are not working conventional eight hour shift patterns. We have officers working a myriad of shift patterns, from nine, ten and even on some occasions twelve-hour shift patterns; we also have one particular location where they work a permanent night duty. They have seven days on and seven days off.

So we are introducing flexible working within the constraints of the police regulations. That was not permitted more than ten years ago. The regulations now permit for that, and all I would say is that the regulations can be updated through the proper negotiating machinery that Parliament has put in place to deal with the unique case of police officers, and I would suggest to you, Sir Bill, it does work, and the negotiation arrived at our pay and conditions package in 2002 is an illustration of that.

What seems to be happening now is that certain aspects of the police service now wish to go back and revisit that agreement; well, the proper place to do that, with all due respect to them, is within the police negotiating board. If they want to change the terms and conditions of police officers, use the proper negotiating machinery that Parliament has set up to deal with them.

Mr Smyth: And they could consult at an early stage; I guess that is the best example you have had of where they find the process too onerous, so they use an Inquiry such as this as a vehicle to drive other issues, which I think is regrettable.

Sir William Morris: Just moving on, in section 2 of your submission, you say that – the reference is MPF 1/10, and the reference that I am quoting is:

"We would consider that the suggestion that the disciplinary procedures are inappropriate is misguided."

Then the submission goes on to use 14 or 15 pages to set out the faults to the current system, about the timeliness, the communications; it sets out a whole raft of headings which represent, if you like, the menu of faults which you are concerned about.

The only point that I want to make here is those points represent the issues which emerge in a number of letters. We do have a number of letters from your members where they are expressing their concerns, about – whether it is the monitoring, the suspension, the service confidence procedures, who deals with the allegation.

Every single heading that you have mentioned in your submission we have received letters where officers have expressed concern, and therefore, what we want to ask is whether the shortcomings that you have picked up – are they being advanced to the management? Because I am sure that those who have written in to us expressing their concern would not use the term "misguided". They would say, "We are victims of ...", and they put a heading.

Mr Smyth: Can I tell you, one of the things that I did, and it arose out of concerns being expressed by our officers in the specialist firearms branch, about the length of time it took to resolve investigations, where they had discharged a firearm, whether or not anybody had been injured, fatally or otherwise.

I had a meeting with both the chairman of the Police Complaints Authority, followed by a meeting with the Director of Public Prosecutions, and I raised the issue of delays.

The chairman of the Police Complaints Authority said the problem lay with the CPS, and the Director of Public Prosecutions told me the problem lay with the Police Complaints Authority. That is without even touching upon the Department of Professional Standards, who I would say would probably blame both of them, but, of course, the one that they will come out – and I know the evidence was given here, that it is because the Federation have employed one well-known firm of solicitors, and it takes a long time to get hold of a lawyer. Which was news to me, because I know we employ more than one group of solicitors.

So where is the truth within it all? Well, there are delays everywhere. I will hand over to my colleague.

Mr Ratcliffe: Professional standards obviously affects – not a large number of our members, but when it does affect our members, we end up with the complaints, as you heard; you never hear about the good stories, these are the bad stories, and there are a number of people who I am sure have written into you with horrendous stories, as it has affected them.

We must not underestimate the effect of discipline on the individual, and of course, if we do not put that right, what then happens is the rot starts to set in, and the organisation suffers as a result of some wrongdoing or the procedure not being followed correctly. Therein lies the difficulty.

Now I have heard you and your colleagues, when speaking to other witnesses, talking about problems over the long length of time, for instance, that people are suspended from duty.

In our written submission, we make reference to the fact that rather than suspension, we ought to be thinking about keeping those individuals at work wherever we possibly can, and there is a facility to allow for that, and only in the most serious of cases should suspension be considered. Then again, when those cases for suspension are considered, then it is right, fair and proper that the individual has the opportunity to comment on the reasons why they are being suspended.

So often in the past, the individual has not necessarily been told the proper reasons for the suspension. We have asked for them to be in writing, but they are not invariably in writing, so that the individual has the opportunity to challenge the decision-making process.

The review often, as we point out, goes ahead without the individual being aware of it, and we end up with officers being suspended for very long periods of time.

The people of London pay for police officers to actually be at work, and we would want them to be at work, providing a meaningful role within the organisation, wherever that is possible.

That is the reason why we bring that to your attention. Is there a way round it? Well, we have suggested how that could be done, and we have put forward to you as to what the MPS should be considering more and more.

Mr Smyth: But could I say within that, Sir Bill, that should not then be an excuse for officers to be removed from operational policing for the same length of time that they might otherwise be suspended. I saw two officers last week, one of whom will have been away from operational policing for six years before his matter is resolved. He has been waiting for promotion to Chief Inspector for six years; six years in a 30-year career is unacceptable. They are not lone cases. It is just wholly unacceptable.

Mr Ratcliffe: We are asking for a proportionate response by the MPS, and I do not think that is anything unusual to ask for.

Sir William Morris: Just one last point before I give our writers a little rest. The final part of your submission sets out a summary of the issues about which you are concerned. I just wondered whether you would quickly summarise those for us, and perhaps identify the three most important ones that you would want to see developed.

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes. I mean, the theme of our evidence in relation to where do things go wrong is obviously consultation. Meaningful consultation goes right the way across the board, whether it be dealing with the individual discipline case, where negotiation is part and parcel of the process, but so often is ignored by the MPS; we do not deal with things in the same way perhaps as constabulary forces do, and I think were there a bit more consultation on individual cases, we may not end up with the amount of hearings we have, for instance, where we end up going to a discipline hearing to find that it only results in a minor punishment.

We do stress that the periodic review of cases is something that is quite important for officers. It is also very important that members of the public who complain about police officers are kept informed of the progress of the case. But so should be the case in relation to the officers themselves, particularly if they are at work or not at work; not at work means they are out of the loop. It is so often very easy to forget about individuals who might not be at work, and then find that it is very difficult for them to come back into the Metropolitan Police Service as a meaningful member of the organisation.

So we do think that keeping the individual involved would be a very, very proper and easy thing for the MPS to do.

If we were to look at other aspects, training is the common thread, to use your phrase, that runs through everything. It is easy for me to say better training, but what we are saying is: better training, and by the way, we are also willing to take part in that better training, and to give you the view from the Police Federation, as we have done in relation to the board members' training. We will give you our perspective on how we feel the board members ought to look at aspects from a Federation perspective. You give us the same back; I think that would be an excellent idea, taking up on your suggestion.

There is something that is quite important that I ought to raise, and, of course, it is in relation to the service confidence procedure which we have not touched on, and I do not know if any of your colleagues will touch on that; we do feel, in those situations, that there ought to be that oversight panel that we referred to.

It is very easy to have somebody simply be the subject of a service confidence procedure, and because of the secrecy that is involved in the whole process, to find that when we try to challenge the process, only to be told, "I am sorry, I cannot tell you, it is a secret", is very disappointing to the individual, who suddenly finds they are required to rehabilitate themselves within the service, but do not know what they are rehabilitating themselves about.

Turning to employment tribunals, what we are asking for at employment tribunals, if I can summarise, is again better dialogue. We have realised that nobody wins by going to an employment tribunal. There has been much said about lawyers, I best keep away from that subject, but nobody wins when you go to an employment tribunal, least of all the applicant.

What we are gearing our training up towards now is a process of negotiation and early settlement rather than appearing before an employment tribunal to try to reach a resolution there. That does not work. And we end up with very, very disappointed members, because they have gone through a process, whilst they may have some compensation at the end of it, what they end up with is a very empty feeling in their stomachs for going through the whole process.

What we would look to see is early resolution of employment related matters as a matter of course, and that is what our training is now geared up towards, negotiation for that early settlement.

Sir William Morris: Okay. Well, thank you very much indeed. I know that my two colleagues have a number of questions they want to put to you, but I am also mindful that our stenographers have been working away there for well over an hour.

So what I propose to do is just have a quick adjournment for about five minutes or so to give them a rest, and we can stretch our legs.

3.47 pm
(A short break)
3.56 pm

Sir William Morris: Okay, Mr Ratcliffe? Right, I will just ask Miss Weekes to lead the questions now that we have reconvened.

Questions by Miss Weekes

Miss Weekes: Thank you. Can I take you back to the discussions you had with the chairman about consultation, but really on quite a different point altogether?

You are the trade union for the Metropolitan Police, I think you mentioned you have over 3,000 members, or did you say 30,000?

Mr Ratcliffe: 30,000.

Miss Weekes: 30,000 members. In which case, no doubt, you were consulted about the setting up of this Inquiry?

Mr Ratcliffe: No, we were not. We became aware of the setting up of the Inquiry, I think the MPA meeting was on 10th December, and we became aware of the Inquiry as a result of that particular meeting. When it came to the setting up of the Inquiry, no, I did not have any discussions with anyone other than when I received the letter from your Secretary to the Inquiry, inviting me to submit evidence, and that was in January of this year.

Miss Weekes: Do you agree with the purpose of this Inquiry?

Mr Ratcliffe: The purpose of the Inquiry is very, very appropriate at this particular period in time.

Miss Weekes: You think it is needed?

Mr Ratcliffe: Very much so. What pervades the Metropolitan Police Service at the present time, particularly in relation to employment matters and discipline matters, is a blame culture; somebody is to blame. It may well be that it is the organisation that is to blame, because its procedures may not be properly in place to be able to deal with the situations that people come across. So I think it is very appropriate.

Miss Weekes: And your membership reflect that view?

Mr Ratcliffe: Well, our membership – I spoke to, by sheer chance, I ran into a former colleague only the other today, she said, "What are you doing at the moment?", and I said "We are preparing our evidence for the Morris Inquiry", and she said, "Oh, what is the Morris Inquiry?"

Now I did take the time to explain to her what the Morris Inquiry was about, and we have asked our members for evidence for this particular Inquiry, but I think that albeit that I have seen it advertised in the corporate news site, I would hope that she is the exception to the rule rather than the general membership. But I would severely – I would certainly hope that the outcomes of this Inquiry are fully understood by all of our members, and appreciate the benefits that could be available to them as a result of your findings.

Miss Weekes: If we were to send out a straw poll, and asked all your members to vote on whether or not they wanted to have contracts of employment, what do you think the answer would be?

Mr Ratcliffe: I think they would need further explanation as to precisely what a contract of employment actually meant. We do have essentially a contract of employment at the moment, in the sense that when we join the organisation, we sign our terms and conditions of service.

So essentially, we have a contract of employment which follows roughly the same procedures as employment law, in the sense that you would not be allowed to dismiss an ordinary employee without a good and proper reason, and if somebody did dismiss an employee without a good and proper reason, they could likely end up at an employment tribunal.

Miss Weekes: Let us put it another way. If the poll said to your constables, "Would you like similar terms and conditions as police staff, maintaining the overall description of being a policeman, with special considerations?", what would you think the poll would be?

Mr Ratcliffe: I would think the poll would be that police officers would be in favour of maintaining the status quo.

Mr Smyth: I think that there is a world of difference between what we are expecting our police officers to do, as opposed to what we expect many of our members of the police staff to do.

For instance, the circumstances and the situations that our colleagues face, whether they are on boroughs or the specialist firearms unit, is very different to that which is faced by those who work providing the refreshments at Scotland Yard, for instance, or for those that work in one of the myriad departments at Scotland Yard dealing with administration. They are wholly different. The dangers are different, the pressures are different. They are not comparing like with like.

Mr Ratcliffe: Nevertheless, they are part of the one big machine, without which all the component parts in place, the machine would not work properly.

Miss Weekes: I ask those questions because you will understand certainly my dilemma, it might be a dilemma that my colleagues have: we are hearing from you, not from the 30,000, and we have heard from some very senior officers, not the lower ranks.

We are going to have to make a judgment about whether we go with the conflicting view which we clearly now have: the main Federation says no, leave it the way it is, if it is not broken, do not fix it. But the majority of every other witness who has sat where you are sitting says, "Time for a change".

Mr Ratcliffe: Well, that is –

Miss Weekes: Just a moment. So it is a matter of really getting to the bottom of what the police really want. How do you suggest we go about that?

Mr Ratcliffe: I think what the police really want is to be able to carry out the role that we all volunteered for. It is not an easy role, but nevertheless it can be a very rewarding role, and I think that that is the reason why I say "if it is not broke, do not fix it". I personally do not think that the organisation needs to change the employment status of the average police officer. We do not need to change that. Do I know that that is the view of the ordinary member? No, I do not, because we have not polled our members on it –

Miss Weekes: So it is your view?

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes. If we were to poll our members on it, I feel more than certain that they would back me in my opinion, and that is all I can give you today, because I have not polled the ordinary member.

Miss Weekes: Okay.

Mr Smyth: Can I just add to what my colleague has said? Part of what I have not seen any of the senior police officers, or indeed the chairman of the Police Authority, Toby Harris, say to you, or talk to you about, is what the on the agenda – on their agenda which is police reform. On their agenda on police reform, and in their responses to the government Green Paper are many of the things to which they have alluded without being totally honest with you.

I have never in recent years experienced a situation where ACPO members will come to a public meeting such as this, where they will know what the on the government's agenda for the future, and disagree, disagree with what any of the others are saying; they will all want to sing from the same hymn sheet, because that is what they do.

But that is the hidden agenda, and that is why I said to you that it is regrettable that this Inquiry, which is about the way we deal with staff in terms of discipline and employment tribunals and so on, is being used as a vehicle to promote a view.

That is not what this Inquiry should be about, so I think that is – there is a dishonesty around some of what you have been told.

The other thing, with all due respect to colleagues that are in the room who are ACPO or have been ACPO officers, is that they do have experience of policing the streets; that experience is generally fairly limited, because they accelerate through the ranks, sometimes very quickly, and so their recent experience of street policing is sometimes 20, 30 or more years out of date.

So we are not surprised that they have come to this Inquiry and given evidence to you which is all about trying to support where they feel that government policy may be taking the police service after the next election. That is clearly what they are doing, and it is dishonest. They should say to you – for instance, have they shared with you the Metropolitan Police's response to the government Green Paper, "Building safer communities"? I do not suppose they have.

As I understand it, although I must check, whilst it was on their website, you cannot find it now, because it was too embarrassing, that which was in it, but nothing they have said to you surprises any of us from the Federation, because we have read that document, we know what they are about. They should have stuck to the terms of what this Inquiry was for, but they have not.

Miss Weekes: Well, I am glad you have gone to it, because you can see why I opened with the questions that I did. I was going to come particularly to you, and the terminology you have used, "They have used the Inquiry to drive other issues". Well, "they" does include your Commissioner.

Mr Smyth: Indeed.

Miss Weekes: I am not going to spend a lot of time on it, but you have said something which I think is important, so perhaps you can bluntly tell me: what is the dishonesty? You may be speaking in terms which I do not understand.

Mr Smyth: Quite simply, in the Met's response there are a number of issues they have put in there – they talk about the "archaic regulations", failing, of course, to mention that they have been amended and revised in very recent times.

They talk about the number of attested or sworn police officers being reduced as an overall number of the total people employed in the police service; in their document, they say by 50 per cent.

We know that there are discussions taking place amongst ministers where they look to reducing that number by 75 per cent.

You know, these are the sorts of things that should be in the public domain, that should be being debated by the public, and those who are opinion formers, not smokescreened by saying, "We need to get rid of archaic regulations, police officers should be treated in most senses like other employees".

The only reason we have the benefit of police regulations is because of the mistreatment that our colleagues have suffered, over many decades, leading up to where we are today; it is to make sure that there is a balance between the rights of the police officer and management to manage.

Because certainly they were not there before, and if you strip all that away, we have no reason to believe they will be any better at employment law than they are at anything else when it comes to looking after staff when they get it wrong. They do not get it wrong all the time, but when they do, it is immensely damaging.

The sum total of how damaging that is is that they have had to have this Inquiry, you know; if you are relying on the suggestion that we should trust them, we simply could not. You know, we need to have rights and responsibilities on both sides; that provides it. They simply want to strip it away.

Miss Weekes: I am going to stick to the terms of reference, and go back to them, please. One of the things within our terms of reference is about management, and how police officers are treated when a complaint or allegation or a workplace conflict arises.

I have taken on board your written submissions, and I have listened very carefully and made a few notes whilst the chairman has asked you questions, and some of it touched a little bit on management skills, so I would like to come back to that.

You have made it absolutely clear that you are not interested in a radical getting rid of the regulations which we have got, because you say they have been recently negotiated for change. The new ones come out in April this year, that is the 1990 regulations, and there is a new Police (Reform) Act.

Well, as I have asked this question to your other colleagues who have just left, I ask you for some assistance. It is all well and good to say, very firmly, and quite impressively, "Well if it is not broken, fix it"; what so far I am not impressed with are real practical solutions about how you get people to understand the regulations, and to implement them, in a way which avoids dispute at work; it helps the police to be happier, so they police in a much happier, constructive mood on the street; and you have less expenses with employment tribunal claims.

So let us move away from the talk about what is wrong with it, and "if it is not wrong, let us fix it". How can you help us as an Inquiry panel that has to put sensible, workable recommendations; practically, how do you get managers to do it right? We know some of them do, but let us have some practical guidance from you.

Mr Ratcliffe: Right, and an awful lot of these managers that we have referred to, that you have referred to, are actually our members; sergeants, inspectors, chief inspectors, of course, are all federated rank members and therefore members of the Police Federation.

Miss Weekes: I understand that.

Mr Ratcliffe: What we are suggesting – and this is where we could have very much an input to it, is by better training of those individuals, people have said, "Is there not a responsibility on the individual to training themselves?", but I would agree, probably with my colleague Clint Elliott's submission to you, that it is all very well and good placing the piece of information before the individual, but the individual needs to be tested to make sure that they are taking through the corporate line.

That is what training is all about, it is reinforcing what you have just read, and that is what we would like to see. Now quite a few locations, various operational command units, OCUs, I will call them, do have training days built into their shift rosters. Quite a few do not, and I would suggest to you that that is very much a backwards step, because training of individuals is a very important part – I am not just talking here about how you might apply handcuffs to somebody, or how you might operate a CS spray; I am talking about the bread and butter training that we all rely on, and that is interpreting the law of the land as Parliament would want us to interpret it, to make sure that we carry through those powers correctly and legally, as I stated previously.

So we would see that better corporate training is the ideal solution. Now the service has done it recently in the past; for instance, the Commissioner was served with enforcement notices under the health and safety legislation, which meant that 23,000 of the lower ranking police officers were required to undergo health and safety training.

The same is true following the recommendations of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, in relation to community and race relations training, which is now in its second phase.

What I would suggest to you is there is the ability to undertake training when it is required to be done; what we should be doing is building that into the whole structure of the organisation, in other words, ongoing and better training for all managers. That is the way to resolve, dare I say it, the number of Fairness at Work cases that I have referred to, where the greater number of them were decision-making by the first line manager.

The next highest grouping, and I am sure you have seen this in the paperwork that has been sent through to you, was, of course, decisions made by second line managers, before you go on to other aspects. So what it does illustrate to me is that somehow or other, our managers are not necessarily getting it right.

What we would want – because I argue as their representative – is for better training for those individuals.

Miss Weekes: Can I just deal with the better training? Every document that I have come across, spanning perhaps almost eight to ten years, is about training. Every Inquiry document I have read is about training. Has the Met not got it right for ten years? I do want this gentleman to answer first, and I will come to you.

Mr Ratcliffe: No, I do not think they have got it right, because yes, we do advocate training, but we do not necessarily carry the training through, or we do not test that the training has been absorbed by the individual.

How do you do that? Do you measure it simply on the number of Fairness at Work cases that you have? Because that illustrates a failure in the system, rather than a positive understanding by the individual.

The same might be true of discipline cases; you know, do we accept that because we have X number of discipline cases, that illustrates that we are not getting something right? We should have a system in place of training individuals on a regular basis, in the same way as we do, as I mentioned earlier on, the officer safety training has been a feature of the police service for a number of years now.

For about the last ten years, officers are required to undergo officer safety training in the use of handcuffs, the use of batons and the use of CS spray.

Miss Weekes: Can I interrupt you. There is a system in place for training within the Met?

Mr Ratcliffe: Officer safety training.

Miss Weekes: But we are talking about personnel issues. We are talking about how managers deal on a day-to-day basis with people with different gender, people from different cultural backgrounds, so I am really interested in personnel issues.

Is there a system that trains managers in how to deal with disputes that might be about personality differences, it might be about the way an officer was spoken to, it might be an issue raised by a woman that is not going to be raised by a man. So that is what I want to get to: is there a system, and if there is a system, is it a good system? And if it is not, what are your practical recommendations for improving the system and making sure that the officers go to that training, that they get it, and that they are using the system?

Mr Ratcliffe: We would much rather that an individual is trained before the event, in other words we stop somebody suffering as a result of a poor decision by a first or second line manager, or whatever the case may be.

Miss Weekes: So is there a system?

Mr Ratcliffe: I am not aware of any specific training, although as I have said earlier, for instance, sergeants on their development courses, and I think the same is true with the inspectors on their development courses, will undergo a form of management training.

Miss Weekes: Right.

Mr Ratcliffe: Now that will include lots of other things, not just personnel management, but how much can you absorb in just one course, or should it be ongoing training? I would suggest to you that it ought to be ongoing training, because, for instance, an aspect that I have come across fairly recently – and Andrea Earl is here and might be able to address this problem for you in more detail.

Miss Weekes: Would you like to bring her in now?

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, I can – is flexible working, and the understanding of flexible working by some of the managers in the MPS. I bring Andrea Earl in on this particular subject.

Miss Weekes: I am particularly keen to hear a little bit more about how good a training system the Met has for personnel issues, because what we do hear a lot about – and we certainly heard from your colleagues on the outside of the Met that interpersonal skills need to be improved. I know there is firearms training and I know there is training on special units, but we are really talking about resolving disputes between officers, between staff. So can you help on that?

Ms Earl: Yes, I think a lot of the problems that I deal with, because I represent women in the main, are part-time, flexible working, and if you want to work part-time, your first port of call on most OCUs is to your sergeant.

So you go to your sergeant with a request to work part-time, and he does not understand the part-time regulations, so that is when the first problem occurs, and then it escalates, it gets way out of control, because an officer will go away, right out of roster, bring it back to that sergeant, who still does not understand what he has got in front – that is where our problem starts, right at the very beginning. They do not understand the regulations, and there is nothing in place that I am aware of to give that training to our sergeants.

Miss Weekes: Do you think something should be in place?

Ms Earl: Yes.

Miss Weekes: Because it is quite fundamental that your manager – it might just be five managers, but it is pretty fundamental if five managers do not understand those regulations, because they are crucial.

Ms Earl: I think they most certainly need something in place, because in some cases, the sergeant or the inspector can go and seek advice from a personnel manager and they themselves do not always understand the regulations.

Miss Weekes: So rather than get rid of it, which is some of the solutions that we have been told, you would rather go back to basics and redo the training scheme, so that they do understand it; is that what I am hearing?

Ms Earl: Yes, I think – and as far as I am aware, none of our sergeants or indeed our personnel managers have any training in discrimination law, which I think is another problem that we as women face; they do not have any training, so the sergeant and the inspector does not realise right in the very beginning that there is a problem, or initially, that needs to be dealt with, so it gets overlooked and just causes problems for our officers.

Miss Weekes: I did hear you correctly, no training in discrimination law?

Ms Earl: As far as I am aware, there is no training given in discrimination law.

Miss Weekes: How easy would it be for the Met to put that into place?

Ms Earl: I think for – on promotion, there should be a part in their promotion course where it should be dedicated not only to police regulations and dealing with disputes in the workplace but also in some form of discrimination law, sex discrimination law and race discrimination law.

Miss Weekes: You are to my mind the first person that has made that clear, so I think it is helpful that we now clearly understand that. Who is in charge of the structure for training, and what part of training should be obligatory, and what is left to the discretion of the manager to attend if they want to or they do not? Do you follow my question?

Mr Ratcliffe: Can I –

Miss Weekes: Who is in charge of that?

Mr Ratcliffe: Can I say, I can assist here, in the sense that whilst HR have responsibility for delivering training, the request for the training has to come from the individual command. So in other words, territorial policing, which covers the boroughs, would have to request the training off human resources training directorate, who would then formulate the training course to be able to deliver it.

Had how do we know that? Because we have just had some consultation on changes to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, where we have requested additional training for officers, only to be told that territorial policing have not requested it, therefore they have not put the changes to the legislation into any training courses. So the same would be true in relation to any discrimination training.

Miss Weekes: I see. But as the main union, a push from your Federation that management or those who supervise must have basic discrimination training, part-time workers' regulations; if you as a Federation put that bid on the table, how would that be received? Would you achieve what you want?

Mr Ratcliffe: Well, we have brought it to the attention of human resources, Assistant Commissioner Human Resources, many times in the past.

Miss Weekes: What has happened to your request?

Mr Ratcliffe: The request is not necessarily put into operation, although what I can say is as a result of me volunteering my services, there was a reference to my name on the HR intranet site, when it came to talking about flexible working; in other words, "If you do have any queries in relation to flexible working, please ring Don Ratcliffe on the following number"; which I do not mind, because that is the role that I have within the Police Federation, is to look at – as I mentioned earlier, the agreement of the joint executive committee is necessary for variable shift arrangements.

So therefore, it is appropriate that I give an early input to shift systems, and this includes the individual shift patterns that an individual might be working as part of flexible rostering arrangements.

What we are seeing more and more these days is a request, particularly from primary childcarers, to compress their working hours into fewer days.

So, for instance, if an officer is working five eight-hour days, if they could compress those into four ten-hour days, then they are still working the 40 hours per week, because I think that is quite important; not everybody has the financial freedom to be able to work part-time. People in this day and age still require to maintain their earnings level at the same standard. But at the same time, they also require the extra time to do these other things, and this is this work/life balance that I think we are finally getting round to in the in the Met police at the moment.

Therefore, if they can compress those working hours into fewer days, it means they have a day at home with their family, that they can look after childcare arrangements for that extra day at home, but at the same time, maintaining their earnings level, and that is what we are keen to see.

But what is happening at the moment, and this is the problems that both Andrea and I are coming across, and I am sure other colleagues are coming across, is a reluctance on the part of managers to look at ways of introducing flexible working, and a lot of people simply refusing flexible working because, "Well, if I cannot do it, you cannot do it", and that is a very old-fashioned and outmoded idea.

Miss Weekes: I am sure you would understand, if that is the stance that management takes, then employment tribunal cases just increase.

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes.

Miss Weekes: I am just interested in going back to the status quo. It is quite clear that it is not always right to criticise a manager if he simply – or she – does not understand because they have not been trained, so I take that on board entirely.

But in getting that training, if there is going to be any sensible recommendation from us, I just need to understand: if you, who represent over 30,000 members, say, "We have never had this training for X amount of managers and we need it", what happens to the request? And if you do not get it, what can you do about it?

Mr Ratcliffe: We can maintain pressure. For instance, using the example I quoted in relation to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the response that we had back within the last day or so was that – for instance, this deals with important changes in the Act, street bail is one in particular that I am sure you will be familiar with.

We think it is very important that police officers receive proper and adequate training in what is a very important role.

So come back with a response that it has not been requested is not appropriate; what we should be doing is bringing pressure on the service to ensure that that training is delivered.

Miss Weekes: Right. Can I ask your colleague this question? It is about your analysis of the trends that you can pick up from employment law cases, and what your membership are telling you about the problems that they have which remain unresolved, so they need to go to employment tribunals to resolve them; and officers can only take discrimination cases, so I am going to look at race and gender, because that is the majority of the cases that go to employment tribunals.

What is the trend that you see as to why women go to employment tribunals? Because there are quite a few of them. I am not going to look back at the statistics, I have read them, and I know you know them.

Ms Earl: I would think it is based around part-time working, promotion, training issues, there would be a lot of breast feeding issues, lack of facilities. But in the main, I would think promotion, training and part-time working.

Miss Weekes: And what steps as the Federation have you taken to speak to management about the trend?

Ms Earl: We speak to management at every opportunity we can. We will always put forward what we perceive to be our problems, and try to address whatever issues that we can. We are doing some work around flexible working at the moment, and having discussions with the diversity directorate around that, so every opportunity that we can, we will try to address that.

Miss Weekes: Let me take one example. I think it should be simple, but no doubt you will tell me it is not. Breast feeding; what is the problem? What is the problem about finding a remedy for a woman to have a facility to breast feed? What are the managers saying to you are the difficulties?

Ms Earl: The first answer will always be, "We do not have a room to use", and so it is a battle. It is a battle whenever an officer comes to you from an OCU who has returned to work, she needs to express milk, you will go to personnel or to a superintendent and ask for a room, and they will tell you they do not have one available. It is always about making space available.

Miss Weekes: Right. Part-time work; what is the response from management about part-time work?

Ms Earl: "We cannot do that because we do not normally do that". If you are a uniformed officer returning to work and you want to return to work part-time instead of full-time, you would be told that you had worked early, late and night duty on a team, so that is where you are expected to return to.

I do not think they think about how an officer is supposed to get a child to a childminder and start work at 6.00 in the morning. It does not seem to be – it does not register. What do you do with your child at 6.00 in the morning and what do you do with your child at 10.00 at night?

Miss Weekes: And you will appreciate that this is going to hit more women than men, because for a certain period of time of a woman's development in a job, she will be on part-time work if she is going to have domestic interests. So that is the response from higher management: so where do you go from there if you want, you know, fairly radical fundamental change? Because the part-time regulations have been in for quite a while, have they not?

Ms Earl: Yes, they have.

Miss Weekes: So how long has this status quo been going on for within the Met?

Ms Earl: It has always been a battle. Ever since it was first implemented, it has always been a battle for a female officer to find suitable part-time hours.

Miss Weekes: You will forgive me that I am asking you these questions in some detail, because we have not heard from very many women, or not as many as we would like to have heard from. There may be good reasons why they have not yet come to this Inquiry, but you will forgive my interest in the topic.

Well, it has always been a battle; a battle does not make the Metropolitan Police an employer of choice for women. So what is your recommendation as to how we can help you with this battle?

Ms Earl: I think we need to start educating, we need to start changing attitudes; as you say, there is a time in a woman's life when she is not going to be able to comply with doing early turn/late turn. I think fundamentally it is changing attitudes.

Miss Weekes: Race: what is the overall view that you get from the race cases that are going to employment tribunals? What is the trend? What is going on? What are people complaining about?

Ms Earl: I would say in the main, it would be discrimination.

Miss Weekes: Is it direct discrimination or indirect discrimination?

Ms Earl: I would say in the main direct.

Miss Weekes: Perhaps you can give me one or two examples of what you say would be the most re-occurring direct race discrimination suffered by your members?

Mr Ratcliffe: Can I assist there and suggest that what always comes up is the selection procedures; not promotion, because, of course, we all know that individuals can take the sergeants' or the inspectors' exam quite freely, this is open to anyone, but it is the other selection procedures that we may have within the organisation, and certainly, black members of the police service will find that they feel that they have been unfairly discriminated against when it comes to the application for various specialist units.

Miss Weekes: As a Federation, how do you take this up with management, and when you have, what is the result?

Mr Ratcliffe: Each case would have to be taken on its own merits, and it is a case of trying to get it through to an early resolution. As I said to you earlier, we are not keen to take anything to an employment tribunal where we can reach an early negotiation.

Miss Weekes: I have misled you with my question, can I put it again? I want to deal generally with you as a Federation, as a body with some clout that can negotiate and move changes, rather than any individual case.

The trend that you see in employment law cases, I think you are saying, is that a recurring theme with race cases is selection.

Mr Ratcliffe: Yes.

Miss Weekes: So rather than pick one case out from another, have you tried the approach of going to management and saying, "Look, there is a trend happening here, we see a repetition of visible ethnic minorities complaining about selection"; have you tried that?

Mr Ratcliffe: Well, we have not necessarily tried that directly at the moment. It becomes quite difficult, because an awful lot of the personnel issues that we are talking about are dealt with by HR. Whilst we meet on a monthly basis with the Assistant Commissioner, we are not members of the HR board, and HR decided last year to dispense with their strategic committee. Now why they did that is a matter of confusion to me and perhaps others as well, because it was our opportunity of putting forward these views within the HR environment.

It becomes that much more difficult when you are raising matters with the Assistant Commissioner, because it will always boil down to individual cases, rather than the theme – to use the chairman's analogy, the common thread that runs throughout cases, and we will try to identify that wherever we possibly can.

Miss Weekes: It is clearly more powerful if you can identify a trend, because one rises above the individual dispute, as it were.

Mr Ratcliffe: Absolutely, and again, I would probably mirror something my colleagues mentioned to you this morning: we are analysing claims, but we are in the very early stages of analysing claims. We had not been doing it until probably about 18 months to two years ago, but I think that now we have got the machinery in place to be able to analyse the claims submitted by our members; we are able to develop that analysis in such a way as we will be able to identify these common themes a lot earlier, and draw them to the attention of management at an early stage.

Miss Weekes: Can I ask this question, and either of you can deal with it: part-time regulations have been a way of British life for a very long time. Race issues and gender issues have also been part of our lives for a very long time. The rest of the public, and public organisations, have had to respond to those two issues.

Two things you have said indicate to me that the Metropolitan Police is very behind in its response. You have only just begun to look at trends. It is very common for public authorities and public organisations to look at trends in their workplaces. Why do you think you have only just begun to do that, when the rest of Britain are quite a bit ahead?

Mr Ratcliffe: Right, and –

Miss Weekes: What is going on?

Mr Ratcliffe: And they are, and I would suggest to you, it is probably the Race Relations (Amendment) Act that crystallised people's thoughts on this. Whilst it applies to the Metropolitan Police Service as a public body, it does not apply necessarily to the Police Federation, but, of course, trade unions, we suspect, will be involved in the legislation in the very near future.

So what I have done, as the general secretary of our organisation, is to put in place the measures that we need to use to analyse the trends that we are talking about.

Now I would hope that long before there becomes a legal requirement for the Police Federation to comply with the terms and conditions of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act, we are doing what the Act will require or does require public bodies to do at this pr

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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 Mr D Ratcliffe of the Metropolitan Police Federation, on 31 March 2004. Sections available here: Transcript of public session: Mr D Ratcliffe, Mr G Smyth and Ms A Earl of the Metropolitan Police Federation 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: Mr D Ratcliffe, Mr G Smyth and Ms A Earl of the Metropolitan Police Federation See also: Letter from Glen Smyth to Sir John Stevens clarifying his oral evidence to the Inquiry Document Reference: MPF 2 [PDF document; 43KB] Wednesday, 31 March 2004 2.30 pm Sir William Morris: Good afternoon, everyone. We are about to commence the afternoon session of the Inquiry. Mr Ratcliffe, can I first of all say good afternoon to you and to all your colleagues, and to say thank you for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry and to give evidence, and thank you also for letting us have your written submission, which we have found extremely helpful. I appreciate that for some of our witnesses, a process of this nature might seem somewhat daunting, so I thought it would be helpful if I very briefly set out how we propose to conduct the hearing this afternoon. But first, let me introduce myself and the other members of my panel. I am Sir Bill Morris, recently retired General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, but as you can see, there are two other members of the panel. On my right is Sir Anthony Burden, who recently retired as Chief Constable of South Wales Constabulary after a long and distinguished career in the police service. On my left is Miss Anesta Weekes QC. Anesta is an eminent barrister who sits as a recorder and part-time chairperson of employment tribunals. She was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry. Mr Ratcliffe, 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 repeat, as I have done since this Inquiry commenced: our focus is the MPS as an organisation and not the individuals who make up that organisation. The inquiry we are conducting is inquisitorial, and it is not adversarial in character or nature. We are nevertheless keen to enquire into the issues raised in our terms of reference, so that we can make appropriate recommendation for further good practice within the Met, rather than concentrating on making criticisms of the MPS, or indeed the individuals within it. To help us in our task, we are very keen to hear from all our witnesses not just about what is wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service, but also what is right with it; but most importantly, we are looking for all the suggestions possible to put things right, assuming anything is found to be wrong. For the record, let me say that a transcript is being taken, so that we 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; followed by Sir Anthony Burden, and any supplementary questions that I might find necessary. At the conclusion of our questions, I will offer you the opportunity to make a brief closing comment. You have been extremely helpful in providing us with a written submission which will be posted on the website, but your submission also set out for us a number of signposts to some of the issues. You have pointed us towards an overview of the Metropolitan Police Federation; you have indicated the consultation procedures which are in place with the Metropolitan Police Service in respect of policies, practices and, indeed, procedures. You have indicated the application of the professional standards within the Metropolitan Police Service and how it functions, and you have highlighted the approach to employment tribunal cases and, of course, the resolution of grievances. In addition, the Met Federation makes a number of summaries to its own proposals, to which I will indicate later on. We would like to ask you some questions about the material in your submission, and to seek your views on those and indeed a range of other matters that are of interest to us, but before we raise these issues, however, for the benefit of the transcript, I wonder if you would mind formally introducing yourself and your colleagues to the Inquiry. Mr Ratcliffe: Good afternoon, chairman, and members of the panel. My name is Don Ratcliffe, I am the General Secretary of the Joint Executive Committee of the Metropolitan Police Federation. I am a constable. On my left-hand side is inspector Glen Smyth, who is the chairman of the Joint Executive Committee. We have responsibility for joint matters, and I think you heard from colleagues from the Police Federation of England and Wales this morning indicating that there are three separate rank branch boards. If I can introduce some other colleagues: behind me to my left-hand side is Andrea Earl. Andrea is the Secretary of our Women's Sub-committee of the Metropolitan Police Federation. Andrea is a constable based at Redbridge borough, and has extensive knowledge on equality matters and flexible working within the Metropolitan Police Service. On my right and behind me is Mark Nurthen. Mark is our lead on discipline within the Metropolitan Police Federation. He is the Deputy General Secretary of the Sergeants' Branch board, a post he has held since 2002, and Mark is also an experienced discipline friend. The term friend, of course, as you will be familiar, has a definition within the police conduct procedures. He has extensive dealings with the directorate of professional standards over policy matters, and again, you may wish to hear from him in relation to those. There are some other colleagues who are in front of you, Sir Bill. On your right-hand side, on the far right-hand side, is Neil Cratchley. Neil Cratchley is a constable. He is Constables' Representative for Haringey borough, but is due shortly to take up the post of Deputy General Secretary of the Constables' Branch board. He is an experienced discipline friend and has considerable knowledge in grievance and Fairness at Work issues. Bob Drew is the General Secretary of the Sergeants' Branch Board, and Bob is extremely experienced, with over 36 years' service in the Metropolitan Police Service, and was our equality leader during the development of the Fairness at Work procedure, which again you have heard about previously. Brian Roles sits next to Bob Drew, was recently elected as the Deputy General Secretary of the Inspectors' Branch board. Brian has over 28 years' service and was, until recently, the Inspectors' Representative of Camden borough. Then finally Dave Bennett; Dave Bennett is a long-standing Federation representative based at Dagenham borough, and again has extensive knowledge of misconduct and service confidence procedure, and is an active and experienced discipline friend. I should also point out that Neil Cratchley, Dave Bennett and Andrea Earl are our trainers, course directors, within the Police Federation, and also have experience of training – shared training with the directorate of professional standards. Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Ratcliffe, you have got a full team. Questions by Sir William Morris Sir William Morris: Could I start by making one or two observations in respect of your submission? In your submission, you make a number of points about what you see as lack of meaningful consultation by the Metropolitan Police Service vis-a-vis its management. At page 6 of the submission, you state that meaningful consultation is often ignored, and the opportunity to comment is very, very limited. My question is: do you see this lack of consultation as reflecting poor management by the MPS, or do you think it demonstrates an organisational culture regarding the treatment of police officers and staff? Mr Ratcliffe: I think the point that we make is too often we are presented with a fait accompli, in other words the policy is very much in its final stages of formation before the document will come through to us for consultation. What we have always argued for, and will continue to argue, is that we should be involved in the developmental stages of any policy, no matter what it is, and that means right from the word "go". In other words: what do we want, why do we want it and how are we going to do it? I think that is what I mean by that comment, that early consultation does mean that we end up with a good product at the end of the day, and that is not just early consultation with the Metropolitan Police Federation, and it is early consultation with all key stakeholders. Sir William Morris: Sure. Perhaps you can give us some examples of the disadvantage, not just to the Federation, but to the service, as a result of this poor consultation, and what representation has been made by the Fed, your Fed, with a view to changing the practice of late or no consultation. Mr Ratcliffe: Yes. We are, as I pointed out in our document members of various strategic committees within the organisation, it is our intention that every time we do end up as being late consultees to any process, to raise it within those particular forums. There are a number of policies, draft policies, that have come through from the directorate of professional standards which have come through very, very recently, there is one that we were discussing yesterday, on sanction guidelines, that is very much in its formative stages. Whilst it is a second draft that we were considering yesterday, nevertheless, had we had the opportunity of having that very early consultation, we feel that that would have been handled a lot better by the organisation, so there are a number of examples, individual examples, in these cases, involving the directorate of professional standards, where we think consultation could have been better. It does not however stop at professional standards, because, of course, we have been in the past a member of various equality meetings, one of which has, I am afraid, withered on the vine and been absorbed into the diversity directorate, where we would be active members of discussing equality issues. But, of course, we have not been invited to that particular meeting for quite some time, there had not been a meeting; we made enquiries in relation to what had happened to that particular committee, only to be told that it no longer existed. Now that is the representation that we can make; how do we make it? We go through various channels that we have. I have pointed out we meet regularly with the Assistant Commissioner Human Resources; we also meet with management board, and we raise those opportunities of bad consultation wherever we possibly can – those examples, sorry, of bad consultation. Sir William Morris: Is it fair to say, on the basis of yesterday's evidence, that whilst it might be getting marginally better, there is still some way to go in terms of improving the quality of the consultation? Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, there is some way to go towards improving that quality consultation. As I do reiterate, early consultation means that we end up with a good product, because what it means is simply because I might be writing a draft policy, that does not mean that I know everything about it. What I should be doing is taking views of other people to formulate those into a draft document; that is what we are asking for. Mr Smyth: I think the other thing, Sir Bill, is sufficient time for us to consult colleagues is very often not given, and I think the worst recent example of policy being developed was when we found out about the estates policy in relation to police stations, and the selling off of large numbers of police stations; we first discovered about it when it became a topic in the Financial Times. I do not think that is really the way to do business. That was the worst example. There were reasons for that, some of which we were told were outside the control of the Commissioner, but nonetheless, that should not happen. But it is also – I cannot emphasise enough: sufficient time to read bulky documents which are technical in nature at times, and to share those amongst colleagues. Many of our colleagues have their day jobs to do as well, and they have to try and find time to read these documents, and feed back to their various branch boards, to come back to us. Sir William Morris: Yes. I am glad you have raised the point about consultation not just between the executive and the senior Met Fed officers, but consultation generally; can you share with us the process of your own Federation, Met Federation, consultation process? Mr Ratcliffe: Right. We are, as you know, divided into three separate rank branch boards. Those rank branch boards meet on a quarterly basis, four meetings per year. The joint executive committee meets four times per year. So if we wanted to consult with members out of those periods in time, you can understand the difficulty that we have. So therefore, what we have to do is the circulation of documents, either by electronic means or paper means, to get views back. That can be very, very difficult at times, bearing in mind the size of our organisation and the number of representatives that we have. There are 352 representatives within the Metropolitan Police Federation, and as you heard earlier from colleagues from England and Wales, they are organised mainly on an operational command unit basis, so if we were to take the views of all 352, you can understand it would take some time. Invariably what happens is we have to go to executive level, and each of the branch boards does have a separate executive to be able to take those viewpoints, but again, we would always encourage – and well, it does happen; those executives do take the view of the ordinary member into account. But does every member of the Federation – are they consulted? Then I would have to say no, they are not, because of the timescales and the enormity of the problem that we would face. Sir William Morris: Okay. The MPS has staked its reputation, and highly so, on among other policies, its policy on diversity, and, of course, as the leading trade union, the Federation has a significant contribution to make to deliver that particular policy. Can you give us some examples where the Met Federation has used the diversity policy of the MPS to benefit underrepresented groups among your own membership? Mr Ratcliffe: Right, again, as you have heard from colleagues this morning, there was a long way to go within the Police Federation. What steps have we taken in relation to underrepresentation within the Police Federation? I could tell you, for instance, by way of example, the Constables Branch board has five members, of a committee of 60, who are from visible ethnic minority backgrounds. The Sergeants' Branch board has five women's representatives, who are not there by way of reserve position places but are there as an ordinary elected representative. Within our own equality sub-committee of the joint executive committee, we have a number of visible ethnic minority members of that particular sub-committee, including an officer who is openly gay, and we also end up – we have, I think, three women on that particular equality sub-committee. So I would suggest to you that we have made great strides in relation to representation within the Metropolitan Police Federation, but that is not to say that we have not got some way to go. Sir William Morris: Sure. Your submission also makes some criticism of failure by the management in the MPS about training. By way of example, on page 24 of your submission, you say there has been very little training delivered to senior managers within the MPS in dealing with personnel matters. What, in your view, are the consequences to your members of a failure to train, and does the Federation negotiate with the MPS on the provision of training? Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, we are consulted about training, but again, I would suggest that the consultation needs to be a lot greater. Personnel managers are something fairly new to the police service. We have only really had them for the last ten years or so. Prior to that, it would always be a Chief Inspector who would fulfil the position of personnel manager at operational command units. We now have a dedicated member of police staff who becomes the personnel manager. What my personal experience has shown is that the training given to some of these personnel managers was wholly inadequate for the job that they were in. I can cite you an example, for instance, of my own personnel manager at the station where I was based, who had come in from an outside organisation, had been told nothing about the organisation, was faced immediately with having to deal with an underperforming probationary constable, having not been told anything about the procedure that should be followed in accordance with the police regulations. Now things have come on a great deal since then, but what we need is better personnel management, not just for personnel managers, but for all line managers. I think again evidence you have heard from other witnesses have indicated that of the Fairness at Work cases since the policy was introduced in May of last year, the majority of those cases involved a problem over decision-making by first line managers. We are 500 sergeants short in the Metropolitan Police Service at the present time. We need to do something to increase the number of those sergeants; we also need to do something to assist with their training. Sergeants, when they go on their foundation course, do have some input towards personnel issues, but what we are saying is: you should not simply say that that is the sole amount of the training that they receive; they should receive ongoing training to assist them with ever evolving situations they may come across. It should be a development process. We do not tend to see the development process throughout the whole of the organisation, and that includes all of our members who operate supervisory positions, from sergeant – well, in fact, constables are in a lot of supervisory positions these days – all the way up to chief inspector. Mr Smyth: Can I say, Sir Bill, the manifestation of that problem is that if people do not know, have not been trained in what they are supposed to do over procedures that in fact are not difficult, are fairly straightforward, but have to be followed in a sequence, you end up with a situation where it is done badly. I suppose it is like trying to put together some complicated flat packed furniture and not use the instructions. One or two people will be able to do that very successfully, but most people will get it wrong, time and time again. That leads to frustration, and in this case, it is frustration on those that are at the receiving end of the actions taken by supervisors, not just supervisors of course, based out of not necessarily anything to do with management, but just lack of knowledge. That is why it is so important to get these things right. Once you have caused that dissatisfaction in part of your workforce, it is very hard to make that good again. Sir William Morris: Let me just try and explore some of the issues around training provision, because policies seem to come down pretty rapidly, shall I say. Does the Federation itself provide training for your own negotiators and senior representatives who are at, if you like, the frontline with interfacing with managers, personnel managers; you provide training for those representatives? Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, we do, Sir Bill. As soon as a representative is elected, they will be given a course almost immediately. We had to rely a great deal on the courses being made available by the Police Federation of England and Wales; with the numbers of representatives that we had, we took a decision, a number of years ago now, to actually create our own training courses. That has gone all the way through the system. So we have our own equality training courses; we have our own discipline training courses, and health and safety. Members will be trained up to various levels, depending on the skills of the individual, or the needs of the individual, or the needs of that particular OCU. So we have a very comprehensive training programme. Can I just say that we would wish that perhaps the MPS were to mirror some of the training that we do give to representatives, particularly in relation to the police regulations, which, as you have heard, are the conditions of service of all our police officers. Now, they are there. They are part of our terms and conditions of service, and you would expect everybody to be fully conversant with them. Our experience is that that is not the case. People may call them archaic, but all I would suggest to you is they may not have taken the time to read the regulations, because the regulations have only been in force since 1st April 2003. So these are fairly new regulations, and have been regularly updated over a great number of years. That is what we are suggesting, that there should be very, very good training for management in police regulations, in much the same way as we do for our Federation representatives. The fact is, our representatives know these regulations, they quote them to MPS management, and when they are quoted to MPS management as being effectively the law of the land, that is when people cry foul and say they are archaic and outdated. I would suggest to you that that is not the case: they are very useful. They are the terms and conditions, as I say, of police officers who do not have that employee status, and we feel that the MPS should be doing more in its training. I did note that you received some written evidence from David Hamilton, the director of legal services, where he pointed out that training was given to personnel managers in police regulations, but, of course, if that has only just started to happen, bear in mind we have had 12 months' operation of those new regulations, I would have expected that to have happened this time last year. Mr Smyth: Sir Bill, can I just take you back to consultation? It is an area, I think, that we did not mention, and you did not ask us about is – consultation is not just with the Metropolitan Police Service, it is also with the Metropolitan Police Authority. I have to say, I do not believe, and I am sure colleagues will agree with me, that the level of consultation we have is anywhere near the level where it should be, as is reflected in other parts of the country. I know you are going to visit other forces, and may I suggest that you ask what the arrangements are there, because they certainly will not be reflected here. Sir William Morris: I will come back to consultation in a minute, but whilst it is fresh in my mind, let me just probe another question about training, very much influenced by what you have just said. The sector of the economy which forms my own personal experience in terms of training has examples where, if you like, both sides of the relationship, managers and representatives, are trained together. It is not universal by any means, but it is deemed to be, if not best, at least good practice, and it is gaining more and more acceptance. Are there any occasions where personnel managers or other levels of management within the MPS are trained side by side with representatives of your Federation? Do you go and join training courses on a particular issue like the regulations, as you have just indicated? Mr Ratcliffe: No, there would not necessarily be courses in the regulations, but there is shared training; for instance, our advanced discipline course does have an input from ACPO members of the MPS, who are down there in the role of the board, the discipline panel, to, if you like, hear our side of the training and, of course, conversely, two of my colleagues here have just recently come back from some training for discipline board members, MPS training for discipline board members, only last week, where they gave an input to that course from a Federation perspective. But do we train alongside each other? We have in the past, we do not currently. Sir William Morris: Okay. Do you see this as an area which, if developed, not just on the regulations, but in some of the working practices which are emerging – working time, flexitime – do you see any benefit on these new and emerging areas of employment relations and relationships – legislation, like discrimination legislation or what have you – of joint training with the managers with whom the Federation has to interface? Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, personally I could see that there would be a great benefit from that, particularly if it came to the interpretation. You mentioned the working time regulations: there was a great deal of confusion within the Metropolitan Police Service as to whether or not they actually applied to us. Of course I keep saying to people, "Yes, they do, there may be certain parts of the regulations that can be disapplied, but the working time regulations have applied to police officers since 1st October 1998." There are large parts of the organisation I could take you to where I could show you breaches of the working time regulations that are taking place today. Mr Smyth: Sir Bill, when it became apparent that the Health and Safety at Work Act was going to be applicable to the police service, some time before it came in – in fact, it was some two years before it came into being, we were training our representatives. In fact, the training we give to them now is an accredited professional training, so we have moved on from where we were, but we offered to, certainly locally, input something on health and safety to senior officers in that part of the Met which was the old 2 area, in North London, and it was never taken up. So it is not for the want of trying, either locally and London. Mr Ratcliffe: Another example, if I might quote, is the police regulations themselves. Up until a few years ago, if you were to look around at any police station in the Metropolitan Police area for a copy of the regulations, you could only find it with the Federation representative. At our request, the MPS have now placed these regulations and the determinations on the intranet site, and they now sit on the HR intranet site, freely available to all members, because again, they should be capable of being read by everyone as being the terms and conditions of their service. Mr Smyth: In fact, Sir Bill, an example of that was that because across the Met they were interpreting the regulations which govern the overtime payments to officers – what they should be paid, in particular circumstances, and they had been subject to a legal action which had cost rather a lot of money, where they had to pay out a lot to a small number of people, because they had not been paid appropriately. It was decided that they would write a guide for OCU commanders so that the overtime could be properly administered, and they gave that task to the training school at Hendon. I happened to be there, on a training course for new reps, and I was asked, this is the Hendon police training college, if I had a copy of the police regulations so they could actually write that guide. They did not have one there. They were only able to write that guide or start the work at that time because I was able to supply them with my police regulations handbook, which I thought was pretty indicative of the situation that pertained then. And there is no reason to suppose they would have been any better if we had not asked them, you know. So archaic, I think, is another word for, "We really have not bothered to study them, we have not bothered to read, it is all rather too difficult". Sir William Morris: Yes. Let me skip to my previous point on consultation, and I might come back on this whole question of training, jointly or singularly. I want to sort of just perhaps make a qualitative distinction between – you can tell I am from the old school of trade unionism, because I make a qualitative distinction between consultation and negotiation, and you have mentioned two stakeholders, two constituencies there; one is the MPS and one is the MPA. It is quite legitimate that you, as a Federation representing over 100,000 people, should be consulted on the issues which affect the interests of your members, and broader social policy issues as well. What areas of policy do you expect to be consulted on by the MPA? Because I have read your submissions, and I have read the ad hoc'ry of relationships in terms of meetings and what have you, and I was not quite clear in my mind what were the legitimate expectations of a relationship between the Federation and the MPA. Mr Ratcliffe: The policy in the main will go to the MPA for sanction, final sanction, as being the policy of the MPS. On those occasions where perhaps we have taken the exception and simply objected to the policy completely, I think we would reasonably expect to be able to put that case to the MPA. That is not necessarily the case, we do not have a speaking part at MPA meetings. The only time that we do have that, just to correct myself, is that there is a new health and safety sub-committee that has been set up within the MPA where our health and safety leader has been invited to be a member of that particular sub-committee. But at other MPA committees, we are not allowed to give an input in the same way as MPS staff would be allowed to give the input, so therefore, we are restricted to writing letters which can be circulated to members beforehand. But, of course, if there are issues developing at the particular meeting, then it becomes very difficult to highlight the differences of opinion that we may have within the Metropolitan Police Federation, which, of course – to slightly correct what you said earlier – represents 29,000 members within London – Sir William Morris: Sorry, I was thinking nationally. Mr Ratcliffe: Of course that is the larger part of the 130,000 police officers in England and Wales. Mr Smyth: I think one of the things that should be in place is a formalised meeting process with the Police Authority, not just with one or two members. We have only had one member of the Police Authority, since its inception, that has wanted to come to speak to the Police Federation and visit us in our offices. I do not think that speaks hugely well. Yes, we do speak to members of the Police Authority on an individual basis, but there is no formalised meeting process. We have a formalised meeting process for meeting both the Commissioner and his management board, both formally and in minuted meetings, and that is something that should be replicated in the Police Authority. They would be better informed if they did that; that does not mean to say they would come to any different conclusion, but at least they would know what the organisation that represents the vast bulk of the police officers in the Metropolitan Police feel on particular issues. Sir William Morris: I am not making a judgment here, but let me just give you a parallel. If I worked for one of the borough councils in London, or indeed where I live, I would not expect the council to consult me on the policies that it is going to put in in terms of roads, highways, personnel or anything. Mr Ratcliffe: Quite the contrary, Sir Bill – Sir William Morris: I can tell you, it does not happen! Mr Ratcliffe: The Metropolitan Police Federation have officers in Bromley. Bromley council recently approached me as a business rate payer for that particular locality and said, "We want to consult you, as well as other business rate payers, about the new town centre development". So consultation does go on. People do change the style as consultation takes place. Yes, it is up to us to put our case forward, which we do on a regular basis. And that is the reason why we have asked for and will strive to maintain our membership of the various strategic committees within the Metropolitan Police Service, because that is our opportunity of giving the feedback from our members direct to those particular policy forming bodies. Sir William Morris: Right. I want to come back now to the MPS, and where that relationship lies in terms of consultation, because of course there are some things about which you are consulted, and the timing issue you have raised, but I would also expect a fair amount of negotiation. Because consultation is: "Well, I have decided broadly speaking ...", or, "I am minded to decide this way, have you got a view?" Whereas negotiation is slightly different: "I am minded ... and these are my proposals", and you on behalf of your members would say, "Well, I see your proposals, but I think that they are marginal, minimum, whatever", and you would get into a dialogue. Particularly when it comes to issues which affect your members' terms and conditions. You have talked about – well, we have explored training, for example, we have talked about issues around working time, working time directives, health and safety; are you saying that at MPS' level, there is probably late consultation but no negotiation? Let me understand. Mr Ratcliffe: What I am advocating for is precisely what you have suggested. By early consultation, it would take the form of negotiation. It allows us to have an input at the very formative stages of any policy. So often, we are presented with, as I said, the fait accompli, "This is what we are going to do, what do you think about it?" We would rather that we were involved in those developmental stages, so as we could enter into negotiation and have some meaningful consultation. If consultation is to be meaningful, it also recognises, at the end of the day, the MPS will be the persons who are going to make the decision; what we want is for you to take our view into account in reaching that decision. To simply give us a document and say, "Please comment on this in two to three days' time", with some of the lengthy tomes that do come out to us, I would suggest to you, is not meaningful consultation. Meaningful consultation starts from what the problem is, and then working out how we resolve the particular problem. Now if that results in a policy being developed, so be it, but that is what we want: the meaningful dialogue, and meaningful consultation. At the end of the day, we are not going to prevent management from doing their job; what we want is our say in how that should happen, because we do happen to think, as we represent nearly 30,000 members, that we do have something to add to the whole equation. Mr Smyth: Sir Bill, the reason why that is so important is that in a hierarchical organisation, which the police service is, not just the Met, where rank counts, they can make a decision despite the best consultation that goes against the weight of evidence and good judgment. That is why it is so important early on. And we can hope to persuade at an early stage of some of the pitfalls, sometimes, of where they might wish to go and perhaps point out ways where we can make a process better, more streamlined, more effective. So we can assist them to make the Metropolitan Police a much more efficient and better workplace if they did that. It does not sit well with a hierarchical organisation, if they are just used to being able to make decisions without consulting, or real consultation. That is certainly a challenge within the police service. Sir William Morris: Yes. I know it is difficult, but I am going to ask you to do it anyway: just set aside what you do, your role as police officers, and think of yourself, the Federation, as a trade union, which you are. In that context, how would you describe your relationship with the employers, the Metropolitan Police Service? Mr Smyth: I wrote something down, because I thought it would be something that we would probably want to say, because if you just read some of the stuff that we said already, it sounds a pretty desperate picture, and I do not think that is actually fair, because we are all very proud to be Metropolitan Police officers, and the Metropolitan Police, along with the police service generally, does much that is excellent. Good news, frankly, is not something that gets to the front pages very often, so what we are really highlighting are the areas where when it gets it wrong, it gets it quite badly wrong, and has an impact which is probably unintentional. I suspect much of what goes on is not intended but happens anyway, and it is about trying to get away from that, we make mistakes less often and are a better organisation. I think the phrase that the Metropolitan Police likes to use is "employer of choice"; well, we can help them to become an employer of choice, but they have to allow us to help them. Having said all that, we must recognise that there is much that the Metropolitan Police does which is absolutely superb, and I think we ought to take that into account as well. Our relationship with the Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioners is a good one. We can go and see them any time that we want to. Both Don and I have the Commissioner's mobile phone number and his home number, the Deputy Commissioner's mobile phone number. So consultation at that level or relationships are certainly very good. Sir William Morris: I accept the fact that the culture is created at that level, and the general ethos of the organisation is directed at that level, but in the end, it is about taking the collective culture of the organisation, right on the frontline, where your members are, and making sure that it runs through what I call in another context the so-called golden thread. What is the overall relationship? I hear about the phone numbers; I understand that in every organisation, we have all got people who we have, you know, real excellent relationships with. But more about the organisation rather than the two senior individuals that you have quoted: how would you describe the Federation, the Met Federation relationship with the MPS, the trade union and the employers, in general terms? Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, in general terms. Taking as to one side – in other words, the hierarchy of our organisation at Bromley, if you look at local representation, how is local representation at OCU level conducted? I would have to say it is good in parts, because, of course, one of the aspects that I have to be involved in is the agreement to various shift systems that operate throughout the MPS, again because of working time regulations and other legal reasons. What I do know is that in some places, consultation with local representatives is very, very good. Our constitution document which I provided as an appendix to our written submission indicates that there should be regular meetings with OCU commanders and local representatives. These do not always take place in lots of locations, but, of course, in other locations, you realise that they are having much more than the statutory four meetings per year; that OCU commanders, borough commanders, are having very, very regular meetings with local representatives and involving them in the local consultation process. On the odd occasion that you do come across where there is poor consultation, we will draw that to the attention of the Commissioner. Sir William Morris: In the last few minutes, we have explored some important issues, and there is a picture of change in terms of issues around working time directives, training, health and safety; issues which then impact on some of the statutory issues around the discrimination agendas and provisions that have been emerging. And, as we speak, it is happening. So life is changing in respect of the world in which your members live and work and police and exist. I want to come to one of the issues which has emerged from a number of witnesses, and indeed emerged to some extent with your National Federation earlier today; my colleagues and I have explored it in the privacy of our discussions reviewing the evidence as it comes forward to us, but we have no view, we are looking for people's thoughts and their ideas, before we form any view. And it is the office of constable, which we have heard a fair degree of evidence on, and both Anesta and Tony might want in their questions to you to raise different aspects of it. It has been suggested to us that the principle of ordinary employment law should apply to constable, and for example, in his written submission, the Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, said that the ordinary employment law applicable to the employment relationship should be applied to police officers whilst, and I emphasise here, maintaining the protection to officers afforded by the office of constable. I emphasise that, the protection of the office of constable, not just the office in terms of what it enables a constable to do, in the performance of his or her dealing, but the ethos and the general culture which underpins that office. And we have had a lot of different views about that. We would find it helpful to hear from the Metropolitan Police Service Federation, from your organisation. Because one of the arguments, as it has been explored, is the protection which it would provide in respect of certain terms and conditions, and greater access for defending yourselves in some instances: the access to tribunals about unfair dismissal issues, things like that. And we note that nothing is static on discriminatory issues, you have that right, and there are some issues around that which will emerge, inevitably so, around the directives, as we have talked about. So it is a changing world, and one of the sort of considerations, if not now, it might be in 20 or 30 years, that will have to be considered by different officeholders is: at what point does this development bring a new dimension to the workplace relationship whilst maintaining the protection of the office and the title of the office of constable? I know that it is a subject on which there are various views, there are fors and againsts, but we would like to hear you on that. Mr Ratcliffe: Well, the office of constable, as you are well aware, is steeped in history. I think I speak for all of my colleagues here, we are all proud to be Metropolitan Police officers, and all that goes with that. It is a very responsible role; society invests in their police officers some powers which ordinary citizens do not have, and they are powers that have to be used correctly, and in accordance with the – in strict accordance with the law. Police regulations have evolved over a great number of years. You know the reason why they came about, from the history of the Federation that we provided to you, and, of course, they are steeped in the police strike of 1918. Now I would suggest to you that whilst certain parts of the employment legislation are now becoming more and more available to police officers – you have heard that some aspects of employment law are open to police officers to take to an employment tribunal. Of course, more legislation comes on-stream later on this year: the Disability Discrimination Act will apply to police officers from 1st October. So we have various aspects that are opening up to police officers, but the question I would ask is: if it is not broken, why do we want to fix it? We do have this view that the regulations are archaic, but, of course, as I have said to you in my evidence earlier, these are fairly new regulations that were arrived at over a period of two or two and a half years' consultation. During that time, you will probably recall that there was a mass lobby of Parliament, where quite a few of my colleagues probably would have very much welcomed the full rights of the ordinary employee to be available to them, but I am not so sure that they are freely available in a free and lawful society, that police officers can be given the full cover of employment legislation. So therefore, I would suggest to you that if we were to be given employee status, then certain parts of the protection that is given to the ordinary employee would be withheld from our members. What do I mean by that? Without skirting round it, my suggestion to you would be the right to withdraw our labour: I cannot ever see that ever being given to the police officer in the United Kingdom, let alone England and Wales, or let alone London. So in those circumstances, there is a lot to think about, but all I would say, Sir Bill, is the regulations are not broke, they do not need fixing; what they need is better interpretation and training and implementation by the management of the MPS. Mr Smyth: Sir Bill, if I was just to add to what my colleague has said, police officers, when they exercise their powers, have to be answerable for their individual actions to the courts, not just to senior officers, or in fact not to senior officers per se; they are answerable in law for every action that they take, or indeed actions that they do not take. That independence is there very properly to prevent officers being ordered to do things which are clearly unlawful. If we were to arrive at a situation where we went to employee status, and an officer is dismissed because they had not followed some rule or order of a senior officer, you know, to try and access redress through employment tribunal, the mere notion that that would give them redress, where the regulations are in place – the police regulations and the discipline code of conduct – are there to try and ensure fairness. There is a perception in the police service that they do not use the conduct procedures in a fair way; is there any more reason for police officers to feel confident that they would use employment law in a fair way? I think the answer to that is no. And if police officers are not to be afforded the same rights as every other citizen in terms of employee status, I think it is fair to say that you must have something else in its place. That has been a tried and tested philosophy for decades, that in return for the fact that we are not allowed to exercise the right to withdraw our labour, then the way that our terms and conditions are negotiated are compensated for in different ways. Those different ways are the police regulations, the Police Advisory Board of England and Wales, and the Police Negotiating Board. You simply cannot tamper with one without changing all the rest. Sir William Morris: Can I just respond to some of those points there? "If it is not broke, do not try and fix it": it is getting broke. We have just talked about the new dimensions which 10 or 15 years ago did not exist, so it is getting broke, and it is getting broke and being fixed by others without the Federation having the real influence that it could and should have in fixing it. More and more demands will be made on your members about flexibility, working; they will be making more and more demands, the whole concept of work/life balance: there is a world out there which is rapidly changing. What is happening is that the rights and obligations in one sense will become an incremental development rather than a development which looks at the coherent whole. So that is a response to the why, "If it is not broke, why try and fix it?" Mr Ratcliffe: Can I comment on that point then? Sir William Morris: Let me just finish, because there is a perception here that you could not – this morning, when the national representative made the point, Mr Elliott, that you cannot have a halfway house, you have to go the whole hog if you are giving the rights, I had no illusions that he was talking about the right to withdraw labour. I have been around long enough to read the smoke when I see it. But the reality is that what would take place would be a contract would be determined, and that contract would prescribe what is in and what is out, so you would have the opportunity to negotiate your terms of contract. If you want whatever is deemed to be in the interests of your members, then you would put that on the table and deal with it. There is another uniformed service who – I am not making a comparison, I am just making a statement; the prison officers uniformed service work closely with your good selves. They had the right to strike, there was a bit of a hiatus, where in a peak, there was legislation, but it has been restored. So it is not beyond the wit of skilled negotiators like yourself. I remember all the debate and discussion around (inaudible), I stood and gave my round of applause. But basically what I am saying is that when nobody has put forward a package for imposition, what has been floated is a principle, and that principle would have to take account of a whole myriad of issues; not least of which is the regulations as they are applied, and indeed rights, obligations and all the other considerations. So that is what has been said, and I hear the arguments, in terms of personal liability; again, that is not something that cannot be negotiated, if it is legislation. You are telling me regulations are constantly being changed, so if it is an impediment to the greater good, then I am sure that will be something that could be changed. What I want just to leave this point for me – I know you need to come back on it, and clearly you must – but the key issue is whether or not the Federation sees the principle as one which is worthy of any negotiations at all, or discussions. Mr Ratcliffe: If I can come back on the point that I was intending to raise, which is the police regulations are regularly updated. You mentioned flexible working, and I hope that we may be able to discuss that later, but flexible working, up until ten years ago, was not permitted within the police regulations. They were changed by the proper negotiating body, the police negotiating board, and, of course, we now have the arrangements whereby police officers are not working conventional eight hour shift patterns. We have officers working a myriad of shift patterns, from nine, ten and even on some occasions twelve-hour shift patterns; we also have one particular location where they work a permanent night duty. They have seven days on and seven days off. So we are introducing flexible working within the constraints of the police regulations. That was not permitted more than ten years ago. The regulations now permit for that, and all I would say is that the regulations can be updated through the proper negotiating machinery that Parliament has put in place to deal with the unique case of police officers, and I would suggest to you, Sir Bill, it does work, and the negotiation arrived at our pay and conditions package in 2002 is an illustration of that. What seems to be happening now is that certain aspects of the police service now wish to go back and revisit that agreement; well, the proper place to do that, with all due respect to them, is within the police negotiating board. If they want to change the terms and conditions of police officers, use the proper negotiating machinery that Parliament has set up to deal with them. Mr Smyth: And they could consult at an early stage; I guess that is the best example you have had of where they find the process too onerous, so they use an Inquiry such as this as a vehicle to drive other issues, which I think is regrettable. Sir William Morris: Just moving on, in section 2 of your submission, you say that – the reference is MPF 1/10, and the reference that I am quoting is: "We would consider that the suggestion that the disciplinary procedures are inappropriate is misguided." Then the submission goes on to use 14 or 15 pages to set out the faults to the current system, about the timeliness, the communications; it sets out a whole raft of headings which represent, if you like, the menu of faults which you are concerned about. The only point that I want to make here is those points represent the issues which emerge in a number of letters. We do have a number of letters from your members where they are expressing their concerns, about – whether it is the monitoring, the suspension, the service confidence procedures, who deals with the allegation. Every single heading that you have mentioned in your submission we have received letters where officers have expressed concern, and therefore, what we want to ask is whether the shortcomings that you have picked up – are they being advanced to the management? Because I am sure that those who have written in to us expressing their concern would not use the term "misguided". They would say, "We are victims of ...", and they put a heading. Mr Smyth: Can I tell you, one of the things that I did, and it arose out of concerns being expressed by our officers in the specialist firearms branch, about the length of time it took to resolve investigations, where they had discharged a firearm, whether or not anybody had been injured, fatally or otherwise. I had a meeting with both the chairman of the Police Complaints Authority, followed by a meeting with the Director of Public Prosecutions, and I raised the issue of delays. The chairman of the Police Complaints Authority said the problem lay with the CPS, and the Director of Public Prosecutions told me the problem lay with the Police Complaints Authority. That is without even touching upon the Department of Professional Standards, who I would say would probably blame both of them, but, of course, the one that they will come out – and I know the evidence was given here, that it is because the Federation have employed one well-known firm of solicitors, and it takes a long time to get hold of a lawyer. Which was news to me, because I know we employ more than one group of solicitors. So where is the truth within it all? Well, there are delays everywhere. I will hand over to my colleague. Mr Ratcliffe: Professional standards obviously affects – not a large number of our members, but when it does affect our members, we end up with the complaints, as you heard; you never hear about the good stories, these are the bad stories, and there are a number of people who I am sure have written into you with horrendous stories, as it has affected them. We must not underestimate the effect of discipline on the individual, and of course, if we do not put that right, what then happens is the rot starts to set in, and the organisation suffers as a result of some wrongdoing or the procedure not being followed correctly. Therein lies the difficulty. Now I have heard you and your colleagues, when speaking to other witnesses, talking about problems over the long length of time, for instance, that people are suspended from duty. In our written submission, we make reference to the fact that rather than suspension, we ought to be thinking about keeping those individuals at work wherever we possibly can, and there is a facility to allow for that, and only in the most serious of cases should suspension be considered. Then again, when those cases for suspension are considered, then it is right, fair and proper that the individual has the opportunity to comment on the reasons why they are being suspended. So often in the past, the individual has not necessarily been told the proper reasons for the suspension. We have asked for them to be in writing, but they are not invariably in writing, so that the individual has the opportunity to challenge the decision-making process. The review often, as we point out, goes ahead without the individual being aware of it, and we end up with officers being suspended for very long periods of time. The people of London pay for police officers to actually be at work, and we would want them to be at work, providing a meaningful role within the organisation, wherever that is possible. That is the reason why we bring that to your attention. Is there a way round it? Well, we have suggested how that could be done, and we have put forward to you as to what the MPS should be considering more and more. Mr Smyth: But could I say within that, Sir Bill, that should not then be an excuse for officers to be removed from operational policing for the same length of time that they might otherwise be suspended. I saw two officers last week, one of whom will have been away from operational policing for six years before his matter is resolved. He has been waiting for promotion to Chief Inspector for six years; six years in a 30-year career is unacceptable. They are not lone cases. It is just wholly unacceptable. Mr Ratcliffe: We are asking for a proportionate response by the MPS, and I do not think that is anything unusual to ask for. Sir William Morris: Just one last point before I give our writers a little rest. The final part of your submission sets out a summary of the issues about which you are concerned. I just wondered whether you would quickly summarise those for us, and perhaps identify the three most important ones that you would want to see developed. Mr Ratcliffe: Yes. I mean, the theme of our evidence in relation to where do things go wrong is obviously consultation. Meaningful consultation goes right the way across the board, whether it be dealing with the individual discipline case, where negotiation is part and parcel of the process, but so often is ignored by the MPS; we do not deal with things in the same way perhaps as constabulary forces do, and I think were there a bit more consultation on individual cases, we may not end up with the amount of hearings we have, for instance, where we end up going to a discipline hearing to find that it only results in a minor punishment. We do stress that the periodic review of cases is something that is quite important for officers. It is also very important that members of the public who complain about police officers are kept informed of the progress of the case. But so should be the case in relation to the officers themselves, particularly if they are at work or not at work; not at work means they are out of the loop. It is so often very easy to forget about individuals who might not be at work, and then find that it is very difficult for them to come back into the Metropolitan Police Service as a meaningful member of the organisation. So we do think that keeping the individual involved would be a very, very proper and easy thing for the MPS to do. If we were to look at other aspects, training is the common thread, to use your phrase, that runs through everything. It is easy for me to say better training, but what we are saying is: better training, and by the way, we are also willing to take part in that better training, and to give you the view from the Police Federation, as we have done in relation to the board members' training. We will give you our perspective on how we feel the board members ought to look at aspects from a Federation perspective. You give us the same back; I think that would be an excellent idea, taking up on your suggestion. There is something that is quite important that I ought to raise, and, of course, it is in relation to the service confidence procedure which we have not touched on, and I do not know if any of your colleagues will touch on that; we do feel, in those situations, that there ought to be that oversight panel that we referred to. It is very easy to have somebody simply be the subject of a service confidence procedure, and because of the secrecy that is involved in the whole process, to find that when we try to challenge the process, only to be told, "I am sorry, I cannot tell you, it is a secret", is very disappointing to the individual, who suddenly finds they are required to rehabilitate themselves within the service, but do not know what they are rehabilitating themselves about. Turning to employment tribunals, what we are asking for at employment tribunals, if I can summarise, is again better dialogue. We have realised that nobody wins by going to an employment tribunal. There has been much said about lawyers, I best keep away from that subject, but nobody wins when you go to an employment tribunal, least of all the applicant. What we are gearing our training up towards now is a process of negotiation and early settlement rather than appearing before an employment tribunal to try to reach a resolution there. That does not work. And we end up with very, very disappointed members, because they have gone through a process, whilst they may have some compensation at the end of it, what they end up with is a very empty feeling in their stomachs for going through the whole process. What we would look to see is early resolution of employment related matters as a matter of course, and that is what our training is now geared up towards, negotiation for that early settlement. Sir William Morris: Okay. Well, thank you very much indeed. I know that my two colleagues have a number of questions they want to put to you, but I am also mindful that our stenographers have been working away there for well over an hour. So what I propose to do is just have a quick adjournment for about five minutes or so to give them a rest, and we can stretch our legs. 3.47 pm (A short break) 3.56 pm Sir William Morris: Okay, Mr Ratcliffe? Right, I will just ask Miss Weekes to lead the questions now that we have reconvened. Questions by Miss Weekes Miss Weekes: Thank you. Can I take you back to the discussions you had with the chairman about consultation, but really on quite a different point altogether? You are the trade union for the Metropolitan Police, I think you mentioned you have over 3,000 members, or did you say 30,000? Mr Ratcliffe: 30,000. Miss Weekes: 30,000 members. In which case, no doubt, you were consulted about the setting up of this Inquiry? Mr Ratcliffe: No, we were not. We became aware of the setting up of the Inquiry, I think the MPA meeting was on 10th December, and we became aware of the Inquiry as a result of that particular meeting. When it came to the setting up of the Inquiry, no, I did not have any discussions with anyone other than when I received the letter from your Secretary to the Inquiry, inviting me to submit evidence, and that was in January of this year. Miss Weekes: Do you agree with the purpose of this Inquiry? Mr Ratcliffe: The purpose of the Inquiry is very, very appropriate at this particular period in time. Miss Weekes: You think it is needed? Mr Ratcliffe: Very much so. What pervades the Metropolitan Police Service at the present time, particularly in relation to employment matters and discipline matters, is a blame culture; somebody is to blame. It may well be that it is the organisation that is to blame, because its procedures may not be properly in place to be able to deal with the situations that people come across. So I think it is very appropriate. Miss Weekes: And your membership reflect that view? Mr Ratcliffe: Well, our membership – I spoke to, by sheer chance, I ran into a former colleague only the other today, she said, "What are you doing at the moment?", and I said "We are preparing our evidence for the Morris Inquiry", and she said, "Oh, what is the Morris Inquiry?" Now I did take the time to explain to her what the Morris Inquiry was about, and we have asked our members for evidence for this particular Inquiry, but I think that albeit that I have seen it advertised in the corporate news site, I would hope that she is the exception to the rule rather than the general membership. But I would severely – I would certainly hope that the outcomes of this Inquiry are fully understood by all of our members, and appreciate the benefits that could be available to them as a result of your findings. Miss Weekes: If we were to send out a straw poll, and asked all your members to vote on whether or not they wanted to have contracts of employment, what do you think the answer would be? Mr Ratcliffe: I think they would need further explanation as to precisely what a contract of employment actually meant. We do have essentially a contract of employment at the moment, in the sense that when we join the organisation, we sign our terms and conditions of service. So essentially, we have a contract of employment which follows roughly the same procedures as employment law, in the sense that you would not be allowed to dismiss an ordinary employee without a good and proper reason, and if somebody did dismiss an employee without a good and proper reason, they could likely end up at an employment tribunal. Miss Weekes: Let us put it another way. If the poll said to your constables, "Would you like similar terms and conditions as police staff, maintaining the overall description of being a policeman, with special considerations?", what would you think the poll would be? Mr Ratcliffe: I would think the poll would be that police officers would be in favour of maintaining the status quo. Mr Smyth: I think that there is a world of difference between what we are expecting our police officers to do, as opposed to what we expect many of our members of the police staff to do. For instance, the circumstances and the situations that our colleagues face, whether they are on boroughs or the specialist firearms unit, is very different to that which is faced by those who work providing the refreshments at Scotland Yard, for instance, or for those that work in one of the myriad departments at Scotland Yard dealing with administration. They are wholly different. The dangers are different, the pressures are different. They are not comparing like with like. Mr Ratcliffe: Nevertheless, they are part of the one big machine, without which all the component parts in place, the machine would not work properly. Miss Weekes: I ask those questions because you will understand certainly my dilemma, it might be a dilemma that my colleagues have: we are hearing from you, not from the 30,000, and we have heard from some very senior officers, not the lower ranks. We are going to have to make a judgment about whether we go with the conflicting view which we clearly now have: the main Federation says no, leave it the way it is, if it is not broken, do not fix it. But the majority of every other witness who has sat where you are sitting says, "Time for a change". Mr Ratcliffe: Well, that is – Miss Weekes: Just a moment. So it is a matter of really getting to the bottom of what the police really want. How do you suggest we go about that? Mr Ratcliffe: I think what the police really want is to be able to carry out the role that we all volunteered for. It is not an easy role, but nevertheless it can be a very rewarding role, and I think that that is the reason why I say "if it is not broke, do not fix it". I personally do not think that the organisation needs to change the employment status of the average police officer. We do not need to change that. Do I know that that is the view of the ordinary member? No, I do not, because we have not polled our members on it – Miss Weekes: So it is your view? Mr Ratcliffe: Yes. If we were to poll our members on it, I feel more than certain that they would back me in my opinion, and that is all I can give you today, because I have not polled the ordinary member. Miss Weekes: Okay. Mr Smyth: Can I just add to what my colleague has said? Part of what I have not seen any of the senior police officers, or indeed the chairman of the Police Authority, Toby Harris, say to you, or talk to you about, is what the on the agenda – on their agenda which is police reform. On their agenda on police reform, and in their responses to the government Green Paper are many of the things to which they have alluded without being totally honest with you. I have never in recent years experienced a situation where ACPO members will come to a public meeting such as this, where they will know what the on the government's agenda for the future, and disagree, disagree with what any of the others are saying; they will all want to sing from the same hymn sheet, because that is what they do. But that is the hidden agenda, and that is why I said to you that it is regrettable that this Inquiry, which is about the way we deal with staff in terms of discipline and employment tribunals and so on, is being used as a vehicle to promote a view. That is not what this Inquiry should be about, so I think that is – there is a dishonesty around some of what you have been told. The other thing, with all due respect to colleagues that are in the room who are ACPO or have been ACPO officers, is that they do have experience of policing the streets; that experience is generally fairly limited, because they accelerate through the ranks, sometimes very quickly, and so their recent experience of street policing is sometimes 20, 30 or more years out of date. So we are not surprised that they have come to this Inquiry and given evidence to you which is all about trying to support where they feel that government policy may be taking the police service after the next election. That is clearly what they are doing, and it is dishonest. They should say to you – for instance, have they shared with you the Metropolitan Police's response to the government Green Paper, "Building safer communities"? I do not suppose they have. As I understand it, although I must check, whilst it was on their website, you cannot find it now, because it was too embarrassing, that which was in it, but nothing they have said to you surprises any of us from the Federation, because we have read that document, we know what they are about. They should have stuck to the terms of what this Inquiry was for, but they have not. Miss Weekes: Well, I am glad you have gone to it, because you can see why I opened with the questions that I did. I was going to come particularly to you, and the terminology you have used, "They have used the Inquiry to drive other issues". Well, "they" does include your Commissioner. Mr Smyth: Indeed. Miss Weekes: I am not going to spend a lot of time on it, but you have said something which I think is important, so perhaps you can bluntly tell me: what is the dishonesty? You may be speaking in terms which I do not understand. Mr Smyth: Quite simply, in the Met's response there are a number of issues they have put in there – they talk about the "archaic regulations", failing, of course, to mention that they have been amended and revised in very recent times. They talk about the number of attested or sworn police officers being reduced as an overall number of the total people employed in the police service; in their document, they say by 50 per cent. We know that there are discussions taking place amongst ministers where they look to reducing that number by 75 per cent. You know, these are the sorts of things that should be in the public domain, that should be being debated by the public, and those who are opinion formers, not smokescreened by saying, "We need to get rid of archaic regulations, police officers should be treated in most senses like other employees". The only reason we have the benefit of police regulations is because of the mistreatment that our colleagues have suffered, over many decades, leading up to where we are today; it is to make sure that there is a balance between the rights of the police officer and management to manage. Because certainly they were not there before, and if you strip all that away, we have no reason to believe they will be any better at employment law than they are at anything else when it comes to looking after staff when they get it wrong. They do not get it wrong all the time, but when they do, it is immensely damaging. The sum total of how damaging that is is that they have had to have this Inquiry, you know; if you are relying on the suggestion that we should trust them, we simply could not. You know, we need to have rights and responsibilities on both sides; that provides it. They simply want to strip it away. Miss Weekes: I am going to stick to the terms of reference, and go back to them, please. One of the things within our terms of reference is about management, and how police officers are treated when a complaint or allegation or a workplace conflict arises. I have taken on board your written submissions, and I have listened very carefully and made a few notes whilst the chairman has asked you questions, and some of it touched a little bit on management skills, so I would like to come back to that. You have made it absolutely clear that you are not interested in a radical getting rid of the regulations which we have got, because you say they have been recently negotiated for change. The new ones come out in April this year, that is the 1990 regulations, and there is a new Police (Reform) Act. Well, as I have asked this question to your other colleagues who have just left, I ask you for some assistance. It is all well and good to say, very firmly, and quite impressively, "Well if it is not broken, fix it"; what so far I am not impressed with are real practical solutions about how you get people to understand the regulations, and to implement them, in a way which avoids dispute at work; it helps the police to be happier, so they police in a much happier, constructive mood on the street; and you have less expenses with employment tribunal claims. So let us move away from the talk about what is wrong with it, and "if it is not wrong, let us fix it". How can you help us as an Inquiry panel that has to put sensible, workable recommendations; practically, how do you get managers to do it right? We know some of them do, but let us have some practical guidance from you. Mr Ratcliffe: Right, and an awful lot of these managers that we have referred to, that you have referred to, are actually our members; sergeants, inspectors, chief inspectors, of course, are all federated rank members and therefore members of the Police Federation. Miss Weekes: I understand that. Mr Ratcliffe: What we are suggesting – and this is where we could have very much an input to it, is by better training of those individuals, people have said, "Is there not a responsibility on the individual to training themselves?", but I would agree, probably with my colleague Clint Elliott's submission to you, that it is all very well and good placing the piece of information before the individual, but the individual needs to be tested to make sure that they are taking through the corporate line. That is what training is all about, it is reinforcing what you have just read, and that is what we would like to see. Now quite a few locations, various operational command units, OCUs, I will call them, do have training days built into their shift rosters. Quite a few do not, and I would suggest to you that that is very much a backwards step, because training of individuals is a very important part – I am not just talking here about how you might apply handcuffs to somebody, or how you might operate a CS spray; I am talking about the bread and butter training that we all rely on, and that is interpreting the law of the land as Parliament would want us to interpret it, to make sure that we carry through those powers correctly and legally, as I stated previously. So we would see that better corporate training is the ideal solution. Now the service has done it recently in the past; for instance, the Commissioner was served with enforcement notices under the health and safety legislation, which meant that 23,000 of the lower ranking police officers were required to undergo health and safety training. The same is true following the recommendations of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, in relation to community and race relations training, which is now in its second phase. What I would suggest to you is there is the ability to undertake training when it is required to be done; what we should be doing is building that into the whole structure of the organisation, in other words, ongoing and better training for all managers. That is the way to resolve, dare I say it, the number of Fairness at Work cases that I have referred to, where the greater number of them were decision-making by the first line manager. The next highest grouping, and I am sure you have seen this in the paperwork that has been sent through to you, was, of course, decisions made by second line managers, before you go on to other aspects. So what it does illustrate to me is that somehow or other, our managers are not necessarily getting it right. What we would want – because I argue as their representative – is for better training for those individuals. Miss Weekes: Can I just deal with the better training? Every document that I have come across, spanning perhaps almost eight to ten years, is about training. Every Inquiry document I have read is about training. Has the Met not got it right for ten years? I do want this gentleman to answer first, and I will come to you. Mr Ratcliffe: No, I do not think they have got it right, because yes, we do advocate training, but we do not necessarily carry the training through, or we do not test that the training has been absorbed by the individual. How do you do that? Do you measure it simply on the number of Fairness at Work cases that you have? Because that illustrates a failure in the system, rather than a positive understanding by the individual. The same might be true of discipline cases; you know, do we accept that because we have X number of discipline cases, that illustrates that we are not getting something right? We should have a system in place of training individuals on a regular basis, in the same way as we do, as I mentioned earlier on, the officer safety training has been a feature of the police service for a number of years now. For about the last ten years, officers are required to undergo officer safety training in the use of handcuffs, the use of batons and the use of CS spray. Miss Weekes: Can I interrupt you. There is a system in place for training within the Met? Mr Ratcliffe: Officer safety training. Miss Weekes: But we are talking about personnel issues. We are talking about how managers deal on a day-to-day basis with people with different gender, people from different cultural backgrounds, so I am really interested in personnel issues. Is there a system that trains managers in how to deal with disputes that might be about personality differences, it might be about the way an officer was spoken to, it might be an issue raised by a woman that is not going to be raised by a man. So that is what I want to get to: is there a system, and if there is a system, is it a good system? And if it is not, what are your practical recommendations for improving the system and making sure that the officers go to that training, that they get it, and that they are using the system? Mr Ratcliffe: We would much rather that an individual is trained before the event, in other words we stop somebody suffering as a result of a poor decision by a first or second line manager, or whatever the case may be. Miss Weekes: So is there a system? Mr Ratcliffe: I am not aware of any specific training, although as I have said earlier, for instance, sergeants on their development courses, and I think the same is true with the inspectors on their development courses, will undergo a form of management training. Miss Weekes: Right. Mr Ratcliffe: Now that will include lots of other things, not just personnel management, but how much can you absorb in just one course, or should it be ongoing training? I would suggest to you that it ought to be ongoing training, because, for instance, an aspect that I have come across fairly recently – and Andrea Earl is here and might be able to address this problem for you in more detail. Miss Weekes: Would you like to bring her in now? Mr Ratcliffe: Yes, I can – is flexible working, and the understanding of flexible working by some of the managers in the MPS. I bring Andrea Earl in on this particular subject. Miss Weekes: I am particularly keen to hear a little bit more about how good a training system the Met has for personnel issues, because what we do hear a lot about – and we certainly heard from your colleagues on the outside of the Met that interpersonal skills need to be improved. I know there is firearms training and I know there is training on special units, but we are really talking about resolving disputes between officers, between staff. So can you help on that? Ms Earl: Yes, I think a lot of the problems that I deal with, because I represent women in the main, are part-time, flexible working, and if you want to work part-time, your first port of call on most OCUs is to your sergeant. So you go to your sergeant with a request to work part-time, and he does not understand the part-time regulations, so that is when the first problem occurs, and then it escalates, it gets way out of control, because an officer will go away, right out of roster, bring it back to that sergeant, who still does not understand what he has got in front – that is where our problem starts, right at the very beginning. They do not understand the regulations, and there is nothing in place that I am aware of to give that training to our sergeants. Miss Weekes: Do you think something should be in place? Ms Earl: Yes. Miss Weekes: Because it is quite fundamental that your manager – it might just be five managers, but it is pretty fundamental if five managers do not understand those regulations, because they are crucial. Ms Earl: I think they most certainly need something in place, because in some cases, the sergeant or the inspector can go and seek advice from a personnel manager and they themselves do not always understand the regulations. Miss Weekes: So rather than get rid of it, which is some of the solutions that we have been told, you would rather go back to basics and redo the training scheme, so that they do understand it; is that what I am hearing? Ms Earl: Yes, I think – and as far as I am aware, none of our sergeants or indeed our personnel managers have any training in discrimination law, which I think is another problem that we as women face; they do not have any training, so the sergeant and the inspector does not realise right in the very beginning that there is a problem, or initially, that needs to be dealt with, so it gets overlooked and just causes problems for our officers. Miss Weekes: I did hear you correctly, no training in discrimination law? Ms Earl: As far as I am aware, there is no training given in discrimination law. Miss Weekes: How easy would it be for the Met to put that into place? Ms Earl: I think for – on promotion, there should be a part in their promotion course where it should be dedicated not only to police regulations and dealing with disputes in the workplace but also in some form of discrimination law, sex discrimination law and race discrimination law. Miss Weekes: You are to my mind the first person that has made that clear, so I think it is helpful that we now clearly understand that. Who is in charge of the structure for training, and what part of training should be obligatory, and what is left to the discretion of the manager to attend if they want to or they do not? Do you follow my question? Mr Ratcliffe: Can I – Miss Weekes: Who is in charge of that? Mr Ratcliffe: Can I say, I can assist here, in the sense that whilst HR have responsibility for delivering training, the request for the training has to come from the individual command. So in other words, territorial policing, which covers the boroughs, would have to request the training off human resources training directorate, who would then formulate the training course to be able to deliver it. Had how do we know that? Because we have just had some consultation on changes to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, where we have requested additional training for officers, only to be told that territorial policing have not requested it, therefore they have not put the changes to the legislation into any training courses. So the same would be true in relation to any discrimination training. Miss Weekes: I see. But as the main union, a push from your Federation that management or those who supervise must have basic discrimination training, part-time workers' regulations; if you as a Federation put that bid on the table, how would that be received? Would you achieve what you want? Mr Ratcliffe: Well, we have brought it to the attention of human resources, Assistant Commissioner Human Resources, many times in the past. Miss Weekes: What has happened to your request? Mr Ratcliffe: The request is not necessarily put into operation, although what I can say is as a result of me volunteering my services, there was a reference to my name on the HR intranet site, when it came to talking about flexible working; in other words, "If you do have any queries in relation to flexible working, please ring Don Ratcliffe on the following number"; which I do not mind, because that is the role that I have within the Police Federation, is to look at – as I mentioned earlier, the agreement of the joint executive committee is necessary for variable shift arrangements. So therefore, it is appropriate that I give an early input to shift systems, and this includes the individual shift patterns that an individual might be working as part of flexible rostering arrangements. What we are seeing more and more these days is a request, particularly from primary childcarers, to compress their working hours into fewer days. So, for instance, if an officer is working five eight-hour days, if they could compress those into four ten-hour days, then they are still working the 40 hours per week, because I think that is quite important; not everybody has the financial freedom to be able to work part-time. People in this day and age still require to maintain their earnings level at the same standard. But at the same time, they also require the extra time to do these other things, and this is this work/life balance that I think we are finally getting round to in the in the Met police at the moment. Therefore, if they can compress those working hours into fewer days, it means they have a day at home with their family, that they can look after childcare arrangements for that extra day at home, but at the same time, maintaining their earnings level, and that is what we are keen to see. But what is happening at the moment, and this is the problems that both Andrea and I are coming across, and I am sure other colleagues are coming across, is a reluctance on the part of managers to look at ways of introducing flexible working, and a lot of people simply refusing flexible working because, "Well, if I cannot do it, you cannot do it", and that is a very old-fashioned and outmoded idea. Miss Weekes: I am sure you would understand, if that is the stance that management takes, then employment tribunal cases just increase. Mr Ratcliffe: Yes. Miss Weekes: I am just interested in going back to the status quo. It is quite clear that it is not always right to criticise a manager if he simply – or she – does not understand because they have not been trained, so I take that on board entirely. But in getting that training, if there is going to be any sensible recommendation from us, I just need to understand: if you, who represent over 30,000 members, say, "We have never had this training for X amount of managers and we need it", what happens to the request? And if you do not get it, what can you do about it? Mr Ratcliffe: We can maintain pressure. For instance, using the example I quoted in relation to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the response that we had back within the last day or so was that – for instance, this deals with important changes in the Act, street bail is one in particular that I am sure you will be familiar with. We think it is very important that police officers receive proper and adequate training in what is a very important role. So come back with a response that it has not been requested is not appropriate; what we should be doing is bringing pressure on the service to ensure that that training is delivered. Miss Weekes: Right. Can I ask your colleague this question? It is about your analysis of the trends that you can pick up from employment law cases, and what your membership are telling you about the problems that they have which remain unresolved, so they need to go to employment tribunals to resolve them; and officers can only take discrimination cases, so I am going to look at race and gender, because that is the majority of the cases that go to employment tribunals. What is the trend that you see as to why women go to employment tribunals? Because there are quite a few of them. I am not going to look back at the statistics, I have read them, and I know you know them. Ms Earl: I would think it is based around part-time working, promotion, training issues, there would be a lot of breast feeding issues, lack of facilities. But in the main, I would think promotion, training and part-time working. Miss Weekes: And what steps as the Federation have you taken to speak to management about the trend? Ms Earl: We speak to management at every opportunity we can. We will always put forward what we perceive to be our problems, and try to address whatever issues that we can. We are doing some work around flexible working at the moment, and having discussions with the diversity directorate around that, so every opportunity that we can, we will try to address that. Miss Weekes: Let me take one example. I think it should be simple, but no doubt you will tell me it is not. Breast feeding; what is the problem? What is the problem about finding a remedy for a woman to have a facility to breast feed? What are the managers saying to you are the difficulties? Ms Earl: The first answer will always be, "We do not have a room to use", and so it is a battle. It is a battle whenever an officer comes to you from an OCU who has returned to work, she needs to express milk, you will go to personnel or to a superintendent and ask for a room, and they will tell you they do not have one available. It is always about making space available. Miss Weekes: Right. Part-time work; what is the response from management about part-time work? Ms Earl: "We cannot do that because we do not normally do that". If you are a uniformed officer returning to work and you want to return to work part-time instead of full-time, you would be told that you had worked early, late and night duty on a team, so that is where you are expected to return to. I do not think they think about how an officer is supposed to get a child to a childminder and start work at 6.00 in the morning. It does not seem to be – it does not register. What do you do with your child at 6.00 in the morning and what do you do with your child at 10.00 at night? Miss Weekes: And you will appreciate that this is going to hit more women than men, because for a certain period of time of a woman's development in a job, she will be on part-time work if she is going to have domestic interests. So that is the response from higher management: so where do you go from there if you want, you know, fairly radical fundamental change? Because the part-time regulations have been in for quite a while, have they not? Ms Earl: Yes, they have. Miss Weekes: So how long has this status quo been going on for within the Met? Ms Earl: It has always been a battle. Ever since it was first implemented, it has always been a battle for a female officer to find suitable part-time hours. Miss Weekes: You will forgive me that I am asking you these questions in some detail, because we have not heard from very many women, or not as many as we would like to have heard from. There may be good reasons why they have not yet come to this Inquiry, but you will forgive my interest in the topic. Well, it has always been a battle; a battle does not make the Metropolitan Police an employer of choice for women. So what is your recommendation as to how we can help you with this battle? Ms Earl: I think we need to start educating, we need to start changing attitudes; as you say, there is a time in a woman's life when she is not going to be able to comply with doing early turn/late turn. I think fundamentally it is changing attitudes. Miss Weekes: Race: what is the overall view that you get from the race cases that are going to employment tribunals? What is the trend? What is going on? What are people complaining about? Ms Earl: I would say in the main, it would be discrimination. Miss Weekes: Is it direct discrimination or indirect discrimination? Ms Earl: I would say in the main direct. Miss Weekes: Perhaps you can give me one or two examples of what you say would be the most re-occurring direct race discrimination suffered by your members? Mr Ratcliffe: Can I assist there and suggest that what always comes up is the selection procedures; not promotion, because, of course, we all know that individuals can take the sergeants' or the inspectors' exam quite freely, this is open to anyone, but it is the other selection procedures that we may have within the organisation, and certainly, black members of the police service will find that they feel that they have been unfairly discriminated against when it comes to the application for various specialist units. Miss Weekes: As a Federation, how do you take this up with management, and when you have, what is the result? Mr Ratcliffe: Each case would have to be taken on its own merits, and it is a case of trying to get it through to an early resolution. As I said to you earlier, we are not keen to take anything to an employment tribunal where we can reach an early negotiation. Miss Weekes: I have misled you with my question, can I put it again? I want to deal generally with you as a Federation, as a body with some clout that can negotiate and move changes, rather than any individual case. The trend that you see in employment law cases, I think you are saying, is that a recurring theme with race cases is selection. Mr Ratcliffe: Yes. Miss Weekes: So rather than pick one case out from another, have you tried the approach of going to management and saying, "Look, there is a trend happening here, we see a repetition of visible ethnic minorities complaining about selection"; have you tried that? Mr Ratcliffe: Well, we have not necessarily tried that directly at the moment. It becomes quite difficult, because an awful lot of the personnel issues that we are talking about are dealt with by HR. Whilst we meet on a monthly basis with the Assistant Commissioner, we are not members of the HR board, and HR decided last year to dispense with their strategic committee. Now why they did that is a matter of confusion to me and perhaps others as well, because it was our opportunity of putting forward these views within the HR environment. It becomes that much more difficult when you are raising matters with the Assistant Commissioner, because it will always boil down to individual cases, rather than the theme – to use the chairman's analogy, the common thread that runs throughout cases, and we will try to identify that wherever we possibly can. Miss Weekes: It is clearly more powerful if you can identify a trend, because one rises above the individual dispute, as it were. Mr Ratcliffe: Absolutely, and again, I would probably mirror something my colleagues mentioned to you this morning: we are analysing claims, but we are in the very early stages of analysing claims. We had not been doing it until probably about 18 months to two years ago, but I think that now we have got the machinery in place to be able to analyse the claims submitted by our members; we are able to develop that analysis in such a way as we will be able to identify these common themes a lot earlier, and draw them to the attention of management at an early stage. Miss Weekes: Can I ask this question, and either of you can deal with it: part-time regulations have been a way of British life for a very long time. Race issues and gender issues have also been part of our lives for a very long time. The rest of the public, and public organisations, have had to respond to those two issues. Two things you have said indicate to me that the Metropolitan Police is very behind in its response. You have only just begun to look at trends. It is very common for public authorities and public organisations to look at trends in their workplaces. Why do you think you have only just begun to do that, when the rest of Britain are quite a bit ahead? Mr Ratcliffe: Right, and – Miss Weekes: What is going on? Mr Ratcliffe: And they are, and I would suggest to you, it is probably the Race Relations (Amendment) Act that crystallised people's thoughts on this. Whilst it applies to the Metropolitan Police Service as a public body, it does not apply necessarily to the Police Federation, but, of course, trade unions, we suspect, will be involved in the legislation in the very near future. So what I have done, as the general secretary of our organisation, is to put in place the measures that we need to use to analyse the trends that we are talking about. Now I would hope that long before there becomes a legal requirement for the Police Federation to comply with the terms and conditions of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act, we are doing what the Act will require or does require public bodies to do at this pr